When my husband and I take our annual road trip from Denver to California with our two kids, we always pack frozen juice packs in our cooler for the 17-hour drive.
They’re perfect for keeping refrigerated snack foods cold during the journey, and along the way they melt just enough to drink or enjoy as a slushy.
The best part is: there’s no drippy ice to dump upon arrival — and no ice packs to lug home.
The allure of Boston junk food can be almost impossible to resist. For every Radius, Grill 23 and Abe & Louie’s there is a dive of some kind offering drunk grub, fat fare or belt-buster. On my recent trip back to Boston, I hunted out my second favorite breakfast joint in the city: Half-Time Pizza (the top spot goes to Fill-a-Buster on Beacon Hill for creating the greatest bacon, egg and cheese on an English muffin I’ve ever had).
Half-Time is known to anyone who frequents Bruins or Celtics games, being situated on Causeway, right across the street from the TD Center. Great for pizza and beer after a game, Half-Time’s morning prowess should not be overlooked. While you can get what many would call “traditional” breakfast meals at Half-Time, for me, it’s always been about the pizza – even at 7 AM.
I discovered Half-Time back in the days when the internet was new and companies like CMGi were relevant. I used to commute into North Station, stop at the pizza shop for two slices (served folded into a paper bag) and dash off to catch the Orange Line to Sullivan Square. It is quite possibly the most appalling breakfast one can imagine, but I found it to be pure bliss.
On a recent trip to Antwerp, I toured the De Koninck brewery, then did some darn fine pre-noon drinking with a couple of Belgians to increase my knowledge about drinking in Belgium. You can do this too, albeit not before noon; just show up at the De Koninck brewery at 3:00 PM on a Saturday and you can get a tour and tasting for €7.50.
Brewery of the Hand
De Koninck was originally known as “Brewery of the Hand.” Back in the 1800s, one had to pay taxes to sell goods in Antwerp, and the hand was the universal symbol for “pay up.” There was an actual stone statue which looked like this hand at the border of Antwerp and Berchem.
Though the beer is now called The King (that’s what “De Koninck” means), the hand is still used as their logo. I rather like this. Instead of saying “I’m going to go for a beer,” I think I’ll start saying “I’m going to go pay the king.”
My tour guide at the brewery was none other than CEO Dominique Van Den Bogaert, a third generation brewer of De Koninck with a family history of brewing that goes back as far as five or six generations. The Bogaerts, who were brewing in Willebroek, helped reopen De Koninck after World War I.
Basically, Van Den Bogaert was born into beer.
He showed us around the charming brewery and talked some shop, but it was when we got to the bar next door that I started to learn what drinking in Belgium is all about.
%Gallery-89309%Drinking in Belgium
In Belgium, the bars never close. My hosts explained that this actually prevents public disorder. “There’s no ‘drink up’ time,” said Van Den Bogaert, adding that Belgium has less trouble with teen drinking than the United States, even though their drinking age begins at 16. And here’s an interesting, possibly related linguistic fact: Belgians don’t say drink a beer, they say taste a beer.
The word Belgians use to toast is Schol! — which is not a Flemish or French word. It’s actually an old Scandinavian word for skull. Viking warriors used to drink from the skulls of their defeated enemies as a (moderately uncivilized) way of celebrating their victories.
The proper thing to drink De Koninck from is not a skull (surprise). It’s a bolleke, or small ball; one of those fancy stemmed beer glasses (above right). There’s also the prinske (little prince, above left), a smaller-looking glass which was created for women so that they would look more ladylike. It holds the same amount of beer.
After drinking several De Konincks (the blond was my personal favorite — it’s light bodied and vibrant) from our bollekes and prinskes, we also had a traditional snack: meat and cheese from West Flanders. Both were served with mustard.
I think Unnecessary Mustard would be a good band name. (But not a great one.)
You’ll actually find a lot of bars without food in Antwerp, because smoking has been banned in establishments which serve food. However, as my host explained: “When in Belgium there is a law, there is always a way to avoid.” Bars where you can smoke will often allow you to bring food in — or even go as far as to serve you food outside and let you bring it in.
I think what I really learned at De Koninck was that Belgians are better at both brewing and drinking beer than most other countries. I have no idea why this is so, but it certainly makes Belgium all the more fun to visit.
Related:
* The 24 greatest cities in the world for drinking beer
* 15 more great cities for drinking beer
* The 25 greatest cities in the world for drinking wine
* The 20 greatest cities in the world for foodies
My visit to Antwerp was sponsored by Tourism Antwerp and Cool Capitals, but the opinions expressed in the article are 100% my own.
Traveling through West Virginia? Why not check out the finest “redneck diner” you’ll ever encounter? Just don’t take the Homewrecker Challenge on a full stomach.
If your travels take you through West Virginia, and you happen to be in the vicinity of Huntington, check out Hillbilly Hotdogs. It’s a small diner decorated in what the owners affectionately call “redneck chic.”
The dining area consists of two school buses, homemade barstools, and a picnic area adorned with hundreds of license plates from across the US. Patrons are invited to sign the walls (or any available surface) to commemorate their trip, and the staff will put on a great show if you ring the bell above the cash register.
It’s 11:00 am on a windy, drizzly early March day in Manhattan’s West Village, but I’m warm and dry in the cozy confines of Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee on W. 10th St.
Though the Mommas and Papas are singing, “Monday, Monday,” it’s actually Wednesday, Wednesday, and my last morning in New York after an exhilarating six-day visit. When I asked friends who are longtime lower Manhattan residents – the kind of people who looked at me incredulously when I said I was lodging on the Upper East Side — where would be the perfect café to end my stay, the answer was unanimous. So here I am, and after 20 minutes, I’m already beginning to understand why.
The words “home away from home” come easily to mind at Jack’s. The cheery baristas greet customers like old friends, and the customers themselves frequently stop to talk with one another before ordering their americanos or as they walk out with cappuccinos in hand.
Jack’s is a shoebox-shaped place, maybe 14 feet from the door to the far end of the counter and 10 feet wide. This size is part of its charm, as is the casual, distinctly lived-in look. From the doorway, a six-foot-long wooden counter with four well-worn stools stretches invitingly along the right wall, and a sitting area barely large enough to squeeze in a dozen neighborly patrons at four two-foot-square tables opens in front and on the left. When I walked in, a bandanna’d barista smiled and called out a greeting from behind a case stocked with a tempting display of muffins, croissants and scones, as well as yogurt, fruit juices and water. Intersecting this case was a counter displaying apples, biscotti and bagels in woven baskets. Here customers were ordering from a menu written in chalk on a mounted blackboard. In addition to the usual coffees, teas, cocoa, cider and milk, the beverage choices included a couple of surprises: a house specialty called Apple Jack — tea with apple juice – and beer.
I ordered my usual latte and chocolate croissant, and just then got lucky as a patron arose to leave, liberating a seat at one of the café’s two window seat tables, which, happily enough, no one else was waiting to claim. And that’s where I sit now, in this airy window-lit space, with my laptop, croissant and latte covering most of my table, reveling in Jack’s idiosyncratic cafescape.
On my far right, above the long counter, a gloriously crammed wall showcases photos of regular customers, a few posters, and other endearing oddities like a picture of a camel in front of the Egyptian pyramids and another of three apparently caffeine-connoisseur penguins with a Jack’s mug in the foreground. Under the photo gallery, a diminutive cork board, maybe 2 feet by 3 feet, features notices from locals (“Past Lives, Dreams and Soul Travel,” “Learn Spanish,” “Lunchtime Yoga,” “Dan Will Teach You Guitar”). Beside the corkboard, a ski-capped couple snuggles on the stools, and beyond them a tweed-coated chap in a navy blue beret professorially peruses the Times.
To my immediate right a thirtysomething mom is interviewing a prospective nanny (“You have your driver’s license, right?” “Oh yes, I am driving maybe six month now.”). Opposite me, a bewhiskered guy in a baseball cap nurses a mug and stares into space as if he’s settled in for the day; at the table next to him, a young man in a ski parka rustles red-marked papers and scribbles in a notebook.
On my left there’s a brick wall with two blackboards, a navy blue tie hanging collegially from the corner of one. One of the blackboards bears the scrawled message, “I’m almost NOT crazy.” Next to them, Jack’s t-shirts, baseball caps, army jackets, courier bags, mugs and coffee are arranged neatly for sale on shelves.
The notebook-scribbler vacates his table and it’s immediately taken by a mid-twenties mom in big black rain boots and her daughter, who delicately drapes her pink backpack over the back of her chair. They launch into an intent discussion of whether they should try to make the icing themselves the next time they bring a cake to school.
I sit back and close my eyes, trying to absorb the pastry-and-coffee scent, comforting conversational murmur and unhurried pace of this place. Then I turn to my laptop and write: “Every town should have a Jack’s, where you can wander in, order a cup of delicious coffee and a just-right chocolate croissant, where the barista asks how the book is going or how the kids are doing, where you can strike up a conversation about novels with a neighbor, write a message on a chalkboard, or bring a child during her school’s lunch break.”
Now Van Morrison fills the air – “oh, Domino” — and the mom is leaning forward and saying to her scone-nibbling daughter, “You have to be introduced to Tennyson at some point in your life, right?”
Regulars stream in and out, joking with the baristas and each other, and the morning slips away. I look at my watch: time for a last stop at a neighborhood bookstore and then it’s on to JFK.
Getting up with a sigh, I compliment the barista on the quality of the coffee. She tells me that the secret is Jack’s homemade “stir brew” coffeemaker, which stirs the coffee grounds as it’s brewing, ensuring that the grounds are fully saturated and evenly brewed. The result, she says, is a less acidic, stronger, bolder, smoother brew. As we talk more, I learn that she used to work at a Peets coffeeshop in the Bay Area that is literally a 10-minute walk from my house. “This is as close as you’ll get to Peet’s in New York,” she says. We share small world smiles and she encourages me to try one of “Aunt Rosie’s” chocolate chip cookies. “Is there really an Aunt Rosie?” I ask — and she points to a photo of a beaming woman behind me.
I buy two of Aunt Rosie’s finest for the long flight home. They’ll serve as a delicious reminder of the perfect café that brightened a drizzly New York day.