Guess what? Those peanuts aren’t health food

by McLean Robbins on

Starting next year, the Food & Drug Administration will mandate that airlines provide nutritional information (read: calorie counts) on all food served during in-flight service.

Section 4205 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 requires restaurants and similar retail food establishments with 20 or more locations to list calorie content information for standard menu items on restaurant menus and menu boards, including drive-through menu boards., Now the FDA is asking that all outlets that serve food – including movie theaters, convenience stores, and yes, airlines and trains, provide the same information.

Other nutrient information – total calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrates, sugars, fiber and total protein – would have to be made available in writing upon request.

The guidelines, issued late last week, will be firmed up by March 2011, but in order to implement the process, airlines will likely have to begin preparing to display the information now. Travelers will be able to find nutritional information on the menus or the travel outlet’s magazine, often displayed in the seat back pocket.

Several dozen cities and states have made calorie counts part of the menu vernacular since New York City launched the requirement in 2008. What’s most interesting, perhaps, is research that shows that calorie postings have little to no effect on consumer behavior.

What do you think? Will you change your order with this new information at your fingertips?

[Photo: Flickr | mrmystery]

Daily Pampering: World’s most expensive hot dog and sundae make a $1,069 meal

by Melanie Nayer on

When it comes to food and luxury the options are simply endless. There’s the diamond-encrusted sushi and the $20,000 bottle of scotch and now, there’s the world’s most expensive hot dog, found in none other than New York City.

That’s right food lovers — feast your eyes (and mouth) on the most expensive wiener in the world, found at New York’s Serendipity 3. Cashing it a cool $69, the haute hot dog is prepared by head chef Joe Calderone, and is topped with truffle oil, truffle butter, duck foie gras, Dijon mustard, Vidalia onions and ketchup and is wrapped in a salted pretzel bun.

This isn’t the first ‘most expensive’ title held by the New York favorite delicacies joint. The restaurant also holds the record for the most expensive ice-cream sundae, called the Golden Opulence Sundae checking out at a $1,000. You’ll have to make a reservation at least 48 hours in advance if you want this chocolaty treat.

Want more? Get your daily dose of pampering right here.

[via New York Daily News]

U.S. Open: Chomp on a Hotdog

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Hotdogs and sporting events belong together, so when I went to my first U.S. Open tennis match, I knew I’d have to see what the Arthur Ashe Stadium had to offer. Given a delay caused by matches earlier in the day, the Nadal/Gabashvili pairing started late, so I wasn’t able to take my first bite until darkness had descended over Queens.

I left my seat and ambled over to the concession as the players battled into the night to see what a U.S. Open hotdog would taste like, and I found three alternatives I could use to satisfy my hotdog jones. There was an Italian sausage, which would have been too upscale for me if it hadn’t spent what looked like an eternity under the heating lamp. That left traditional hotdogs in two sizes: regular and foot-long. Obviously, I chose the latter … wouldn’t you?

Carefully balancing my cardboard tray – laden with my two foot-longs, water and a beer (Heineken Light, my feeble attempt to make sure there was something healthy on the tray) over to the condiment counter, where I added ketchup and mustard.

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%Gallery-101120%Back at my seat, I took my first bite. Simply maneuvering the monstrosity to my mouth took two hands, and I had to be careful to ensure my shirt remained clear of the red and yellow adorning my dogs. As two models of physical fitness sprinted, grunted and heaved under the lights on the court below, I pierced the casing of an American tradition.

I was not disappointed.

The Arthur Ashe Stadium hotdog was exactly as unimpressive as I’d thought it would be. It didn’t quite snap when I bit, and the temperature was only lukewarm, in part my fault because of a detour to the smoking area. The taste wasn’t bad, though. Some stadium dogs can resemble warm bologna too closely, but this one was the real deal. I munched mercilessly and quickly.

While the U.S. Open’s hotdogs don’t compare to those I’ve had in Iceland, Montreal or Antigua, they get the job done when you’re baking in the hot city sun (or if you’re suffering through a sweltering New York night). It’s not the taste that matters when your back is pressed against the hard stadium seats. Rather, it’s the fact that you’re participating in a uniquely American institution that’s important. If you’re among the masses headed to New York for the U.S. Open, be sure to grab a dog –and make it a foot-long!

[Photos by Laurie DePrete]

Disclosure: I was a guest of the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Tourism, Andrew Hickey and Laurie DePrete. My opinions of these Queens hotdogs were not influenced in any way by the Caribbean destination.

Vietnamese street food tastes better by motorbike

by Laurel Miller on

There are few things I enjoy more than perching on a plastic, Playskool-size stool on a steaming sidewalk, surrounded by clouds of carbon monoxide. Why do I so enjoy impersonating a contortionist and inhaling carcinogens? Because it means I’m somewhere in Southeast Asia, eating street food.

On my first visit to Vietnam, I flew up to Nha Trang, on the South Central Coast. I found a cheap hotel several blocks off the beach, and set about giving myself a crash course in Vietnamese street food. I was familiar with staples such as pho and banh mi (baguette sandwiches with pork pate and a variety of condiments). Yet I was soon overwhelmed by the array of comestibles being hawked from carts and storefronts, despite frequent thumbing through my Vietnamese food guide.

Compounding the issue was the lack of recognizability of many of the ingredients. No one could ever accuse me of being squeamish, but I like to know what I’m eating, if only for curiosity’s sake. The mysterious, meaty hunks stewing in battered, aluminum stockpots, and hanging behind Plexi-glass shields gave no indication as to their origin. Clearly, I needed someone to help me achieve Vietnamese street food cred.

%Gallery-100653%I had already planned to visit the Evason Ana Mandara & Six Senses Spa later in the week, because they had a well-regarded “street market dinner.” Since 2003, a gaggle of local women–all food vendors known for their version of a specific dish–prepare their respective specialties at one of the property’s three restaurants. It’s a fun way to educate less-adventurous guests about traditional Vietnamese cuisine. The bi-weekly dinners provide steady income for the women and their families, which is critical during inclement weather.

The privately-owned Evason-Soneva luxury property group has a core philosophy of green building design and operations, and emphasizes the hiring of local people in order to support the economy. They also make donations of revenue proceeds to community social projects, including education and health care for children.

Much of the produce and botanicals used in the restaurants and spa treatments are from the sustainable gardens at nearby (stunning) sister property, Six Senses Hideaway at Ninh Van Bay. Ana Mandara also offers market tours and cooking classes as a way to introduce guests to regional Vietnamese cuisine and ingredients.

When I finally checked in to Ana Mandara, I asked if they offered personalized food tours through one of the local guides they contract. And that’s how I found myself on the back of a motorbike at sunset, whizzing through the back streets on my very own tasting tour of Nha Trang.

My 29-year old guide, Nguyen Quoc Nam, was born and raised in Nha Trang. He took me to some of the city’s best spots for eating regional dishes–most of them popular street foods. Our first stop was the poetically-named, sidewalk eatery Phúc, which specializes in banh canh, a fish and rice vermicelli soup. The rickety sidewalk tables were crowded with patrons enthusiastically slurping soup and fried mackerel head–the other specialty of the house.

Like most Vietnamese, Nam is obsessed with food. Throughout our three-hour feeding frenzy, he gave me the history, preparation method, and eating technique for every dish we sampled. We ate banh beo, “leaves” of rice noodles topped with succulent grilled pork, herbs, and chile; sinh to, fresh fruit and yogurt shakes; banh xeo, lacy rice flour, coconut milk, and turmeric crepes stuffed with grilled squid, shrimp, quail egg, and bean sprouts, and chao tom, grilled, seasoned, ground shrimp on sugar cane skewers.

At lively Quan 52, the sidewalk tables were wreathed in aromatic smoke from an adjacent grill. We were served a plate of still-sizzling strips of pork, which we used to make nem, a kind of DIY spring roll. We soaked crisp rice paper sheets in water, then layered them with the meat, nuoc nam, julienned cucumber and green banana, pickled shallots, rau hung (spearmint), diếp cá (fish mint), and ngo gai (saw leaf herb). I was utterly hopeless at constructing the tidy little packages made by fellow diners; even Nam seemed amazed by my lack of fine motor skills. Fortunately, my appetite compensates in these situations.

Our final stop was Pho Bo 81. Despite being painfully full, I managed to devour their heavenly pho (traditionally a beef noodle soup from Hanoi, it’s a staple throughout Vietnam and can also be made with chicken). The restorative broth was greaseless and fragrant, redolent of lime, chile, and star anise.

The next morning, Nam took me on a motorbike tour of the villages and rice paddies in the surrounding countryside. Rice is more than just the staple of Vietnamese cuisine, although it is eaten at every meal in some form. Rice is also intricately linked to the country’s culture, folklore, festivals, and social mores. Around noon, Nam pulled the bike up to a roadside shack beside the Cau Lung Bridge. There, we ate plate after plate of banh uot, a Nha Trang specialty of steamed rice noodle sheets, garnished with powdered dried shrimp and scallions.

After lunch, we visited Dien Thuy village, where I helped make rice paper at the home of a woman who supplies the local community. She soaked, then milled the rice by hand, Next, she mixed it with water to make a batter, and poured frisbee-sized circles onto a bamboo and cloth steamer fueled by the rice husks. The disks were then set to dry on woven bamboo ladders.

Next, we visited the Vinh family, who operate a small rice noodle factory out of their home. Outside of the major cities, rice paper and noodles are made in similar factories, often by hand (the Vinh’s had just purchased a machine to cut the noodles). It’s repetitive, exhausting, time-consuming work. My two-day motorbike journey took me into the origins of not just my beloved street food, but the very soul of Vietnamese culture.

Ana Mandara’s culinary motorbike tours are approximately $40.00, and are offered only by personal request. Cooking classes and market tours also available.

Click here to learn how to make banh cuon (steamed rice crepes with ground pork and mushrooms).

Vegetarians in a foreign country (or, How not to eat meat in Thailand)

by Abbie Kozolchyk on

“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans…are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.” — Anthony Bourdain

The Traveler’s Code of Conduct — a body of oral law etched indelibly into the collective nomadic consciousness — is very clear on matters of food: However unfamiliar, unappetizing and/or squirmy, nothing a host serves may be turned down. Especially when you’re a stranger in a strange land. To violate this rule is to violate one of the most ancient and sacred precepts of hospitality — and to reveal simultaneous provincialism and schmuckiness of the highest order.

Here, then, is one schmuck’s tale.

I became a vegetarian 25 years ago, during a 10th-grade biology lab, when my designated dissectee turned out to be the pigeon that broke the camel’s back. Deceased animals placed before me, whether as meals or science projects, had long since induced guilt and a gag reflex. And for some reason, with this one squab au jus de formaldehyde, I was done.

But alas, some 20 years later, my hosts on Yao Yai didn’t get the memo.No, really. There was a memo. Or at least a Special Dietary Requirements section of the paperwork I’d filled out for my trip to this southern Thai island. I was heading there to write about a nascent homestay program. And my friend Lon — always up for a dose of the different — was joining me.

Thus did we find ourselves the newest residents of an isolated wooden shack. It was surrounded by rice paddies and water buffaloes, propped up on stilts, and filled — in our honor — with freshly prepared fish.

Yes, our appointed island home — where two men on motorbikes had just deposited us after a dock-to-door off-road derby — harbored the ichthyological mother lode. Name the Andaman Sea subspecies, however obscure, and it was represented in our welcome buffet. Highly identifiably, in fact: Whatever had happened to these fish between their last swim and their appearance on the day’s menu, nary a scale, fin, tooth or eyeball was out of place.

So I knew Lon wouldn’t be the one to get us out of this mess. Normally, she’d act as my omnivorous wingman, making at least a respectable dent in any non-veg offerings. But anatomically correct entrées were her deal-breakers — grounds for a poker-faced declaration of vegetarianism. And I could feel one coming on any second.

I panicked. And the heat and humidity — augmented by a thousand steaming fish dishes, all enclosed in the house’s tiny central room — didn’t help. Within seconds, I felt woozy. But apparently, no one was the wiser. Our host parents — each a good decade our junior — beamed expectantly, gesturing toward what had clearly taken them hours (him, on the fishing end; her, on the cooking end) to produce. Just for us. The esteemed guests. Oy gevalt.

So as much as I hated being that tourist — the philistine who rejects such generously, lovingly, painstakingly prepared food — I saw no alternative. Especially as Lon was giving me the “can’t help you, dude” shrug.

“I’m SO sorry,” I began, looking back and forth between our new parents, who spoke next-to-no English.

“So, so, so, so sorry,” I continued. “I really can’t tell you how sorry I am. But there seems to have been a misunderstanding.”

The Traveler’s Code of Conduct is clear on matters of food: However unfamiliar, unappetizing and/or squirmy, nothing a host serves may be turned down. Especially when you’re a stranger in a strange land.

Their brows — until now eagerly raised — suddenly descended to the mildly concerned elevations. But still, not a glimmer of comprehension.

So I tried again.

“You’ve prepared SUCH a beautiful meal. So, so, so, so beautiful. Wow. Really, wow. The only problem is, sadly — very, very, very sadly — we can’t eat it.”

Still, nada.

Between the fish haze and the fear of offending — both intense to begin with, and rising at equal rates — I wasn’t sure how much lucidity I had left.

My mind raced several years back to another such episode, when Lon and I were in Frankfurt, and I was struggling to order a meat-free meal. After attempting every possible pronunciation of the word vegetarisch — only to be met with the waitress’s blank stares — I finally blurted out, kein fleisch.

No meat.

Plain and simple. Crude and desperate. The fumbling vegetarian’s version of the Hail Mary pass. But it worked.

So I thought I’d try it again.

Not knowing the Thai words for no meat, however, I resorted to pointing and mime. And in a show of solidarity, Lon soon did the same. By the time anyone got what we were saying, we had performed a veritable Macarena of we-no-eat-fish gestures.

Perhaps it was our virtuoso air swim. Or the way Lon so poignantly pursed her lips and shook her head at once. But something finally clicked — and our hosts nodded accordingly.

Even better than the hard-won understanding, however, was the hysterical laughter. Some things — the unbridled joy of watching two grown women make total asses of themselves, for example — are indeed universal.

And with this single plunge into idiocy, the group dynamic changed radically. No longer were we a collection of strangers, smiling and nodding at a polite distance. There was something familiar (and familial) about the way we were cracking each other up now — a good thing, if ever you find yourself in the otherwise awkward position of awaiting the meal that’s replacing the ridiculously elaborate one that was already cooked for you.

We had tried to convey to our hosts — in our best Pidgin ‘n mime — that there was absolutely no need to come up with a new spread. We truly would’ve been happy with plain rice. But they would hear nothing of it, or simply had no idea what we were saying.

Either way, about an hour later, meal number two showed up. The motor-bikers had been sent back to “town” (a relative term on a one-road island), where some mystery chef had devised a vegetarian bacchanalia: innumerable curries, stir-fries-and every conceivable combination of banana leaf, sticky rice, and fruit.

So we interrupted the activity in progress — a mostly failed, highly comical attempt at teaching each other a few words of Thai and English — to eat. Absent a table and chairs, which don’t come standard with Yao Yai stilt houses, we stayed exactly where we’d been: in a circle on the linoleum floor.

The food was placed in the center, along with the local version of a napkin tray: a red plastic toilet paper dispenser, the starter square already peeking out.

By now, we were famished — as were, apparently, all the neighborhood ants. They showed up as soon as we were served, and without ever breaking formation, marched fanatically over our ankles, calves and thighs to get to the goods.

Lon and I once again began exchanging glances. But to our surprise, no one else did. There was evidently nothing out of the ordinary about, oh, 100,000 ants showing up for lunch.

Failure to eat was not an option. Was it?

“No,” we silently confirmed to each other; it wasn’t.

Pretending not to notice our ant-covered bodies and plates, we’d wait for breaks in the foot traffic. Then — our chopsticks pre-cocked — we’d go in with laser-like speed and precision, hoping to minimize their insect protein content. And really, what was a little syncopated stick work given our already strange-seeming eating habits?

Soon enough, we all started chatting again — and rarely stopped during the three days we spent on top of each other in this tiny home. Of course, no one had the faintest idea what anyone else was saying, but that seemed a minor detail. And a shared joke.

A language barrier is a funny thing. Sometimes, however illogically, you decide to ignore it and say whatever you want to say to a person. Then you search his face for any trace of recognition, only to get a shrug and a smile — the international sign for “Nope, didn’t catch a goddamned syllable.” At which point both parties have to laugh. Or at least we did.

Of course, sometimes understanding what’s being said to you makes it no less funny. Take the Thai word krap. The masculine form of “yes” — and a polite if meaningless sentence ender — it’s also how you kill in front of a 35-year-old American crowd that has a 12-year-old’s sense of humor. Our host father, who clearly enjoyed having become some sort of comedic genius in our presence, obliged with the most liberal sprinkling of krap he could muster. Got us every time.

So taken were we with these absurdly warm, open, lovely people, that even activities we normally wouldn’t sign up for — the admiring of doomed and departed fish, for example — now seemed a perfectly acceptable form of bonding. When our host father and his fishing buddies took us by long-tail boat to behold the waterborne holding pens and walkways they’d set up in the middle of Phang Nga Bay, the excitement was palpable. Never mind the surreal limestone formations that protruded from blue-green waters, or the secluded, powdered sugar beaches — or any of the other greatest hits of the bay area. Though we were dutifully escorted to all of them, nothing lit the boys up the way a mackerel in a net did. So we smiled and nodded appreciatively at every last specimen.

We repeated the exercise (or a variation on it, any way) later that day, as our host mother expertly handled a succession of carcasses in the kitchen. She was so solicitous — always looking up from her work to smile at us and make sure we were having a good time — that we dared not disappoint. If we were going to commit the cardinal traveler’s sin of not eating the things, we could at least ham up our audience participation. And judging from our oohs and ahhs, you’d think fish-gutting was our favorite spectator sport.

That night, our last night on the island, Lon and I gave her a pair of earrings we knew she’d love. (They were the same enameled bohemian jobbies we had loved at her age.) And the following morning, they kept catching the sun as she waved goodbye to us from the dock. But as we waved back — our ferry slowly maneuvering out of its slip — we noticed a much subtler glimmer: There were tears running down her cheeks. Our host father’s, too.

Within seconds, Lon and I were crying ourselves. At which point we realized how quickly we’d all formed this funny little family. The process wasn’t graceful — or by Bourdainian standards, even civil — but God, was it delicious.

Abbie Kozolchyk has written for numerous publications, including National Geographic Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Forbes Traveler, concierge.com, World Hum, Real Simple and Cosmopolitan. Her website is www.abbiekozolchyk.com.

[Photos: Flickr | morrissey; jon hanson; René Erhardt; sashapo]