Food and Fun Festival, Iceland Style

by Neil Woodburn on

What could possibly be wrong with a “Food and Fun” festival?  Doesn’t the title itself sum
up all you really need in life?  What in the world could be better than an entire festival celebrating food
fun?

Well, I’m going to lose a handful of you when I mention where it is being held: Iceland.

The 5th annual Icelandic Food and Fun Festival kicks off on February 22nd,
in the capital of Reykjavik.  A number of local chefs participate in the festival where they are limited to
preparing dishes made solely from Icelandic ingredients.  This doesn’t mean plate after plate of arctic cod
either.  Iceland has a unique culinary heritage
which only a cold, North Atlantic island can give rise to.  Now, here’s the part where I will lose even more
of you.  Iceland is well known for maximizing their limited food resources and creating such wild dishes as
smoked puffin, dung-smoked lamb, sheep heads, pickled ram testicles, and their most famous culinary masterpiece, rotten shark meat that has been left to decompose for six months
and traditionally downed with Brennivín, a
potato-based schnapps drink more commonly referred to as Black Death. 

But don’t let this scare you off.  Reykjavik has wonderful restaurants and I ate quite well while visiting there a
few years ago.  The food is unbelievably fresh (except for the shark) and the quality outstanding.  Very few
restaurants even offer the above mentioned culinary um… challenges. 

As for the Food and Fun Festival, you should still go.  I guarantee that you will love the food and definitely have fun as well—despite
the festival being held during winter in a country located just below the Arctic Circle that has very odd food customs
indeed. 

 

Turin: Winter Playground or Culinary Heaven?

by Neil Woodburn on

Yum.

Piedmont, as far as I knew, was just another region of Italy—one with few, if any, well-known cities and
almost no tourist attractions.  Today the Piedmont area is getting a tremendous amount of press thanks to the
previously unknown town of Turin which is now hosting the Winter Olympics. 

After the Olympics are over, however, Piedmont will undoubtedly fade from memory while Turin will remain entrenched
in everyone’s mind as nothing more than a ski resort. 

Piedmont, however, has much, much more to offer. 

A tantalizing LA Times article by
Catherine Saillant stays clear of the snow-and-ski theme dominating today’s press and focuses instead upon
why the area is truly beloved amongst in-the-know Italians: its food. 

Saillant signed on to a culinary tour arranged through Culinary Arts
International in Santa Barbara.  The week long tour wound its way through the region, stopping off for morning
cooking classes, three-course lunches, and multi-course dinners.  As you might imagine, wine played a dominate role
in the trip as well. 

The highlight of her travels, however, revolved around the region’s true specialty: the white truffle. 
Saillant joined a hunting expedition in which a trained dog sniffed out the culinary gems ($300 an ounce) buried in the
rich earth.  Her favorite meal of the trip, a simple fried egg coated with thin shavings of truffle, speaks to the
power this amazing fungus holds among foodies.

If I ever make it to Piedmont, I’m skipping the obligatory tour of the Olympic grounds and heading straight
for the restaurants instead.  You should think about doing the same. 

 

Red Square: Lenin in Vegas

by Neil Woodburn on

I wasn’t expecting to be able to write a Red Corner post while in Las Vegas this weekend, but one evening while wandering through the Mandalay Bay Casino I came across Lenin himself-or at least I thought it was him.

A massive statue standing outside a bar named Red Square had all the characteristics of a Soviet-era Lenin statue except it was missing its head (which I later found out was stored inside the bar’s walk-in freezer).

Red Square is a vodka lover’s paradise. I stay away from the evil swill myself, having had too many bad experiences with Russia’s national drink while in the motherland, yet it was still fun to pop into the swanky commie-themed bar and gaze at the enormous selection of vodka, impressive array of caviar, and random menu items such as Siberian nachos.

Incidentally, unlike so much in Vegas, the Lenin statue standing outside the bar is not a fake; it was imported from the former Soviet Union shortly after the fall of communism. The bar’s owners, however, received complaints that the statue glorified Lenin and so they removed its head and splattered the statue with fake bird droppings – as if placing a statue of capitalism’s greatest enemy in an American casino wasn’t insulting enough.

Red Corner: Cool Restaurants Prague

by Neil Woodburn on

I’m a little disappointed.

Today while shopping I ran across a book called Cool Restaurants Prague. Having lived in this fair city, and frequented what I thought were its “cool” restaurants, I was excited to find a book all about them. The only problem was that the book was wrapped in plastic. No worries, I thought. How could someone screw up such an easy concept?

So, I bought the book and just spent the afternoon glancing through it.

Cool Restaurants is actually a series of books published by teNeues Publishing Group in Italy that spotlights “cool” eating establishments in more than 20 cities across the world. The concept is simple: offer a few pages of photographs of the interior of each, showcase one recipe, and then move on to the next restaurant.

The problem with the Prague book is that it is soulless. The majority of photographs lack warmth and charm and fail entirely in, what I assume, is their goal of evoking cozy, architecturally arousing eating establishments that are hip, beautiful, and… cool. Sure, a few of them do indeed look great and I would love to check them out, but the book as a whole fails to motivate, inspire, or even tempt my appetite. I’m not sure about the others in the series, but had the Prague book not been wrapped, I would have had the opportunity to leaf through it and then put it aside.

Of course, I might simply be bitter that nearly every restaurant in the book was new to me. If they are indeed the city’s new crop of “cool” restaurant, I’m no longer in the know. And that’s depressing.

Photo of the Day (2/12/2006)

by Erik Olsen on

I selected this photo of the day not because it’s such
a great photo…I mean, it’s OK. A tripod might have helped…but because I love the name of the concoction being made
here: Feuerzangenbowle. The drink, according to crafterm, who took the photo, is made with hot red wine in a pot, along with rum. You pour the
rum over a sugar cone that burns and falls into the red wine. Yummy.