Gadling Contributors’ Favorite Restaurants Of 2012

by David Farley on

I take pictures of my food at restaurants. Do you hate me now? Yeah, I thought so. I do it because I’m a food writer and I use the photos to jog my memory when I’m writing about a restaurant. But also sometimes I do it for the same reason a lot of other people do: because I’m so smitten with the taste of what I’m eating that I want something to take with me when the flavor has long disappeared from my palate. There’s an anti-foodie backlash, that dismissive irony that hipsters gave to the world – the one that says: we can’t be enthusiastic about anything and if we appear to look that way, it’s just because we’re being ironic.

Remember when you had to go to an Italian specialty shop to get olive oil? Or when the only tacos you could find were made of ground beef and impossible-to-melt cheddar cheese? No? Well, trust me. The year 2012 is a much better time to be a lover of food than the past decades. It’s a good thing that we care about what we eat; that we want to know where it comes from; that we’re supporting more farmers and fewer corporations. And it’s okay to be so crazy about what you’re eating that you can’t help but snap a picture of your plate. Go ahead.

Below is a list – in alphabetical order – of Gadling writers’ favorite restaurants of 2012. No word on if they snapped shots of their food. They did, though, leave very satisfied.DAVID FARLEY
Gastrologik, Stockholm
There’s been so much talk about the triumph of Nordic cuisine the last couple years. I spent my first time in Scandinavia-in Stockholm, to be exact-eating my way through the handsome city of water and islands. My favorite meal was at chef Jacob Holmstrom’s restaurant, Gastrologik, where I feasted on a multi-course dinner. Dishes included a smooth crème of rooster liver, deep-fried cod belly, and fork-tender reindeer.

L’Osteria Monteverde, Rome
I spent one night in Rome earlier this year and my friend Pancho took me to this unassuming restaurant in the Monteverde neighborhood. It’s part of a trend in Roman dining right now where a talented chef takes over the space of a neighborhood eatery outside the center of town (where the rents are cheaper), does little to the décor, and quickly transforms the place into a destination restaurant. The menu listed what seemed like some tricked-out versions of classics but I went with the traditional carbonara and didn’t regret it.

In New York, there were just too many to keep it to one, so I’ll briefly mention my faves: Ngam in the East Village for an impressive fusion of American comfort food and northern Thai cuisine (the massaman curry pot pie makes me salivate); Mission Chinese Food on the Lower East Side for just about everything on the menu; and ditto for Fort Defiance in Brooklyn’s Red Hook which hit the mark on everything I ate there.

RACHEL FRIEDMAN
Bernys, Bateman’s Bay, Australia
This summer a friend and I drove Australia’s little appreciated south coast roads from Sydney to Eden. Along the way, we stopped off in the seaside town of Bateman’s Bay. Eager to get an insider’s view of the popular tourist destination, we asked a group of local fishermen where to get lunch. They recommended Bernys, a brightly painted but ramshackle place serving up fresh oysters, a dozen for a mere six Aussie dollars. We piled back into the car with two loads and headed to the nearest beach. Parked at a picnic table, we spent a blissfully lazy hour snacking on our mouth-watering mollusks.

ALLISON KADE
Flatbush Farm, Brooklyn
I really loved Flatbush Farm when I was there and had this incredible bean dish, and an incredible polenta dish. But they change their menu all the time, depending on what’s seasonal, which is part of the charm.

COLLEEN KINDER
Barboncino, Brooklyn
I have only love songs to sing for Barboncino, a newish wood oven pizza place on Franklin Avenue. Their basic, cheese-less marinara pizza, as sweet as it is garlicky, makes you wonder whether cheese is a cover-up for inferior sauces. Delicious and the perfect portion for one. For brunch, the egg pizza is surprisingly good, and well-paired with a Nutella calzone. Decadence.

JEREMY KRESSMAN
Pok Pok NY, New York City
New York is probably the last place you’d expect to find mind-blowing Southeast Asian cuisine – many of the tropical herbs and fragrant spices that make cuisines like Thai so wonderful and flavorful are hard to come by on the other side of the world in a cold-weather climate like New York City. So I was dumbstruck to discover earlier this year that Portland chef Andy Ricker would be opening an outpost of his award-winning Thai restaurant near me in Brooklyn. There’s no shortage of standouts on the menu, but the Northern Thai-style specialties are the best: the outstanding Chiang Mai-style Khao Soi soup is a wonderful sensory and flavor overload–crispy noodles, tangy citrus and milky coconut broth held together by a fiery mixture of spices. The “Sai Ua Samun Phrai” (Chiang Mai grilled sausage with spicy green chili dip) is a “punch in the mouth” in the best possible sense of the term – pairing, savory, smoky sausage with bitter squash and a spicy dipping sauce.

PAM MANDEL
Bakery Nouveau. Seattle
Sometimes I go for coffee and baked goods – they make an amazing twice baked almond croissant that’s stuffed with marzipan and smothered in butter, but they also make a beautiful custardy quiche and their California club sandwich is avocado, bacon, Havarti, and a not to garlic-y aoli on their own crumbling, delicate croissants. There’s nearly always a line and it is always worth the wait.

JESSICA MARATI
Wolfnights, New York City
The Brother’s Grimm at Wolfnights NYC is quite possibly the most delicious wrap I have ever had in my life, and I don’t even like wraps. This little roll of heaven contains spicy grilled chicken, pickled shitake mushrooms, raisins, plantain chips, and a generous dose of chipotle aioli sauce, all wrapped in a freshly made chestnut and chilly dough. Cost? A reasonable $7.95. I go at least once a week.

GRANT MARTIN
Longman & Eagle, Chicago
Longman & Eagle has been getting some well-deserved great press for the past couple of years due to a combination of great food, warm atmosphere and the cute six-room inn that they’ve established above their Logan Square restaurant. The fare could be best described as local comfort food that’s pricey but not expensive, while the clientele and staff could be in the same category. The menu changes seasonally, but if you get the chance try the delicious wild boar sloppy joe. And don’t forget to sample part of the whiskey menu – their selection is unparalleled.

LAUREL MILLER
OAK at Fourteenth, Boulder, CO
Dinner with Grant and Liz, last week. They have a dish of San Marzano tomatoes-braised meatballs and burrata cheese, served on Anson Mills grits. It’s like nirvana on a plate.

MEG NESTEROV
Thinking about my travel this year, I’d recommend a few places:

Kantin, Istanbul
One of my favorite neighborhood spots in ladies-who-lunch Nisantasi is open just for lunch. There are no printed menus, just whatever is seasonal and fresh is written on chalkboards. I’m still trying to recreate their watermelon lemonade, and you can’t go wrong with a savory pastry or kebab. Even better is the dukkan (shop) downstairs where you can take more treats home.

Pesti Diszno, Budapest
The chalkboard pig outline logo drew me into this “gastropub” (pork was always inviting when I didn’t get much living in Istanbul), and it was one of my favorite meals in Budapest. The design and lighting feels like a hip bar, but the waiters still treated us like VIPs even with a baby and no Hungarian. I had one of the best hot dogs of my life there, if you could call such a wonder of meat a hot dog. Fun place to try traditional Hungarian food with a twist.

Beast, Brooklyn
I’ve had many a boozy brunch and extended dinner at Beast in years past, and I’ve returned there more than any other place since I’ve moved back to NYC. It feels unpretentious and cozy, yet the food is surprisingly innovative and gourmet. The outstanding burger made with a mix of meats, and the fried manchego cheese bites are so good, you’ll order a second plate. They also have some of my favorite bathroom graffiti ever.

DAVE SEMINARA
Carmelo’s Brick Oven Pizza, New York City
Growing up, my brother Peter was known as the family garbage disposal. You could put a pile of pig slop in front of him and he’d rave that it was the best thing he’d ever tasted. So I was more than a little surprised when he spent a small fortune on a mobile wood-fired pizza oven a couple years back in order to found a small mobile pizza business, Carmelo’s Brick Oven Pizza. He studied the art of pizza making and within a year, he was hitching his mobile oven to the back of his truck and catering parties and events. When he bragged that he made the best pizza in New York, I assumed that he was full of crap. That is, until I actually tried it this year and had to admit that it was just as good as the famous Da Michele in Naples and much better than just about every other Neapolitan-style pizza I’ve had anywhere. Sometimes the most prolific eaters also make very good cooks.

[Photo by David Farley]

The Mystery Of Sandy Island

by Kraig Becker on

A team of explorers traveling to a remote island off the coast of Australia has made an unusual discovery. Or perhaps in this case, it is more accurate to say that they made an “un-discovery.” It turns out the tiny piece of land known as Sandy Island doesn’t actually exist despite the fact that it appears on nearly every map and atlas in the world.

The research ship RV Southern Surveyor was sailing in the South Pacific when the crew noticed an interesting discrepancy between their navigational maps and other atlases that were aboard. Almost every source they checked, including Google Maps, showed a small speck called Sandy Island halfway between Australia and New Caledonia. But the ship’s navigational charts showed no such island, so the crew decided that while they were in the neighborhood they would go and investigate. What they discovered was nothing but empty ocean.

The Surveyor actually arrived at the site of Sandy Island in the middle of the night, which left some of the crew, including the captain, a bit concerned that they might run aground on a piece of land just beneath the surface. But their depth sounding equipment showed that the ocean floor was thousands of feet below. This indicated that the island wasn’t a victim of recent volcanic activity and probably never existed in the first place.So now the real question is, why does nearly every map and atlas show a place called Sandy Island? Those sources indicated that Sandy was approximately 60 square miles in size – roughly the same area as Manhattan – which means that it wouldn’t have been an insignificant piece of land. But how it managed to get on to all of those maps remains a mystery. One theory is that the island was placed there on purpose by a cartographer who was looking to prevent the copying of his maps. In the past it wasn’t unusual for mapmakers to put a deliberate mark on their works so that they could identify copies by the less scrupulous. It is possible that Sandy Island was just such a mark, but over the years it somehow simply became accepted that it existed.

Now it seems Sandy Island will go down as just a footnote in history – a place that never existed, but still managed to stay on most maps for hundreds of years. I wonder how many other places like that are still out there waiting to be un-discovered.

[Photo credit: Google Maps]

Photo Of The Day: Swollen Creek

by Chris Owen on

This Photo of the Day is titled “Swollen Creek” and comes from Gadling Flickr pool member Miles Rowland. The image was taken in Australia near Broken Hill, using a Canon EOS 400D Digital.

Miles simply captions the image, “Time to freshen up.”

Upload your best shots to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. Several times a week we choose our favorite images from the pool as a Photo of the Day.

Tips for getting featured: include the camera you used along with any other equipment or processing software that might help other photographers know more about your image.

[Photo Credit: Flickr user Miles Rowland]

Crystal Cruises Hobbit Experience Brings New Adventure To Sea

by Chris Owen on

Crystal Cruises are always looking for unique experiences to stand out from the crowd and an upcoming New Zealand sailing is no exception. Bringing adventure from the big screen to cruise passengers, Crystal Cruises has a new dinner experience this December, on the “Hobbiton” set used for the Lord of the Rings trilogy and new prequel film.

Just days after “The Hobbit”

opens worldwide, Crystal Symphony calls in Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty region of the North Island of New Zealand, home of the “Hobbiton” set used for the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and new prequel film. On the December 20 sailing, Crystal Symphony guests can have a private, guided tour from Frodo and Bilbo Baggins’ Hobbit holes to the Brandywine Bridge, featuring local wine and beer and a traditional Kiwi barbeque served by wait staff in Lord of the Rings costume.

“We are always looking for unique, boutique ways for our guests to immerse themselves in a world different from their own,” said Crystal’s Vice-President, Land & Port Operations, John Stoll in a Popular Cruising report.A second “Lord of the Rings“-themed adventure is also offered on both cruises, visiting Edoras’ home, Mt. Potts Station and Lodge, and New Zealand’s Southern Alps from Christchurch.

The 16-day Christmas/New Year’s sailing voyage overnights in Auckland before sailing through Tauranga, Napier, Christchurch, Dunedin, Sydney (double overnight), Melbourne (overnight), and Dusky, Doubtful, and Milford Sounds.

“With ‘The Hobbit’ opening mid-December, this is an extraordinarily timely opportunity for Crystal guests to be transported to a place that many fantasy-fiction genre fans, movie buffs, as well as wine and foodies, and off-the-beaten-path travelers, from around the globe can only dream of visiting,” said Stoll. The Hobbiton dinner and village exploration fee is $265 per person.


[Photo credit: Crystal Cruises]

Mental Math: Easy Rules Of Thumb For Converting Currency

by Allison Kade on

Being in a new country is full of enough culture shock – trying to remember how many dollars to the krona doesn’t need to be part of it.

After all, constantly whipping out a calculator (well, a cellphone) and spending five minutes trying to figure out if that sandwich is really a good price is a waste of your valuable vacation time.

To make things easier on you, here are some basic rules of thumb to help you guesstimate the exchange rates in a sampling of different countries.

It’s important to note that currencies fluctuate all the time, so these rules of thumb should not be used as actual foundations for financial transactions. They were based off the most recent exchange rates as of midweek on the week of November 5, 2012. If you actually want to know what the exchange rate is for a given country, look it up. And if you want to know again a week later, look it up again.

These rules of thumb are intended to help you quickly do the mental math required to figure out if, yes, that sandwich is a good deal. Or, when you withdraw 400 pesos from the ATM, roughly how much you’re taking out in US dollars.

Disclaimer: this post is admittedly America-centric, but the reality is that’s my perspective as a traveler. I hope this will help others as it’s helped me.

Asia
China: Divide all prices quoted in yuan by about 6 for a dollar estimate.

Japan: Divide all prices quoted in yen by 100 and then tack on about 25% for a dollar estimate.

India: It’s slightly more than 50 rupees to the dollar.

Thailand: Roughly, divide the prices you see in bahts by about 30 and you’ll get the dollar value.

South Korea: Divide Korean prices by about 1,000 for the USD estimate.

Europe
Eurozone: Add a 25% premium to all the prices you see.

UK: Multiply pound prices by 1.5 and then round up to guesstimate the dollar amount.

Switzerland: Roughly 1-to-1 with the US dollar.

Russia: Divide prices by about 30.

South and Central America
Mexico: Divide the prices you see by 13 for a sense of the USD price.

Guatemala: Divide prices by 8.

Belize: Cut the prices you see in half.

Colombia: This one’s a little tricky. First, divide the Colombian price you see by half. Then divide by 1,000. If you’re lazy and on the go, that’s very rough. For a slightly cleaner conversion, do that and then add back 20%.

Argentina: Divide Argentine prices by about 5.

Ecuador: Trick question. Ecuador uses the USD as its currency, so no conversion needed.

Dominican Republic: Divide prices in the D.R. by 40 for a sense of US equivalents.

Jamaica: Divide prices by 100 and then add back about 10%.

Africa & Mideast
South Africa: Divide prices by a little less than 9 for the US equivalent.

Kenya: Divide by 100, and then add back about 15%.

Morocco: Like for South Africa, divide by a little less than 9.

Israel: Divide by about 4 to estimate the US price.

Turkey: Divide by 2 and then add back 25%.

Egypt: Divide by about 6.

Oceania
Australia: For estimating purposes, roughly 1-to-1.

New Zealand: Take a 20% discount on the prices you see.

[Image credit: Flickr user Images_of_Money]

Correction: A previous version of this article mistakenly said to “divide by half” rather than the correct “divide in half” or “cut in half,” and has been amended.