Where they ate: chefs’ and food/travel writers’ best meals of 2011, part II

by David Farley on

I ate well this year. Maybe better than any other year. I spent a week in Hoi An, Vietnam eating cau lau–an obscure noodle dish that technically can only be made in the small coastal town. I ate my way through Barcelona, dining at restaurants whose chefs had a connection to the recently closed elBulli. I ate all kinds of offal at Incanto in San Francisco. I finally got to eat Ethiopian cuisine in Ethiopia. I had a four-hour meal at Degustation in Prague, where chef Oldrich Sehajdak is re-inventing Czech cuisine. And, here in New York, I was fortunate enough to eat at places like Le Bernardin, the Breslin, Riverpark, GastroArte, and Gramercy Tavern, among many other meals.

But I’m not the only one who spent the year digesting delicious grub. Part II of the annual “where they ate” round-up picks up where the first installment left off.• Homaro Cantu
Executive Chef, moto & iNG and host of Future Food (Chicago, IL)

EL Ideas in Chicago is an amazing BYOB tasting menu concept that is run entirely by Chef Philip Foss and Chef Andrew Brochu, who are true culinary perfectionists.

Del Posto in New York, Mario Batali’s fine dining flagship restaurant. was one of my best dining experiences of 2011; taleggio filled pasta with white truffles; ‘Nuff said.

Burt Katz is the “godfather of Chicago deep dish.” It’s an art in a pizza and it’s always perfect.

• Julia Cosgrove
Editor-in-Chief, AFAR magazine

After a friend’s wedding in Turkey this summer, I spent six days roaming around Istanbul. One afternoon, I dragged my travel companions–a German, a Turk, and two New Yorkers–to Ciya Sofrasy in Kadikoy, on the Asian side of the Bosporus. Everyone was cranky and hungry by the time we found it, but I knew the second we walked in, the trek was worth it. The chef, Musa Daðdeviren, comes from eastern Turkey, and his dishes reflect the diverse traditions of the region. We shared many small plates we picked from the counters at the front: fresh salads flavored with seeds and unusual herbs, stewed beans, perfectly tender eggplant, Turkish meatballs, and hot pide bread. For dessert, we tried candied pumpkin, which had a taffy-like texture like nothing I’ve ever tasted. I could eat there everyday.
In Cairo for the premier AFAR Experiences event, our group ate dinner at Abou El Sid, a traditional Egyptian restaurant in Zamalek. I sat down at a table filled with Egyptians, and our three-hour-long feast commenced. We ate platters of lentils, babaghanoug, tahini, foul (a fava bean dish), and lamb kofte. And those were just the mezes! Then came molokheya (a bright green soup made with molokheya leaves), stuffed pigeon, and koshari, my favorite combination of rice, lentils, and fried onions. My new Egyptian friends chided me into trying the dessert-om aly, a sticky and sweet casserole of phyllo dough, milk, and nuts.
To send off a friend moving to New York, a group of four of us tried everything on the menu at Plum, Daniel Patterson’s new restaurant in Oakland, California. Vegetables and grains have never tasted better or more surprising, and I’m still thinking about the rich dashi broth with yuba and mushrooms, as well as a dessert that is best described as a deconstructed Mint It’s It. The interior is earthy and woodsy, and the location, up the street from the classic Paramount Theater and a few blocks from Gold Teeth Master, is quintessential Oakland.

• Joe Diaz
Co-founder of AFAR magazine

Park Avenue Winter (New York City): A brilliant concept and one in which the restaurant is stripped down to its barebones during a 48-hour period and rebuilt to prepare for the coming season. Four times a year, Chef Kevin Lasko and team transform every detail of Park Avenue to reflect the season. It makes me feel like I’m in synch with the rhythms of the particular time of year, which is rare in our world where we’ve come to expect any food at any time, and during any time of year.

Sotto Mare Gigi’s Oysteria (San Francisco): Walking into Gigi’s you’re whisked away to the North Beach of the 1970’s. Sit at the bar and strike up a conversation with waitresses who are busy rushing around but will always give it to you straight. If you’re lucky, you might even spot Gigi who in his 70’s still has the party animal inside him. The seafood is basic but fresh and the feel leaves you loving the San Francisco of old.

Dinner at the Pyramids: This is one of the most memorable meals of my life. On October 28, 2011 we had our final dinner of AFAR Experiences Cairo at the Pyramids at Giza. Our group of approximately 40 people sat underneath tents overlooking the Pyramids and dining on some of the most delicious foods catered by the Four Seasons Nile Plaza. It’s not everyday that you get to you get to eat with your closest friends looking out at the Pyramids and listening to one of Egypt’s most famous rock bands. Everything came together perfectly that evening and it’s one I’ll never forget.

• Andrew Evans
National Geographic Traveler’s Digital Nomad

A standout favorite for me was Alta Bistro in Whistler, British Columbia. Not even a year old, Alta is the runaway stepchild of some of Whistler’s finer-dining establishments–all that commitment to marvelous local cuisine minus any ski resort stuffiness. Food and drink are created equal here; the drinks menu is a tribute to the historic art of a well-mixed cocktail and the food menu is consistently fun and fresh.

O Thym was my best meal in a week of eating my way through Montreal. By far the most culinary of Canada’s cities, Montreal kept revealing new surprises and O Thym did it best. I loved the atmosphere, the single oversized chalkboard with the entire menu scrawled out in French, the commitment to French standards in the kitchen, and plucky presentation that would make make Martha Stewart take up bowling instead.

I sniffed out SUNdeVICH just five blocks from my apartment in Washington, DC. Hidden in a back alleyway of Shaw, the one-room cafe is a global sandwich dream: your favorite flavor memories from the road brought to life on bakery-fresh bread. “The Athens” is loaded with tender grilled lamb and fresh Greek tzatziki, the “Berlin” has authentisch bratwurst and sinus-cleansing mustard. No doubt, this is food for the well-traveled and my best home discovery.

• Richie Farina
Sous Chef moto Restaurant and Bravo’s “Top Chef” Season 9 Contestant (Chicago, IL)

Not only is Del Posto one of the prettiest restaurants I have ever dined in, the pork ravioli with a whole white truffle on top was ridiculous.

The Bristol in Chicago is an amazing industry hang out spot, especially on Sunday nights. The pasta is amazing and the meat salad is one of my favorites. Really simple plates.

Coppa in Boston is one of the best places to get charcuterie in Boston, but the calamari pizza is awesome.

• Maria Fontoura
Senior Editor, Men’s Journal

I had one truly standout eating experience in the last year, and while this is perhaps old news in New York, it was at Takashi on Hudson St. in the West Village. The food is yakiniku, a sort of Korean barbecue (in this case by way of Japan) focused on offal. It was a totally transportive experience, just the most fun I’ve had at a restaurant in a long time. The waitress steered us toward the beef tartare, I thought at first because she suspected we couldn’t handle the real down-and-dirty stuff. But I realized after tasting it that I was wrong. It has such richness and depth of flavor and the texture is so unusual, because the meat is sliced in–this will sound disgusting but trust me, is delicious–these wonderfully marbled ropes. And there’s a dish that’s basically a little raw cube of steak, topped with uni, served on a shiso leaf, that is maybe the most perfect bite of food (sorry, Chiquita bananas). My favorite items to grill were the tongue and the sweetbreads. They have some delicious Japanese beers. And for the record we also got some kind of salad, which was very refreshing. In fact, I think I’m going there right now.

• George Mendes
Executive Chef, Aldea (New York City)

The best places I ate at this year were the following:

Townhouse. In Chilhowie VA. Chef John shields is doing fantastic work. Creative, delicious, spot on technique. And he’s foraging in his local hills and mountains

The French Laundry. Yep. After all these years I finally made out there. Just experiencing Chef Keller’s signature dishes at the original restaurant (other than Per Se) was mind blowing. One of my best meals of all time.

• David Muñoz
Executive Chef, DiverXo (Madrid)

Restaurant Aponiente (Cádiz, Spain):
It is absolutely a unique experience and one of the most personal paths we can find nowadays in Spanish cuisine.

Tippling Club (Singapore):
Because of its high creativity and the best “fine dining” in Singapore.

Soto (New York):
Because of its tact and kindness, simplicity, personality and creativity. Absolutely brilliant.


• Paco Roncero
Executive chef, La Terraza del Casino (Madrid), Gastrofestival participant

My favorite culinary experiences in 2011 include a gala dinner for the Elton John Foundation in London. It was very special for all the team preparing the event, and the reason of the dinner (against HIV). I also went to Venue in Hong Kong promoting Spanish Cuisine. We were very proud representing Spain and promoting Spanish cuisine.

• Sarah Rose
Author of For All the Tea in China

In Hawaii, on my first jetlagged morning, I had Vinha D’Alhos and pork fried rice at the Koa Pancake House in Kaneohe on Windward Oahu. Hawaii is the world capital of amazing pork. And it is authentic fusion, from every Pacific culture and colonial time period–Vinha D’Alhos is Portuguese-spiced pork (“The Meat of Wine and Garlic”) dating to the arrival of sugar cane workers in the 19th century. The restaurant is paneled in koa wood– gorgeous, rare and outrageously expensive; imagine a greasy spoon paneled in gold. Best breakfast in America that will kill you dead.

Every August I return to the Midwest to eat tomatoes. I’ll have a tomato sandwich for breakfast and lunch (toasted white bread, mayo, Big Boys or Better Boys, salt). Suppers are straight from the garden: potatoes, green beans, beets, sweet corn, and likely another tomato sandwich. August is the best eating month. Hurricane Irene destroyed my CSA’s crop, so that weekend was the last real farm meal I got.

A boyfriend took me to Daniel, Daniel Boulud’s namesake palace in New York. That might have been one of the greatest nights of my life–but we broke up.

In Norway I had 10 different kinds of fish for breakfast while sailing the Hurtigruten through the fjords: four kinds of herring–wine, mustard, tomato and curried; two kinds of mackerel–peppered and tomato. There were sardines too, and sweet anchovies for topping soft-boiled eggs (who knew it was such a flavor marriage?). I tried some unrecognizable fish pate that looked exactly like a can of cat food but tasted much better, I assume. (If cats are eating this well I should rethink my grocery habits.) And there was all the smoked salmon I could eat. It was almost as good as a bris.

• Dan Saltzstein
Assistant Editor, New York Times Travel section

Sadly for me, I barely made it out of the country this year (thanks, Canada!), but that doesn’t mean my year lacked for great meals. Here in my home base of New York City, I had outstanding food at Eleven Madison Park (best dish: a simple roasted eggplant, speckled with bulger wheat and bright, intensely flavorful fresh herbs); Blue Hill at Stone Barns, just north of the city in Pocantico Hills (best dish: farm-fresh egg “carbonara” with thinly sliced squash in place of pasta, and bacon); and Momofuku Ssam Bar, which never fails to please (best dish: an umami-fest of chanterelles with pickled quail egg, marrow and juniper).

• Jiri Stift
Executive Editor at Essensia, Prague, Czech Republic

This year I had the pleasure to spend three weeks in Thailand and it was one big dining experience. I found excellent food in top hotel restaurants like Thai restaurant Le Grand Lanna in Mandarin Oriental Chiang Mai as well as great value for money street restaurants serving traditional Thai and Indian cuisine.

The best dining experience this year I would any way vote lunch in Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. I simply loved the restaurant for its original concept and absolutely superb quality of food.

• Gabriel Stulman
Owner of Fedora, Joseph Leonard, and Jeffrey’s Grocery in New York City

Joe Beef in Montreal: I went here with my wife over our wedding anniversary. Joe Beef is constantly one of my favorite restaurants. We sat at the corner table and had the awesome service of wine and the incredible storytelling and companionship of Dave. A few things stand out from the meal–but most memorably was their take on chicken nuggets: instead they made eel nuggets complete with all the classic dipping sauces of a spicy mustard, bbq sauce, etc but all homemade in the little paper, thimble sized ramekins. The other part of the meal that was ethereal was when they served us a warmed-up round of Epoisses cheese for dessert with caramelized shallots – it was emotional.

At Casa Rufo in Bilbao with friend and partner at Fedora Brian Bartels and my friend and chef at Fedora Mehdi we had the most simple and perfect meal. Casa Rufo is a market/restaurant concept that has been around for 60 years and is still run by the husband and wife team who inherited it from their parents. The menu is simple: croquettes and sardines and jamon for appetizers and an incredible 30-day dry-aged rib eye for three served with homemade French fries and a side salad. The meat was out of sight, perfectly marbled, heavily salted, and expertly cooked on the grill. The kitchen is run by one person 5 days a week. The setting is brilliant and the company the best.

For Jeffrey’s Grocery one-year anniversary my wife and I took out the entire management team for a 15 course tasting menu at Manzo restaurant in Eataly helmed by chef Mike Toscano. Mike’s food makes me smile. He is one of the more talented chefs of Italian food in the city in my opinion. The menu had everything: offal, multiple pastas, fish, meat, foie, cheese course, and on and on and on. A supreme dining experience with the team.

• Greg Sullivan
Co-founder of AFAR magazine


Indigo–a restaurant near the Gateway of India in Mumbai. I had some delicious snapper on their open air rooftop next to the frangipani trees. A real highlight last winter.

The Farm at Cape Kidnappers in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. Incredible views of the rolling hills and the Pacific, wonderful local foods and wines.

Cantina Siciliana in Trapani, Sicily. Chef Pino Maggiore treated us to traditional Trapanese (?) meal of cuscusu (couscous), sardines and swordfish.

Park Tavern. I just had another great meal at the new place in my ‘hood – North Beach San Francisco. They had me right off the start with the deviled eggs with jalapeño and I never looked back.

5 best floating markets around Asia

by Jessica Festa on

When traveling, it’s always fun to head over to the local open-air markets and gain some insight into the culture and their products. To make the browsing experience even better, some markets forgo street stands and set up shop right in the water. To see this for yourself, checkout this list of the five best floating markets around Asia.

Damnoen Saduak Floating Market
Ratchaburi, Thailand

While there are myriad floating markets in Thailand, one in particular stands out for the rest. The Damnoen Saduak Floating Market is located about 60 miles southwest of Bangkok and is best experienced early in the morning before the crowds arrive and the heat gets unbearable. The market is very colorful and lively as merchants paddle down the canal in their canoes selling fresh fruit and vegetables which are usually grown directly by the seller. The market also has some history behind it, as Damnoenssaduak was the name of the canal made by military soldiers and local people during King Rama IV’s reign. Back then there weren’t rivers and canals, making transportation quite limited. This was a concern for the king in terms of the country’s economic growth, and the result is the canal that is now home to the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market.Cai Rang Floating Market
Can Thao City, Vietnam

Located about 3 miles from Can Tho City is the largest floating market in the Mekong Delta. Hundreds of boats gather to sell food, plants, fruits, and vegetables, hanging their goods on a tall pole so that potential buyers can easily see what is being sold. If you don’t want to drive the short distance from Can Tho City and instead want a more relaxing, scenic experience, opt to do the 12 mile boat loop. Just make sure to leave early, as the market begins at 5AM and closes before noon. Bonus: Seeing the sunrise over the Mekong Delta, the sky glowing orange as life on the river begins for the day, is a can’t-miss experience.

Banjarmasin Floating Market
Banjarmasin, Indonesia

The Banjarmasin Floating Market is located on the Barito River and takes place from 5AM to 9AM each morning. It is very traditional, and a way for locals to trade goods such as handicrafts, seafood, spices, fruits, and vegetables from boat to boat. To get there, the journey will take about 20 minutes by waterway.

Aberdeen Floating Village
Aberdeen, Hong Kong

The Aberdeen Floating Village is more than just a market (as you can probably tell by its title). On the Aberdeen Harbour reside about 600 junk boats that house approximately 6,000 people. These boat locals are mainly Tanka people who arrived in Hong Kong around the 7th-9th centuries and hold a long history of marine and fishing culture and tradition. To sample fresh seafood, you can visit one of the many boat restaurants, the biggest being The Jumbo Floating Restaurant which is a major tourist attraction that serves high-quality Cantonese-style seafood.

Srinagar Floating Market
Jammu and Kashmir, India

Every morning from 5AM to 7AM the Srinagar Floating Market takes place on Dal Lake as vendors go to buy, sell, and trade vegetables. Most of the produce has been picked only hours beforehand, so you know what you are getting is fresh. In fact, about 1,250 acres of land surround the lake and are used for cultivating veggies. A visit to this market will not only guarantee a cultural experience, but also beautiful scenery as the lake is lush with lotus flowers.

Video of the Day: Traffic in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietman

by Mike Barish on

Everyone I know who has spent any time in Vietnam has bemoaned how challenging it is to cross the streets there. It’s like a game of Frogger, but the stakes are much higher. This time lapse shows just how chaotic and frenetic the streets of Ho Chi Minh City actually are. The number of motorbikes along is staggering. Add to that roundabouts, limited traffic signage and pedestrians and you have yourself some organized chaos. We recommend that you look both ways (heck, look up and down while you’re at it) before crossing the street.

Snack food diplomacy in Vietnam

by David Farley on
I’ve never been so happy to see a cockroach. There it was scurrying across the floor near my feet, around the empty snack food wrappers. It meant I was on the Saigon-bound train from Nha Trang. Which also meant it would (hopefully) skid into the steamy Vietnamese metropolis somewhere around 4:15am and give me about an hour to jump in a taxi, point it to the airport, and (barely) make my flight back to New York. Hopefully. This was a future chain of events that had to be perfectly synchronized in a Rube Goldbergian fashion. But at this point, I almost didn’t care. One near miracle had already occurred today. Would it be divinely gluttonous of me to ask for two?

The day started like the 13 others I’d spent in Vietnam. Crawl out of bed, quaff three or four sugar-laced coffees, and then stroll down to the local market to consume as much as my stomach would allow (pho, chao, spring rolls, more pho). This was my last day here, ending my first trip to Vietnam. I came here to write an article on Saigon and then spent the last week traveling around the country, heading up to Hoi An and then, with Gadling’s own Jeremy Kressmann, down to Qui Nhon and Nha Trang, where we ate and drank and rode backs through a leper colony and somehow ended up driving around with strangers in clunky cars late at night.

The day I was leaving Nha Trang, I got myself to the airport early enough to sip coffee in the business class lounge (it was the only ticket available for this Vietnam Airlines flight). My friend Richard Sterling–the so-called “Indiana Jones of gastronomy”–had a big night planned for my last evening in Vietnam: he was going to take me on an adventurous eating tour of Saigon. Then I was going to get approximately two hours of sleep before getting my flight home. I couldn’t wait.

Movies and novels often begin by showing the protagonist having what seems like a normal day. They get up, they drink coffee, they take their kids to school, whatever. And then, as the formula usually goes, something happens. Something extraordinary. Usually something bad. In the biz it’s called the “inciting incident.” My real-life inciting incident occurred somewhere in the middle of my second cup of coffee in the airport lounge.

It wasn’t an alien invasion or an oversized simian introducing itself to a large metropolitan area. It was an announcement saying all flights out of Nha Trang that day had been cancelled due to forthcoming inclement weather.

What was a once placid group of about 100 people became an angry mob, leveling frustration at the gate agents and clerks behind the Vietnam Airlines desk. The airline employees, however, just shrugged, saying that the only thing left to do was go back to the airlines office in Nha Trang to see what they can do.


I was the first person in a cab. I directed the driver to the railway station. I sprinted into the station, hoping, fantasizing, dreaming there was no line at the ticket window and a Saigon-bound train just about to leave. At this point–with just 12 hours to get 300 miles south of here–there was no other way I’d make my flight. But when I skidded into the ticket hall, I was greeted by snaking lines.

Immediately a middle-aged woman who was manning a snack bar grabbed me by the arm. “Where you going?” she asked.

I told her I needed to get to Saigon in 12 hours. I figured she’d give me a slow shake of her head or fill up her cheeks with air and let it blow out in defeat. Instead, she gave me a gentle push toward the miasma of tightly packed humanity and said, “Go, go, go!” There was, in fact, a train leaving for Saigon in two minutes.

The first attempt to circumvent the dozens of people in one line was met with hostility. A teenager shouldered me out. The second attempt I was shouldered out by a short old man. At the third window, I got in. I just had to wait for the person in front of me to get their ticket. I stood there, tapping my foot, rotating glances between the train outside and the person behind the counter and the snack food woman who was giving me a perpetual “well….?” look. I looked back at the ticket agent, who was fumbling with the printer. There was a printer jam. Ugh. A new piece of paper would have to be inserted. It worked! Yes. I’m about to buy my ticket. Not really. That’s when the clerk took out a pair of scissors and decided it would be best to snip off the edge of the ticket around the ink-printed border.

Finally she handed the ticket to the person in front of me and, steepling my hands like I’ve never steepled before, I told her I needed to get on that train. “No!” she barked. “Too late.” Suddenly, though, the woman from the snack bar was there. I’ll call her Phuong because that’s what I think she said her name was. Phuong dug her face in the hole and explained in Vietnamese what I wanted. The woman behind the glass just shook her head.

I was ready to give up. Phuong, though, was not. “Okay, come on,” she said pulling me by the arm, as I, like an apathetic pinball, bumped into other people waiting in line. By the time we got across the ticket hall, I had another companion: a female dwarf, locked onto my other arm, and pulling me toward a door. Together–me, Phuong, and the dwarf–found ourselves on the platform. Phuong opened the backdoor to the ticket agents’ office. She began explaining my situation and the ticket agent looked at me and said: seat or sleeper.? Yes! I was going to get on this train. I was going to catch my flight. I was going to make it home.

Just then a piercing whistle blew and that massive piece of machinery began crawling away toward Ho Chi Minh City, the metropolis everyone still calls Saigon. And with it went my hopes.

But there was news. There’s another train in an hour and a half. It gets to Saigon an hour before my flight. Seat or sleeper? I was on it.

I had time to kill and when I was exiting the station, Phuong called out for me: “When you return, don’t forget to buy snacks from my shop.”

An hour later, I was back and decidedly calmer than the last time I turned up here. Phuong, her dwarf in tow, ran up and gave me a flirtatious bump with her hip.

They sat me on an open bench in front of Phuong’s snack bar kiosk. She placed her hand on my knee and caressed it gently; not in a romantic way but in more of a deeply caring way. Phuong’s niece, who I had pegged as 12 years old but was actually 21, began peppering me with questions.

“Are you married?” she asked in near-perfect English.

I nodded, knowing what the sequel question was going to be.

“Do you have children?”

“No,” I said.

“Are you going to have children?”

I told her I probably was not. The niece was aghast. She tugged on Phuong’s arm and told her the devastating news about my ambivalence to bringing another human into this world. She called the dwarf over to tell her the bad news.

I asked Phuong if she was married. She shook her head from side to side, looking down at the ground. “He’s dead,” said the niece. Then Phuong mimicked guzzling a bottle and held her neck with a panicked look on her face. Did he drink poison?

During her death pantomime, an announcement for my train sounded. Phuong reminded me of my end of the deal and we walked over to her kiosk. After all, without her help, I may have been stranded. “I’ll take some Mentos, a bag of dried jack fruit chips, four cans of 333 beer, a pack of gum, a package of cookies, and a bag of those ‘New York-flavored’ potato chips.”

Phuong looked at me, pouty, her lower lip eclipsing the rest of her mouth. “Okay, okay,” I said, frantically looking through the glass counter of snack foods. “Give me the dried shredded pigs ears.” Phuong smiled and tallied up my bill. It came to about five dollars in total, which didn’t seem like much but Phuong looked pleased.

Maybe I was just projecting it, but as Phuong, her niece, and the dwarf stood there with me on the platform, I felt a sense of warmth between us. As if these three people and I had shared something magical together; like we hadn’t just spent the last two hours together but the last two weeks. I insisted we take a photo with my telephone and then I picked up my bag to get on the train.

That’s when Phuong stepped in front of me and rubbed her belly. “Oh, please sir, give me money,” she said.

I knew all along Phuong’s motivations for helping me were not entirely out of altruism (something about the way she said, “Come back and by my snack foods” tipped me off). After all, she didn’t even know my name and the only thing she really knew about me was that I lived in New York and I didn’t think I wanted to have children. But I was choosing to suspend reality for a few hours, to pretend that we really did have a bond, that she did care for my well being. In a way, I cared for hers. We both got something out of the experience: I (barely) got home and Phuong got some extra money. But I think we both got something more out of it. I did. For a few minutes, I didn’t feel abandoned in a place so foreign to me; just a few hours earlier, I was utterly helpless and had no idea how I was going to get myself out of this situation. That’s when Phuong stepped into my life.

I opened up my wallet and handed her a few large bills, maybe the equivalent of $20, and she pocketed it with such automation one could have easily been fooled into thinking we’d done this –said goodbye on a train platform in central Vietnam–dozens of times.

Phuong gave me a long hug. “See you next time,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “See you soon, I hope.”

I got on the train with my small backpack and large bag of recently purchased snack food. As the train began to chug away, I waved to Phuong, her niece, and the dwarf on the platform until they disappeared.

If I ever get back to Nha Trang, I will make a point to visit Phuong’s snack food kiosk in the railway station. Is it naïve to think she’ll remember me? Probably. Instead, though, I’ll buy another bag of dried, shredded pigs ears and introduce myself, as if we’re meeting for the first time.

Vintage aircraft collection to feature Legends and Legacies Series

by Chris Owen on

For aviation fans, visiting a vintage aircraft collection is about as good as it gets. Scattered around the United States from Richmond, Virginia to Galveston, Texas, aircraft of yesteryear are available to view and some even still fly. One collection, Fantasy of Flight in Florida, takes it all a step further with its Fourth Annual Legends & Legacies Symposium Series, which features new and seldom explored stories of World War II and the Vietnam War, told by some of the aviators who were actually there themselves.

“Each year, the Legends & Legacies experience is different from the last, with new guest speakers, new stories, new interactions with guests, and new topics to explore, including three all-new events this year,” said Kim Long, General Manager of Fantasy of Flight. “The opportunity to hear firsthand from military veterans, especially those who fought in World War II and Vietnam, is a precious gift that we hope to share with as many guests as possible throughout the 2012 series.”It’s a forum for the public to hear firsthand about the experiences of some of America’s most courageous aviators and military heroes through exhibits, real aircraft, and most importantly, their own personal stories, recollections from their family members, and interactions with guests. The multi-day events feature open-forum, question-and-answer sessions as well as meet and greet autograph signings with the guest speakers.

The 2012 Legends & Legacies Symposium Series includes:

They Dared to Fly: Tuskegee Airmen, Feb. 9-11 – In honor of Black History Month, several of the nation’s first African-American military aviators will share their personal stories of what it was like to serve as a World War II pilot in the military during segregated America. Fantasy of Flight has a permanent multi-media Tuskegee Airmen exhibit and vintage aircraft collection, including the P-51C Mustang, provide the perfect backdrop to meet the men who fought America’s enemies abroad while enduring racism at home.

Breaking All Barriers: Amazing Women in American History, March 2-3 – In honor of National Women’s History Month, Fantasy of Flight celebrates the barrier breaking women who took on non-traditional roles during WWII, including the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), the first women to fly military aircraft, and all those entered the workforce for the first time in the spirit of “Rosie the Riveter.”

Unspoken Valor: The Bomber Crews of World War II, April 13-14 – New to the Legends & Legacies line up this year, the event promises harrowing tales from actual crewmen of WWII bomber planes such as the B-25 Mitchell, B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator, all incredible planes with amazing strengths but potentially catastrophic weaknesses.

D-Day: The Invasion of Normandy, May 11-12 – Guests will relive the most complex military initiative in world history as the men who were there recount their experiences as part of this massive air, land, and sea attack. Months in the making, it required the coordination of thousands of Allied forces, who once set in motion, could not be called back.

Reflections of Vietnam, June 8-9 – Fantasy of Flight’s Legends & Legacies series will explore the Vietnam War, America’s longest conflict and first military failure on foreign soil. Here, those who served will share their personal experiences about this complicated and emotional time in U.S. history.

Letters Home: Love, Courage & Survival, Oct. 12-13 -The final event of the 2012 series is based on the personal handwritten correspondence exchanged between the men who fought abroad and the women and loved ones they left behind. Whether they were high school sweethearts separated by the war or soldiers who met the love of their lives while serving overseas, their letters portray a wartime experience that can’t be found in history books.

Symposium events are included in the price of Fantasy of Flight general admission and are free for annual pass holders. For more information about Fantasy of Flight, call 863-984-3500 or visit FantasyOfFlight.com.