Pizza

Update on Conflict Kitchen

Two years ago (wow, really, that was two years ago?!?), I wrote about an intriguing project just getting started in Pittsburgh, called Conflict Kitchen. The premise was to focus on the food of a country with which America is in some kind of conflict, using the food to engage people in learning about these countries. The other day, I came across this Los Angeles Times article profiling the project, and its anticipated expansion from a stand serving street food to go, to a full-service restaurant in downtown Pittsburgh. Since the last time I read about them, they've done Persian, Afghan, and Venezuelan food, are planning for a Cuban iteration soon, and are also exploring a North Korean version. If you're in the Pittsburgh area, check them out!

Cultural Diplomacy and Turkish Coffee

This is what I call closing the last 3 feet of public diplomacy: handing out free Turkish coffee on the streets of DC, and inspiring lots of conversations about Turkey, Turkish culture, Turkish food, and Turkish coffee fortune telling in the process. 

 And I get to be a part of it! I would write more, but I'm headed to New York with the crew tomorrow as they spread the Turkish coffee love around the East Coast. So in the meantime, check out the Turkayfe website for more info on the project, and look out for lots of pictures and videos (courtesy of my newfangled DSLR) to come!

Chipotle's CSR

Since taking on a full-time internship in November that sadly for this blog has little connection to food and travel, my bandwidth for writing about these topics has been constrained. Of course, my appetite, both figurative and literal (get it? Literal? I made a double pun!), has not waned.

Chowing down on a puka dog in Hawaii

My internship deals with sustainability and corporate social responsibility communications, and one of my interview questions was, predictably, "What large company's sustainability efforts do you admire?" I say that the question was (or should have been) predictable, but clearly unemployment had hampered my clairvoyance, and I froze, afraid to mention a brand name that had some horrible environmental or social practice known only by true CSR experts. Or worse yet, that I might incriminate one of their clients as a bad example of CSR. Luckily a week-long temp gig a few weeks earlier got me through: I said something about admiring companies that fully integrate sustainability principles into all aspects of their activities, and cited National Geographic's zero-waste policy in their headquarters as an example of an organization expressing its mission -- conservation of the world -- through every little detail of its work.

It occurred to me recently, however, that if someone were to ask me the same question today, I would say Chipotle.

Chipotle's Asian Concept -- CALLED IT

A long time ago on this blog, back when it was still in its infancy and I was figuring out what shape it might take (I say as if I have since figured out what shape this takes...), I wrote about Chipotle's new "Asian concept" that was reportedly in the works.

Specifically I wrote:

Sidestepping the PC-minefield of conflating the diversity of Asian cuisines into one concept, I can see a Vietnamese "inspired" (for all you purists out there) menu that could easily work within the Chipotle model:

Banh mi sandwiches
Bun (room temp vermicelli salad-type dish)
Spring/summer/garden rolls (I'm thinking of the fresh ones, rather than the deep fried ones)

All of these draw upon easy to source local ingredients, can be adapted to suit a variety of diets and food preferences, and can be quickly assembled to order. Oh yes, and they're delicious.

Well ShopHouse has been open for a few months now, and all I have to say is,

CALLED IT.

The basic components of ShopHouse's menu? "Bowls" of protein, veggies, and sauce over your choice of jasmine or brown rice, or chilled rice noodles, and banh mi sandwiches.

Interestingly, despite being almost a year old, that original post has the most hits of any post here, and people still regularly find my blog from searching for "chipotle asian concept."

Apparently Chipotle is not the only one to draw on the mainstreaming banh mi bandwagon, though, as I discovered when I stumbled upon BONMi, just a 10 minute walk down the street from Shophouse. BONMi's website seems to espouse a lot of the same values as ShopHouse: inspiration in Vietnamese/Southeast Asian cuisine of course, but also "locally sourced environmentally friendly products whenever possible", and even similar tones of orange in their color schemes.

Despite emanating from national companies (Denver-based Chipotle and the New York-based JBH Advisory Group), both ShopHouse and BONMi are currently only located in Washington, DC. In another example of eerie similarities, both proprietors have talked about how DC is actually a great city for trying out new food concepts.

The District is an ideal launching pad for the concept, according to [Lynne] Jacoby [a partner in the JBH Advisory Group that has conceptualized the new 40-seat eatery]. "...D.C. is the best place for restaurants to open, believe it or not," she says. "Unemployment is very low here, it's a very eclectic group of people here, and there's a high concentration of educated people..." (BONMi Opens Today In Downtown D.C.)

"As for why ShopHouse chose to debut in the District of Columbia and not in New York City, [ShopHouse's director of concept development, Tim Wildin] explained that D.C. is a better "proving ground."
"There are just hundreds of restaurants in New York City that aren't great, but last," he said, noting that New York City's high population density might sustain an eatery even when the concept isn't exceptional. On the other hand, Wildin said, a restaurant's performance in D.C., a city with a burgeoning food scene but fewer people, might be a better indication of a concept's potential success elsewhere. (ShopHouse, Chipotle's New Asian Spin-Off, Opens In D.C. )

This is one of the few times that, from a food perspective, I feel lucky to be in Washington, DC.

My Love Affair With Brunch

This is a story that begins with buffet and ends with brunch.

First plate

When I was a kid, I used to say, "I don't know" a lot to people's questions. What did I want for lunch? I don't know. Did I want to sit next to Mom or Dad? I don't know. Do I want milk or juice? I don't know. Buffets, however, were the perfect answer to my indecisiveness. At a buffet, you don't have to decide on just one dish, only to regret your choice later. You can have it all.

Second Plate

I loved buffets. My family used to go to the Sunday brunch buffet at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco. I don't actually remember much about the food there, except that there was a lot of it, and I could choose anything I wanted. What I remember most are the distinctive concentric circle-patterned floors.

My love of buffets often befuddled my parents. Or maybe just pissed them off, because much as I loved the variety of food available, I could never actually eat enough to get their money's worth. Such are the perils of having a small stomach.

Third Plate

When my family moved to Hong Kong, we started frequenting the Sunday buffet at the Conrad hotel. There are actually two restaurants that jointly occupy the eighth floor of the hotel, Nicholini's and Brasserie on the Eighth. Though they generally function as separate restaurants, with a de-nationalized room mediating between their Italian and French cuisines respectively, on Sundays, the borders dissolve to host a tour de force champagne brunch buffet. Over 20 years of patronage, my family has now come to refer to this experience simply as "Conrad". As in, "Did you confirm the reservation at Conrad?" or, "If I died tomorrow, I would want my last meal to be Conrad."

Or, "Conrad is the birthplace of my love affair with brunch."

The Evolution of a Foodie OR An Ode to My Nephew

Since coming into my life about 7.5 years ago, my nephew has been one of my favorite people in the world (the other favorite being his sister who followed him a year and a half later).

One of the things that makes him especially awesome? The fact that he will pause mid-bite in whatever he is consuming with nary a complaint, just to let me take a picture.

Of course I would love him to bits regardless of his aptitude for being a featured subject in my food photography habit. But seriously, here he is about to chow down on an ice cream mooncake (kind of like an ice cream mochi), and he barely batted an eyelid when asked to delay his gratification so that I could take this picture.

Since I've never lived in the same city as him for more than a couple of months, I don't get to witness the evolution of his food tastes firsthand very often. Of course I know that he loves chocolate cake, and that he will eat almost anything wrapped in a tortilla. I know that when he's about to garnish his pumpkin pie with whipped cream, you'd better make sure he takes his finger off the trigger at some point. But usually these are things that I learn ex post facto, seeing the culmination of several experiences into one preference that I can identify, but don't know the origins of. I'm rarely there at the actual moment of discovery, the moment when he takes a bite of something and realizes that this is not just anything in his mouth, but something that he wants more of, something revelatory and magical that transcends the current meal to become a food memory.

Maybe it's the age he's at or the experience of being in a foreign place, or some combination of the two, but our trip to Hong Kong at the end of July proved an especially ripe occasion for memory-making. Like the night we had three dinners.