3/28/05 Brussels

Megan and I woke up around 9am and the weather very much resembled that of San Francisco the past couple of weeks. It was rainy, foggy, and cold. Not exaxtly prime walking around conditions, so we opted for ordering coffee from room service and eating more of the chocolate from Antwerp. It was truely the breakfast of champions.

We didn't end up leaving the hotel until 11:30 or so, and by then the rain and fog had let up a bit. Since this was our only full day in Brussels, We had to see as much stuff as humanly possible. Besides several amazingly beautiful churches and cathedrals, we stopped in the Plaza Louise Louizapl, which is a very french-influenced shopping area on the southern border of lower Brussels. Not a lot of shops were open due to this being a holiday WEEK and all, but we were able to find a pastry shop serving croissants and sandwiches.

Our walking tour, which Megan lovingly mapped out and navigated, ended back at the hotel around 3:30, and after a nap, we went down to fitness room and worked out.

After showering, we got ready for dinner, which I was pretty excited for since we had found the restaurant earlier in the day and gotten to see its menu. We showed up 2o minutes early for our reservation despite it taking a while to walk there because Megan insisted on wearing high heels regardless of the fact that every sidewalk in this town is cobblestone.

The restaurant was called Belga Queen and it was impressive as soon as walked through the door. The door opened into a catwalk, about 30 ft. long, which led to the dining room. On the left side of the catwalk was a raw bar with 11 seats at it, all set for what looked like a full menu. One the right was a wet bar, which had candelabras at either end of it. The upper wall behind the bar featured what looked like ceiling fans turned verticle behind frosted glass and were lit from behind so all you could see was the sillohette.

After a drink at the bar, we walked down the catwalk to the dinig room which revealed that it was a converted old bank. The floor and walls were all marble and the ceiling was domed with beautiful blue glass. There were huge marble columns lined up in the center of the room and an old clock built into the wall marked where the teller boothes used to be. Although the decor was very nice, it lacked anything and everything to absorb sound. There weren't even linens on the tables. Every clink and clatter echoed though the dining room. That was flaw #1. Flaw #2, which was really just more funny than anything else, was the waitstaff uniforms. They wore these white smock things over their shirts that tied in the back. They resembled something between armour of the middle ages and the lead vest the dentist makes you wear when you're getting x-rays.

The only biger joke than the uniforms the servers wore was the service they provided. Though we were greeted and given menus by our female server in a timely manner, it seemed as though we were "passed off", because a guy came over a few minutes later to take our order. I would have understood if she was trying to go home or if she got triple sat and needed help, but she was there the entire time we were, and it was a seemingly slow and quiet monday night. I can only assume the "pass-off" went something like this: "Ugh. I can't deal with Americans tonight. Will you take them for me?"

We got our champagne and waited a painful 15 minutes for 6 oysters...raw oysters...nothing to cook here - two and half minutes per oyster...way to go guys. What pissed me off even more was that I could see our waiter and our old waitress horsing around by the server station. Go get me my fucking oysters!!!

Oysters came - Belons - which were good, but I was pleasantly surprised by our appetizers. Megan had shrimp croquettes, crispy on the outside, creamy inside, with fried herbs. Mine was puff pastry with crayfish tails and button mushrooms in a beer/cream sauce. Sound good? Wait...I'm not done. On top of that were...are those...fried monkfish cheeks? And, uh, wait a minute...is that seared foie gras? Yes. On both counts. This was one of the most confused dishes I have ever eaten. The chef had to be a schitzo. Now I'm not nessesarily against 6 components to a dish, but this one didn't make any sense to me. Why do you need cripsy monk-fish cheeks when you already have crispy puff pastry? And the plate was already covered in heavy cream sauce - there was no shortage of richness, so what the hell was the foie for? Don't get me wrong - it was all very good - but the composition was beyond me. Oh, and there were also, and I'm not exagerating, about 100 crayfish tails on the plate. This whole dish was a good idea gone terribly wrong.

Somewhere towards the end of our appetizers, I saw our waiter, in street clothes, walk through the dinig room and out the front door. What the fuck!!?? Whats that all about? Two minutes later our original waitress comes over, clears our table, and puts dessert menus in front of us then briskly walked away. Uh, OK. I guess that would have been fine...had we still not had entress coming. It took about 5 minutes to flag her down, and when she finally came over, she was chewing on something. Give me a break!! You're eating!!?? In my face!!?? As my server (and shitty one at that)!!?? "Yeah, uh, hi," i said, now getting mildly upset, to say the least. "We still have entrees coming," handing her back the dessert menus. "Oh yeah," she said, and walked away. Whoever trained these servers - if they ever got trained at all - should be hunted down and shot on site.

We got our entress, which, though the portions were out of control , were very good. Megan had braised cod over about 3 cups of mashed potatoes, and there a cool fried disk of celery root on top. I had roasted cuckoo (a Belgian poultry) over gingerbread with pear syrup, potato chips, and snow peas. Everything on the plate worked well with each other. We ended up opting out of dessert, mostly beacuse we just wanted to get the hell out of there, but partly beacuse we had the last of our Antwerp chocolates back in our hotel room calling our names.

Tonight taught me a valuable lesson in restaurants. The food was actually very good over-all, but the waitstaff just killed the experience. I felt bad for the cooks in back who were obviously the only ones putting any effort into their jobs. I used to think that getting great food was worth suffering through bad service. Tonight changed all that. Sometimes shit goes wrong - its inevitable and its part of the business. But everything that went wrong tonight - and I mean eveything - was preventable - and that sucks.

3/27/05 Brussels

"Got back from the wedding at 3am last night and, as it turns out, for some reason, Europe does daylight savings a week earlier than the U.S. - so we really got back at 4am. Then we had to check out of the hotel by 11, so we only got about 5 hours of sleep - minus, of course, the half hour i layed awake listening to the guy in the next room snoring. I mean, these walls were really very thin in this hotel, but it sounded like this guy was in the same room. Megan said if I ever snored like that she'd dump me. I don't blame her.

So we got up and checked out and stopped at a laundrymat down the street to wash some clothes. I went and tried to find us coffee, but its Easter Sunday - just another reason for everything to shut down. Antwerp was a ghost town.

After the laundry was done we hopped on a train to Brussels. The ride was only about an hour, and thanks to Megan's navigation skills, we found the hotel in about 20 minutes. This hotel is a bit of a treat for us. I found a deal on-line for $80/night, and its a 4-star hotel. It's really very nice. Somehow, though, I wasn't surprised when they had no record of my reservation. Luckily I had written down all the web-sites I used to book hotels along with confirmation numbers and phone numbers. After a phone call, it was all fixed. The room is huge, with a king-size bed and a vestibule. The bed is so big that you can lay width-wise and not hang over the sides.

Megan took a shower while I began calling around for dinner reservations. Most places are closed on sundays, which would never fly in the states, but whatever. As it turns out, people here not only take sundays off, and not only Easter off, but a full Easter 'holiday'. A fucking week off for Easter!! And we're not talking about banks here, we're talking about restaurants - several of them - like, every one I called.

So I finally found a place that's open tomorrow and booked a table there. The only place that sounded good that was open tonight didn't take reservations, so we decided to just walk down there. We were walking down a small alley-sized street, when at the end it opened up into this huge plaza surrounded by severel-hundred-year-old buildings. It seriously didn't look like anything had changed here in 600 years. It was gorgeous, complete with a cathedral. You could totally picture the executions going on here centuries earlier.

After some more winding through back streets, we came to realize that the restaurant we were looking for was back in the plaza. It turned out that it was a tourist place...and with a wait no less. So we opted to wing it in the back streets of Brussels.

We settled on a Swiss place with wall-to-wall wood paneling. It was cozy and had a lodgey feel to it. After ordering up a couple of Hoegardens, I opted for the gruyere quiche. Megan, feeling the effects of all the frites and chocolate over the past three days, got a salad. Before the first course even showed up, we were brought bread and cornichons. I could have eaten just the bread with French butter and cornichons for dinner.

My quiche showed up and was delicous. With the bare minimum of egg to officially call it a quiche, it was cheesy - and the tart-like dough was crispy and crumbly. The whole thing was on a bed of iceberg lettuce dressed in lemon vinaigrette. It was a nice, refreshing contrast.

By the time I had finished that off, along with the half of a baquette and dozen or so cornichons, I was full. But I had to forge on. Next was fondue. Yes...more cheese. Megan was in heaven. Hers had tomatoes and mine had morels. All of the cheese, though, drowned out all the flavorings, so, being full anyway, I basically just pulled out all the morels and ate those. The fondue came with a big pot of boiled new potatoes. They weren't even cooked in salted water. I used the bread instead, reverting back to my old friends the cornichons in between bites to cut the richness. I wish the fondue had come with someting else like the quiche did to contrast it.

Overall, the food was very good, but the menu didn't seem very well planned or thought out. I guess they figured that if they stuff you with enough cheese, that you'll leave happy. Then again, what the hell do I know? Megan was a pig in shit the entire time."

RIP Nana 1920-2007

3/26/05 Antwerp

"The wedding was today. Pick-up time was 2pm back at the hotel, so Megan and I got up early to go check out the daimond district. We got down there around 9. The Hasidic Jews still run the daimond market just like in the movie 'Snatch', which I found quite amusing. It was also saturday, which is their sabbath, so weren't surprised when virtually everything was closed. We tried going to Daimondland, which is a big market, but it never opened. It was supposed to - at 9:30 - but at 10 the doors were still locked, so we said forget it. The unpunctuality of this place is really starting to piss me off.

So we walked over to the daimond museum, which was pretty cool. As it turns out, daimonds can only form at pressures found 80-150 down into the earth under temperatures of 1200 to 1800 celcius. Underground eruptions bring them closer to the surface where they can be mined - over a million years after they begin forming.

Afterwards, we had a hankering for some chocolate, so we bought a box on our way back through the town square. And of course, after eating sweets we needed something salty, so we stopped at a frittur and got some Belgian fries with mayonnaise. As I was buying them, a small parade strolled through the tiny cobblestone streets, marching band and all. Megan ran out and stood on a bench to watch and take pictures. She looked so happy. It is tiny moments like this that remind me how much I lover her.

The fries were amazing. Perfectly blanched and twice-fried with surprisingly little color on them. Hot and crispy with some of the richest mayo I've ever had. The only thing that could have made them better is if the there were truffles in the mayo, but there, in the sun, with Megan and the parade, they were perfect.

We headed back to the hotel around 12:30 toget ready for the wedding. Megan has now blown a fuse with her blow dryer and hair straightener.

There were cabs waiting for the 30 or so of us there were staying in the hotel for the wedding. We took them to a quaint town 10 miles or so outside outside of Antewrp called Lier. The cermony started around 3:30pm and was only abouot a half hour long. The cermony and the reception were at the same place, which was nice, because cocktail hour immediately followed in the back garden. There is something about drinking champagne and eating Belgian chocolate in a beautiful courtyard 10 milies southeast of Antwerp in the small town of Lier that seems to have made this whole trip worth it.

The reception had a buffet starring several items that I thought I'd never see served because of their 'cheeseball' ball factor. Among them were raw tomatoes hollowed out and stuffed with crab. I think the front cover of my main text book from the CCA has them on it, because i remember thinking 'who the hell would ever make that?'. But the clincher was the Pommes Duchesse - one of the first things we learned to make in culinary school. I swore I'd never eat them again, assuming I'd even ever see them made again - and I honored that vow. I wish I had a friend frim school there to share in the humor.

Dancing followed the meal, but went a little too late for my taste. I fell asleep in a chair in a seperate room at about 12:30. Megan came and woke me up around 2:30 to take me home. I guess I had too much champagne."

3/25/05 Antwerp

"No notable meals today. Too bad.

Today 44 of us went to Brugges, which is a small medevil town about two hours outside of Antwerp. It was one of those towns that you think of when you think of old Europe. It had canals running through the whole town, and a lot of the houses date back to the 18th, 17th, and even 16th centuries. The roads are cobblestone and horse-drawn taxis line the streets. Unfortunately, the more we walked, the more all the little quaint streets turned into touristy places, unitl you couldn't tell who was a native and who wasn't. Has every beautiful town dong to shit? Whored itself out to the tourist dollar?

Anyway, we took a boatride through the canals and learned that some of the churches date back to the 12th century. Over 300 years before Columbus was even born, and they were building churches in Brugges - that are still standing. Amazing.

After the boat ride we went on a tour of a local brewery, only to find out that they don't even make the beer there anymore. What the fuck?! They called it a 'museum', but I called it a graveyard. It was just rooms full of old brewing equipment and rusted brewing tanks. Lame. The beer wasn't even that good.

And that another thing - Belgians seem to think that 2" of head is desirable in a beer. I call it a rip-off. The glass is 1/3 foam - and it's 4 euros! Fuckers."

3/24/05 Antwerp

"Today we walked around Antwerp with Elka and Haseem and some friends/family. We all went to the Peter Paul Rubens house/museum. Man, did that guy know how to live. His house was like a mini castle. His paintings are mostly religous and have all sorts of great symbolism in them, especially in the Vrouwekathedral, where he has three tri-fold paintings. In one of the, each of the three paintings depicts jesus being carried in a different way. The first is in the whom by Mary, the third is as a baby by a prophet, and the middle and largest one of the three, he is being carried off off of the cross to be buried; in this one in a red robe is St. Christopher helping to lower Jesus' body. We came to find that 'Christopher' means 'the carrier of Christ.'

Dinner: I, as I'm sure everyone else does when they're going to another country, had somewhat of a preconceived idea as to what a great restaurant would be like on the inside. We'd sit in a large room with with some stuffy mait're d or some small country-like house and sit in wicker chairs eating eggs from the back coop. Well, the only thing about this that came into play tonight was the small part. Otherwise, it blew my expectations out of the water.

I had asked the receptionist at our hotel to make us a reservation and when I called the restaurant to confirm it, the nice woman confirmed it for 'between 8:15 and 8:30'. I've never had a reservation that was a window of time.

We walked into Gin Fish at 8:30pm, and the front door opens into a small vestibule with a door on either side of it. The one to the left leads to a small kitchen with a small counter full of people and seems to be very modern with a marble counter and stainless everything else. The door to the right, however, leads to a comfy living room setting with 8 plush chairs all around a long coffee table. It was a 'country living room' with large beams and a wooden spiral staircase with steps so old that you could swear they were from the French Revolution. The hostess, who turned out to be the chef's wife, greeted us as though we were guests in her house. She explained that our table was not yet ready, but we could sit and have an 'appertif'. The cozy room had a small bar at the far end of it and a tall cigar case next to it. We sat in two of the plush chairs and ordered drinks. With them came a plate of kalamata olives, parmesan crisps as thin as paper, and house cured salami with incredible thick marbling. 'If this is a sign of things to come', I thought, 'then I'm in for a treat.'

Some time passed, and the entire kitchen, which had glass walls so you could see in from the bar area, emptied at once. I assumed it was our turn, but the hostess only let two other couples in - then, ten minutes later, another partyof 4. I was starting to think that she had forgotten about us when she told us to enter. The others already had wine and the chef was plating their first course in the open kitchen. The whole seating area, to my surprise, was only 14 seats in total. Behind the line was one cook, one waitress, and the chef, who was wearing nothing but a gray t-shirt, jeans, and an apron.

The waitress poured us some wine and sliced us some whole grain bread off of a huge loaf. She put a small dish of fleur de sel, a small grinder with white pepper in it, and a large slab of the richest butter I've ever had in front of us.

Half-way through my slice of butter-smeared bread, the chef came over and shook our hands to greet us. He then explained the menu to us, reassuring us that he could change anything we didn't like. That wouldn't be nessesary. After speaking with us, he went back to plating the second course for the people who sat down before us. It was then that I realized why they have a staggered seating. It was so the chef is cooking/plating no more than 6 plates at a time. It made me jealous that at Farallon we have 10+ picks of 25 entrees/night and this guy does 4 picks of 6 per night. I envied his attention to detail and the time he had for it. He also never broke a sweat or seemed frazzled in any way. Must be nice.

With much anticipation, our first course arrived. Littleneck clams with steamed scallops, sweated leeks, and garlic. Although I think i prefer the flavor of seared scallops, these added a really nice textural contrast to the clams. The leek broth was perfectly seasoned and just begging that buttered whole-grain bread for a swim.

After polishing that off, we moved on to the second course. White and green asparagus, poached egg, shaved parm, and shaved white truffle. This white truffle was the size of a large egg and the chef was not stingy. On top of that he drizzled EVO. Glorious. I have never realized white asparagus' superiority over green until tonight, when I had them side by side. Fatter, sweeter, and much more texturally appealing.

The third course was a fish that I'm pretty sure he called 'brill'. I may be wrong, but he said it similar to turbot, and that it was. Not dense like halibut but not flakey like sole. He steamed it with a poached potato plank. He took the liquid from the fish's steaming tray and added it to the pot with buttered soy beans, from which he used the liquid as a sauce. These looked and tasted like fava beans, but Megan said they were soy, and she's a vegetarian who eats shit like that, so I'm gonna go with her on this one. It was all topped with some inch-long cut chives.

One of the best parts of this meal, was as we began to dig into our third course, the chef rolled out an ice cream machine churning fresh vanilla, cream, sugar, and eggs. Something about watching your dessert being made while you eat your dinner is very satisfying. It was topped with strawberries that the cook was slicing while the chef was plating our fish. Very fresh. The cook scooped the ice cream straight from the machine, concocting a huge perfect quenelle with one flick of the wrist. As we were scraping our bowls, he opened the ice cream machine, whipped out another quenelle, and put it on our plates followed by more strawberries. It was just beacuse he saw we were enjoying it, and there was plenty.

I think that was one of my favorite parts about this meal. Whenever our wine glass got low, the waitress just filled it up again. There was no set portion of anything - it was just 'eat and drink unitl you're done'. Granted, the evening was quite expensive, but that's just what it was, an evening - not a meal."

3/23/05

"I've been awake for 27 hours. Of course, of all the things to forget, Megan and I forgot our clothes for the wedding - the whole fucking purpose of coming to Europe in first place. Luckily a friend of ours in SF who is also coming to the wedding isn't coming until tomorrow, so he's going to get them and bring them.

The flight was as smooth as it could be for the 11 hours. On demand movies and free booze - I've got to fly internationally more often. Sleeping was a bit uncomfortable - like, I got none. Ten and a half hours into the flight Megan showed me that the headrest could bend into this wonderfully comfortable position that she had known about and been using the entire flight. Sweet.

We Landed in Amsterdam and we met up with Dan and Ian. We had some beers then walked around for a while. I wasn't too impressed with the town, but I'll be back there later next month. We went to the Anne Frank Museum. Fascinatingly depressing...depressingly fascinating.

I noticed that the air in Amsterdam, at least the part we were in, smelled like manure, yet there were no cows or horses or farms in sight.

The Europeans move quick. Every Biker, walker, and driver has been darting in and out of traffic all day. I don't know where they're all trying to get to in such a rush.

From Amsterdam we had to take a series of trains to get to our hotel in Antwerp. I think its in a good location, but I was too tired to notice. So tired. I heard from a girl on the train that Jamie Oliver has a restaurant in Amsterdam - could be the highlight of that town.

These walls are as thin as paper."

So you really want to know me?

I will not apologize for not blogging in 7 months. My life has been too hectic. The highlight was getting married. After that would be spending 11 days in a beach front cabin on kauai with no internet or phone. It was glorious.

This post, however, is not to tell you about any of that. This post is to mark the first of many that are about to come your way in the coming 6 weeks. One per day, actually - but its not what you might think (I actually have no idea what you might be thinking, but thats besides the point). I'll explain.

You may or may not know that Megan and I went to Europe two years ago. We had been together for a mere 9 months. It was an amazing trip. We spent two weeks together, and then she came home for work and I kept traveling for another month, by myself, eating my was through europe. On this trip, I kept a journal - 119 hand written pages of food, thoughts, and stories.

After the wedding a month ago Megan and I were cleaning out some things and we uncovered this journal. I havn't cracked it open since I wrote the last entry in it 2 and a half years ago. Starting tomorrow, I will be sharing an entry a day with you - 6 weeks, just as I spent it. Please keep in mind that as I prepare to do this, I really don't remember most of what I wrote about or what kind of languge I used. It was an inner dialogue that I will be sharing with you, word for word, just as I wrote it. It may be offensive, but I promise not to censor a thing as long as you promise not be offended.

Enjoy.