Philly Caribbean Festival

by Adrienne Wilson on

Score! It looks like I’ll be fortunate enough to head over to the Philly Caribbean Festival this weekend. The event takes place on Sunday, August 20, 2006 at the Great Plaza in Penn’s Landing from 12 PM – 8 PM. Like most festivals of this nature it will be a celebration of Carib culture through island cuisine, music and vendors selling authentic island crafts. Also on the scene will be the Expedia Team distributing info on their special giveaway in Philadelphia. Now, I would imagine it would be something really incredible like an all-inclusive vacation to the Virgin Islands or something. Well, okay wait, it looks like it will be info on their $50,000 Dream Vacation getaway, which is just as fabulous if not better than what I had imagined.

If you’re in the Philly area with nothing on your agenda as of yet, come check out the fest, grab some jerk chicken, Red Stripe and lime a little bit. Make sure you save me some!

(picture from locolosconplatanos.com)

Boba

by Adrienne Wilson on


Boba World, Westwood – that’s where it all went down for me. A life long disdain for tapioca, gone in several small slurps. One boba, two boba, three – Slurrrrp! Slurrrp! As a child, tapioca was the magic word to make me scrunch up my face, turn the other direction and run like a mad coyote in the wind. These days I can’t get enough it. Just the other day I cruised over to a local Vietnamese owned spot to grab a cool Green Tea Boba smoothie. As I was slurping up the tapioca balls I started to wonder what caused the change of heart after so many years. It took only a few minutes for brain freeze to kick in and knock me from my train of thought. Who cares? As far as I’m concerned boba’s good and unsurprisingly there are several Americans who are so out of touch with this delightful treat On my quest to find some gentle facts for the timid tourist exploring boba for the first time this is what I uncovered:

  • Wikipedia notes that Boba (pronounced Buo Ba in Mandarin) is the tapioca found at the bottom of bubble tea or boba milk tea. The literal meaning for the word is slang for “big breast/nipple” as the tapioca balls resemble a mother’s nipple. Hmm – I never thought so, but that’s certainly something to chew on. Can someone confirm?
  • Boba balls are made from Cassava.
  • There is a village in Vas county Hungary named Boba. Wonder if boba drinks are popular there?
  • A now obsolete Italian word – boba, means “stupid.”
  • Bobafind.com provides several recipes to making your perfect drink in the comfort of your own home.

It might do first-timers some good to swing by the recipes page first to see what the heck is going on in these deliciously wild beverages before going in and making their own funny face when offered the tapioca balls.

Point It

by Adrienne Wilson on

A friend of mine was just telling me about this revolutionary book helping travelers globally become better communicators – Point It. I know we’ve had to have mentioned it here before, but it’s worthy of another blurb. The concept is quite easy. Let’s say you’re in a European restaurant. I’ll be more specific and say mmm… Latvia. You want to tell the waiter you do not wish to have Latvian bacon buns, but you know neither word in the lang. You’re stuck and destined to have this fine Lativan appetizer unless you can point your way out of it. You turn to your trusty Point It guide hoping it has bacon buns pictured with a huge red “X” in there somewhere. Does it? Heck, if I know – my copy is in the post, but you get the idea. If you don’t know how to say it there are 1,200 pictures so – point it.

via Flight 001

Roadfood

by Erik Olsen on

We’ve done a number of road trip posts here and they always prove popular. Why? It’s obvious: the hum of the road under the tires, the sense of freedom you get in your own car, the lovely, vast openness of the countryside.

But with all that driving, you need to eat, and sure ,you can drop in on any fast food joint along the way. God knows there are gazillions of McDonalds, taco Bells ,Burger kings, etc, ad nauseum (literally). But his is not how it always has been on America’s great roads. In fact, the highways of America used to be dotted with friendly little mom and pop stops that you could drop into and get a nice burger or patty melt along with some down home soul lifting conversation.

Needless to say we don’t find ourselves chatting much with the fast food workers these days. In fact, I can think of few things more miserable…OK, I can think a few things. Having my skin peeled off in a bath of vinegar, that’d be worse. But anyway.

There is now an online meeting place for the nation’s diner lovers at Roadfood.com, which has grown to attract about 250,000 unique visits a month since its 2000 launch. You can check out the site or read an interview with the site’s founder, Mike Stern.

Red Corner: Cheap Eats where the Czechs Eat

by Neil Woodburn on

Prague was once a great deal. Everything was so cheap and tourists flocked here by the millions to lap up 40 cent beers and $1 plates of goulash. Good luck finding such deals in the center of town these days, however.

The influx of tourism has increased prices in the town center exponentially. Beers can cost as much as $4 in some tourist dives. Sure, this is still very affordable, but the wise tourist knows he’s overpaying for that sudsy beer or plate of goulash.

But, where can he find the real bargains? Where can he dig up those authentic Czech restaurants where only the Czechs go and where prices remain as they should for a sloppy plate of goulash?

Well, turn to the expats. The Prague Post, an English language newspaper catering to the foreigners in the area, has printed a pretty decent article on where to find food and drink priced for the locals.

Take, for example, XXX on Senová?né námeste, where some goulash and a couple of beers will only set you back $5. Hardly the prices of ten years ago, but still a great deal compared to the prices found in the more popular tourist dives.