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It’s my own fault really. I’ve been in France since May and mostly I buy fresh veggies, and fruit and cheese and bread (finally found a good baguette place…now I’m officially French).

The week before last I ate African food at a music festival in Marseille and just last week, I went to Morocco with my friend Jessica. In actuality, going to Morocco is quite the French thing to do: most Moroccans speak French as an official language (although never if they can help it- Arabic is king), and with Ryan Air, tickets were only about $60 round trip from anywhere in France. I could spend hours talking about my experience there – my trip through the old town “medinas”, our 4 hour train ride (sans air conditioning), the nice people we met (one who even insisted we stay at his house with his grandma), and all the wondrous and miraculous ways we got cheated.

But, Clarence, I’ll just stick to the food… (read on…)

Mesdames et Messieurs, c’est avec plaisir que je vous presente mon ami Channon. How that for some busted up French? Alright so check out my friend Channon’s first report from France where she’s spending the next five months living the good life. Be sure also to check out her blog, “From Right Here” for more detailed accounts and beautiful photographs of her time en France. But first, check out her first review…

Hey folks,

This is your friendly not-so-neighborhood foreign food correspondent Tim,
giving you the what’s-whats from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Like my long-time
pal CTing (this emphasis on your last name is new - must be an internet
thing), I plan to give you periodic reviews of restaurants. Since you’ll
probably never actually go to one of these places, I’ll try to pepper it
with as much culture (no, not the fro-yo kind) as your literary palates can
take. Unlike CTing, I plan to avoid first-initial last-name self-references
in order to avoid ridicule, or at least disappointing Google hits for people
who were expecting something else when they typed in “THigh”.

My first subject, in spite of what I just told you, is a recounting of my
culinary experiences not in Rio, but in Porto de Galinhas, Pernambuco, just
south of Recife…(read on)

Alright so last week during the massive heat wave here in NYC, me and Shef decided to get a little culture by checking out the David Byrne Musical building, we decided to reward ourselves and escape the heat with a some more culture of the yogurt variety and get some fro-yo. So in the interest of broadening our fro-yo palate we went to Red Mango, supposedly the inspiration for Pinkberry. Check the fro-yo reviews (at the bottom) for what we thought.

So what exactly am I talking about? Well, go ahead and take a look a the Chavellas post for a little background info. Perhaps now you’ll understand what I mean when I say that this neighborhood in Queens, the second most populated borough in NYC kicks Chavellas’s - the tiny Mexican restaurant in Prospect Heights - ass. Of course it’s not a fair fight, but it’s true. Whereas Chavellas is close, convenient and serves up mediocre somewhat gringofied Mexican food, J-Heights, Queens is far away, totally a hassle to get to (from our pad in P-Heights, Bklyn), but it is the home to awesome and authentic Mexican food -most notably the tacos. Don’t believe me? You’re wrong. Need convincing? Read on.

Alright people, first of all, I apologize to all of you three or four dedicated you-fooders for the long intervals between posts. Believe me it’s been wearing on me not to come out with something fresh and scintillating (ok at least moderately interesting) every few days or at the very least every week. This is what happens when you have a job that you must attend to every day. I’m a sucker. Yeah, I’m back on the murder show. But it’s a good thing I know the antidote to working on a reality homicide show: frozen yogurt. That’s right y’all. I finally finished the first installment of the the fro-yo reviews. I know I’m probably at least a year behind the times as far as this newest fro-yo fad is concerned, but better late than never. And I’m sure there’s still plenty of folks newly initiated into the Pinkberry ranks who would appreciate the painstaking effort that goes into sampling the various fro-yo establishments. For all of you, I present a bit of culture (get it? yogurt has live culture - sheeeiiit look it up if you don’t believe me.

Check it.

Well, in a sense. Chavella’s a tiny little restaurant opened up a little over a year ago half a block from where I was living in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn (now I live all of about a block away). I would pass by and take a look at the menu which offers a selection of somewhat standard Mexican fare including tacos, tortas, quesadillas and bigger plates of enchiladas, tamales and chicken mole…

Read the full review.

… while the men sit around watch TV and eat. Just kidding. Well, only partly. None of the menfolk (me, my dad, my brother-in-law) cooked that night (I but I did film them for the benefit of the public), but we sure as hell did eat. And delicious it was, as Yoda would say.

Alright, just so you know, I shot this over month ago at my sister’s house in California but due to various circumstances - actual paying work, moving to a new apartment, the fact that these vids take a while for me (Mr. Professional TV guy) time to produce, and I’m kind of lazy - I haven’t been able to put up these recipes, which I promised in my last post, until now. For that I apologize but I know all the 3 regular readers of this site will understand. My sister does her version of empanadas and my mom does her version of polenta. Ain’t globalization grand? Alright, without further ado, check out how my mom and sis do.

So here’s my latest entry. Sorry it’s been a while since the last one. I actually was working last week in California on one of the best TV shows ever (oh I meant worst). But this site’s about food and not about me whining about working in bad TV. I guess the point being, work kind of gets in the way of maintaining a blog. My apologies. But just know that all was not lost to “work”. I did shoot some family cooking in Cali which I will post in the near future. In the meantime, check out this chicken soup that I made last week. It’s a nice hot soup just in time for spring when things are warming up and all you want to eat is salad and stuff off the grill. Oops! Okay, maybe my timing sucks, but this chicken soup does not. Check it out right here.

Slurp!

This past Saturday after Cantonese class, Waine and I made our ritual pilgrimage for some food. We’d had pho the week before and Northern style Chinese hand pulled noodles the week before that, so I wasn’t really feeling the noodles. One word: dumplings. So we headed to the logical stop a couple blocks from our class, the aptly named Dumpling House a well known haunt of Chinatown locals and hipsters alike. It was by no means the first time we’d been to this place but I thought I would take the opportunity to make it the first stop on the newly inaugurated Dumpling Review Page. Check out the full review.