LarsTheo

I've always felt as safe in Mexico City as I did in San Francisco, but New York does not have one of the lowest crime rates and is one of the safest cities in the U.S., unlike Atlanta, New Orlean, or Detroit, if I remember statistics correctly. I did take the subway on a regular basis, but it did have some scary moments, especially when guys would drop a bag of broken glass in the aisle, throw themselves on top of the glass, pick it back up and then demand money for their performance. One of them got right in my face and was quite intimidating, but I refuse to encourage such behavior by giving them money. I found several restaurants in Condesa that I liked, but most meals were prepared by servants at my friends' houses.

You didn't say what day of the week, but Röckenwagner's serves breakfast on Sundays. For something even fancier brunch, try Jer Ne at Ritz Carleton in MDR, although I'm not sure if they are still serving that. They have a different chef since I was last there.

I don't know how C&O Trattoria made the list - I thought the food there was below average. Maybe he gave it extra points for atmosphere. I much prefer Alejo's or Italy's Little Kitchen in Westchester. I still miss Chianti Cucina, which used to be on Melrose.

Hummus and Lavash (for today) Guacamole (tomorrow) Sushi (today) Bean dip and tortilla chips Kimchee (just by itself) Low salt dry roasted peanuts Quesadillas (made with tomato sauce, Mozz, and mushrooms) I can't cook right now because my kitchen is being painted, and so I have to have snacks instead. I stocked up on smoked turkey, Black Forest ham, and sharp Provolone cheese.

I agree that New Orleans is a good country to visit for seafood. You can get somewhat similar food in Vera Cruz, Mexico, which is the best place for jumbo Gulf shrimp. There is plenty of other seafood as well, and the cooking traditions are similar to NO. Vera Cruz also has a large Mardi Gras celebration, streetcars, and coffee similar to NO. I visited a small village, Puerto Arista, Chiapas in 1979 with some friends from Mexico City, and my friend José helped some of the fisherman, and they gave him a huge fish, which we took to someone house to be cooked. The woman who lived there had a table and chairs in her yard, and so it was a makeshift restaurant, but she cooked the fish for us for a minimal price. I can't remember what the other restaurants were like - the Mescal was very cheap, although it tasted like gasoline. The hotel at that time cost $1.60 a night but was a bit primitive. It probably costs five times that much now, however.

Peanuts are Pea Nuts, or at least that's the way I've always understood it. In culinary terms, peanuts are nuts, in horticultural terms, peanuts are legumes. In Jamaica all beans are called peas, or in some Caribbean country. Vanilla beans are not legumes either and are no more beans than coffee beans are. One person suggested that only peas are eaten green with their hulls, but green beans are eaten just the same. Are chickpeas peas or are they garbanzo beans? I guess the tendril definition is the most accurate one, at least horticulturally, but that makes little difference in culinary terms, which are less scientific.

I don't think you are going to find great Chinese food on the West Side. There is a neighborhood Szechwan restaurant on Washington at Abbot Kinney in MDR/Venice, but it is only adequate, although very inexpensive. I go there often because I can walk there, but it's not comparable to what you can get in Monterey Park. It's also difficult to find Vietnamese food on the West Side. If all you want is scallion pancakes, those should be very easy for you to make yourself. I tend to make Chinese food myself rather than bother to go to a restaurant for it. It's really one of the easiest cuisines to make. I also make dim sum but admit that it is more labor intensive.

There's another Oaxacan restaurant even closer to Marina Del Rey, El Saśon Oaxaqueño, 12131 Washington Place (Grandview), Mar Vista. It's in a little minimall and is very inexpensive but popular with the local Oaxacans. Excellent clayudas. Also in Mar Vista, Valle de Oaxaca, 3809 Grandview Blvd. (Venice Blvd) - great, and very inexpensive, huarache and molotes. I've been to Oaxaca many times (mostly in the late 1970s and early 80s) and never cared for the food there because I don't like most molés (especially the sweet ones), but when I went back a couple of years ago, I found a much better selection of restaurants there - and the prices were much higher. I prefer Yucatecan food myself. I do like some of the dishes in Guelaguetza, but I have not yet been to Texate, which is in Santa Monica (not Venice) on Pico at 4th.

The climate in Australia is actually closer to Mexico's than it is to California; i.e. rain in the summer and dry winters and opposed to California dry summers and wet winters. Epazote should be easy to grow in either climate, but I have not noticed much flavor in the epazote that I have bought. It's in all the markets here (L.A.), and so I haven't bothered to grow it, but maybe if I did, I would notice better flavor.

For north African, try Meals by Genet, the best Ethiopean restaurant in the city and very close to WeHo. I like Tommy Tangs for Thai food, and I believe the waiters are in drag on Mondays, although that might still be the case. For Japanese food, try Sawtelle Blvd between Olympic and Santa Monica Blvd - Orris Restaurant is my favorite at that location, but there are several others I like also. Since I live in Venice, I'm really more familiar with restaurants in this area, including Santa Monica and Culver City. I've heard mixed reviews about Ford's Filling Station in CC - it's very crowded at lunch with Sony employees (DB is one of those), but not so in the evening. I like La Dijonaise better than Beacon for restaurants in that neighborhood. Joe's in Venice is worth the trip, IMO, but it's just down the street from me, and so I take it for granted. I go there often for brunch.

Ming Tsai's Szechuan Peppercorn Paste I saw Ming make this on TV a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot what he did with the paste after he made it. I think he put some on salmon and some on chicken. He may have added soy sauce to it. I bought a 1 oz. jar at Penzeys a couple of months ago - I thought the ban had been lifted. There are almost no seeds in the jar from Penzeys, but I remove what I do find. They are not flavorless, but they are gritty.

I'll try Guidi Marcello (with two "L"s) - at least they are in Santa Monica - and let you know what their prices are like. I have not found balsamic vinegar on the web available directly from Modena, but perhaps I am not looking correctly. Please share the site where you order from. I seem to remember finding it a few years ago, but my recent searched have been futile. I speak Italian, and so the site does not have to be in English. I generally shop at Sorrento Market in Culver City for Italian deli items, but they do not allow tasting of balsamic before buying. I've tasted some expensive ones that I didn't especially like, and so I don't think price is the best indicator. BTW, I don't like the new layout of Surfas either - it reminds me of Rite-Aid.

Where are they? There is the French Market Cafe down the street from my house, which is where I normally buy French imports, but that doesn't help with Italian Balsamic vinegar.

I disagree also. I've shopped on line and at other stores, and I have not found the really good Balsamic vinegars for a better price than at Surfas. I have found them for twice the price, however. Please tell me where you can find 8 year old Fondo di Trebbiano Balsamic Vinegar for less than $55 - the price I last saw at Surfas. Also, at Surfas you can sample the vinegar before you buy it, which you certainly cannot do on line. I've also found lobster soup base for the best price at Surfas. You can match the price on line, but then you have to pay shipping, which costs quite a bit more than the sales tax. I have found chocolate that I liked cheaper at TJ's, however.

My first recommendation would be to attend the African Marketplace Festival, which will have food booths from various African/Caribbean restaurants. It will be going on every week-end from now through Labor Day. Here are some pictures I took (some are of me) from the 2003 festival. I'm going again this week-end. For Ethiopean food, try Meals by Genet on Fairfax, and for Izakaya Japanese food, try Mushu in Torrance or Santa Monica - one of my favorite dining experiences. My sister will be visiting from Austin in a couple of weeks, and these are places I would take her. I was in San Antonio about a year ago and had a good experience at Cajun or Creole restaurant on the riverwalk. The Sunset Junction Street Fair will be going on while you are here, but it's not a great place for food, although The Cramps will be performing on Sunday at 9:00 p.m. I've done food crawls in Artesian (Little India), Japantown, Sawtelle (north of Olympic), Abbot Kinney in Venice, Melrose, and Main Street in Santa Monica. It depends on what kind of food you want. I also like Sunset Plaza on Sunset Blvd, which is popular with Euro tourists.

I went to Mai's Restaurant, 316 Clement Street, the last time I was in SF, and the food was much better IMO than Slanted Door, where I had lunch the next day. There are quite a few choices on Clement Street around 4th Avenue - I can't keep the names straight, but I've been to several in the neighborhood that I liked.

Sorry, folks. I meant "eminent domain" instead of "imminent", although it seemed "imminent" to me at the time! Just another homonym mix-up.

According to this news article, which is continued on page two, Surfas may be going out of business soon, due to their warehouse being appropriated by imminent domain. I don't know why they don't use the vacant lot across Washington Blvd from Surfas. I would be happy to see more light rail, and that is a great location (although Culver & Washington seems better), but I think the public domain is better served by Surfas being allowed to stay in business where they are. I've written Huell Howser to enlist his help. Maybe he will be able to do a show on Surfas before it is too late.

Last week-end I made some chile sauce, using these chilies picture of chilies, which included Guajillo, Negro, Cascabel, Mulato, Pasilla, Morita, and Ancho. It was an experiment. I have about five or six other dried chilies that I did not use - mainly because they are hot. I omitted the Chipotle chilies I have because the Morita is smoky, and I didn't want too much of that because I was primarily making the chile sauce to make Louis salad dressing - not Mexican at all, but I wanted information about chile sauce in general. Here's what the sauce and salad dressing looked like, and here's the recipe for the salad dressing. Here's how I make the chile sauce, which is very simple because I want it to be versatile. Normally, I only use three types of chilies - Ancho, Guajillo, Pasilla, but when I went to the local Cuban market, I found so many more different types that I had not tried. I think I might find even more at Grand Central Market downtown. My questions is - what combinations of chilies do you use when making chile sauce? The sauce that I made came out a bit bitter, and so I added a little salt and sugar and some balsamic vinegar to balance the bitterness. I like bitter, but this was a bit too much.

You can get chocolate ones at La Brea Bakery. I used to buy croissants from Pioneer Bakery in Venice, but they closed their retail store. I like the croissants at Il Fornaio also, but lately I've been buying bread from Gelson's bakery, which is just as good, but I don't know if they make croissants.

I've always had them with teleras instead of bolillos also and did find that the bean paste was the other essential ingredient. I've often had them with turkey and avocado, but the bread is always toasted or else the sandwich is grilled. I haven't had the more elaborate ones, but I can be sure I would like the cochinita pibil. When I was in Yucatan last (which was decades ago), I found pita bread to be more common than teleras, but that may have been because of my choice of restaurants.

I went to Cheeves Steakhouse when I was visiting family in Temple last Christmas. I thought it was exceptionally good - much better than my memories of the Elite Cafe in Waco. According to my mother, they are not open for lunch on week-ends (and they are closed on Sundays), but you could call to make sure. To get there, you would have to take Hwy 53 east if you are going north on I35, and take Central Ave to downtown, and turn right on 2nd Street and right on Avenue A. There is an Italian restaurant next door that is supposed to be good, but I haven't tried that yet. It probably has the same open schedule, since they cater to people who work downtown. I really liked the white linen tablecloths at Cheeves. We used to shop there when it was a store instead of a restaurant, and it was about the last of the downtown stores to close. I loved shopping in downtown Temple as a child, back in th 1950s. You could also try stopping in Salado, which my mother likes more than I do.

If you have a car in L.A., you might want to take a trip to Grand Central Market, to get a taste of Latin America. My favorite market (fairly near the airport) is Gelson's in Marina Del Rey. Their meat department is generally expensive, but the produce is very good and reasonably priced. There is also a large fruit/vegetable market on Centinella, just west of Jefferson. It's next to Go Veggie, 5462 S. Centinella Ave. For seafood, I go to Santa Monica Seafood Market.

I've always made enchiladas with corn tortillas, but I've learned that quite a few people make them with flour tortillas, although I don't think I've had those in Mexico. I did notice that restaurants that were more colonial or Spanish used flour tortillas more than the ones that seemed more native or possibly rural. I have a couple of cookbooks in Spanish that were published in Mexico City. Some of the recipes for enchiladas call for simply "tortillas" and some call for "tortillas de maíz". even within the same book. Nowhere in the books is the word "tortilla" defined to mean corn or wheat or both, but the book México the Beautiful Cookbook says in its glossary that the word tortilla to most Mexicans means masa tortillas. Should I assume this is true for the books in Spanish, which BTW are Cocina tradicional mexicana by Blanca Nieto and Recetasd de todo México, Tipicas y SABROSAS by Angeles de la Rosa. I've also noticed recipes that are called molé that are almost identical to what I've been calling enchilada sauce. Basically, I use several types of dried chilies, chicken stock, onion, garlic, achiote paste, cumin, tomato paste, and oregano. Without the achiote paste, cumin, and tomato paste, I guess it would be a chili sauce, but I'm not sure at what point a chili sauce becomes something else. I often omit certain of my ingredients just to get different variations, and I'm not always sure what to call what I make.

I was in Taxco a couple of years ago and found the restaurants that I went to around the Zocalo to be adequate, although I don't remember which ones I really liked. I went to one that had a great view from the second floor, but the food was mediocre. However, the experience of the atmosphere often can make up for mediocre food. Here is my brother's blog on our trip, which info about DF and Taxco.