The Little Blue House

What seems like a very long time ago, my Dad use to have a favorite bar in Baghdad--a calm place on a roof top somewhere, with plastic lawn furniture and blow up palm trees. It somehow how doesn't seem all that impossible that such a place would have come with wine, or had great cuisine. It's just hard to imagine now, I guess. -Little Blue

Wonderful cheeseburger.

Try being a Cubs fan. Being in Hawaii, the closest thing we could get was one of those Chicago Hot Dogs at Home Depot. It was decent enough--it wasn't Gold Coast Dogs or even SRO--but it was decent. Poor Cubbies. -Little Blue

I only got to go into the Librairie Gourmande for a short bit--on an errand--I would have loved to stay longer and check out the selves. The women at the counter were amazingly helpful, and rather patient with my French. -Little Blue

I missed you all by about a month -- and I spent most of my few days in Paris lugging a Spanish 1st Edition of the third El Buli cookbook from Librarie Gourmand to museums, restaurants and then back to the hotel. Ugh. Sounds like all of you had a much better time. (Of course, I got a kick butt book out of it all.) -Little Blue

Cher Link, Non, je ne le sais pas. Desole, mais bonne chance. Si vous le trouveriez, ecritez-nous. Merci, La Petite Bleue

Felice, To a certain extent, in Strasbourg you do pretty well at most holes in the wall. You'll end up with decent choucroute... Which, aside from the well star-ed fine dining options, should be why you are eating in the area. I once ended up at an all cabbage dinner just outside of Strasbourg, and now know far too much about both cabbage dishes and the history of cabbage in the area. (Either that or what I think I know is all wrong, as the whole thing took place in French.) Long story short: eat the cabbage in its many forms. As for where to go after, abuse you friend and head to Basel (Bale). It's less than 90 minutes away by train, and you end up with a whole different kind of food. I am pa fan of Rosti, the potato pancake with an egg and ham on top. -Little Blue

skchai - thanks for letting us know that this was here.

Having lived in Chicago for 5 years, I had respect for Bayless. This summer I stole his margarita recipe off of the Spledid Table page--and introduced several light-beer-swilling-boat-going friends to the idea that margaritas are even better when you ditch the margarita mix and use decent liquor. But, then we saw this commerical... And in those first moments, Rick Bayless's head was on the screen, and we were happy and maybe a little home sick, until the Burger King thing became apparent. Other chefs in Chicago have turned this sort of thing down. And now I am sort of happy about living on the other side of the world where the chefs go at any little local ad campaign and we never have to develop the delusion that they are not for sale.