Dining in Dushanbe: Merve

by Adrienne Wilson on

Dushanbe isn’t NYC, it isn’t Paris, and it most certainly isn’t Rome. In other words it may not be the most high-trafficked culinary city in terms of tourism, but having had the opportunity to dine out around town quite often I feel it my duty to dish the 411 on the good and bad plates in this big Central Asian city. To kick it off I’ll start with Merve.

Merve makes Lonely Planet’s Author’s Choice and for good reason. Affordable, tasty meals with friendly wait-staff make this one a real winner. For the first two weeks of my stay, Merve was the breakfast stop for me and my Habitat GV companions every morning. Start the day with a small yoghurt, sausage omelet, or Turkish pizza – three menu items that quickly became personal favorites. Initially the sausage has an awkward taste, but it grows on you. I’m told its chicken sausage since pork can’t really be found in Dushanbe. Mornings are pretty quiet at the Turkish cafe, but things start getting really busy around 11 AM and stay busy until closing time. If you check in for lunch, grab the donar kebab. It can be prepared on a sandwich, but go for the shredded meat over rice. Dishes range from 2TJS-7TJS.

There are two locations in Dushanbe, though the most popular appears to be that found at Rudaki 92.

From Prague, For the Absinthe-Minded

by Iva Skoch on

Dude, I got so wasted on absinthe last night…

If you’ve spent some time in Prague, you have heard this line one too many times. Walk into any bar on the beaten path and you will almost for sure see a group of American college students doing shots of the bright green liquor, which they think (or hope) will make them hallucinate.

The funny thing is that most of the stuff they sell here in the Czech Republic is not even absinthe. Not only is it not derived from wormwood, but it does not contain thujone (which is exactly the substance that many countries regulate heavily for its alleged hallucinogenic effects.) Generally, the brighter the color, the more fake it probably is. Don’t get me wrong – you can still get a mean hangover if you drink this stuff, but that’s mostly because the “green liquids” contain 60 percent alcohol and some food coloring. If you really want to go over the top, try that stuff with Red Bull. Make sure to sign up for life insurance well in advance though.

If you want to taste the real thing, you can still do it, but don’t expect to pay $3 per shot. It will be more like $10. For example, the Czech company L’OR makes The King of Spirits (see picture), which is the real thing containing 10mg of thujone. A bottle of this will set you back around $60. If you want the King of Spirits Gold, which contains 100mg of thujone and is illegal even to sell even in the Czech Republic, is available to ship for $200+

Building or Chinese Menu Item?

by Iva Skoch on

Seeing pictures of the proposed new biomedical research center in Chengdu, China (Szechuan province) reminded me of some menu items I tried in that city last year. One reporter called the proposed building “the blob.”

The Szechuan province, of course, is home to that terrific spicy food that is ubiquitous in Chinese restaurants everywhere, usually on the menu right next to an asterisk or a nearby ‘chili pepper’ icon, signifying “this food is hot as hell.”

The traditional and most popular way of eating food in Chengdu is the hotpot. Basically, you’re given a large bowl of boiling, flavored oil that sits atop your table, while you cook skewers of various foods in the oil–kind of like fondue without the cheese. Most of the time, you have some rough idea of what it is you’re cooking, since you picked it off the shelf yourself. The best oil, we were told, was as old as possible: as oil burned off and was eaten, the bowl was topped up; if you cleaned the bowl and used fresh oil, you killed the taste. The older the oil, the better. The table has a hole in it and sits above an industrial-sized propane tank and burner, one to each table. With the cooking-oil-slick floors and open flames everywhere, it’s an American trial-lawyer’s dream.

Back to the building: the building, it seems, was meant to look like a cell, peppered with meeting room pods which were meant to look like embedded proteins around the outside. And the shape? You can see for yourself. Care for a dip in the interior’s “mitochondrial” pools?

Yep, looks and sounds like something I’d be dunking in a bath of ancient, bubbling oil, filled with chili oil and fish heads.

Brick Lane: Best Indian Food Outside of Bangladesh

by Iva Skoch on

Contrary to popular belief, not all food in London is bad. Indian food is, in fact, excellent. The best way to sample it is to head over to Brick Lane, a street in the East Side of London, just steps away from Liverpool Street or Aldgate East tube stops.

Brick Lane (also known as Banglatown) is actually the center of the Bangladeshi community, nonetheless, this is where people go to satisfy their Indian food craving. It is one of the few things in London which won’t make you go broke in two hours. You can get a meal here for 5 GBP.

I come here every time I am in London and I try a different place every time. I went again this past Saturday night and was not disappointed. Remember that some of the restaurants have no liquor license, so you have to bring your own booze. Make sure to try the sweet, coconut nan. It complements the super-spicy vindaloo (or “vindy”) dishes very nicely.

Five Best Places for Beer

by Erik Olsen on

I’m not sure who comes up with this stuff, and/or which interns are assigned to go through travel guides to put the list together, but I suppose since it’s about beer, it’s worth a post none the less. Fodor’s has put together the Top Five Places to Drink Beer in the US. rather silly, as I say, since one man’s great beer joint is another man’s rancid smelling dive. Personally, I tend to favor the darker, mustier, smokier pub-style drinking establishment over the brightly-lit yuppie-filled Gordon Biersch-style place, but that’s just me. Anyway, the top five are, in order of ranking 1 to 5, the following:

  1. Ironworks Barbecue, Austin, Texas
  2. Blue and Gold Tavern, New York, NY
  3. Straub Brewery, St. Mary’s, PA
  4. St. Nick’s Pub, Los Angeles, CA
  5. Axel’s Inn, Milwaukee, WI

Now let me say for the record that I’ve been to the Blue and Gold, and while it is a fine place to drink beer, I’m not sure I’d say it’s one of the best in the US let alone New York. Further, where St. Nick’s is concerned, you need to read the fine print to determine if the place is for you. To wit: here are a few of the review’s “selling points”: If you are a post-college 20-something hipster with a taste that runs more towards mozzarella stocks and Budweiser than caviar and Cristal, then this is your place. Plus, the men are hot.

Nuf said.