Desperately Seeking Crab

Jamie Oliver’s Italian Restaurant

December 27, 2008 by gastrochic

I was meaning to write about my two month journey in the order that I traveled but if I do that, I’d never get anything written in this blog. My lack of posting is due to a new job that has me in front of a computer screen all day and you know, I don’t want to get online as soon as I get home…

In September 2008, I spent some time in Oxford (a place close to my heart) to present a paper at the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery (more on that later) and to visit some old friends. I haven’t been to Oxford in two years and I noticed that a few new restaurants had popped up – one of which was Jamie Oliver’s Italian Restaurant simply called “Jamie’s Italian” on 24-26 George Street. I can’t even remember what was there before (if you remember, email me please). It is the first restaurant in a planned 20 restaurants completely backed by Jamie and his business partners (currently the other locations are Bath and Kingston). The idea behind his Italian restaurants is to provide good, casual Italian food – similar to Antonio Carluccio’s successful chain through Britain called Carluccio’s.

The restaurant doesn’t take reservations but according to their website, if you are a group of 8 or more, they may accommodate you. Luckily we arrived at around 2pm, which was after the lunch rush but we still had to wait a little while for a table. The restaurant was buzzing with people and while we waited, I watched an employee making fresh pasta in front of the large window that faces the main street. I was quite impressed that they made the pasta fresh, as needed. We were seated in the back of the restaurant and because we were starving, it didn’t take us long to decide what to order but me and a friend were both agonizing whether to get the prawn linguini or truffle tagiatelle so we decided to split them. The other thing that impressed me was their children’s menu. Jamie is well-known for educating children to eat healthy, real food – no chicken nuggets and chips or hot dogs at this joint – the kid’s meals were basically smaller portions of adult pastas such as spaghetti bolognese served with free, all-you-can-drink cordial. Kids even got crayons, stickers and a cool twirly fork to eat their spaghetti (which probably requires your child to be at least 4 or 5 yrs old to maneuver properly). Our friend’s daughter is 3 and she was too young to understand the concept that if you run the fork between your thumb and forefinger, it will automatically twirl your pasta for you but it is a very cool concept if you are a kid!

Employee making pasta at front of restaurant

Pasta coming out of machine

We ordered a bruschetta and two bowls of gorgeous green olives which my friend’s daughter relished nearly all by herself. We as a table ordered the pumpkin ravioli, sausage pappardelle, truffle tagiatelle, prawn linguini and a kid’s spaghetti bolognaise. I loved the sausage pappardelle (very meaty, rich and satisfying) and the truffle tagiatelle was just simple buttery and truffle-y pasta – yum! The bruschetta was a bit odd – toast was so hard that it sort of ripped the roof of our mouths. I have a feeling that we ordered another starter but I cannot remember it – which means that it was not that great. I would definitely stick to the fresh pastas and next time I go, I want to try some of the meats (which sounded very good).

Bruschetta

Kid's Twirly Fork

Pumpkin Ravioli

Prawn Linguini

Sausage Pappardelle

Kid's Spaghetti Bolognaise meal at Jamie's

For a party of 4 adults and one child, the price of the meal wasn’t too bad – it was actually affordable by English standards but with our Australian dollar so weak at the moment, after I saw the currency conversion on our credit card statement, I nearly had a heart attack!

The only complaint I have is that the service was forgetful and although most of the tables around us were pretty empty, our young 20-something yr old server seemed to have friends eating at the table next to us and just kept chatting to them while we kept trying to get her attention. The bad service should be no excuse especially since we started eating after the major lunch rush. Perhaps it would have been more attentive if we sat in the lighter, airier at the front of the restaurant.

Overall, it was one of the best meals I had in my travels when considering value and quality. We did eat at a couple of Michelin starred restaurants (more on that later too) but of course, the price was much higher and the food was often more complicated than I was in the mood for at times. Jamie’s Italian is a good, casual place to eat that is also very child friendly without compromising on quality.

Posted in Celebrity Chefs, Italian, Restaurant, United Kingdom | Tagged Carluccio, fresh pasta, Jamie Oliver, Jamie's Italian, Oxford | 4 Comments »

Merry Christmas!

December 25, 2008 by gastrochic

I hope that everyone has/had a lovely Christmas. I spent the day with good friends and we all shared the task of providing food and it worked out very well. Lunch that was a colourful feast and stuffed to the gills!

What makes an Australian Christmas different from any Christmas I’ve spent in the UK or back home in the US is that not only is it summer and warm, big bowls of fresh cherries are a must on the table! Also either lobsters (crays) or large prawns (both eaten cold) are a big feature on many Christmas tables in Oz and to top it off, a lovely summer pavlova for dessert.

Happy Christmas!

Individual pavlovas made by me 🙂

Prawns made by Jacqui with a great sauce

Our lovely festival table with ham made by Jacqui, turkey made by Brenda with a very good grape relish called Mostarda, salads made by us and wines provided by Jen & Matt!

My very colourful Christmas lunch plate

A few more things I made for lunch...buttermilk pecan pralines, oatmeal raisin cookies, mince pies using homemade mincemeat and Mexican wedding cakes (the best!)

Posted in Australia | Tagged Australian Christmas, Christmas, Pavlova | 3 Comments »

Insects Anyone?

November 8, 2008 by gastrochic

A vast array of fried bugs in Bangkok

Roaches at least 3 inches long and fried small birds

Sorry for the lack of posts – traveled a total of over 7 wks (mostly to visit friends and family) and can’t seem to quite recover yet. It doesn’t help that I just started a new full-time job so I’m exhausted as hell. Do you know how hard it is to go through thousands of photos to chose a few to post on a blog? Anyway, enough about me…

Whenever Andrew Zimmerman or Anthony Bourdain go on their tours of Asia, you always see them eating some type of insect so I was really hoping to find some form of cooked insect in Thailand. I was lucky to find this woman, who had a stand on one edge of the Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok and I was quite excited that the variety was so immense! From what I can make out, there are silkworm cocoons, grasshoppers, crickets, and some beetle larvae in the first photo. In the second photo, in the foreground, are the most gigantic cockroaches I’ve ever seen and behind them, looks like some type of small bird (think it’s a chicken that’s not quite mature yet)!! At first I thought that those fried birds were fried bats…all of the items were deep-fried to a golden crisp and nicely garnished with green stuff (pretty sure it’s green onions).

I have had fried beetle larvae (the white ones that look like caterpillars) before, piping hot actually, and even watched crawling ones get plonked into hot oil and ate them soon after! Where the heck was this? Well, this was the last class in the entomology course I took at UC Davis. What did they taste like? French fries.

I was just not that adventurous and the heat (being about 38C and 80%+ humidity) definitely did not help. I just know that even though those huge cockroaches are deep fried, they will probably be a bit…squishy inside – yuck. I don’t mind handling them but eating them…that’s another story.

(Hey Jin, you would’ve been screaming so loudly!! haha)

Posted in Asian, Bangkok, Birds, Bugs, Deep-Fried Food, Snacks, street food, Travel | Tagged Andrew Zimmerman, Anthony Bourdain, Bangkok, Chatuchak, Eating Bugs, entomology, entomorphogy, Fried Bugs, Fried Cockroaches, silkworm cocoons | 6 Comments »

Street Stalls, Bangkok

October 10, 2008 by gastrochic

Traditional stalls set up near a KFC & McDonald's

I am not a wimp but my gut isn’t what it used to be. I went to Bangkok with EVERY intention on actually eating food off street stalls because they are often very tasty and authentic. Some of my best memories of eating throughout Mexico were the dodgy-looking tacos, ice creams and grilled corns from street stalls. The main reason why I didn’t eat at many of the stalls in Bangkok is because of the absolutely scary and appauling food-safety conditions. Let me remind you that it was very hot, (over 35C and over 90% humidity) and it was rainy season and so often, I’d walk by street stalls with bowls of meat sitting out in the hot sun for god knows how long!! Or, if it looked decently clean, I’d see the bucket of stagnant water that they were washing their crockery and cutlery in (not to mention they reuse wooden chopsticks) and realized that they didn’t refresh the washing water very often. Yuck! Also, because it was the very beginning of my around-the-world trip, I honestly didn’t want severe gastro problems so early on (especially since my next flight was 13 hrs to London).

I made a rule for myself that I would only eat something at a street stall if it wasn’t on washed crockery and only if it was piping hot when I purchased it. So, grilled & marinated chicken skewers qualified under that category and they were awesome! So juicy and tasty and it cost about $0.20 each and they were piping hot off the grill. One of the things that I couldn’t resist buying were cold drinks and fresh juices from the street vendors, especially during those scorching days. We bought thin popsicles, frozen in the most interesting manner (see picture) to refresh ourselves and the Thai iced tea flavor popsicles were fantastic! We also ate a lot of sweets off street stalls – among them, grilled sticky rice and banana wrapped in banana leaf and fried peanut crackers.

Popsicle freezer...ingenious especially since it was so hot out!

Some of the tastiest and juiciest chicken skewers!

At the Chatuchak weekend market, a noodle stall almost called me to sit down because it looked really good. In the middle of each table, there were large mounds of shredded cabbage and other vegetables piled in bowls and wondered what it was for. I soon saw that the raw veggies (as much as you like it seemed) were to be added into your hot soup (kind of like Pho). Problem was, they offered NO tongs so that diners were licking their forks and then diving into the veggies and double-dipping! New bowls of veggies weren’t provided to the next customer – they were simply refreshed with more veg.

Mounds of veggies on table...

One of the scariest things I saw being sold by the side of the street was sushi. It looked entirely homemade, in a large tupperware container and sold with ZERO refrigeration. People were still buying them from the vendor and that really amazed me. The average Thai person must have very different flora in their gut to be able to withstand all the gastrointestinal onslaught from foodborne diseases!

No refrigeration, homemade, scary sushi

Posted in Asian, Bangkok, Snacks, street food, Travel | Tagged Bangkok street food, street food, street stalls | 5 Comments »

Street-fried Taro Chips Bangkok

October 6, 2008 by gastrochic

This photo was taken on a random street in Bangkok on our search for Chote Chitr restaurant (reviewed on NPR and NY Times – story on that later), it was very near to the restaurant on the main road. Although the weather was scorching hot and humid, I just couldn’t pass by these hot treats because they invoke a lot of childhood memories for me. I have actually never had taro chips “hot off the fryer” and it was amazing to me that they had this type of set-up outdoors (but then again, they cook anything by the side of the street in Bangkok). I bought two bags for the total of about $1.30USD. The woman tossing the chips was very grumpy and unfriendly but who cares, it was all part of the experience!