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Eating Out, Travel

NZ eh!

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Hey Dan,

Nearly a week on the ground in New Zealand, and I barely touched a sauvignon blanc or any lamb. But there was good reason: there must be about a million boutique breweries in NZ, and they’re doing some pretty amazing stuff – so no need to indulge in any cloying sav blancs. Plus, there were so many steaks on the hoof, that it would have been rude not to have partaken.

My ski season lasted all of one day. But it was a good one. And it’s nice to slide around the place with the benefit of heated seats – thank you very much BMW New Zealand and BMW Asia for the opportunity.

NZ Blog 2

skiing with heated seats: hmmmm

What I cannot stress enough is just how beautiful the Southern Alps are – if I believed in a god (or even a God), I’d believe this was the place where s/he thought “yup, I got that bit right.” Absolutely stunning.

And there were some good meals too, thanks again to a range of quality local produce.

Saffron restaurant was a great introduction to the dining scene, as was an Emerson’s Pilsner at the related The Blue Door bar next door. A little local chardonnay with my crispy whitebait (it was whitebait season) followed by a baked puff pastry stuffed with confit of local rabbit, sultana and pine nut black pudding, double smoked bacon, and served with braised lettuce and what they called a cranberry jus. It’s a common mistake – the word is coulis – but I’m willing to forgive the faux pas, because it was bloody good. A nice Central Otago pinot noir hit the spot too.

Oddly enough, Arrowtown (it’s about 15km from Queenstown, and apparently where all the locals moved when property there got too expensive – it’s a pretty little gold-rush town, but at the end of a valley, so apparently is as cold as a witch’s something-or-other much of the time) is also home to a tapas joint, officially a wine bar, called La Rumbla, which was also pretty good.

Sharing plates. Some a bit hit-or-miss, but with sharing plates it matters less. And I did get some lamb here too, along with a couple of really nice hoppy ales. The boys went for girly tamarind cocktails, but seemed to enjoy them enough. It is another place to which I’d return.

NZ Blog 4

And now on to more important matters: burgers. Queenstown, by which I mean the actual town (pictured above – is that not the prettiest city in the world?), is home to the Fergburger. Now you need to be careful about your pronunciation – a furburger is apparently something completely different (don’t Google that if you’re under 18, thanks). But log on to the official website – it captures the spirit of the place beautifully.

NZ Blog 5

 

In Ferg we trust

Any burger joint that was set up to cater to drunk people – it’s open 21 hours – has to be good. And it is. My ‘Mr Big Stuff’ only just squeezed under the ‘if it’s bigger than your head, you shouldn’t eat it’ rule, but was pretty amazing.

NZ Blog 1

 

Yeah, I’m eating it anyway

Sitting by Lake Wakatipu, taking in the scenery, and eating a Fergburger was pretty damned nice, despite the single-digit temperatures. I even saw people boarding the flight to Auckland with Fergburger bags. Probably the online ordering won’t work from Bangkok – I expect soggy rolls by the time the order arrives here – but it has set me on a mission to find the best burger in town. That’s for another post.

Meanwhile. What I’ve learned is that: You need to go to NZ; driving BMWs on ice is wickedly entertaining; you need to go to NZ; setting up a good burger shop catering to drunk people makes a lot of sense – at least if there aren’t any souvlaki joints in the neighbourhood; you need to go to NZ; and, you really should go to NZ. Seriously, it is the most amazingly beautiful natural scenery you will ever see. And they do good produce; they make great craft beers and wine other than sav blanc; they seem to enjoy life a lot; they don’t turn away boat people (unless they’re Americans with nuclear weapons); and they whip everybody in the world at rugby. What’s not to like?

 

 

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Daily Bread

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Banana

Not a loaf of bread

Hey Dan,

Fresh bread, you’re right there is nothing like it.

When I first arrived in Singapore in 1997, bread was problematic. I could buy pre-sliced processed loaves at the supermarket, but there was precious little else available. In despair I bought a bread machine. The results weren’t brilliant, but better than any bread I could buy.

Fast-forward a dozen years and bread has been discovered – sort of. The Singaporean Bread Talk chain is everywhere in Asia, and people in Singapore seem crazy for the stuff. I’ve even seen queues.

But when I walk past all I can smell is that sickly-sweet aroma of processed-flour sugary buns. It’s actually enough to make me feel a bit ill. Apparently it’s what appeals to the Asian palate, but calling it bread is something of a stretch. Then again, you’re probably not going to sell much product in a store called Processed-Flour Sugary Buns (though I should trademark the name, just in case).

There are alternatives now – Jones, Swiss Bake, Cedele, and the French place Paul, plus a few independents, are making life much better for those of us who go for a more traditional loaf. Bangkok’s even better – there are enough Europeans in town for a market for the stuff. Conkey’s and Maison Jean Philippe both make excellent loaves – and at vaguely reasonable prices.

Unbelievably, even Tesco Lotus in Samui has a bakery that churns out edible bread, plus there are a few European-run independent bakeries such as La Fabrique which has its main bakery in Lamai and an outlet near Chaweng. Who would have thought it?

But baking is just not an Asian thing. It’s unusual to find a domestic kitchen with an oven – of four places I’ve lived in Asia only one was equipped with an oven. That is bound to change, what with the cupcake craze (yep, every hipster in town wants to open a cupcake shop). For the moment though,  your bread recipe is a bit lost on me for now.

Yes I still roast meat on the old gas barbeque, but that’s not a bread-baking solution. (Then again, maybe it could be?)

I miss the oven though. Bread for one thing. Home-made pizzas. I’m hungry just thinking about it.

It’s funny though how much paraphernalia can accumulate in a kitchen. All those special tools that serve one function. A good kitchen shop is a bit like a good hardware store – it’s a bonanza of possibilities. But like hardware, there are some things you don’t really need. A garlic crusher? Use a knife, slice and flatten it. Really.

Cooking implements are different. A paella pan cannot be directly replaced. Or a cast-iron pot for slow cooking. And specific serving implements are hard to replace too. But give the olive pitter, or banana slicer a miss. Banana slicer? Yup. You can get anything on Amazon (do yourself a favour and read the user reviews, they’re hilarious).

An oven though. That’s an important cooking tool. I’m thinking I need a pizza oven. I’ll fuel it with the fat ends of the coconut fronds, and do some bread and a pizza at the same time.

Oven

 

I’m reserving a spot for it in the veggie patch right now.

Eating Out, Travel

It’s Thailand FFS – try some local food

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Library

Cold weather? It’s all yours, though a flying trip to Queenstown in August is bound to be somewhat chillier than I’ve got now. I’m hoping there will be lamb ragù on the menu. Will keep you posted.

We were passing by and stopped at The Library on Chaweng Saturday for a meal by the beach. It’s not the view we have, or want really, but interesting to see every now and then. When the megayachts come in (it’s the one in the background, below, you may just be able to see it behind the longtail boat) you know it’s the end of the neighbourhood.

Megayacht

There are so many beautiful places to anchor around Samui. I wonder why you’d choose Chaweng? Unless you’re desperate to be seen. Sadly, it’s this sort of tourist the place attracts these days.

There’s a story being told in that picture that is playing out around the island too. No sooner do I mention Khun Play’s seafood fried rice  on the beach than the pace gets taken over by a bunch of Italians who have set up a pizza oven.

Now I like pizza, don’t get me wrong, but in my local Thai village it’s starting to get hard to find Thai food. There’s something deeply, horribly wrong with that. It hasn’t quite happened on our island yet, the one loser French restaurateur notwithstanding. I hope we can resist any further incursions.

But really, it’s Thailand FFS – why don’t you try some local food? Why travel all the way from Europe for what is bound to be a second-rate pizza? What’s wrong with people? Ah well, I did once see a bunch of Singaporeans off to a Chinese restaurant in Rome (I went elsewhere for pizza. ‘When in Rome’, goes the saying) so it cuts both ways.

Naturally, the menu at The Library does have some local dishes, though they’re fancy versions thereof. A pad Thai goong and a khao pad talay (that’s a seafood fried rice – just displaying my superior Thai language skills), were actually pretty good, and not watered-down too much on the spice for those sensitive European palates. Shame the beer is served in flat glasses.

Pad thai

I fear this is the future though. Unless I want French or Italian I’m going to have to go to fancy restaurants in Samui to get a local meal. At least they’re available somewhere. I do wonder why people bother travelling at all if all they want to do is replicate home though. If they’re not willing to actually eat the local food as a bare minimum of experiencing the place what are they gaining by travelling at all?  They could do us all a favour, cut their carbon emissions and make Samui more beautiful to boot if they just stayed at home.

Eating Out, Travel

Singapore in 5 Meals

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Wanton mee

Hey. I’m struggling to believe I moved to Singapore 17 years ago, and that realisation sent me on a little meander down a culinary memory lane recently.

When I first rocked up I could not believe the food, mainly because it was so cheap and delicious. There I was eating hawker meals every day, because it was cheaper than attempting to cook the same thing at home myself (there should be a warning sign in that), and after a couple of months I weighed myself and discovered I’d stacked on nearly 10kg! How did that happen?

Well, obviously when you’re cutting costs, as hawkers are forced to do – Singaporeans may pay through the nose for fancy foreign food, but they complain bitterly when their favourite local dish goes up in price – then something’s got to give, and the first thing will be the quality of the ingredients.

You’re eating palm oil, sunshine.

It doesn’t help that I gravitate to the most calorific meals in existence. A rich, coconut-creamy laksa? My mouth is watering just contemplating it, but it’s probably in the region of 800 calories, and with precious little nutritional value either.

Even when I tried to eat healthy, my complete ignorance of how things were cooked led me astray. How could I put on weight eating Hainanese chicken rice? It’s just chicken and rice after all. Except the rice is cooked using the chicken fat. No wonder it’s so delicious.

Anyway, with a plan to go to the gym every day, I figured I could revisit some favourites.

The first was a chicken rice in a downtown shopping mall. The ambiance was crap, but the price was reflective of that. I went the whole hog and spent $6 on a set, which meant I got some vegetable and a soup as well. The soup was basically a shallot and chicken broth, so nothing special. I’ve had a peanut soup before, which sounds odd, but tastes better than you think.

The chicken was chopped with the bones in – not my favourite – but the garlicy chilli sauce was just perfect, and the rice rich and obviously fatty. Not the best chicken rice ever, but for $6 I’m not complaining. It would have cost me $4 all those years ago.

The next day I was in the ‘burbs near Upper Thompson Road (sight of the Singapore Grand Prix back in the day – I wish I was around to see that before it was canned in the 1970s), and stopped for a wanton mee (pictured above). I got upsold and ordered some soup with bigger dumplings in it too. The main dish was a bit light-on for the roasted pork, but the noodles seemed fresh enough. Plus there’s that lovely sambal belachan – chilli cooked with shrimp paste – to add some salty/fishy spice. Hmmmm.

Nasi Padang

Moving yet further into the wilds seldom seen by tourists, the next day I stopped at an eating house in Sembawang for some Malay food. I love this place, actually. It’s run by a bunch of nice older ladies who seem to actually enjoy what they do, and it shows in their food. A plate of rice with sambal chicken, fried bean sprouts, a fried egg and some peanuts with ikan bilis (teensy little dried fish) on the side. Delicious, and again, somewhere around $6.

Another day saw me in an outer suburban shopping mall, braving the early lunch hour (everybody eats at 12:30!). I had a char kway teow, which is a flat rice noodle dish with prawns, fat, cockles, fat, bean sprouts, fat, dark soy sauce, fat, egg, and some other secret ingredients, possibly including fat.

Bizarrely, some locals arrived and ordered the dish at the same time, and had theirs cooked first because – get this – they didn’t want spice! Weird. It was delicious, but I suspect it may have been fattening. I don’t know what makes me say that. And I reckon $4 doesn’t buy you any ingredients with nutritional value, either. Certainly green vegetables were conspicuous in their absence. Good for a hangover though.

Finally I went to Poison Ivy, which is on an organic farm – one of about one in Singapore – and had a curry. Okay, it’s more expensive than hawker food, but I did get vegetables, which is rare, and they were grown locally too, or so they claim. All for $20 with lime juice and coffee.

Now, I didn’t manage to hit some of my other favourites – Indian served on banana leaf at Samy’s for instance, or sambal sting ray, or chilli crab, or laksa, or bak kuh teh, or nasi lemak. But I need to spend at least a year on an exercise bike first.

Maybe that’s the list for 2015. That and a heart transplant.

 

 

 

Home cooking

Greener Pastures

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Lamb

 

Tender and delicious (left). Farmer (right).

Great Dan. While you were braving Melbourne’s winter to barbeque/smoke fish, I was busy making a lamb ragù and home-made Pappardelle in 37-degree heat!

At least the weather came to the party and I got a storm when I was dishing up, so with the air-conditioning cranked up it seemed an appropriately wintery night for a hearty slow-cooked meal and a glass of red.

Greener grass; it’s a great motivation, no?

Oh, and if you’re American, that’s 99-degrees F. Please, get a more sensible system – 0-degrees for freezing water and 100-degrees for boiling it makes comprehending it so easy. Your option is 32-degrees and 212? Really?

The lamb was sort-of made up, but something like this: Brown lamb pieces in a heavy cast-iron pot, set aside. Add onion and pancetta and cook until the onion starts to colour. Deglaze the pan with a glass of wine, add stock, tomato paste, carrot and a bay leaf or two and simmer for three hours or so.

The pasta’s about the opposite in terms of cooking time. Mix about 1.5 cups of flour with two eggs and a generous pinch of salt. Knead and set aside for 30 mins. Run it through the pasta machine and cut into wide strips. Cook in boiling water for about 2 minutes.

There’s no substitute for fresh pasta like this. I don’t have anything against dried, but in this case the firmness of the fresh pasta was perfect for the fall-apart ragù. A little good quality parmesan cheese across the top and you’re away.

I’m almost embarrassed to say it, but we drank a bottle of Jacob’s Creek cab sav with it. In my defence, I had to buy it at the supermarket, and it was the Reserve variety, which is much better than the usual stuff. And it cost US$25, which is more than enough for a night at home, and at the low-end for a drinkable wine in these parts. Sigh.

My winter didn’t last long though. The next day I made omelettes stuffed with fresh crab, coriander and a chilli-jam dressing. I can’t get over the fact that I can get the crab meat, freshly-cooked and picked, from the supermarket for less than the price of lamb.

And really, when the temperature is in the high thirties, who wants a heavy winter meal?

Eating Out

Web of Deception

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Duck

WWWeb-footed 

Hey, “The leading independent guide to what’s on in Singapore” recently launched a mobile app. Having never heard of City Nomads I thought I’d check out its website, and chose a restaurant review at random, just to see what it’s all about.

Wading past the usual lifestyle writer’s clichés – Sabai Fine Thai on the Bay is, of course, ‘nestled’ in its location. Nestled being the only way a lifestyle writer can describe a physical location. ‘Nestled in verdant greenery’ is a personal favourite and overused phrase, as though greenery is any other colour.

There was a mention of ‘pleasing verdant foliage’ in another randomly-selected review on the site, so I’m saying they’ve got all the boxes checked. Then again, another food blogger went the whole hog with ‘nestled among lush greenery’ for his review of the same place, and yet another went with ‘soaked in quiet greenery’. I’m assuming he took a wetsuit.

But back to the Thai restaurant. Apparently the chicken wings were ‘joyful’, which would seem odd given they’d been hacked off a chicken and subsequently stuffed and fried.

But the one that really hit a nerve was this: The ‘duck red curry’ came in a ‘light red curry sauce containing lychees, an unusual but brilliant addition.’

Lychees in gaeng phed ped yaang are an ‘unusual’ addition? Oh come on: 90 percent of the red duck curries I’ve ordered have had lychees in them.

Lychees

Some lychees, yesterday

I’m an old fart I know, but this sort of uninformed opinion masquerading as knowledge really pisses me off.

If you’re going to make a statement of fact, maybe you should try to ensure it is actually factual. Ever heard of Google? It is a place to start, though may well lead you to other similarly uninformed opinions on the Web.

Herd ignorance; just what the world needs.

Now I know I’m picking on City Nomads unfairly, it’s not as though they’re the only amateurs in the field.

It is possible to write with some humility and informatively when you’re new to something, but in most cases  you want reviewers who have some experience in the field about which they write.

This is problematic in the lifestyle media for reasons made clear on City Nomad’s website in a job advertisement. You too could join the City Nomads team as editor, the gatekeeper for all the opinion and facts (along with the spelling and grammar) that warrant publishing, and earn a grand sum of S$3-4k a month for your trouble. That’s US$2.4-3.2k.

Stop and think about that for a moment.

Unless you’re living at home with mummy and daddy (a distinct possibility in the world’s most expensive city) and they’re picking up all your bills, that’s not going to leave a lot of spare cash for dining out at anything other than hawker centres. So where, other than hosted media tastings, are you going to get the experience you should have in order to do the job properly?

I’ve long maintained that to write about lifestyle it helps to actually have a lifestyle, but frankly most publishers don’t see it that way, choosing instead to exploit juniors who perceive the business as glamourous and are willing to accept inequitable wages as a result.

If you’ve ever wondered why reviews in the so-called lifestyle media tend to be as gushing, and as adjective- and superlative-laden as the marketing materials from which they are so often cut and pasted, or why they’re so often ill-informed and undiscerning, then wonder no more.

Do we deserve better? I’m not so sure we do, given our penchant for consuming our media for free on the Web. Maybe the old model where experts were paid a proper living wage to write reviews and we paid for the privilege of reading them was better?

Thoughts?

Anyway, now I’m done venting my spleen, last night’s dinner was based of a recipe  in an old Donna Hay magazine. Thai herbs, duck, home-made chilli jam, and fresh lychees. They were an unusual, but brilliant addition.

Home cooking

Stock and Awe

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stock

Hey Dan,

While you’re living high on the hog, I’m getting back to basics. After all the travel there’s a serious need to lose some weight, so the exercise has been ramped up, and the calories consumed reduced.

One favourite for the weight-loss diet is soup. It sates an appetite and can be healthy too, depending on the ingredients. Tonight it’s pea soup with mint, so that checks all the boxes.

But first, I need some stock.

A long, long time ago I gave up on store-bought stock or cubes. Convenient they may be, but typically an ingredient list looks like this: Wheat flour, salt, flavour enhancers (monosodium glutamate, disodium 5′-ribonucleotides), yeast extract, glucose syrup solids, chicken fat, potato starch, sugar, chicken extract, flavouring (contains celery), onion extract, colour (ammonia caramel). That’s from Oxo, but may as well be any of them.

So that’s flour, salt, sugar, fat and chemicals. Mmmmm, ammonia caramel: Just like Grandma used to make.

Really, I have no interest in eating something that sounds as though it was scraped off a vessel in a toilet cleaner factory.

So today’s stock day. Easy: A couple of chicken carcasses; some old chook bones saved from other meals and frozen; some celery; an onion; a couple of carrots; a few bay leaves; salt and pepper; water. Simmer for a few hours, skim, strain (remembering you’re reserving the liquid and not the solids – I absent-mindedly tipped the stock down the sink one day. Doh!).

Viola: chicken stock. No artificial ingredients, loads of flavour, and it costs a couple of dollars. I divide it into Ziplock bags in two-cup portions and freeze them, and one pot of stock lasts me for a month or two for soups or risottos or whatever.

There’s only one problem. While it’s simmering, the whole house fills with a superb chicken/bay leaf aroma and it is mouth-watering. It takes some serious self-restraint not to raid the fridge, and that would defeat the purpose somewhat.

Home cooking

Boy’s Menu

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Coconut cream

Hey Dan,

Looks as though you do nothing but eat out. Being the poorer sibling, I’m doing more home cooking, and am at the end of a two-week stint of fending for myself.

No big deal I hear you say, except I’m on the island, and that changes things.

For those who don’t know, it’s a remote island in the middle of nowhere, and my nearest food supplies are at least a 30-minute boat ride away. And I don’t own a boat. Needless to say it, but shopping is done once a week.

I know what you’re thinking – why not grow some food yourself? I do try, but between feral pigs and water buffalos (no kidding) it isn’t easy. I do have more coconuts than I know what to do with, so this week when I made a green chicken curry…I used some store-bought coconut cream. Have you ever made coconut cream? I have and I was pretty proud of myself too (I even took a photo, above) but it took forever, and didn’t taste that much better. Half an hour’s work and all that sweat? Really, just buy the stuff.

Anyway, because I’m effectively a bachelor, that means I don’t have the shopping rigour of my better half, who not only makes menu and ingredient lists, but actually consults them while in the shops. I’m the boy who goes to the store thinking I’d like to make a frittata and comes home with onions, potatoes, and capers (because we were out) but no eggs.

Worse. My mind always turns to the most complex things you can imagine: Twice-cooked pork belly (simmered for two hours, then char-grilled)? Yep. Did that. Though in my defence, it is still charred meat – the caveman is alive and well!

Even when I do map out a week’s menus, I’ll get to the day and decide I want something else instead.

In some ways it’s like being on one of those cooking shows: “Here are your ingredients: You have one hour!” Only I’d lose miserably, because I’d be “well the pork belly’s going to need another couple of hours” when they tell me to plate-up. Makes me wonder whether they’re only looking for short-order cooks, but that’s another story.

Anyway. The finite ingredients make me get a bit creative. Sometimes that’s good. I cooked some Asian-style chicken (that I’d never serve to an Asian friend, even though it was delicious), and tonight, getting towards the end of what’s in the fridge, it’s a Spanish-style omelet. Again, something I’d never serve to a Spaniard.

But it’s interesting that as Australians we feel free to experiment with other cuisines. I think that’s why there are so many really good Australian chefs. That said, you really need to master a traditional dish before you can feel free to modify it. Apparently Picasso said you need to “learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

I think there are too many chefs trying to run before they’ve learned to walk. My experimentation is more a matter of necessity, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t successes along the way. Come and visit and I’ll do the pork. It’s pretty sensational, though in retrospect I forgot one of its prime ingredients this time around. Ah well…

 

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Attack of the Gastro-Gnomes

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Negrito

Hey Dan,

Russian River does sound interesting. Funny you mention The French Laundry though. I’m not sure why you’d bother going, because it only ranks 44th in the World’s Best 50 Restaurants list released this week. I’m betting you’ve remortgaged the house and been on hold to Copenhagen for 48 hours, trying to get a table at Noma some time in 2017 instead.

Or not.

Having never eaten there, I’m happy to give Noma the benefit of the doubt on the food front, but slapping a ‘world’s best’ label on something like a restaurant is as futile as ranking art – ‘and once again for 2014 the Mona Lisa takes the top prize, though that Da Vinci bloke had better get a bit more avant-garde if he wants to retain the title next year.’ Bollocks.

They’re comparing apples with oranges (with mangoes, durians and grapes too – though grapes win hands-down, because at least you can turn them into wine), and despite the claim that more than 900 industry experts are involved in the voting there are obviously biases involved. Plus, 900 experts sounds a lot like a committee to me, and you know what committees produce.

Still, there are some interesting things to note. Such as 36 of the 50 best being in Europe. That’s right, a mere six in Asia – the world’s most populous continent (though I have two within walking distance. Should I count myself lucky?). There are five for all of Central and South America, and a mere one each for Australia and South Africa.

Okay, so the judges have a thing for Europe, and Spain in particular. I get the Spain thing – I did a trip there a few years back organised by the Spanish tourism people, and the food was incredible. But only one in Australia? Then again, the ranked restaurants all tend to do the expensive degustation menu thing, so that narrows the field.

As a marketing tool this works. You’d push to be on the list too if it meant a waiting list to get a reservation at your restaurant. I met one of the chefs on this year’s list a few years back, and he was young, extremely photogenic, and very eager to be nice to the media – it’s amazing how far a compliment to a journalist will get you, believe me.

The problem is that being on the list means your restaurant will be full of media types and serious foodies – they’ll sit quietly and photograph every plate and analyse every bite and discuss in reverential tones suitable for such a religious experience (Chefs are gods, didn’t you know?).

Give me a busy family-run trattoria in the Italian countryside any day. Nothing sucks the joy out of a dining experience more effectively than a serious foodie.

Clearly it was an oversight that I was not consulted when it came to compiling this list. Frankly we should do one of our own – the 41 Best Restaurants in the World (that should stop them suing us!).

My nomination goes to Cafe Negrito on Koh Samui. Khun Play does a killer seafood fried rice (I don’t want to know what the secret ingredient is, for fear that it’s MSG), the beer is so cold that the condensation freezes on the outside of the bottle, and the view across the water is lovely.

Admittedly the wiring is more creative than the menu, there’s no wine list (we can fix this) and the roof leaks when it rains, but I’ve never had anything buy a joyful experience there. That makes it the best in my books.

 

 

 

Travel

French toast

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Cancale oysters (1)

Hey Dan,

Isn’t it strange that we should both be travelling at the same time, particularly to these destinations.

Despite the absurd ‘freedom fries’ debacle ten years ago, Americans and the French have more in common than either would like to admit. Unfortunately that includes their ‘cremate it and stew it’ coffee. No wonder the minority of Americans with passports all seem to be in Paris.

You can get a half-decent espresso if you ask nicely, but anything with milk in tends to come with the sense that the coffee grinder was on strike that day.

Funnily enough, it was a decent coffee that lead me to one of my better lunch experiences in Paris. I was walking past a place called Le Pain Quotidien (http://www.lepainquotidien.com) at coffee-o’clock and stopped in, and was surprised to get something that tasted like coffee. That they also had some great-looking bread and organic vegetables on the menu – April in France isn’t great for vegetables, as they tend to eat seasonal, and that limits things to asparagus – decided me on coming back for lunch.

I thought it was a real find, but then I discovered that it is a chain that originated in Belgium, and that even has four outlets in Sydney! Still, quality is quality – franchise or not.

The vegetable thing also led me to Le Richer (http://bit.ly/1lHGTE2), a bit of a hipster bistro on Rue Richer in the 9th arrondissement. The menu is limited to three starters, three mains and three deserts, and they don’t take bookings – arriving for a late mid-week lunch we got a table instantly – but the food is actually worth a wait.

My main featured the most tender and succulent rabbit I’ve ever eaten, though the addition of cuttlefish to the sauce seemed unwarranted. Good service and Agent Provocateur Belgian ale on tap, as well as a choice of wines by the glass or up to about €60 per bottle (most are in the €25-40 range), and a pretty decent espresso to finish. What’s not to like?

The eating highlight of this France trip was in Brittany in a little town called Cancale though. At the Port de la Houle there is a row of restaurants facing the water, and at low tide oyster beds are visible at one end of the bay. Tractors towing trailers full of oysters ply the street in front.

The oysters were so good at the casual Au Pied d’Cheval for lunch one day we went back and tried the slightly fancier Le Surcouf the next night, and they were even better. That lovely fresh seaweedy, sweet salt-water flavour and beautiful silky texture – my mouth is watering just thinking about them. Their moules marinières weren’t bad either. All washed down with a 2012 Pouilly Fumé – unlike you, Dan, I prefer my French whites while they’re still in diapers.

All-in-all a memorable experience, and one that reinforces my feeling that really good ingredients don’t need to be messed around with much.

Enjoy the rest of your California sojourn, I hope there’s some more good eating.