One of our favorite cities over at Gadling is Stockholm, Sweden and one of our favorite chefs, Jamie Oliver. So imagine our glee when discovering that Mr. Oliver had put together a slide show and narrative from his recent journey into Scandinavia.
Fully available over at the Guardian, Chef Oliver’s slideshow is a love story written to the city, where he meanders in and out of lush, cultural descriptions and delicious, gastronomic profiles in his trademark, boyish tone. All of this is set against the backdrop of a beautiful series of Stockholm photos, from the striking, colorful waterfront to food and families strewn across the country.
Your grandparent’s slideshow, this is not.
It’s almost enough to encourage a wayward blogger to drop his belongings, jump on a 767 and fly directly to Stockholm, just in time for the Midsommar festival and for the long, sunny nights of summertime in northern Europe. Or perhaps that’s some not-so-creative foreshadowing.
Each week, Gadling is taking a look at our favorite festivals around the world. From music festivals to cultural showcases to the just plain bizarre, we hope to inspire you to do some festival exploring of your own. Come back each Wednesday for our picks or find them all HERE.
By the look of its name, “La Tomatina” might make you think of the word tomato, or in Spanish, tomate. That’s because La Tomatina is currently the largest tomato throwing event (as well as the largest food fight) in the world. Each year on the last Wednesday of the month of August, the Spanish city of Bunol erupts with a riot of dancing, drinking, fireworks and plenty of messy tomato-throwing fun. The name Tomatina is the word tomate altered with the ending “–ina” added to it to mean lovely. So La Tomatina is the lovely tomato festival.
The origin of La Tomatina was during another Spanish festival, Gigantes y Cabezudos or Giants and Big Heads in October, 1944. In this festival, people dressed up with giant masks over their heads. A group of kids wanted to join in and entered the area with their masks on. One of the kids somehow tripped and fell over and landed near a street grocery. Thinking some of his friends tripped him, he started to throw tomatoes at them. This started a food fight and soon not only the kids who started the fight were throwing food but also people from the festival as well.
Even Bunol city officials were provoked into the fray. The store owner eventually called police and the people were forced to all pay the grocer for the food they had ruined. The next year, the kids and others returned with their own tomatoes and repeated the fight but instead three weeks before the Gigantes y Cabezudos festival. Every year the festival grew until the entire town was celebrating on the last Wednesday of each August each year.
Want to participate in this one-of-a-kind Spanish food fight? Keep reading below to learn more.
Over time, La Tomatina has grown to a fight of over 30,000 participants, but not without plenty of government interference. In 1950, the regime of Francisco Franco deemed the festival without cultural or social value and labeled it a violent display of public vandalism. But people still tried to keep the Tomatina alive. From 1950-1954, La Tomatina was attempted every year but the police always intervened and fights always ended before everyone had thrown all their tomatoes.
In 1955, the supporters of the Tomatina from Bunol flooded the streets of the city for the Burial of the Tomato or “El Entierro del Tomate.” The people protested the ban of their town festival, which in five years had become an established tradition. They marched down the streets with a giant tomato in a miniature coffin towards the plaza of Bunol where the festival had always begun. It was a real funeral for the Tomatina. Funeral rites and songs were performed. In 1957, the government relented, agreeing to allow the festival only if the Bunol city government supervised the planning and execution of the event. The tradition of La Tomatina was in place.
The first event of La Tomatina is removing a tethered ham from a lard greased wooden pole. It takes many attempts and more than one person to reach the ham. After the ham is freed, the start of the annual fight is signaled by firing water cannons. Bottles and other objects that could injure participants are prohibited in the fight. Trucks full of tomatoes then roll down the roads of Bunol. People ride in the back and shower the people on the streets with ripe tomatoes. People on the streets then hurl the tomatoes among themselves. The tomatoes must be squashed with the hand before throwing them. A rule that is official but hardly ever followed is that clothes cannot be ripped off opponents. Tomatoes and tomato pulp are flung around and the whole area near the Bunol plaza is dyed pink. The fight ends an hour after the first water cannons with another blast.
In 2002, La Tomatina of Bunol was classified as an International Tourist Festival. The event is currently organized every year by two participants of the original Tomatina. La Tomatina really is an expression of freedom and a protest against powers that seem out of common people’s control. Both the powers of the individual and the group importance are enumerated by the event. The greased pole is an obstacle that everyone must help each other to overcome so that the festival can begin. The ham represents the powers that be. It is impossible to climb the pole alone. After the ham is down everyone is free to do mostly what they want with the tomatoes. Every tomato represents a choice and the choice of a person influences how the individual progresses.
The whole event is a symbolic representation of how the collective people have more power than any man, whether king or peasant, and that one man can not fundamentally rise over another permanently. It is a festival that shows that even the most oppressive of governments can never have ultimate control over the hearts and souls of its citizens. La Tomatina is an act of defiance to the powerful because within the fray of the fight, every man is equal, and ultimately, only armed with a tomato.
I did not have any idea what I was going to find when I hopped a cab in downtown Cleveland one morning last week and headed to the West Side Market. Sure, the folks charged with marketing Cleveland as a vacation destination said the market was great, but that’s their job.
So, I had low expectations. All I was hoping for, frankly, was to find a vendor who was selling a muffin and perhaps some coffee.
And then, I stepped into the yellow brick building that has housed the market since 1912.
Dozens of food booths stretched out before me, selling everything from cannolis to whole suckling pig. There are more than 100 food vendors at the West Side Market, and they represent dozens of different ethnicities. Many of the booths have been in the same family for generations.
It’s one of those rare places where you can buy both tamales and liverwurst, pierogis and lo mein, gnocchi and apricot stilton.
It wasn’t packed, (this was a Wednesday, after all) but the market had a big-city bustle that made for great people watching. The ladies who lunch carried their purse pooches on an outing to get the best price on organic produce, students carried worksheets and took notes on the different ethnic foods available and regulars from around the corner ran in for a dozen eggs and a pound of ground sirloin.
Besides the people watching, the West Side Market is a great stop for travelers looking for a quick bite. Many of the vendors have ready-to-eat foods or foods they are willing to heat for you. There’s also a short-order restaurant, the West Side Market Cafe, adjacent.
Admission to the West Side Market is free. It’s open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday and Wednesday, and 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday at West 25th and Lorain, in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood.
And, by the way, I did find that muffin. But not until I had found the a freshly made crepe filled with lemon curd and mascarpone, chocolate bacon bark and caramel cheese popcorn. My apologies to the baker; there simply wasn’t room.
The traditional martini is getting all shook up in Boston’s Back Bay. Brasserie JO at The Colonnade Hotel is giving Bostonians a new reason to clink glasses after a long day. The stylish restaurant has introduced a Brasserie JO Martini Club, complete with a membership card and martini menu.
You’ll earn a stamp on a club card with each order (limit of two martinis per patron per visit) and once you fill your card you can hand it in for a prize (because what fun is a martini if there’s no prize at end?). Show your martini status in exchange items including baseball caps, polo shirts, Martini shakers and martini glasses. If you’re one of the first 20 to fill your card you’ll get a free day pass to The Colonnade’s rooftop pool.
While prizes are always fun, the martini menu is what holds the real excitement. It features 14 twists on the classic cocktail, including: A Casablanca-inspired French 75 (Bombay Sapphire, Cointreau, lemon juice and champagne) The bold Aviation — an “aerodynamic” blend of grapefruit-infused tequila, Grand Marnier and tamarind L’Opera — a theatrical concoction of Canton Ginger liqueur, passion fruit, organic lavender syrup and champagne Martinique — conjuring a soft Caribbean breeze with Barcardi O, Crème de Peche, cassis, pineapple juice and champagne Espresso – a java jolt of “Stoli” Vanil, Kahlua, Tia Maria and espresso L’Artiste – a creative combination of Hendrick’s gin with organic cilantro syrup, jalapeño and lemon juice.
Martinis are priced at $12, with the exception of two Grand Martinis priced at $14. Club members receive credit only for martinis they purchase for themselves (read: buying rounds of cocktails for your friends will only result in lost money, not gained gifts).
I’ve eaten some odd foods in my day. Haggis. Hot Vit Lon. But for all the odd travel cuisine I’ve tried, I’ve yet to find anyone that has willingly eaten dirt. I take that back. Check out the video above on the making and consumption of “Indonesian Mud Snacks,” a local delicacy on the Indonesian province of East Java. Indonesian Mud Snacks aren’t just made from any dirt. According to other articles on the practice, mud snack fans will harvest dirt only from local paddy fields and it must be free from gravel. The chosen mud is then baked, smoked and sliced into tiny roll-like canapes for consumption. Locals believe eating the mud snacks have health benefits, claiming these dirt-bites work as pain-killers. We have film critic Roger Ebert to thank for this gem of a video, which was posted to his Twitter feed yesterday.