It’s Official, Ramadan Starts Today and Tomorrow

by Jamie Rhein on

Ramadan, the Muslim holy period of fasting starts with the sighting of the new moon. That’s today–or tomorrow, depending on which country you’re in. Turns out, the new moon isn’t the only marker. Astrologicial calculations might be a factor. Here’s an article that explains this more. Regardless, if you’re traveling in a country that’s mostly Muslim, it’s helpful to be aware of a few pointers so you’re not left wandering in the middle of the day looking for a meal–or taking a swig of water or eating in front of people who are abstaining.

Depending on where you are, it’s not uncommon for restaurants to be closed after sun up and before sundown. Once the sun goes down, the day’s fast is broken and the eating begins. You are not expected to be fasting yourself, but it’s helpful to be culturally sensitive, and not create a stir depending on where you are. If you are in a strict Muslim country like Iran, eating and drinking in public is not allowed and you could find yourself in trouble. The Lonely Planet has a helpful guide for traveling in Muslim countries. One suggestion for taking advantage of your travel experiences is to hang out at a restaurant right before it opens, and then enjoy the feast.

So what is this fasting about you might be wondering?

This is when Muslims commemorate when Allah (God) revealed the Quran to the prophet Mohammed. During this time, Muslims are to purify themselves in mind and body by devoting themselves to endeavors of the spirit. Fasting is a practice of showing devotion to Allah and to strengthen resolve to be a better person. Giving to charity is also important during this time. (Okay, what I’ve presented is the condensed version.)

By the way, the country with the largest Muslim population is Indonesia. And the Gambia, where I was in the Peace Corps, is also mostly Muslim–both are quite diverse from each other. In Singapore, because there is a large Muslim population who live there, the first and last day of Ramadan are also holidays.

Turd Coffee: An Indonesian Specialty

by Neil Woodburn on

Here at Gadling we just love educating our readers about bizarre foods they should look out for while traveling abroad.

Well, today, we have one of the strangest I’ve come across in a long time: turd coffee.

Turd coffee comes to us from Indonesia and is the byproduct of wild civets (photo above). And when I say byproduct, I mean byproduct.

The catlike animals feast on coffee beans, eating only the very best. Once the beans are inside their stomachs, enzymes eat away the proteins that lend coffee its bitter taste. The digestive process also strips the beans of some, but not all of their caffeine. 24 hours later, what remains of the beans is deposited on the forest floor along with whatever else the creature consumed the night before.

Farmers collect the dung, separate the beans, roast them, and then sell them for as much as $600 for a pound.

What?!?

Yes, folks, this is a rare delicacy that crosses cultures. Turd coffee, more correctly known as kopi luwak, is apparently some of the finest coffee in the world. According to a recent LA Times article, it is blessed with “a top note of rich, dark chocolate, with secondary notes that are musty and earthy.”

Good luck finding it, though. Less than 1000 pounds of the beans are produced annually. And, much of what is for sale is apparently counterfeit; I’d hate to know what’s in that turd coffee.

Greetings from Crete: One Too Many Frappes

by Iva Skoch on

The coffee junkie that I am, I must confess that the frappes here in Crete kick ass. I am on my third one as we speak.

The drink goes like this: you take spray-dried instant coffee. Yeah, I know. You wonder how anything made out of Nescafe (aka “no es cafe”) can make a decent drink. Really though, it does. Except, you can’t use the Nescafe sold in the US because it is usually freeze-dried, which ruins the formula. Sorry.

In Greece, they have been drinking them way before Starbucks found a lucrative market for fluffy coffee drinks, specifically since 1957. That’s 50 caffeinated years! And I mean caffeinated. Some sources say, a frappe has four times the caffeine as an espresso.

Wikipedia has a great blow-by-blow chemical explanation of exactly what’s happening, but suffice to say, this stuff is an excellent summer drink.

Recipe:

2 teaspoons instant coffee
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon evaporated milk (optional)
Cold water

1. Place coffee, sugar, and 5 tablespoons of water in a drink mixer. Shake vigorously for 30 seconds to produce a thick, light-brown foam.

2. Place three ice cubes in a tall glass. Slowly pour the coffee foam into the glass. Add milk. Fill with cold water until the foam reaches the top of the glass.

3. Insert a thin, flexible straw (colored) and gently stir. Serve with an accompanying glass of cold water.

4. Drink in the company of old, tan men smoking cigarettes.

Big in Japan: An Ode to Sake

by Matthew Firestone on

I really love sake.

Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking. Sake?!?! That cheap, indiscernible clear-liquid that they sell at the supermarket for six dollars a bottle. That foul-smelling, foul-tasting garbage that wasted college students love dropping into their beer glasses to the tune of ‘Sake Bomb!’ That gut-wrenching, eye-watering swill of a beverage that they serve at cheap Japanese restaurants across North America.

Well, let’s just say that you don’t know sake like I know sake!

Forget everything you think you know, and allow me to explain to you why real sake is like nothing you’ve drunk before.

Sake (???), which is pronounced sa-kay (not sa-key), is a traditional Japanese alcoholic beverage made from rice. Proudly regarded as the national tipple of Japan, sake is commonly referred to in Japanese as nihonshu (?????????) or quite literally ‘Japan alcoholic beverage.’ To the Japanese, sake is revered as the most exalted of beverages, much like the French swear by fine wines, or like Americans swear by a cold Budweiser.

Commonly referred to in English as ‘rice wine,’ sake is actually more like rice beer. Unlike wine, which is made by the single fermentation of fruit (typically grapes), sake is produced through the multiple fermentation of grains. While beer consists of the holy trinity of barley, hops and malt, sake consists simply of rice.

Mind you, it’s not just the sweet delicious nectar itself I love, but the refined drinking culture that surrounds it. As with most things in Japan, there are unwritten rules that need to be followed.

For starters, sake is typically served in a special flask known as a tokkuri (徳利), and is poured into a tiny cup known as a choko (猪口). Interestingly enough, good sake is nearly always served either cold or room temperature as heating the beverage is a way of masking the undesirable flavor of a cheap brew. With that said, hot sake hits the spot on a cold winter day, even if it isn’t exactly the most traditional way to drink it.

As foreigners quickly learn in Japan, it is considered rude to pour yourself a glass of sake (or any alcohol for that matter). Instead, it’s good form to refill the glasses of those around you, and wait for others to repay the favor. If you want to acknowledge a friendship, or pay tribute to someone of lower status, you can also raise someone else’s glass and take a small sip.

Also, never underestimate the power of a loud kampai (cheers, かんぱい)!

Although sake has somewhat of a less refined status in the West, that doesn’t mean that the drink doesn’t have its own associated drinking culture. As any college kid can tell you, balancing a choko of sake on a pair of chopsticks straddling a pint glass before slamming the table with your fist and yelling ‘Sake Bomb!!’ is the best way to start (or end) a night quickly.

Of course, there are more sophisticated ways to drink sake, such as in an expertly mixed cocktail.

Here are some of my favorites:

Saketini

2 ounces of dry sake
Splash of dry vermouth

In a shaker over ice, add the sake and vermouth. Shake well and strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with grated lemon peel.

Sake Blossom

2 ounces of nigori (unfiltered) sake
1 ounce of orange juice
1 teaspoon of fresh lemon juice

In a shaker over ice, add the sake, orange juice and lemon. Shake well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a curled lemon peel.

Lychee-infused Sake

720 milliliter bottle of sweet sake
3 cups of peeled and pitted lychees

In a glass pitcher, combine the sake with the lychees, and refrigerate overnight. You can serve the infused sake straight up or as a base for a cocktail.

Getting thirsty? Go wild in the bar, and feel free to post some recipes here.

** Special thanks to Flickr users rick (sake bottle), est_bleu2007 (amazake) and rick (sake cocktail) **

Band on the Run: Kitschy, Classy Drake Hotel is Toronto Arts Beacon

by Ember Swift on

Ember Swift, Canadian musician and touring performer, will be keeping us up-to-date on what it’s like to tour a band throughout North America. Having just arrived back from Beijing where she spent three months (check out her “Canadian in Beijing” series), she offers a musician’s perspective on road life.


If the merging of kitsch and class together is on the agenda for a place to stay in Toronto, The Drake Hotel is perfect. Each room is unique. The furnishings are retro and modern combined. The artwork is compelling. There’s even an antique photo booth machine that shares a room with an electric saddle ride.

But we didn’t stay there.

Honestly, it’s a bit too pricey for the musician’s salary, but it’s one of those urban hotels that are worth splurging for on a special occasion because it would be a memorable and unique night’s stay. And, well, it’s a happening place in the city and surely the entertainment within its walls would be worth absorbing. This week, for instance, it’s one of the social hotspots for the Toronto International Film Festival. Well… there’s something.

(Which film stars will be riding in that saddle, I wonder?)

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I was in Toronto this weekend for a jam party and some rehearsals. I love this city. I spent nine years living here up until 2004 and I still feel like it’s my urban home. The thing that has struck me so much since I left, however, has been the rapid changes that urban landscapes undergo. One of those changes is Queen Street West and its push towards upward mobility from artist and low-income eccentricity.

Gentrification. It’s heading west in Toronto. At least the eccentricity hasn’t been completely vacuumed away. The Drake is evidence of that fact.

Places like The Drake have popped up all along this stretch. It’s not as though this hotel wasn’t here when I lived in Toronto. In fact, it was a dive that most people I knew stayed away from. It has been around since 1890 and used to house the railroad workers that came into the city. In the eighties and nineties, it was a rough punk bar and just seemed like a seedy establishment that one hurried past if walking by late at night.

The current owner bought it in 2001, gutted the place and underwent several years of renovations before opening the space as an upscale hotel, lounge, rooftop restaurant and live music venue in the basement. Since it’s opened, the traffic to this part of the city has increased, as have the number of art galleries, cafes, and loft-dwellers in nearby newly constructed urban condos. It’s remarkable how quickly neighbourhoods transform.

Their website describes The Drake as “a democratic hub and cultural pathfinder, in the midst of a re-energized indie art gallery district.”

I can’t quite swallow the democracy here, since it’s out of many people’s price range if you’re not actually looking to stay, but I do concede that it’s a hub. It’s central to new growth and feels like a beacon of change. What’s more, it does unite rather well with the diversity of the neighbourhood as though its spot “in the midst” of so much art hasn’t been lost on the designers. They hang local artwork on the walls, have commissioned canvasses and expensive sculptural displays flanked by refurbished couches and squeaky vinyl diner stools. Indie musicians file through the basement venue while a sushi bar and yoga den take up the upper levels.

It’s definitely full of contradictions that succeed at representing a neighbourhood in the throws of change, on the cusp of new identities, on the eve of new beginnings without a desire to erase the past.

When I walked into The Drake this weekend to check out the second stage of renovations – I had been told that it had transformed into a more 30’s style kitsch look in the past year and I was curious – I spoke to the smiley front desk clerk about the hotel and its story. He seemed to smile out of every pore as he showed me the flyers and flashed white teeth in response to each of my questions. He had me smiling back, to be sure, but I wondered how happy he really was.

He spread his arms outwards to sweep in the whole of the building when he told me I was free to walk around and take pictures. Another grin and he went back to work without a word. In fact, no one seemed to mind my presence in the least. I felt a bit like a fly on the wall as I strolled into rooms I hadn’t been in for several years and took pictures and looked around. I listened in on a few meetings, a lover’s spat and a heated political discussion over a late lunch.

When I returned to the lobby, the smiling host looked up from his word asked if I had any other questions about the space and if I wanted to reserve a room. He explained that I wouldn’t be able to view one because they were all booked out (there are only 19 rooms), but he brought out room brochures that showed their diversity. As I mentioned, every room at The Drake is different. It’s not themed, per se, but several top designers were hired to design the rooms and each took a different approach. Some rooms have hardwood, some have carpeting, some have exposed brick walls and minimalist decoration and others have walls filled with unique art pieces. No art in the whole hotel is repeated, actually (sigh of relief) and each room boasts different furnishings, colours, layout and overall decorating style.

I looked at the brochures with genuine interest and told him that I’d be back in touch in the future. After all, anything’s possible.

Maybe, if nothing else, I’ll come back to socialize and get my picture taken in that old black and white booth.

Right after I’ve ridden in that saddle!