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Interesting looking concept. I too wonder how folks will respond to the higher price point. Maybe the stores will be rather slick? I can't imagine Yum brands bringing real-deal Chinese food to the masses, but I could be pleasantly surprised. We'd have to lose our addiction to orange chicken first. Personally, I'd kill to be able to get a bowl of noodles and some fungi n' oyster sauce off the side of the road though...

I'm no cocktail mixer, but I happen to adore this stuff. The taste is extremely pleasant: a rather sharp ginger bite and a not-too sweet finish. It is certainly quite "gingery'! I think it'd have excellent potential in imaginative mixed drinks...I'd love to see what you come up with!

I picked up "Cookin' Up A Storm," a book of recipes compiled from the New Orleans Times Picayune, and fell madly in love withthe recipe for Creole okra. Quick, easy, and delicious - not much more you can ask for. Also eminently adjustable - you can add sausage, shrimp, extra spice, mushrooms, you know it. Admittedly I now realize I sort of live on okra but I guess that's okay for a Louisiana girl...

I just visited Boucherie this weekend and absolutely loved it. I expect to be a regular customer. Had the duck confit in broth - delicious. However, those collards are slap-yo-momma good, absolutely transcendent,and I am a collards snob. Anyone tried the bacon brownies? Write up with pics at my blog: http://teenagechowhound.blogspot.com/

Man, I would LOVE to see a pictorial or travel blog from Iceland. Anyone do one that I am simply not aware of?

Looks very tasty. Anywhere to get it in Northern California, say?

I'm conflicted on this one. I would personally draw the line at fast food and convenience establishments, but disallowing anything that isn't explicitly Italian? Sounds like it's going too far. However, I do understand that there's importance and value to preserving Tuscan heritage foods, but would a high-quality Thai restaurant (for example) really have a deleterious effect on these traditions? Further, food traditions aren't developed in a vacuum, and it's wrong to assume they will not continue to grow and change. Interplay between cuisines and conditions is, to my fusion-happy mind, not necessarily a bad thing. Can fusion and the "real deal" exist side by side without one suffering? Can't answer that. Of course, weighing "good" change in food and eating habits and "bad" change...ah, there's the rub.

You can get through this! To answer the original question, as a poverty-ridden poor student, I often feel kind of like an alien life-form for my food habits. Most of the kids I know and hang out with survive on frozen pizza, Easy-Mac and dining hall buffalo wings: I just can't live that way. For me, it's easy to justify why I make myself cook and eat "real" food - if I don't eat that way, I'll feel like crap, I'll look like crap, and the primary joy of my life (eating tasty things) will be severely diminished. Therefore, I have to make it a priority. Cooking for myself does seem to come out in the wash to be cheaper then the diets of most of my friends, though - I can always bring my own lunch to class instead of dumping 7 bucks a day on gross, overpriced cafeteria sandwiches. I did have a bit of a debate with myself at the beginning of this semester about whether I was limiting myself by heading home to cook a real meal every night - but I tried living on convenience foods and lasted roughly two days. It's a priority to me so I'll keep on doing what I'm doing, and I think it'll pay off in the end. And nothing (almost) is more fun then cooking! Far as convenience food goes...hell, instant rice noodles, Kashi frozen veggie bake and Cedarlane veggie enchiladas save my butt sometimes. I usually doctor them up big-time but I don't feel too gross if I eat these things when need be.

Any killer hot pot places in San Francisco? Hot pot all the time is probably the numero uno thing I miss about China. Of course we're capable of doing it on our own, but the restaurant experience is always such a hoot...

Was very impressed by Sel de la Terre back in 2007: excellent salmon with lentils and house-made breads.

I would eat ketchup, cottage cheese, and oysters any day sad to say. i may attempt such a thing broiled and get back to you. salmon, lime jello, beets. the color would, however, be lurid to the extreme.

I loved this travelblog. One of my obsessions is lesser-known cuisines and now I am proud to say I have some vague idea of What They Eat in Estonia. The pastries look scrumptious. Was it incredibly cold? It sure looks that way.

That rumen is absolutely lurid. How does it actually taste?

The Food and Wine yearly compilations have lots of interesting, light recipes, and I believe most of them satisfy our EGullet centric cuisine requirements. The vast majority of my cooking is pretty healthy, and I get a lot of inspiration from those books. And yes, Cooking Light sometimes runs some rather tasty stuff, although you have to comb out a bit of "lite potato chip crusted tuna casserole" chaff from the wheat, so to speak.

Oh man, you're making me miss Mumbai! I've been to a few of those restaurants and am now extremely hungry for roomali roti, boti kebab and dahi puri.... I can verify that anglo-Indian cuisine can be very tasty in the right hands. Especially the Indian take on chili crab. Yum. And it's hard to resist chili chicken, as unhealthy as it may be! Do you have the recipe for those stuffed crabs? They look divine. Thank you so much for bringing back a ton of great memories. I'm hoping to make it back this summer and eat everything in sight.

Your fried rice photos are majestic and are also making me exceptionally hungry.

Ubuntu is magnificent and really quite unique. It's vegetarian food that will deeply satisfy even the most avowed carnivore. I've got photos of my meals at Ubuntu on my website : http://teenagechowhound.blogspot.com/search?q=ubuntu As for SF, totally dizzying array of options! I do know La Taqueria in the Mission is really widely recommended for no-frills Mexican. In general, ambling around the Mission is a good way to alert on tasty Mexican food. If you want something a little different in that neighborhood, I really like Dosa - Southern Indian food done well, not something you get much of state-side. Hope you have a great time!

I got invited to a Burns night fiesta by a wandering New Orleans bagpiper. I am considering going primarily to say I have had haggis. So is the traditional sheep's stomach also illegal in the USA, along with the lungs? Seems like a shame.

I've also got one. I used to get these delicious little hard candies in Beijing. They tasted like flaky, caramelized sugar. The wrapper seemed to insinuate they were from Hainan. I've hunted up and down at all the Asian super markets in Sacramento to no avail....would love to try them again! Those candied fruits look DELISH. Unfortunately I didn't run across em' in China.

A Santander passion fruit chocolate bar. What I had hoped would be a delicate, subtle passion fruit flavor ended up being a bizarre combination of vaguely passion-fruit flavored rice krispie bites inside of dark chocolate. Not a winner. And Uni. I always try uni, it is always expensive, and I always end up hating it. I need to give up.

Headed to Deanies today for gumbo and thought it was quite good. You can get a very large bowl of seafood gumbo and a salad for 11 bucks...not a bad lunch deal. Really nice service, as well.

I drowned everything I ate in ketchup as a sprout myself. Now I'm 20 and regularly irritate the hell out of my parents with my food snobbery. This too will pass! I went to a Waldorf school. We didn't offer lunch per-se, but the classes sold food and it was absolutely 100% required to be organic or the hippie parents would scream. We did end up selling some pretty tasty baked goods, Chinese chicken salads, bean and cheese burritos, and so forth. The pizza, however, always sold best. Hands down. Thirded (or fourthed or whatever) on letting kids eat like kids occasionally. Let em' have a treat after standing out in the freezing cold to watch the inauguration. I seriously doubt the chilluns were being served outright bad food, unhealthy as it may have been.

A Vietnamese couple taught me their way of doing it old-school in New Braunfels, Texas, last year. They take some parchment paper, wrap some chicken skin or sausage in it into a little packet, then tie some twine around it. Crawdad latches on, you pull the sucker up. I caught about 10 in 20 minutes this way, although we may have had a very excellent spot indeed. I am now rather intrigued about fancy crawfish traps. I want one.

I'll add to the chorus in favor of Pasta Moon. The linguine with ahi tuna, capers, and chili oil is absolutely wonderful: fresh, tangy, slightly spicy. When available, the rock shrimp pizza is also great - the shrimp taste like little exploding seafood jewels in your mouth. The Meyer Lemon parfait with lemon curd, meringue, caramel, and sorbet is on my list of favorite desserts ever. I must hoover one of those down whenever I'm anywhere near Half Moon bay. I really do need to try Duarte's sometime, however.

I live pretty much right up on top of Tee-Eva's and far as I can tell, they're not open. Or open very intermittently. Glad you enjoyed Cochon and Casamento's - they're both excellent, excellent restaurants. Did you skip dessert at Cochon? I thought the pineapple upside-down cake was just awesome. So should I skip Dookie Chase? I'd been meaning to make a voyage out there but the photos have kinda turned me off.