So you’re a young Khmer guy in the big town of Siem Reap, and you’re out for dinner—alone. But your honey is on the phone, and your grin gives that fact away. You chat and chat with that grin real wide until the fried rice comes to the table. Then you wield the little black phone with the left hand, and a spoon with the right, devoting half your attention to each task in each hand. Neither the grin nor the conversation falters. You don’t even notice the barang sitting across from you, snapping your picture again and again and again, in quick succession. You pile the rice into your mouth, still talking and grinning, eyes cast downward, focused on rice—but every other bit of your being so obviously concentrating on the sweet sounds coming through that little black phone.

Then suddenly, inexplicably—though not unpleasantly, because the grin continues—the conversation ends and you can attend to your dinner with two hands. Fork in the left, spoon in the right; zip bang boom, the plate is clear, the bill is paid, and you’re off. You strut down the street with a little jig in your hips—and a big grin still carved in your face.

… is monkey-licious. But you have to wait for it.

Waiting in line (that’s what an hour of your life looks like) for Gorilla BBQ loveliness.

NOTE: Somehow barbecue seems frivolous and least important, in light of what’s happening in Haiti. The images erase even a vigorous appetite; they remind me of the tsunami five years ago. My heart goes to Haiti and its people. And yet. Life goes on. Jerry was kind enough to write about his recent excursion to one of the Bay Area’s most famous BBQ joints, an adventure I had to miss. Enjoy….

One day last week while the Rambler stayed behind to “work,” I joined my folks for a jaunt up the California coastline to sample a local phenomenon: Gorilla BBQ, in Pacifica.

Run from a converted railroad boxcar with a smokestack out the back (“If it’s smokin’ we’re open!”), the menu is a blessedly simple mix-n-match of: BBQ pork ribs, chicken, beef brisket, pulled pork, hot links and a Philly cheese steak sandwich. With regulation BBQ sides. In a nod to local non-carniverous freaks, they also offer a portabella mushroom. I think it may be a trick: I saw no one order it.

The Right Honorable Mr. Rich Bacci, co-founder, in situ, taking orders. Full menu behind.

It took us a solid hour of waiting in line in the parking lot to get inside to place an order. All orders are carry-out: there are no tables. They open at noon and close when they run out of meat, which may occasionally last until 8 p.m., so go early. And if you have the chance, you will go early again and again and again.

A man who loves his work.

There is a simian theme here…

Simian theme continued.

The meat itself is fantastic. Utterly fantastic. Over-the-top fantastic. Obviously soaked for days in sugary-spicy goodness and then roasted for hours upon hours, the pork is dreamy-succulent, and (surprisingly) not too terribly greasy. Personal preference would call for a little less sugar and more chili and vinegar in the sauce, but common North American palates would likely disagree.

Pulled pork de-lite, with beans, sauce, corn, cornbread and coleslaw.

And, unlike the offerings at so many BBQ joints, the sides were properly cooked and flavorful, not globby starch lumps.

But Gorilla BBQ is really about the ribs. Which are whole ribs, nearly a foot long, including the tips and other pieces often trimmed off and sold as separate bits by cruel butchers.

“Falling off the bone,” “mouth-watering,” “succulent,” “heart-clogging,” “I need a bib” and all the other usual rib-descriptors apply, but in this case they are all fully justified. You also get a whole lot of pig for your yuan, a fairly uncommon occurrence in the Golden State.

BBQ Ribs: Ribs, the Whole Ribs, and Nothing But the Ribs, so Help Me God. If this doesn’t fill you up, there’s a hole in you somewhere.

A Californian “surfing,” or simply wishing she had some good BBQ instead of a pointy foam board on her head.

Big, meaty and real, one more time.

The one single drawback to Gorilla BBQ – no beer. They should sell mini-kegs of Anchor Steam to go. Then I would be 110% gruntled.

-Jerry

When AFAR published my laphet thote article, it ran under the headline, “A Burmese Salad that Says Welcome.” I didn’t write the title. It’s what editors inferred from the story. “Welcome” is spot-on, but love, compassion or kindness would have worked just as well.

The Burmese possess magnanimous hearts—this I learned from my students. I’m remembering the month I spent in Thailand last year teaching a group of Southeast Asian journalists, and never once did the Burmese contingent allow me to pay for their meals. None of their families had stashes of cash to spare. I wanted to pay them back, and I thought I had devised a way. During the last week of the course, I asked them to a Burmese dinner, to a restaurant I had visited while living in Chiang Mai a few years back. The place had a new owner, new menu and new name. I asked my colleagues to eat with me, and to explain everything they knew about Burmese food—because I was interested, as a journalist. Before the end, I figured, I could sneak off and pay the bill.

We gathered on the restaurant’s upstairs balcony and the feast began. Shredded ginger salad (gin thote) arrived with peanut, tomato and onion—spicy, pungent, nasal-clearing goodness. We talked a lot that night about a key ingredient in Burmese salads: chickpea powder, which adds the hefty graininess I have always loved.

Sauce is paramount to the pork and soybean paste (wat pone yae gyi). “The main thing is the juice. It’s better than the meat,” said P. (For protection, the Burmese asked that I not use their names or show their faces.) It’s rich, like the juice of a great steak, but spicy from green chile.

It takes several months to pickle the bamboo shoot used in Burmese pork curry (wat hmyit chin). “We have two kinds of bamboo—sour and sweet,” K explained. This is sour, and very young, he said. “Infant bamboo. Infant of the big bamboo tree.”

A pungent dish of fish paste (nga pi) arrived, surrounded by raw vegetables. “This is essential food,” Y said. “In Burmese villages, some people cannot eat a meal, so they eat this with rice and vegetables, and that’s all. Because they are poor.”

We talked of the different methods of cooking with chiles. Fish paste is mixed with fried dried chiles, but curry uses chiles dried in the sun, “no need to fry,” P said. “In Myanmar, every curry has oil, onion, ginger, garlic and salt.”

The basics of Burmese salad include fried shallot (in peanut oil), garlic mixed with onion (if you like), chickpea powder, fish paste, salt and something sour (such as tamarind or lime). P said he doesn’t cook, but he learns everything by watching his wife—and eating a lot.

In fact, the four men in this group knew as much about cooking as the single woman among them. The reason became clear toward evening’s end as H leaned toward my ear:

“Karen, I want to tell you something because I think it is useful for your story. We all know how to cook our curry because it is in our culture.” Every woman cooks, and she talks to her friends about food. Every man eavesdrops, and he learns the secrets of Burmese cooking.

I asked H his opinion of the restaurant. “Is it the real Burmese food?” He answered with a big, toothy grin. “Nearly, nearly!” Translation: It’s as good as it gets away from his wife’s home cooking.

All of us were stuffed and happy, chatting over little cups of tea. I ducked downstairs and opened my wallet, but the waitress shook her head. The bill had been paid, and I never even saw it.

What could I say?

Chezu tinbade, my friends. Someday, may your freedoms be as wide as your hearts.

A cool afternoon tea in a remodeled stone home at Castleton, Derbyshire.

When Condé Nast shuttered Gourmet last month, the move actually opened a drawerful of opportunity for me—entire files and folders of material left undone, unpublished, unseen by readers. As with any magazine, articles and ideas get stashed in mysterious corners, some never to surface again. It’s just the way this business goes. Ever since Gourmet.com appeared online, it was part of my job to feed the site. Sometimes I’d send my editor a list of ideas; other times, when I felt a deep-down urge, I’d scribble something from the moment and send it off, straight away. And sometimes, I’d hold an idea for a time more appropriate. Some such pieces would never run, for reasons of timing or space or mood (all magazines are moody: sometimes something works, sometimes something doesn’t, and sometimes something doesn’t today—though it might tomorrow). None of this necessarily detracts from a narrative’s merit.

What I’m saying is this: I have on my desktop a big, fat package of ideas that were, at one time, intended for other places. But now, periodically, I’ll be posting those narratives right here. Let us begin in Derbyshire:

How to handle a whistle-stop tour of England’s Peak District

First, get yourself an A and G, distant cousins who double as the dandiest of tour guides. They greet you at the Derby Railway Station, stuff you into their little black car, and whisk you to a countryside literary barn. It’s known as Brierlow Bar, advertised as England’s biggest bargain bookstore—and its highest, at 1,075 feet in elevation.

Get your books, then head to nearby Buxton, on old spa town built by the Romans just after Jesus’s time. Healing waters spurt from St. Anne’s Well, where believers gather with plastic bottles.

Moving along, through a misty mountainous drive, Castleton beckons just as hunger riles your stomach and goosebumps prickle your skin. Skip the hilltop castle and choose instead a warm seat inside The George, a homey little inn offering watercress soup, steamy and predictably green. Still chilled? Try a half pint of John Smith’s Extra Smooth. It will put you in the perfect mood for a walk along a babbling brook, past stone-walled cottages toward the mouth of the Devil’s Arse (it’s a cave).

Taking an afternoon stroll past the old stone homes of Castleton, leading toward the Devil’s Arse.

Not much time to linger, though. You’re off to the “Plague Village” of Eyam, to which the dreaded disease arrived in a bundle of cloth in 1665. Pay your respects at the church, then wander the town, where buildings bear signs with the names of the dead and the dates they succumbed: “John Torre died here 29th July 1666. Godfrey, his son, aged 8 months died 3rd Aug 1666. His wife, Joan, survived.”

Eyam, infamous for its plague history and stories from the 17th century, today is a quiet village, perfect for wandering.

Choose dinner in Derby to escape the gloom. La Tasca’s wine and lively décor soon remove all memory of the grim reaper (just don’t tell A and G the paella could do better). Afterward, stroll the ancient sidewalks and acquaint yourself with the local ghosts. Catch last call at The Brunswick, and be sure to try the porter. Then head to bed, for morning shall arrive early.

British breakfast served overlooking a typically British garden on a typically misty Derby morning.

If you’re lucky, the sun shines and it’s a pleasant drive to Calke Abbey, through a pretty oak-lined passage, past a rare breed of longhorn cattle grazing in the dewy grass. Eventually you hit Ashby de la Zouch, where the remnants of a massive medieval kitchen occupy your imagination for an hour, as does a climb to the old castle lookout. (Hint: rent the audio guide. It’s entertaining and informative.)

You’re hungry again, and your guides insist on dinner, a Sunday afternoon tradition. Your destination: The Rose & Crown in Brailsford, a cheery affair serving hearty classics such as beef roast, Yorkshire pudding and steak-and-mushroom pie. Ask the server a question, any question, (“Where’s the bathroom?” or “What, exactly, is Yorkshire pudding?”) and he’ll quip, “Ah, right, so you’re a foreigner.”

Chase your meal with a pot of tea at The Izaak Walton Hotel, where little girls in frilly attire frolic with their mothers on the lawn, while sheep and cattle graze the steep slopes of Thorpe Cloud in the distance. Drink up, then walk along the water in Dovedale and imagine the Hollywood movies that have used these scenic lands as a backdrop.

A duck floats along the Dovedale, in Izaak Walton country, named for the author of The Compleat Angler, first published in 1653.

That’s it, your time is up. Head to East Midlands Airport, and make sure your baggage does not exceed 20 kilograms—or you shall pay dearly.

Beautiful views along the Dovedale.

A heavy day for world leaders here in Pittsburgh at the G-20 Summit. The day began early with news of Iran, followed by a new plan for world economic recovery. But what about breakfast?

“I’m a little resentful because I did not get to Pamela’s Diner for pancakes,” President Obama told reporters at a press conference concluding the Summit. Apparently, he took a liking to this Pittsburgh favorite while on his campaign trail last year. So much so, Pamela’s pancakes appeared on White House breakfast tables last Memorial Day.

(Kudos to my astute and energetic group of Burmese journalists for scoring front- and second-row seats at the press conference.)

I’ve taken you on a visual tour of Arenal, and now I’ll guide you through a little Costa Rican food. We have, above, a typical scene of fruits and veggies hanging from a shop wall (these I found in the tiny town of Tilaran). I love the colors in Costa Rica, everything painted upbeat and bright.

On Saturday morning, a small produce market opens up along the sidewalk near the central church.

Across the street, little stalls offer snacks and drinks beside the bus station. These stalls border a tiny indoor market, not more than a dozen shops beneath a metal roof in a dim square enclosed by thick walls. In the center is a counter with stools and a man selling lunch—casados y empanadas y bebidas.

I order the casado con pollo en salsa, a huge plate of food with rice and red beans, a tangy slaw of thinly sliced cabbage and carrot, shredded chicken in a light red pepper sauce and ground beef with tiny cubes of squash. Hands down, one of my favorite meals in Costa Rica, washed down with one of the best glasses of fresh pineapple juice I’ve ever had anywhere.

Most of the Costa Rican food I sample is not intrinsically spicy, though no local meal is complete without chilera—hot pickled chiles, onions and other vegetables, kept on restaurant tables as salt and pepper are back home. It’s addictive (I’ve always had a thing for anything pickled). I will have to make it.

One day, I sit on the front porch with my niece and her host dad when a truck rumbles down the hill. It’s stuffed with fruits and vegetables, and neighbors quickly gather with money in hand.

My niece says the roving grocer comes by every day or two or three, as does a wandering man who sells pastries from boxes stacked in a cart. What a grand idea! Bring the groceries to me!

I await the day we have such perks at home.

In honor of Bastille Day, as we Americans call the French national holiday, I figured I’d revisit Paris. For lunch.

Alas, I am not getting on a plane. I’m just journeying through my notebook from last fall, from a drizzly October day.

We come from the underground after touring Les Catacombes and emerge on a bleak Paris street beneath a sky that reminds me of Oregon winters. Chilled and soaked, we rush toward warmth and light and people.

Afternoon. Café Le Courlis, Cuisine Normandy. We duck inside to escape the wet and find a bathroom. We accomplish both and find, too, a Parisian affair. We score a tiny two-seater table beside a glass door, in a little nook with a prime view of the spectacle seated outside. Indeed, the French have an affair with lunch. White tennis shoes tap beneath tables as women blow smoke into the slowly emerging sun.

At 2:30, the place is still spilling with people: a woman with her golden retriever, squirming around her ankles. A stylish damsel flicking fingers across a laptop. Another young woman with, perhaps, her mother sitting in that so Parisian way—golden hair knotted behind her head, smooth face and perfectly plucked brows, black attire and boots to the knee, cigarette to the side. Everyone chatters.

It’s been days since I’ve eaten a proper amount of greens. I order salade Nicoise; Jerry the soupe à l’oignon gratinée (A friend who grew up in Paris later tells us this is a soup he has never understood because he knows no French people who eat it. Only tourists…. But that’s another story.). We enjoy our food and a couple of strong espressos. The tuna tastes fresh, the bright red tomatoes ring my plate in a burst of color. It’s a mound of fresh greens, anchovies, black olives and thin pepper slices.

Two gray-haired ladies in the corner rasp intently over slabs of beef, round house fries and a half carafe of red wine. Behind them, a smartly dressed woman meets a distinguished bearded man; she wields knife and fork with precision and hardly ever removes her eyes from his. I think of a French movie I watched somewhere—an airplane? a Vientiane hotel?—in which a middle-aged man and woman commence their weekly rendezvous with strong drinks and a Parisian lunch.

By 2:50 the dining room empties. The young bow-tied waiter takes a break. He and his colleagues have put their hip-slung bottle openers to good use this afternoon amid the rain, the crowd and a propensity for wine. By now, the drizzling has stopped and the luncheon affair has ended.

I love the light in London this time of year. What a switch from Southeast Asia, where the sun follows a rather set clock, year-round, with few leisurely sunsets. In torrid climes, the ball falls below the horizon and suddenly it’s night. But at 51 degrees north, in May and June, you get long, drawn-out evening light.

So, then: one fine weekend day, we piled into the Tooting mobile and began our grand tour. Not the usual or expected tourist sites. First stop: Wimbledon Parkside for a look at the Buddhapadipa Temple, the UK’s first Buddhist temple, established in 1965. A treat! Not every day do we see a Thai temple amid such northern vegetation and temperate air. The murals inside differed from the usual as well. Airplanes and missiles? How about the two-headed demon featuring Muammar Qaddafi and Ronald Reagan? Interesting, indeed.

All of us book fiends, we visited an Edwardian favorite, where I picked up a copy of this and this. We looked for this too, but the store had sold out (our dear guides later gifted us with a copy). Jerry bought me a bizarre little item, which I finished at 5 a.m. one sleepless night. It contains several worthwhile musings on food: “Don’t despise the domestic potato.” And my favorite: “Don’t forget to feed the ‘brute’ well. Much depends on the state of his digestion.”

We also stopped at Rococo Chocolates, where packaging is an art as much as the goodies inside. We picked up a four-pack of truffles filled with Islay whisky, which we’d come to love during our Edinburgh trip last fall.

Oh, and if you’re looking for obscure Burmese ingredients—roselle leaves, for example—stop by Mum’s House, a teensy-tiny shop behind half a dozen others on High Road, across from Burger King.

Much of our London touring centered around pubs—some for libations, but several for the gastro aspect. (The male half of our guide duo had research to do. Really.)

Just as that evening light hit its most pleasant notes, we stepped into the York & Albany, where I tasted a fine bottle of Aspall Suffolk Cyder.

Can you tell I have a thing for light? We found ever more of it at the Bull & Last, one of London’s most notable gastropubs…

…which makes its own charcuterie.

Now, how about that for a city tour? Thank you, dear Tooting friends. I leave you with the words of diarist Samuel Pepys, who wrote in thanks to Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed after a visit in 1697:

“…a most thankful acknowledgment of Your Crowd of Favours, both intellectual and Culinary, at my late visit; and both of them heightened by the conversacion and kindness of your Excellent Lady.”

I’m working on my own kitchen library, but I doubt it will ever match this mighty impressive collection of culinary reads (and what you see here is only half of it—the rest is stacked upon office shelves upstairs). I suppose such an achievement is to be expected when you bring together the food and drink editor of this informative group and the editor of this fine site, eating and cooking and living tastefully under one roof.

Lucky us—we got to be guests in this dynamic household! We took the long route home from Asia, with a four-day stop in London. We’d met Him and Her for dinner on our last trip through, in October. When we came through this time, They generously offered their guestroom as a halfway stay between continents. We couldn’t have asked for better hosts and guides, who welcomed us with a full-on home-cooked Burmese meal made from the recipes of this grand book (to which She recently gave a big thumbs up).

Nor could two fans of Indian food have asked for a better halfway house location. She and He live in Tooting, which offers one of the world’s best assemblies of Indian and Sri Lankan eats. Next up: touring London with two of the city’s most refined palates.

Not often do we travel without plans or expectations. I won’t complain that most of our trips are filled with places to see and deadlines to meet. But what a joy, to land in Honk Kong with nothing more than 16 hours to fill in any way we pleased!

We did nothing extraordinary—which, in itself, was. We dropped our bags at the hotel and walked and walked and walked (I in new shoes—mistake). We ate early because we could, because our stomachs grumbled after hours of airports and planes without much food.

We chose a bright cafe filled with eaters and talkers slurping soups and noodles. We chose this spot over dozens of others because the menu was long and cheap, and barely an empty table remained. Packed with locals, always a good sign. I don’t even recall the name of the place—didn’t write a thing in my notebook.

But I can tell you we ate salt-and-pepper tofu, cooked perfectly crispy on the outside with a quality salt that indulged the tongue.

And we ate a hotpot pork and eggplant that reminded me how much I would miss Chinese food as it is prepared in Asia.

We filled our bellies, paid the bill…

…then wandered the waterfront as the lights began to shine against a dimming sky. I’m not sure why, but something about the whole circus scene and neon signage reminds me of Candy Land. Like a big, colorful maze of fun.

We rode the Mid-Levels Escalator all the way to the top, peering into tiny windows of life along the way. One by one, every little apartment and bar and library and corner store seemed to scroll past us, as though we stood stationary while the world moved.

I like that about Hong Kong: so much life in so many tiny spaces. Look closely at the level of lights in the photo above, and you’ll see a whole row of joggers running in place.

By the time we finished our walk, I had a new set of blisters. And much gained, for nothing expected.