One of many pedestrian-only streets in the city center of Munich
Happy Monday and greetings from Europe!
Sorry I've been a bit silent the last couple days. I think I was recovering from the push at the end, trying to finish those 21 posts in May and even a bonus (!) of publishing a 22nd post on Saturday on BISq, the second restaurant by the same team that opened up Bergamot, one of my regular haunts.
As soon as that finished, I was off to London and Munich for a short extended weekend trip, tagging along on another one of Bryan's business trips.
I'm still processing all my photos from Europe, but I promise that I'll be writing plenty of posts here about all my food experiences.
London is not new to me, as I have visited it countless times for work in the past decade. However, Germany is a brand new country for me, and I must confess I knew very little about its food before visiting. Though the trip was short, I learned so much trying all these different types of Bavarian food (wiener-schnitzel, pork knuckle, sausages, and lots of beer!). Look for it in upcoming posts (and get a preview now from my various social media channels, instagram, twitter, etc . . .)
Though I was busy posting every single weekday in May, I also did a lot of other stuff I didn't even write about on the blog. Here's a quick flashback . . .
On Memorial Day weekend I stayed around Boston, spending the day walking around the city with a couple friends. Boston Common was filled with thousands of flags. It was both beautiful and a reminder of the significance of the holiday.
I took a fun "tall ships" (it wasn't that tall) sailboat ride around Boston Harbor. I helped pull up the sails (it's hard work!) and then enjoyed views of the gorgeous Boston harbor from the ship's hour and a half sail around the harbor. The boat's pretty small and only fits around 20+ people, so it feels much more intimate and less crowded than the Spirit of Boston cruise that I took with my family last year (though that cruise also has beautiful views, is more stable for the motion-sensitive, and is perfectly pleasant as well, just more crowded).
Bryan and I hadn't been to Alden & Harlow in quite some time and finally stopped by again in May. We discovered it's not too hard to get a seat (even on a Saturday night!) if you show up earlier and plop yourself down at the bar. We were thrilled with the fun vegetable-friendly offerings, like deep fried whole baby bok choy with a poached egg on top . . . .
Or these beautiful grilled beans. We also loved the grilled New York Strip steak (not pictured), which was a prime, grass-fed cut that was seasoned beautifully and cooked perfectly. At $24, it was a really good value.
We visited Bondir Cambridge for the first time since Jason Bond opened his new restaurant in Concord. The Cambridge location is now helmed by chef de cuisine Brandon Joy (Jason Bond spends much of his time in Concord these days).
We were extremely impressed with food, which was gorgeously composed, thoughtfully prepared, and perfectly executed. Pictured above, the duck course.
Poached egg with fresh, seasonal vegetables (hello morel mushrooms, fava beans, and peas!).
I also had a chance to visit Posto's truck on the Greenway. I've visited the brick & mortar restaurant before (and even helped them make pizza!), but I'd never been to the truck before. I couldn't believe this, but they have a real wood-fired oven on the back of the truck that can spit out authentic Neapolitan pizzas in 2 minutes!
Basically you order and wait, because they can make your pizza to order in just a couple minutes. All pies are individual sized and cost $10. It's a generous size (I couldn't finish), but definitely very tasty.
I had the fun opportunity of visiting Formaggio Kitchen (one of my favorite local gourmet food shops) to try a tasting of new products with their staff. The staff meets once a month to try out new products that the store is considering bringing in.
It was fascinating to learn about how Formaggio carefully curates the high quality products that line its shelves. The store is not huge, and thus the Formaggio team has to be really selective about how it chooses the products based on all sorts of factors, like the size of the producer, taste of the food, look of the packaging, how many other types of products they already have, and the list goes on.
It was fun to participating by giving feedback on some of the products and also to see them in action as they discussed the merits and shortfalls of various products. I must say, I am very impressed with how hard they work to ensure that the products on their shelves reflect their philosophies, and they are very, very selective when it comes to quality.
Finally, I had a chance to partner with Cathy Erway and Taiwanese American Professionals to lead a cooking class to promote Cathy's new book, The Food of Taiwan (affiliate link).
I've flipped through the food and so far I really, really like it. Cathy's a great writer so her writing is fun and easy to read. She intersperses her personal stories with recipes throughout the book. The book includes many, many very authentic Taiwanese recipes, and I'm thrilled that all of my favorites are included. I've tried one recipe so far, her version of Taiwanese grilled corn, and it was delicious! I'm excited to try many, many more.
Hope you all had a wonderful May! Now that June is here, we will finally (hopefully) have some consistent warm weather. Looking forward to summer!
Disclaimer
I was invited by Posto to have lunch at their truck and I did not pay for meal. I was also invited by Formaggio to join their staff tasting and I did not pay for anything there as well. All opinions are my own. I paid for everything else mentioned in this post.
