food Archives - Page 27 of 34

Restaurants December 4, 2017

Mystery Noodles are the Best Kind of Noodles

I recently found myself in a food hall of sorts in Beijing, hungry for something a little bit more substantial than the various snacks that most of the vendors were offering up. There was a full fledged restaurant in the back, but the menu was fully Chinese, with no pictures to point at.

There’s an app you can get on your phone called Google Translate, where you can point your camera at something and it’ll translate it on the fly. When I first heard about this, I thought, well, travel has been revolutionized. Then I tried it. It sorta-kinda works, depending on what you point it at, but for some reason when you try it on menus the results tend to be gibberish.

Still, I was desperate enough to give it a shot, and amongst the nonsense was a line that said something about “old noodles.” So I pointed at that and ordered it.

Restaurants December 2, 2017

Mushy, but Good

Thanks to its colonialist history, Surinamese cuisine is quite common in Amsterdam (the history of colonialism is pretty horrifying, but at the very least some good food came out of it. So… glass half full?).

Fast Food November 30, 2017

McDonald’s Around the World: Netherlands Edition

Remember my post about kroket, Amsterdam’s version of the croquette? McDonald’s has their own version, and — of course — it’s called the McKroket.

Dessert November 29, 2017

Unusual (and Delicious) Apple Pie in Amsterdam

Apple pie purists would probably scoff at it, but the pie at a cafe called Winkel 43 in Amsterdam is pretty damn good.

Restaurants November 28, 2017

Crunchy Fried Tubes in Amsterdam

One of the more popular foods in Amsterdam is a version of a croquette called kroket. It’s deep fried, with a very crunchy exterior and a creamy interior with chunks of beef. It’s really good.

Dessert November 26, 2017

Hauntingly Good Stroopwafels in Amsterdam

I was already a pretty big fan of the stroopwafels you can get back home — the round, thin discs of crispy, chewy, caramel-filled waffles that usually come in a cellophane-wrapped pile of five or six. They’re delicious.

But my stroopwafel love has been kicked to the next level, because I just had a freshly-made one in Amsterdam, and it was everything. It was one of the best things I’ve eaten in a long, long time.

Street Food November 25, 2017

French Fry Amazingness in Amsterdam

There’s something about the simplicity of really well-prepared fries that’s kind of irresistible. I mean, ultimately they’re just potato sticks, but that crispy/creamy contrast can’t be beat.

And the fries from Vleminckx Sausmeesters in Amsterdam are some of the best that I’ve had in a long while. They’ve got that crispy/creamy thing going on in spades. They’re lousy with it.

Restaurants November 23, 2017

The Line Failed Me

I’ve written before about how I’m powerless to resist a line-up for food. Yes, some restaurants can be over-hyped, but generally speaking if a place is popular enough to generate a long line, the food is probably pretty good.

So I got pretty excited when I saw the line at the Green Bench Cafe, a takeout joint (or “takeaway,” as they call it here) that’s well known for its sandwiches.

Dessert November 22, 2017

Crispygate: The Conclusion

In case you haven’t been following Crispygate (i.e. the most important story of 2017), you can catch up here and here. Basically, the doughnut shop Aungier Danger served me a doughnut with a crispy exterior, and I proceeded to spend way too much time thinking about it.

Dessert November 20, 2017

Crispygate Update

You’ll recall that a few days ago, I posted about the doughnut I ate at Aungier Danger, which had a bizarrely crispy exterior. I wondered: was that supposed to be crispy? Was the oil just at the wrong temperature? Or do Irish people like their doughnuts crispy?

Clearly, this could be my Watergate moment. Are Irish doughnuts crispy? The world needs to know about this. I’ve gotta blow the lid off of this thing.

So I went and ate a couple more doughnuts, obviously.