Senza Glutine-- Eating Gluten-Free In Tuscany Is Easier Than In The U.S.

Da Delfina terrace with the 1596 Medici pad in the background

I just got back from about a month in Tuscany. Some old friends and I rented a beautiful old villa outside a small town in the Chianti region of northern Tuscany, just southwest of Florence. I ate every day-- and that included a lot of pasta and some pizza-- and never had to worry about gluten, which my doctor told me to avoid.

I have four favorite Italian restaurants here in L.A.-- BellaRiva, Angelini Osteria, Osteria Mozza, all in the Hollywood area, and Piccolo in Venice-- and I wouldn't even think to ask them for gluten-free anything. Although... I'm about to start. It's perfectly natural in Italy, where, apparently, Celiac is a well-understood disease. Health food stores, like the well-stocked NaturaSi in Florence (4 outlets), normal run-of-the-mill grocery stores (like the Coops everywhere) and pharmacies, all carry gluten-free food-- and lots of it. So cooking back at the villa was no problem.

But it's Tuscany. I was there to eat the most refined and deicious cuisine in the world. And I never had a problem with that it. Montespertoli is a tiny town you won't find on many maps. You don't even find the roads that go to it on any maps. But the one of the pizzeria's just off the main square Garby's, with dozens of different kinds of pizza on their menu, was always happy to make a pizza senza glutine. Down the road from the villa in the other direction, there was a big restaurant, Lo Spigo in Montelupo Fiorentino has a page on their menu with gluten-free dishes, but basically they'll make you anything you want in a gluten-free way, including every kind of pasta (except ravioli and lasagne) and every kind of pizza.

When I first got to town I called on a friend of mine who's been living in Tuscany for 8 years, American-born film-maker Frank LaLoggia (Lady In White, Fear No Evil). He suggested we go to a place owned by a friend of his, Paolo, in Lucardo, 10 minutes from Montespertoli and halfway between our villa and his house down a dirt road in San Casiano-- Ristorante C'era Una Volta in Lucardo. Not only did Paolo offer to make me any pasta I wanted senza glutine, he even served me gluten free bread while my friends ate the house bread. I might mention that the food is amazing and the view from the terrace is spectacular and that I ate there half a dozen times afterwards. Just down the road a piece is a turn-off on via Lucignano which leads to a not easy to find farm house that doubles-- if you make a reservation-- as a vegan restaurant, La Fonte. It's not specifically gluten-free-- more organic and macrobiotic-- but they know how to do it and do it well.

And that brings us to the world renowned Tuscan destination restaurants-- and, yes, they take care of their gluten-free guests as well. The first day I arrived in Italy I didn't go to the villa but stayed to see some friends honeymooning in Florence. We had dinner at one of the best restaurants in town, Ristorante Cibrèo. It was my first meal of the trip and I was taken aback when I asked the waiter if he could serve gluten-free pasta. He got all huffy-- but, as it turned out, not over the gluten-free part. In all their long history (Etruscan times?) they have never ever served pasta. OK, once we got over that, I sat back and had a superb meal. The menu, which changes constantly, is scrawled in Italian by hand but the waiter sits down and explains every dish on it to you. There were a dozen things I wanted to order and I barely remember what I wound up picking but everything was delicious and had I ever worked up the courage to brave Florence's bizarre traffic again, I would have certainly gone back again.

The only other restaurant in a city I ate in was Siena's wonderful Osteria le Logge, just off the Campo, the city's famed main square. Everything was delicious and although gluten-free wasn't their thing, they were able to easily accommodate my request. I went with a bunch of friends and we ordered tons of food, all of it delicious, well-prepared and shockingly inexpensive. All the other restaurants were in the countryside and-- warning-- they all require reservations. They also require a car and a lot of directional savvy to locate and get to.


In the small cluster of buildings in the middle of nowhere called Artimino, near a small town called Carmignano just west of Florence is a Tuscan classic, Da Delfina. The terrace overlooks a gorgeous bucolic scene that happens to include an amazing Medici villa built in 1596. As one reviewer put it, "Comfort is the keyword: you come here for an elegant take on mamma's home cooking, served on crisply laid tables by impeccable, bow-tied waiters." I had called ahead and told them I didn't eat gluten and they were prepared. One of the reasons-- there are several-- that I keep going back to RivaBella in L.A. is because of their unqiue take on eggplant parmigiana, which the L.A. Times described as "a luscious eggplant timbale in a light Parmesan cream" and I'm hooked. But wasn't I shocked to find the identical preparation at Delfina, only twice the portion size and a little more... let's say relaxed. I wouldn't call the restaurant inexpensive but it's far from expensive. They don't accept credit cards.

Another restaurant that stands out as especially delicious and also pretty much in the middle of nowhere was La Locanda di Pietracupa on the side of the "main road" into San Donato in Poggio. That's where we had our goodbye dinner when my friends from Amsterdam and Arizona were leaving for home. All send-offs should be that delicious! Again, I called ahead with the senza glutine request and they were solicitous and ready to serve! I had the amazing pasta dish with a light sauce made of beets and gorgonzola. It doesn't sound that good but, man, would I like to be eating there again tonight! They even had gluten-free bread for me!

I should also add that all the restaurants are especially proud of their olive oils and balsamics, and they should be. In fact the only souvenirs I brought home were bottles of local olive oil!

India, Pakistan, Mali, Maine... You Know... Everywhere

When I got to India the first time, having driven my VW van across Asia, I was just getting out of my teens. I entered in the Punjab, drove to Delphi, Bombay, Goa, through Kerala, took the ferry across to Ceylon for a few months, then drove to Pondicherry, Madras, north through Andhra Pradessh and Orissa (where Tom Wolf, probably the next governor of Pennsylvania was serving in the Peace Corps at the time), on to Calcutta, Benares and up into Nepal for a couple months, Oh, and what fun it was! I'll spare you the unsavory details of what the Kabul Runs entails, but I can still remember the first time I realized that the slab of dead animal hanging from a hook in every (unrefrigerated) marketplace across Asia was black because it was covered in flies.

Around a decade later, one of my closest friends, at least in part inspired by my stories of India, the painter Eveline Pommier, traveled to India, contracted cholera and died, not yet 30. India has never been-- and never will be-- at least not in our lifetimes-- a walk in the park. Anyone who forgets this a trip to India is a serious undertaking, vacation, business trip, spiritual pilgrimage or what-- is putting their health and even their life in jeopardy.

Years later, Roland and I were driving around Rajasthan when we stopped for dinner at a high-end restaurant in Jaipur. Yum, yum. Afterwards we were walking around town and we wound up back behind the restaurant, where we saw some small boys filling up the bottled water they had been serving from a hose. I keep traveling to the Third World-- we were back in India last Christmas, for example-- and the hygiene everywhere is... spotty. On our way to a wonderful restaurant in Bamako a few years ago, perhaps the only really "wonderful" restaurant in the whole country, we counted a number of people using the public sidewalk to squat down and... well... #2. You get used to it. Or you go to Disneyland or, maybe, London and Paris, instead.

A couple days ago I was driving around L.A. listening to Terry Gross interview Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid about his new book, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. Hamid isn't some Pakistani bumpkin or, despite his previous book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a fundamentalist, a movie version of which opens next month. He spent a lot of his childhood in Palo Alto and earned degrees from Princeton and Harvard. How to Get Filthy Rich seems to be set in his hometown (and where he lives now), Lahore, a city I first visited in 1969 (when it had a million people; today it has 10 million). Wonderful place!

The main character in Filthy Rich, which is actually written like a weird How-To book, feels his best way to get rich is through a series of scams, a tried and true tradition across cultures, as we've seen in the History Channel series, The Men Who Built America. Hamid's character doesn't seem all that foreign when he takes goods that have expired and makes labels for them with longer shelf lives. Eventually he strikes it rich by boiling tap water and selling it as expensive mineral water. When I mentioned it to Roland, he seemed relieved. "At least," he said, "he was boiling it."

"[T]he marketization of water, the sort of application of a kind of uber-capitalism that you see really all over the world and certainly in Pakistan, is in some senses you can see it most clearly in water because water used to be almost free. You could get water, you know, from a river, from a canal, from a well, from wherever. And now, of course, we're running out of clean water in most of Asia and much of Africa and much of Latin America. And so people don't have clean drinking water. And we can live for a month without food, but we can't last more than a couple of days without water. So people are selling water, and both at the luxury level, where you have these high-end mineral waters and also at the level of just poor people needing something to drink. So his scam is to take mineral water bottles that have been consumed at high-end restaurants, buy the empties, take tap water, boil it a little bit, pour it into these mineral water bottles and reseal it so it looks like it's an authentic water bottle and sell it back to the exact same restaurants, who probably suspect that it's a scam product, but because it's so much cheaper than the water they buy normally are happy to take it on." The book, Gross explains in her introduction "is both a satire of self-help books and an examination of life in an Asian city with a growing middle class and an infrastructure that can't support it, except for the crime infrastructure, which is thriving."

This book is a self-help book. Its objective, as it says on the cover, is to show you how to get filthy rich in rising Asia, and to do that, it has to find you huddled, shivering on the packed earth under your mother's cot one cold, dewy morning... I originally didn't want to write it as a self-help book. I was trying to write this as a straight novel, and as usually happens with me, I did that for a couple of years and failed and eventually stumbled across this self-help book form. And what I liked about the self-help book form was I started to realize that in a way I actually do write novels to help myself.

...I think it's a story that is a type of story that is common in Pakistan, but more than Pakistan in the entire world, because something like half the world's people now live in cities for the first time in human history. But in the course of the next generation, 25, 30 years, that number is going to go to 80 or 90 percent, which means a couple billion people are going to move to cities in Asia and Africa and Latin America, all over the world. And I think there's a lot of similarity between going from a poor countryside to a Third World megacity, which is a journey that these billions of people are on. So in a sense this is a story of that mass migration in Pakistan but also elsewhere.

Gross mentions the rotting water pipes and how "the contents of underground water mains and sewers mingling with the result that taps in locales rich and poor alike disgorge liquids that while for the most part clear and often odorless reliably contain trace levels of feces and microorganisms capable of causing diarrhea, hepatitis, dysentery and typhoid." Hamid's wife was diagnosed with hepatitis the day after their wedding. "And it was the second time she had had it," he said. "Virtually everybody in my family has had either hepatitis or typhoid or something of that sort. You know, water-borne illness is everywhere. It affects the poor, and it also affects the affluent in a place like Pakistan... [Y]ou get it from either drinking water, you know, brushing your teeth with tap water, or perhaps somebody prepared your food, and they had washed their hands in that water or touched the water or hadn't washed their hands at all. I mean it's-- the mode of transmission is what's called oral-fecal, and that sort of unsavory term really sums up how you get it." His character, the bottled water scammer millionaire had hepatitis too.

[H]e has it as a boy, and so many of us had it, and it's a strange situation. You know, living in America, where in most cities you can drink tap water, and even so, people do have bottled water, but the tap water is perfectly safe to drink almost all the time, there is an enormous difference in a society where you can do that and a society where you cannot do that. And most of the world actually you cannot do that. So the government, the state, hasn't performed the basic, basic service of taking this most common of all commodities that we use and making it safe for everybody to drink as they please.

Not even in Poland Springs, Maine.

Low wage workers at the Poland Springs Bottling Plant in Maine, which is owned by Nestlé, are so angry with the way the company treats them that they're doing pretty disgusting things to pollute the water-- not that Nestlé gives a damn. Nestlé settled a law suit accusing it of using water under a former trash and refuse dump, and below an illegal disposal site where human sewage was sprayed as fertilizer for many years. Nestlé paid $10 million in the settlement but continues to sell the same Maine water under the Poland Spring name.

And they make a lot of money selling that crap too. People are trying to get their hands on money now... everywhere. And many will do anything to get it.

Eating Healthy In Mérida, Yucatán

Roland had some kind of pork thing

I rented a house in Mérida to kick back and use as a base to explore the interior of the Yucatán Peninsula of southeastern Mexico, the old Mayan Empire-- and to follow up on some leads about Mitt Romney's being a longtime worshipper of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec and Mayan feathered serpent god that the Mormons believe is the resurrected Jesus Christ. But in between... you gotta eat.

Today when we got back from tracking down an old family of Mormon polygamists near Uxmal-- with Romney connections from when the two families first fled America to live in Mexico in the 1800s so they could keep the polygamy hustle (like they still do in Arizona)-- we ate at a Greek/Italian restaurant in the neighborhood, Rescoldos. Their garden dining immediately transported us to Europe and the food was like nothing we've been eating in Mexico. Michael, who lives in NY and spent last summer in Italy, says his ravioli (stuffed with brie and garlic) was the best ravioli he'd ever tasted anywhere. I had scruptuous vegetarian moussaka that was better than any vegetarian Moussaka I ever found in Greece. Everything was delicious and fresh and very inexpensive. What a place!

Finding good vegetarian food isn't easy in Mérida and I had given up when we found Rescoldos. People here eat pork, lots of it. A the food tends to mostly be fried. Healthy eating doesn't seem to be much of a preoccupation. There's a long-time "vegetarian" restaurant that all the guide books hype, Amaro, just down from the Zocolo in the heart of touristville. It's not bad and there are a few vegetarian dishes (in the broadest sense of the word) but... it's not what I was looking for. Way across town is a franchise place called 100% Natural (near Sam's Club). They have these in Cancun and other Mexican resort towns. It reeks plastic and it's not worth the long bus ride. And we met this guy Pedro who has big dreams and a small new vegetarian placed called 2012 (on Calle 62 right near all the tourist action). It wasn't bad-- but not as good as Pedro's dreams. It was the closest thing to vegetarian though.

Ironically, the organic food you can only buy at a market called Superama here but that we eat in California, mostly comes from Mexico-- but from barren northwest Mexico, Baja California. The NY Times got into it this weekend.

Clamshell containers on supermarket shelves in the United States may depict verdant fields, tangles of vines and ruby red tomatoes. But at this time of year, the tomatoes, peppers and basil certified as organic by the Agriculture Department often hail from the Mexican desert, and are nurtured with intensive irrigation.

Growers here on the Baja Peninsula, the epicenter of Mexico’s thriving new organic export sector, describe their toil amid the cactuses as “planting the beach.”

Del Cabo Cooperative, a supplier here for Trader Joe’s and Fairway, is sending more than seven and a half tons of tomatoes and basil every day to the United States by truck and plane to sate the American demand for organic produce year-round.

But even as more Americans buy foods with the organic label, the products are increasingly removed from the traditional organic ideal: produce that is not only free of chemicals and pesticides but also grown locally on small farms in a way that protects the environment.

The explosive growth in the commercial cultivation of organic tomatoes here, for example, is putting stress on the water table. In some areas, wells have run dry this year, meaning that small subsistence farmers cannot grow crops. And the organic tomatoes end up in an energy-intensive global distribution chain that takes them as far as New York and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, producing significant emissions that contribute to global warming.

From now until spring, farms from Mexico to Chile to Argentina that grow organic food for the United States market are enjoying their busiest season.

“People are now buying from a global commodity market, and they have to be skeptical even when the label says ‘organic’-- that doesn’t tell people all they need to know,” said Frederick L. Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. He said some large farms that have qualified as organic employed environmentally damaging practices, like planting only one crop, which is bad for soil health, or overtaxing local freshwater supplies.

Many growers and even environmental groups in Mexico defend the export-driven organic farming, even as they acknowledge that more than a third of the aquifers in southern Baja are categorized as overexploited by the Mexican water authority. With sophisticated irrigation systems and shade houses, they say, farmers are becoming more skilled at conserving water. They are focusing new farms in “microclimates” near underexploited aquifers, such as in the shadow of a mountain, said Fernando Frías, a water specialist with the environmental group Pronatura Noroeste.

They also point out that the organic business has transformed what was once a poor area of subsistence farms and where even the low-paying jobs in the tourist hotels and restaurants in nearby Cabo San Lucas have become scarcer during the recession.

To carry the Agriculture Department’s organic label on their produce, farms in the United States and abroad must comply with a long list of standards that prohibit the use of synthetic fertilizers, hormones and pesticides, for example. But the checklist makes few specific demands for what would broadly be called environmental sustainability, even though the 1990 law that created the standards was intended to promote ecological balance and biodiversity as well as soil and water health.

...While the original organic ideal was to eat only local, seasonal produce, shoppers who buy their organics at supermarkets, from Whole Foods to Walmart, expect to find tomatoes in December and are very sensitive to price. Both factors stoke the demand for imports. Few areas in the United States can farm organic produce in the winter without resorting to energy-guzzling hothouses. In addition, American labor costs are high. Day laborers who come to pick tomatoes in this part of Baja make about $10 a day, nearly twice the local minimum wage. Tomato pickers in Florida may earn $80 a day in high season.

What a great big interconnected world. I wonder if President Romney would set up a shrine to Quetzalcoatl in the White House. I hope we never find out. Here's a photo of me at Chichen Itza, a sacred site where the feathered Mayan serpent god was worshipped. And below that is a Mormon picture at Chichen Itza that represents Quetzalcoatal as the resurrected Jesus. Bishop Willard Romney, the same guy who's running for president under the assumed name "Mitt" Romney, teaches this version of... whatever it is.

Starting The Ball Rolling Towards A Trip To Ethiopia

Three ladies from the Mursi tribe

I started my adventure traveling before I understood anything about sex. In fact, the first time I ever even had sex was when an older woman-- she was 17 I think, or almost 17-- seduced me in the back of a Greyhound station in Jacksonville, Florida. I had virtually no idea what was going on and mostly all I remember were the big black rubber tires we were surrounded by. I was on my way to visit my grandparents for Pessach in Miami Beach. Later being physically attracted to a people helped determine where I wanted to visit; I've had wide tastes and see beauty in almost every kind of people. But that was a long time ago and these days I'm much more likely to pick a destination because I like the cuisine. Really.

Roland, who is really eager to go to Ethiopia (not to mention Eritrea and Somalia; he's insane)-- and knows my proclivities-- has been trying to talk me into liking Ethiopian food for just around a decade now! He keeps claiming it's "one of the great cuisines of the world." L.A. has a Little Ethiopia about half and hour from my house. There are over a dozen well-regarded Ethiopian restaurants within 2 blocks of each other. The basic building block of the cuisine is injera, a kind of sour bread that he just loves and I never really took to-- until this year. The meal consists of the injera and some wats or stews. Just when I was starting to get used to the taste of the injera I found out it's made of fermented teff, which is totally in synch with my health regime. Teff is a kind of grass, but not wheat-- which I avoid-- and it's not gluten. It's more like quinoa or millet and it's a good source of fiber, protein, iron and calcium-- very healthy.

Anyway, Roland's in Maine for a few weeks and yesterday I went to Little Ethiopia for lunch. My favorite restaurant there-- by far-- is Rahel, which is the only pure vegan place. The others-- Messob, Rosalind's, Nyala, Merkato, etc all serve vegetarian dishes, which are common in Ethiopia, but Rahel makes an art of it. On Saturday's lunch is an all-you-can-eat buffet for something like $12. There are a dozen dishes, all delicious and healthful. So Ethiopia passes the food test and we're in the early stages of planning a trip there. One of my neighbors has an orphanage in Lalibela.

In his enthusiasm, Roland has been feeding me this line about how it doesn't only have "one of the world's great cuisines" but that it's also the "land of eternal spring." I decided to double check, knowing how completely unreliable he is when he's made up his mind. He's been pushing for next June.

When to go to Ethiopia?

The main rainy season is June to end of September. Don't go then unless it is the ONLY period you can take a holiday. it rains pretty well every day-- some is drizzle but much is heavy tropical rain. Things get very muddy. IF you can only go in this period of the Big Rains try to spend some time in lower altitude areas like the Rift Valley Lakes zone, where it will be warmer and a bit less wet...

Best time to visit is mid October to mid March-- the dry season.

Since this coming December we're set on the Yucatan, it'll have to be the following Christmas. Long way... But here's a video I found with an overview of the capital, Addis Ababa, a city with 4 million people that everyone tells me to have a quick look around and then out into the country.

How Important Is Food In Determining Where You Travel? Hygiene?

I was 15 the first time I hit the road and hitchhiked from Brooklyn to Miami Beach. I had the wanderlust. It never left me. When I was 15 Florida seemed exotic-- and my grandparents were down there for Passover/Easter so I knew I'd have a (free) place to stay. Motivations and destination targeting has changed for me over the years. Delicious food is always an incentive when I think of going to Italy, Morocco, Turkey, France or Thailand. A poor cuisine or an unavailability of healthy food is always a detriment when I think about Egypt, Mongolia, Cuba and, oddly enough, China. (We decided to go to Mali anyway and managed to survive well enough... and then found an absolutely fantastic restaurant-- serving traditional food-- in Bamako.)

China? With it's world famous cuisine? Well, I have to say, I was just in Hong Kong for a few days and every meal was really excellent. I was also in Nepal and... well, no one goes there for the food. And the amoebic dysentery I picked up only lasted for 8 or 9 days. But China... David Sedaris put it so very elegantly in the Guardian this past weekend:

I have to go to China." I told people this in the way I might say, "I need to insulate my crawl space" or, "I've got to get these moles looked at." That's the way it felt, though. Like a chore. What initially put me off was the food. I'll eat it if the alternative means starving, but I've never looked forward to it, not even when it seemed exotic to me.

...I think it hurt that, before landing in China, Hugh and I spent a week in Tokyo, where the food was, as always, sublime, everything so delicate and carefully presented. With meals I drank tea, which leads me to another great thing about Japan-- its bathrooms. When I was younger they wouldn't have mattered so much. Then I hit 50 and found that I had to pee all the time. In Tokyo, every subway station has a free public men's room. The floors and counters are aggressively clean and beside each urinal is a hook for hanging your umbrella.

This was what I had grown accustomed to when we flew from Narita to Beijing International, where the first thing one notices is what sounds like a milk steamer, the sort a cafe uses when making lattes and cappuccinos. "That's odd," you think. "There's a coffee bar on the elevator to the parking deck?" What you're hearing, that incessant guttural hiss, is the sound of one person, and then another, dredging up phlegm, seemingly from the depths of his or her soul. At first you look over, wondering, "Where are you going to put that?" A better question, you soon realise, is, "Where aren't you going to put it?"

I saw wads of phlegm glistening like freshly shucked oysters on staircases and escalators. I saw them frozen into slicks on the sidewalk and oozing down the sides of walls. It often seemed that if people weren't spitting, they were coughing without covering their mouths, or shooting wads of snot out of their noses. This was done by plugging one nostril and using the other as a blowhole. "We Chinese think it's best just to get it out," a woman told me over dinner one night. She said that, in her opinion, it's disgusting that a westerner would use a handkerchief and then put it back into his pocket.

"Well, it's not for sentimental reasons," I told her. "We don't hold on to our snot for ever. The handkerchief's mainly a sanitary consideration."

Another thing one notices in China is the turds. "Oh please," you're probably thinking. "Must you?"

To this I answer, "Yes, I must", for if they didn't affect the food itself, they affected the way I thought about it. In Tokyo, I once saw a dog pee on the sidewalk. Then its owner reached into a bag, pulled out a bottle of water and rinsed the urine off the pavement. As for dog faeces, I never saw any trace of them. In Beijing, you see an overwhelming amount of shit. Some of it can be blamed on pets, but a lot of it comes from people. Chinese babies do without diapers, wearing instead these strange little pants with a slit in the rear. When a child has to go, its parents direct it towards the kerb or, if they're indoors, to a spot they think of as "kerby." "Last month I saw a kid shit in the produce aisle of our Chengdu Walmart," a young woman named Bridget told me.

This was the seventh day of my visit and so desensitised was I that my first response was, "You have a Walmart?"

There are the wild outdoor turds of China, and then there are the ones you see in the public bathrooms, most of which feature those squat-style toilets, holes, basically, level with the floor. And these bathrooms, my God. The sorriest American gas station cannot begin to match one of these things.

In the men's room of a Beijing subway station, I watched a man walk past the urinal, lift his three-year-old son into the air and instruct him to pee into the sink-- the one we were supposed to wash our hands in.

My trip reminded me that we are all just animals, that stuff comes out of every hole we have, no matter where we live or how much money we've got. On some level we all know this and manage, quite pleasantly, to shove it towards the back of our minds. In China, it's brought to the front, and nailed there. The supermarket cashier holds out your change and you take it thinking, "This woman squats and spits on the floor while shitting and blowing snot out of her nose." You think it of the cab driver, of the ticket taker and, finally, of the people who are cooking and serving your dinner. Which brings me back to food.

If someone added a pinch of human faeces to my scrambled eggs, I may not be able to detect it but I would most likely realise that these particular eggs taste different from the ones I had yesterday. That's with something familiar, though. And there wasn't a lot of familiar in China. No pork lo mein or kung pao chicken, and definitely no egg rolls. On our first night in Chengdu, we joined a group of four for dinner – one Chinese woman and three westerners. The restaurant was not fancy, but it was obviously popular. Built into our table was a simmering cauldron of broth, into which we were to add side dishes and cook them until they were done. "I've taken the liberty of ordering us some tofu, some mushrooms and some duck tongues," said the western woman sitting across from me. "Do you trust me to keep ordering, or is there anything in particular you might like?"

I looked at her thinking, "You whore!" Catherine was English and had lived in China for close to 20 years. I figured the duck tongues were a sort of test, so I made it a point to look unfazed. Excited even.

When I was eventually forced to eat one, I found that it actually wasn't so bad. The only disconcerting part was the shape, particularly the base, from which dangled tentacle-like roots. This reminded one that the tongues had not been cut off but, rather, yanked out, possibly with pliers. Of course the duck was probably dead by then, wasn't it? It's not as if they'd jerk out the tongue and then let it go, traumatised and quackless but otherwise whole.
It was while eating my second duck tongue that the man at the next table hacked up a loud wad of phlegm and spat it on to the floor. "I think I'm done," I said.

The following morning, and with a different group, Hugh and I took a drive to the mountain where tea originally came from. It was late January, and the two-hour trip took us past countless factories. Mustard-coloured smoke drifted into the sky and the rivers we passed ran thick with waste and rubbish. Eventually we hit snow, which improved things visually but made it harder to move about. By the time we headed back down the mountain, it was almost three. Most restaurants had quit serving lunch, so we stopped at what's called a Farming Family Happiness. This is a farmhouse where, if they're in the mood, the people who live there will cook and serve you a meal.

One of the members of our party was a native of Chengdu, and of the five Americans, everyone but Hugh and I spoke Mandarin. Thus we hung back as they negotiated with the farm wife, who was square-faced and pretty and wore her hair cut into bangs. We ate in what was normally the mah jong parlour, a large room overlooking the family's tea field. Against one wall were two televisions, each tuned to a different channel and loudly playing to no one. On the other wall was a sanitation grade-- C-- and the service grade, which was a smiley face with the smile turned upside down.

As far as I know there wasn't a menu. Rather, the family worked at their convenience, with whatever was handy or in season. There was a rooster parading around the backyard and then there just wasn't. After the cook had slit its throat, he used it as the base for five separate dishes, one of which was a dreary soup with two feet, like inverted salad tongs, sticking out of it. Nothing else was nearly as recognisable.

I'm used to standard butchering: here's the leg, the breast, etc. At the Farming Family Happiness, rather than being carved, the rooster was senselessly hacked, as if by a blind person, a really angry one with a thing against birds. Portions were reduced to shards, mostly bone, with maybe a scrap of meat attached. These were then combined with cabbage and some kind of hot sauce.

Another dish was made entirely of organs, which again had been hacked beyond recognition. The heart was there, the lungs, probably the comb and intestines as well. I don't know why this so disgusted me. If I was a vegetarian, OK, but if you're a meat eater, why draw these arbitrary lines? "I'll eat the thing that filters out toxins but not the thing that sits on top of the head, doing nothing?" And why agree to eat this animal and not that one?

I remember reading a few years ago about a restaurant in the Guangdong province that was picketed and shut down because it served cat. The place was called The Fangji Cat Meatball Restaurant, which isn't exactly hiding anything. Go to Fangji and you pretty much know what you're getting. My objection to cat meatballs is not that I have owned several cats, and loved them, but that I try not to eat things that eat meat. Like most westerners I tend towards herbivores, and things that like grain: cows, chickens, sheep, etc. Pigs eat meat-- a pig would happily eat a human-- but most of the pork we're privy to was raised on corn or horrible chemicals rather than other pigs and dead people.

There are distinctions among the grazing animal eaters as well. People who like lamb and beef, at least in north America, tend to draw the line at horse, which in my opinion is delicious. The best I've had was served at a restaurant in Antwerp, a former stable called, cleverly enough, The Stable. Hugh was right there with me, and though he ate the same thing I did, he practically wept when someone in China mentioned eating sea horses. "Oh, those poor things," he said. "How could you?"

I went, "Huh?"

It's like eating poultry but taking a moral stand against those chocolate chicks they sell at Easter. "A sea horse is not related to an actual horse," I said. "They're fish, and you eat fish all the time. Are you objecting to this one because of its shape?"

He said he couldn't eat sea horses because they were friendly and never did anyone any harm, this as opposed to those devious, bloodthirsty lambs whose legs we so regularly roast with rosemary and new potatoes.

The dishes we had at the Farming Family Happiness were meant to be shared, and as the pretty woman with the broad face brought them to the table, the man across from me beamed and reached for his chopsticks. "You know," he said, "this country might have its ups and downs but it is virtually impossible to get a bad meal here."

I didn't say anything.

Another of the dishes that day consisted of rooster blood. I'd thought it would be liquid, like V8 juice, but when cooked it coagulated into little pads that had the consistency of tofu. "Not bad," said the girl seated beside me, and I watched as she slid one into her mouth. Jill was American, a Peace Corps volunteer who'd come to Chengdu to teach English. "In Thailand last year? I ate dog face," she told me.

"Just the face?"

"Well, head and face." She was in a small village, part of a team returning abducted girls to their parents. To show their gratitude, the locals prepared a feast. Dog was considered good eating. The head was supposedly the best part, and rather than offend her hosts, Jill ate it.

This, for many, is flat-out evil but the rest of the world isn't like America, where it's become virtually impossible to throw a dinner party. One person doesn't eat meat, while another is lactose intolerant, or can't digest wheat. You have vegetarians who eat fish and others who won't touch it. Then there are vegans, macrobiotics and a new group, flexitarians, who eat meat if not too many people are watching. Take that into consideration and it's actually rather refreshing that a 22-year-old from the suburbs of Detroit will pick up her chopsticks and at least try the shar pei.

I'd like to be more like Jill, but in China something kept holding me back. In clean, sophisticated Japan the rooster blood, arranged upon a handmade plate between the perfect, tempura snow pea and a radish carved to look like a first trimester foetus, would have seemed a fine idea. "We ought to try making this at home," I'd have said to Hugh. Here, though, I thought of the sanitation grade, and of the rooster, pecking maggots out of human faeces before being killed. Most of the restaurants in China to me smelled dirty, though what I was smelling was likely some unfamiliar ingredient, and I was allowing the things I'd seen earlier in the day-- the spitting and snot blowing, etc-- to fill in the blanks.

Then again, maybe not.

While on our trip we ate at normal, everyday places, and sometimes bought food on the street. Our only expensive meal was in Beijing, where we went alone to a fancy restaurant recommended by an acquaintance. The place was located in an old warehouse and had been lavishly decorated. There was a wine expert and someone whose job it was to drop by every three minutes and refill your water glass. We had the Peking duck, which was expertly carved rather than hacked and was served with little pancakes. Towards the end of the meal, I stepped into the men's room to pee and there, disintegrating in the western-style toilet, was an unflushed turd, a little reminder saying, "See, you're still in China!"

Back at the table I asked for the bill. Then I remembered where I was and amended it to "the check". In France, you can die waiting to pay for your meal, which is something I've never understood. "How can they not want me out of here?" I'll think. Ten minutes might pass. Then 20, me watching as the waiter does everything but accept my goddamn money.

I'll say that for China, though-- offer to pay and before you can stab a rooster with a rusty screwdriver someone has taken you up on it. I think they want to catch you before you get sick, but whatever the reason, within minutes you're back on the street, searching the blighted horizon and wondering where your next meal might be coming from.

Asian culture doesn't subscribe to the germ theory. I'll never forget the first time, decades ago, I visited Thailand and watched our beautiful, smiling waitress coming towards us with a huge platter of delicious looking food. She sneezed all over it, and kept smiling beautifully as she served us. My friend Digby, who lived in Thailand for many years, suggests you kill whatever bacteria you can by using plenty of hot sauce... on everything.

SAF-- London's Raw Food Culture Comes Alive... In A Big Way

About a year and a half ago Sarah Bentley did a hopeful feature for TimeOut London about the British capital's nascent raw food scene. I just heard from one of L.A.'s most accomplished raw chefs via e-mail that everyone he knows who's gone to London complains that it's difficult to get good raw food. Well, I have good news: SAF in Shoreditch is really pretty excellent. And they opened a branch in Kensington (at the Whole Food Market; more about that below). Bentley:

London’s raw food scene is exploding. After decades of raw food diets provoking gasps of disbelief, it has eked into the city’s mainstream health food movement with a burgeoning network of restaurants, market stalls, delivery services, workshops and lifestyle events.

...Raw food or ‘live food’ dishes are made from produce – usually but not always unprocessed, organic and vegan – cooked at a temperature below 48C (warmer than body temperature, but still not even half way between frozen and boiling water). On raw food websites it is often referred to as ‘high vibrational food’, some theories suggesting that, being uncooked, ‘live’ foods have more enzymes and a higher nutrient content than cooked ‘dead’ foods. 

Chad Sarno, culinary mastermind behind Saf, London’s most high-end raw food restaurant that opened in April 2008, says. ‘I find terms like “high vibrational” alienate people. Basically it’s food in its purest, freshest form, so of course it’s healthier and in my opinion tastier than cooked food.’ Though it should be noted that trained nutritionists are far more sceptical of the benefits of raw food diets – which studies show are associated with increased risk of osteoporosis. 

The Saf menu includes dishes that sound impossible to create from raw ingredients: beetroot ravioli and Chinese pancakes share the line up with pad Thai and autumn risotto. At Dragonfly Wholefoods in Highgate the menu offers sumptuous falafel, pizza, sunflower burgers and onion bread available in all their uncooked glory.

...Many raw food enthusiasts make claims of improved health on switching to a raw food diet, but one benefit which is more palpable is weight loss – a strictly followed raw food diet is an almost guaranteed route to shedding pounds. Some feel it also has a massive impact on your general wellbeing. ‘When I went raw the change in me was hugely noticeable,’ says fan Liz Bugrave. ‘My energy levels increased, my skin was glowing, I was more flexible and I felt more at one with everything around me.’

Though it’s difficult to argue against the benefits, the practicalities of maintaining a raw diet are challenging, especially if you go 100 per cent raw. Converts are in a constant cycle of preparation, planning and, if travelling or visiting friends and family, packing ingredients to take with them. Then there are the cravings. It seems even the most dedicated raw fooders fall off the wagon and binge on cooked food en route to finding a take on raw that works for them.

Tonight we had our New Years Eve dinner at SAF at 152-154 Curtain Rd. What a treat! It's certainly on a par with Pure Food and Wine in NYC or Roxanne's old restaurant in Marin County. The food prep staff holds itself to a very high standard and every dish they turn out is breathtakingly scrumptious. Tonight they offered a mind-blowing 7 course meal for £70, just over $100. At first glance at the menu I was a little put off because I wanted to order a la cart and because champagne was included. But once the food started arriving, I never looked back. Actually, even before the food started arriving, I was happy since they offered to substitute any of their drinks for the alcohol. I had a cucumber, ginger, lemon juice drink-- there were other ingredients I can't remember-- called a Zinger that totally hit the spot.

Keep in mind that this restaurant has a 28 rating in the London Zagat Guide, that publication's #1 vegetarian restaurant. This year the Evening Standard also dubbed it the best vegetarian restaurant in London. So here's what we ate tonight-- after nearly a month of, basically, couscous in Morocco.

-Consomé, which was cucumber juice with a delectable chipotle sorbet, wilted cucumber and sea lettuce caviar. Roland and I both rated it an A-- and we rated everything that came after an A as well, so I won't repeat the ratings.

-Terin, which was layers of spectacularly prepared beets with horse radish, the most delicious walnuts I ever tasted (pickled!) and a porto wine reduction.

-P Salad, something my entire body thanked me for feeding it-- pomelo, pomegranate, pumpkin seed oil, pistachio and lightly pickled peppers.

-Coquette, which featured chestnut tartare, truffel alfredo and other components that escape me but that helped make this completely memorable as a dish.

-A Nut Roast, that was a kind of main course, I guess. It was a kind of a vegan meatloaf with a demi glace accompanied by broccoli, leek pure and a tomato confit.

-A Cheese course with macademia cheese that was infused with a red pepper cors with a slice of barley bread and some kind of strawberry jam.

-And the dessert: a Moonie Pie, which starred a smoked banana ice cream encased in a chocolate shell with a cacao nibs crust on a jasmin pear compote.

And the best news of all: they're talking with Whole Foods about opening TWENTY branches in the U.S., starting on the East Coast. That'll be a very healthy step forward for the raw food movement in the U.S. because most everyone will have to step up their game to compete.

Three Best Restaurants In Marrakesh... I've Got Two

I've always found Morocco so welcoming and so gay-friendly-- but that's only for foreign gays. The homegrown kind, like we saw when we looked at Abdellah Taïa's story last spring, have a much harder time. In fact, a much, much harder time. I'm going to Marrakesh soon and I've been meaning to post about some of my favorite restaurants there and see if I could get some suggestions from other travelers. But then Rachel Maddow pointed to the gruesome news today that Morocco was one of the 79 backward countries in the UN to have voted in the UN to reserve the right to kill gay people just because they're gay. Yes, of course Uganda voted that way too. In fact, scanning through the list it looks like every Muslim country did (other than Bosnia, which voted with the civilized world, and Mauritania, Turkmenistan, Turkey and Kyrgyzstan, which were absent) -- even Oman where the Sultan, Qaboos ibn Sa‘id, is a predatory homosexual (as well as a patricide)-- did.

A new U.N. resolution condemns the arbitrary execution of whole classes of humanity, from street kids to indigenous groups. It was to have included sexual minorities, but a bunch of nations balked at protection for LGBTs. The U.N. General Assembly then approved an amendment that removed them from the list.
The vote was 79-70. Here's the list of countries that wanted to reserve the right to kill the gay:

Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Brunei Dar-Sala, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, China, Comoros, Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

That said... let's eat! There are quite a few Google searches for "3 best restaurants in Marrakesh." I've been there over a dozen times-- starting in 1969-- and the last time was about 4 years ago. I thought it was miraculous that this morning I remembered the names of my two favorite restaurants from that trip... and then found that I had posted about them from Morocco at the time.

The only restaurant in Guéliz (the new city) we went to is the justifiably famous Al Fassia. The 2 unique things about it is that it is entirely run by women and that they revel in the concept of a la carte, never an easy thing for foreigners to find. The food was superb and expensive but not over the moon. And, like many Moroccan eateries, if you give them enough notice, they'll prepare things for you to order. The menu has all the best Moroccan standards and you can pick the ones you want and not have to bother with the ones you don't. It was sold out when we went and they said we'd have to come another time but begging and pleading helped and we were seated in an hour... For our big night out the El Cadi's manager suggested we go to the Dar Zellij deep in the heart of the medina. I was intrigued because it isn't in any of the tourist guide books, although it is very much for tourists. We got there considerably before they were ready to serve so we spent some time talking with the very friendly and accommodating owner. The restaurant is simply one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The food, although the typical tourist menu (unless you call in advance and order what you want, which we did), is PERFECTION. Everything was beyond delicious. And the servings were not gargantuan (as is typical in Morocco), although if you're a glutton, have no fear: they're happy to serve seconds on any dish you want more of.

So I'm looking for some suggestions along these lines, restaurants where the chefs are out to impress the customers with the best that they can do. Please let me know if you've found any along those lines. (I've already got Le Tobsil and Yacout on my list, so what I'm looking for is something delicious but not grand.) I also hear that there's a vegan restaurant in town now! Earth Cafe Marrakesh is also organic; it opened in 2007 (and they have a version opening, or just opened, in Essaouira too).

Hungry? The 50 Best Restaurants In The World-- And The 100 Best... And Good Dining In L.A. Too

molecular gastronomy

Roland seemed pissed off yesterday when he told me that CNN reported that the new San Pellegrino list of the 50 best restaurants in the world was out and that there isn't one single Los Angeles restaurant on it. It probably didn't cheer him up any when I said that if Pellegrino expanded to the top 100, L.A. still would probably not make it. (I was right.) And the kinds of restaurants that Roland and I favor these days-- healthy ones-- don't even get considered. In fact, we were sitting in Life Food Organic when he mentioned it, munching tiramisu as delicious as anything we ate at Il Canto in Siena's Certosa De Maggiano Hotel-- only not harmful to our well-beings.

On the other hand, except for professional gourmands, who's eaten in as many of these restaurants as we have? The shock of Noma in Copenhagen being named the best restaurant in the world over El Bulli in Roses, Spain came as a bit of a shock-- although probably more to Ferran Adrià than to us-- but neither of us is that big a Scandinavian food fan anyway. And El Bulli (between Barcelona and Perpignan)... any time! El Bulli has been numero uno over and over again. This review by Sue Dyson and Roger McShane will give you an accurate idea of what we love about it.

A visit to El Bulli requires a willingness to suspend the reality that eating is a basic fundamental of life, something we do in order to survive. There is little about a meal here that bears any relationship to notions of eating for living. It's an experience that will give you sensual and intellectual pleasure, as far removed from eating to live as reading Kafka is to following a set of instructions on how to program a video recorder. The connection is there but it's not immediately obvious.

In a world where too many people struggle to get the calories they need just to survive, it is a luxury to eat just for the pleasure of a series of tantalising games, where the satisfaction of hunger doesn't seem to have any part in the motivation for preparing and offering the meal.

Once you accept all that, and it doesn't take long because from the moment you arrive it's so beguiling, then you're in for a memorable experience, one which the restaurant staff appear to enjoy as much as the diners. If you choose the degustation menu, and on a first visit almost everyone does, you'll experience some 25 different tastes, each one memorable and some exquisite.

...The meal is progression of some eleven courses. Some are a single dish. Others are a collection of three or four exquisite tastes. In all, you'll eat about 25 different dishes. Sometimes, you're given strict instructions on how to eat something, for example the famous pea soup, served in thin cone-shaped glass. Drink it all in one go is the advice. While the texture and colour remain constant, as you drink the temperature changes, starting hot and finishing cold. It's a fascinating education as the flavour changes along with the temperature, its ‘peaishness' more obvious as the temperature lowers.

Every dish is served with purpose-designed crockery. In fact every element of this place appears purpose-designed, not least the streamlined and beautiful kitchen, where each small masterpiece is constructed, and which chef Ferran Adriá's partner and master of the front of house, Juli Soler, shows off proudly.

Highlights? Although famous for his ethereal foams, which aim to capture the essence of a flavour, and which have now crossed the Atlantic and have even been sighted in Singapore, for us two of the most memorable flavours were ravioli. One, sea-urchin ravioli, served with a sea-urchin jelly, had a rich, creamy intensity. It was served with pineapple and mango jelly, a fennel jus, and a raspberry-coloured foam made from aromatic herbs! Another ravioli was almost transparent, revealing ahead of the first bite, small bright-green broad beans and just a hint of a strong ham. A later ravioli was filled with oysters, served with oyster jelly, with seaweed and tea foam. Hidden inside this were two tiny, invisible, pieces of extraordinary-intense lemon zest, revealed only in the mouth...

But this is Noma's year and everyone is raving about the young, aggressively Nordic chef René Redzepi. He's all about "a regional, seasonal agenda that is right on the cutting edge: if it isn't available in the Nordic region, he won't cook with it. The result is a very idiosyncratic style of food that speaks to concerns about the way a global food culture turns our eating experiences a uniform beige."

But it goes much further than the agenda: Redzepi is a gifted cook with an extraordinary palate who does amazing things with wild herbs and flowers, bitter green leaves and the freshest local seafood.

In some quarters, of course, the decision will be read as a slap in the face for the modernists, especially for El Bulli and the Fat Duck.

Heston Blumenthal, chef and owner of the Fat Duck, responds-- quite reasonably, I think-- that if his or Ferran Adrià's restaurants had plummeted down the list, then that might well be a viable argument; as it is, what we are really seeing is just a little bit of jostling in the rankings.

What other stories are there? The UK has just three entries, with Claude Bosi's Hibiscus making its first appearance, alongside Fergus Henderson's St John. There are a couple of other places in the UK I would happily see in there, but I can't argue with that overall result: three out of 50 for the UK seems about right. It was always absurd that London restaurants such as Nobu and Hakkasan ever made a showing. The best Japanese and Chinese restaurants in the world being in London? Ludicrous.

The fact that Chateaubriand is the highest ranked French restaurant, ahead of all the over-gilded gastro-palaces, is a breath of fresh air. It is a low key bistro, with apparently fabulous food (I've never been) and if the food is what matters more than the decor then that has to be a good thing. I'm delighted that Japan, with two restaurants, makes a showing, though it is still grossly under-represented.

We keep trying to fiddle with the judging system to up Japan's representation but it's very tough, because the interplay between Japan and the rest of the world remains low key. And that's what's needed for a restaurant to break through: lots of people from outside the country in which it is situated eating there.

Of course, lots of people will take issue with the list: in some European countries it has been decried as some sort of fix (though god knows how you are supposed to fix the votes of 800 people). As I've said in previous years, that sort of thing is taking it far too seriously.

Is it the definitive ranking of the world's top restaurants? Absolutely not, because there is no such thing as a definitive answer to the question. It is just a list, and we all love one of those. Each year, as a result of its publication we argue for a few days about the merits of certain restaurants over each other and, while it is only a tiny part of the conversation to be had around food, that has to be a good thing.

Aside from El Bulli. my faves from the list this year are-- in order of list rankings, not mine-- Daniel in NYC, Per Se (NYC), Pierre Gagnaire (Paris), Le Bernardin (NYC), Iggy's (Singapore), L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon (Paris), the French Laundry (Yountville, although they also have a wonderful affiliate, Mozaic in Ubud, in the middle of Bali that we love), the aforementioned Il Canto, Alain Ducasse (in my favorite place to stay in Paris, the Plaza Athénée), Biko (Mexico City), Hibiscus (London), Eleven Madison Park (NYC), and then in the bottom 50, Jean Georges (NYC), Chez Panisse (Berkeley), The River Cafe (London), Enoteca Pinchiorri (Florence), Masa (NYC) and La Pergola (Rome).

If there's a restaurant remotely like Spain's El Bulli in Los Angeles it's a new Basque, not Catalan, restaurant opened by José Andrés (who actually trained under El Bulli's Adrià) at the SLS Hotel on La Cieniga. The L.A. Times described the experience of eating there as "Fellini-esque, a gastronomical circus, a flirtation with the flavors and soul of Spain? Los Angeles has never seen anything remotely like this..." If any L.A. restaurant is ever going to wind up on that San Pellegrino list, it's El Bazaar. We took a friend from out of town there last weekend. When it first opened, the Wall Street Journal reviewed it and came away saying it "may be the future of fine dining." It cost over $12 million to put together. "It serves no appetizers or entrees: All meals are made up of tapas, and signature items include drinks and canapés dipped in vats of liquid nitrogen. First-time visitors might wander the ground floor of the SLS Hotel looking for the restaurant-- and not realize that they are already standing in it. A palm-reader roams the floor, offering predictions... A mobile cart of liquid nitrogen wheels up to tables that order a $20 Brazilian cocktail, which is dipped and instantly frozen in the steaming brew. Another cart offers 'Cotton Candy Foie Gras,' a block of rich paté that a waiter twirls in spun sugar. A third cart serves "caviar cones," fish eggs served in paper-thin pastry cones... Half the menu belongs to the category of avant-garde cuisine, or molecular gastronomy, which uses advances in culinary science to create new flavors and textures. Mr. Andrés's "olive oil bon bon," for example, looks like a tiny glass sculpture but is in fact olive oil encased in solidified sugar; bite down and it bursts flavorfully in the mouth. Avant-garde cuisine has transformed fine dining in Europe. American avant-garde chefs, from Grant Achatz of Chicago's Alinea to Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 in New York, are heroes to many young chefs."

We're having dinner at Cru tonight. The food is organic, healthfully prepared, delicious and... well eating there will add years to your life, rather than cut it short. Here's the menu (click to enlarge it):

L.A.'s Best New Restaurant: Lifefood Organic

I don't write much about restaurants and hotels or any kind of attractions in Los Angeles, not because it's an unworthy of tourist attention, but because I live here. But it dawned on me the other day that with so many tourists flocking to L.A. I should point out my newest favorite restaurant. Sort of restaurant... most exclusive restaurant in town (only 6 seats)! I want to back track first.

A few weeks ago I was with some friends celebrating my birthday at an old L.A. favorite, A.O.C. Our regular wonderful waitress Suzanne (from Sweden) wasn't there and we got stuck with someone who would rather be an asshole than be helpful. So when I asked for the sublime Brussels sprouts in parsnip purée dish I had had earlier in the week to be brought with no bits of pork or ham or whatever pig flesh they use to screw it up with, she said it wasn't possible. But it was possible. Suzanne had gotten it for us a few days previous and I had been dreaming about it since. In fact, it's why I picked A.O.C. for the celebration. She said I was mistaken. I ordered the broccoli with garlic and chili instead and the meal was very good. Everyone loved everything they ate. Afterwards a cook came over to say happy birthday and discuss the Brussels sprouts problem. Turned out her name is Suzanne too-- Suzanne Goin.

I don't watch cooking shows on TV and I don't follow chef celebrity but my friend Heather was kvelling. Turns out Suzanne Goin is the chef-- and one of the most renowned in the chef celebrity circuit. She was very sweet too. Heather mentioned she's also the chef at Lucques, where I hadn't been since I turned in my company credit card. But Suzanne sure knows how to cook up some good food-- and Lucques is a lot closer than A.O.C. to my home so... a few nights later Roland and I tried to get into our favorite local raw vegan joint, Cru and, as happens more and more frequently these days, it was too crowded and we had to walk away. On the spur on the moment we decided to go "someplace different" and I called Lucques and they said, "Come on down." We did. Of course it was delicious. But I had a realization while I was eating. It was heavy-- really heavy. Everything was cooked in sticks of butter. And when I chatted with the waiter about... the Brussels sprouts, well... they were cooked in veal stock. The food tasted good but was clearly deadly healthwise and very, very expensive. Why bother? How had I drifted so far away from raw vegan to find myself, at least once or twice a week, in places like A.O.C. and Lucques?

The next day, I met up with Roland for dinner again and he basically had had the same thoughts. "Let's eat someplace simpler. Lucques was too heavy." I said "OK, I have just the place!"

Livefood Organic at 1507 Cahuenga in Hollywood, just a few feet from the corner of Sunset Blvd-- and very conveniently located to ArcLight and Amoeba, isn't really a restaurant. It's a raw, vegan take-out place. But there's a nice communal table in the window with 6 stools. It's only been open a few weeks and so far there's always been a little room at the table.

First of all, every single thing they prepare is absolutely delicious, healthy and incredibly inexpensive. And... you can order stuff to go with dignity. I mean that's what it's all about-- that and the healthy eating thing. My mouth is starting to water as I write because I'm thinking of the delicious lasagna I have in my fridge right now that I'll be eating when I'm done writing. Lasagna and blueberry cobbler. Eating at Lifefood Organic isn't about making any compromises with taste. Their food is unquestionably more delicious-- not to mention nutritious-- than the "same" dishes you'll find in conventional restaurants, including-- if not especially in the A.O.C.s and Lucques of the world. If you're a raw foodie, think about this-- their dishes are as good as anything you'll find at Pure Food and Wine in New York City! I've been all over Italy and-- more to the point-- I grew up in NYC and I've never tasted better tiramisu than at Lifefood!

Click on the menu so you can read it-- and a warning: they usually only have a few things on any one day-- but they're ALL yummy

LUNCH IN THE SAME BANGKOK RESTAURANT EVERYDAY FOR A MONTH-- BUSSARACUM, THE BEST RESTAURANT IN THAILAND

I've been visiting Thailand for nearly 30 years now. It's a lot easier to find great food in Bangkok now than it was when I first started going but, ironically, the very first Thai restaurant I ever fell in love with, is still my absolute favorite: Bussaracum. When I first found it, in the 80s, it was in a beautiful free-standing traditional house. It's where I learned what Royal Court cuisine is and how different it is from the 99.9% of other Thai restaurants. A few visits later it moved to the elegant Dusit Thani Hotel, now home to a runner-up Royal Court cuisine restaurant, Benjarong, and then soon after to the ground floor of an office building between Silom and Sathorn, right down the street from the Hindu temple complex at Silom and Pan Road.

[UPDATE: Bussaracum Moved To Sukhumvit 55

I've been visiting them for years and years and through three changes of address. Next time I'm in Bangkok-- in a couple of months-- I'll be at the new location too.]

The restaurant is a special event kind of place with incredible and unique dishes on the menu. By Thai standards it's moderately expensive, though not over the top like the restaurants at the big hotels or the exclusively tourist places like the Blue Elephant. But the 7-day a week buffet lunch is the absolute best deal in town. The food is stunning-- pretty much the same stuff you get on the menu-- and the price (240 baht, which is like $7.30) is mind-bogglingly low. Everyday they offer a different assortment of dishes. And everyday the assortment is very wide. I'm a picky eater. I never had a problem finding lots of delicious, relatively healthful food to eat.

With the exception of an international seafood buffet lunch at Lord Jim's in the Oriental Hotel (expensive by even western standards but really excellent), I had lunch at Bussaracum every single day I was in Bangkok-- and that was nearly a month. Normally I love going around and trying all the good places in Bangkok-- and that was my intention when I first arrived in early December. I've written about the best Thai restaurants in the past and I was eager to get back to Patara, for example. Unfortunately when I got to it, it was just a big hole in the earth. They're supposed to be re-opening in the Sukumvit area... soon.

I always have my first meal in Thailand at Bussaracum and, as usual, it was so delicious that when I found Patara demolished on day 2, I went back to Bussaracum. Every dish they were offering was different. That's when it dawned on me that it didn't make sense to eat anywhere else. The food is the best and so are the prices low (for quality food) that it's actually mind-blowing. Everyday was a wonderful culinary experience. Each day there were 5 or 6 tables laden with food: salads, soup, appetizers, desserts and main courses in chafing dishes. I was thrilled when I realized that aside from the white rice and fried rice, they also have brown rice.

Like I said, each day there were different choices. Over the course of the month, the offerings included this list. I eat fruits, vegetables and seafood but I'm including the meat dishes as well so you can get a good idea of the variety and breadth of their meals.

-Deep-fried shrimps
-Deep-fried Chinese sausage wrapped in omelet
-Deep-fried wonton
-Minced shrimp on toast
-Fried breaded Thai sausage
-Deep-fried crabmeat with minced pork
-Spicy sour sausage salad
-Spicy tuna fish salad
-Cowslip creeper flower spicy salad with shrimp
-Soy bean dip with vegetable
-Fish balls in green curry
-Stir-fried grilled pork with chili paste
-Baked glass noodle with pork
-Fried boiled egg in tamarind sauce
-Fried pork cake
-Fried filet of fish with celery
-Stir-fried bean sprouts with pork
-Stir-fried pork with basil leaves & long beans
-Deep-fried minced vegetables wrapped in bean curd pastry
-Spicy minced duck salad
-Grilled pork neck spicy salad
-Grilled duck in red curry
-Steamed crabmeat curry
-Deep-fried filet of seabass with chili sauce
-Fried mixed vegetables
-Clear soup
-Deep-fried breaded marinated chicken
-Deep-fried breaded marinated chicken
-Stir-fried pork with basil leaves & eggplant
-Stir-fried Tuna fish with chili
-Chili paste dip with yellow eggplant & omelet
-Fried rice with tamarind chili paste
-Deep-fried filet of fish with celery
-Stir-fried pork with cashew nuts
-Stir-fried spring onion with pork liver in oyster sauce
-Stir-fried long bean with squids
-Stir-fried pork with black pepper sauce
-Spicy crabmeat salad
-Spicy pork sausage salad
-Spicy squid salad with lemongrass
-Vegetable spice-dip with shrimp
-Thai noodles with curry fish sauce southern style
-Catfish in green curry
-Pork in red curry Northern style
-Baked pork with vegetables in brown sauce
-Fried pork with garlic & peppers
-Steamed mushroom curry
-Stir-fried fish fillet with celery
-Fried pork with sweet pepper
-Stir-fried vegetables with crispy pork
-Spicy-dip fried rice with salty egg
-Barbecued marinated pork on skewers
-Variety choice of salad with ham
-Thick curry with chicken
-Shang Hai noodle soup
-Deep-fried eggroll wrapped with carrots and peas
-Spicy grilled catfish salad 
-Thai noodles with chicken curry sauce
-Grilled pork in curry sauce
-Stir-fried white lettuce with shrimp balls
-Stir-fried Shanghai noodles with pork and basil
-Minced shrimps & pork in mashed taro
-Pork leg in spicy soup
-Fish & banana bud cake
-Tamarind soup with Sesbania flower
-Fried glass noodles with salty egg
-Asparagus & carrots in oyster sauce
-Deep-fried minced vegetable wrapped in bean curd pastry-Baked glass noodle with pork
-Stir-fried squash with carrot
-Sweetened lotus stem custard
-Stir-fried bean sprouts with crispy pork & soft beancurd
-Spicy lotus stem salad with shrimps & chicken
-Baked chicken with vegetable in brown sauce
-Tuna fish curry with Thai noodles
-Chicken leg in soya soup
-Stir-fried chicken with bamboo shoots in chili paste
-Stir-fried squid in chili paste
-Chicken wings in soya soup
-Traditional Thai noodles with coconut milk sauce
-Lotus stems in coconut milk with mackerel
-Mackerel in thick curry
-Chicken wings soup with pickled lime
-Three kinds of mushrooms in oyster sauce
-Stir-fried chicken with lemongrass
-Quail egg salad
-Deep-fried crabmeat & minced pork sausage
-Dried shrimp spice-dip with vegetables
-Baked shrimp with glass noodles
-Steamed squid curry
-Stir-fried Taiwanese vegetable with oyster sauce
-Papaya salad with coconut cream rice
-Spicy straw mushrooms salad
-Deep-fried breaded fish balls
-Deep-fried bean curd
-Stir-fried pork balls in curry with bamboo shoots
-Noodle soup with pork
-Deep-fried breaded fish sausage
-Spicy wing bean salad with mint leaves 
-Stir-fried macaroni with crabmeat
-Fried rice with pork
-Lotus seeds with coconut cream
-Stir-fried pork with oyster sauce
-Spicy chicken breast salad
-Thai noodles with peanut curry sauce
-Grilled pork in green curry
-Roasted chicken in red curry
-Stir-fried squids and green bean in chili paste
-Pork noodle soup
-Pork spare rib spicy soup
-Fried boiled egg in tamarind sauce
-Thai noodles/ fish curry sauce
-Steamed fish
-Spice-dip fried rice with salty egg
-Spicy squid salad
-Thick fish curry
-White bean sauce dip with vegetables
-Northern-style spice dip with mince pork & tomato
-Bitter squash salad with minced pork and shrimp
-White mushroom salad
-Ground pork & pork skin salad with peanut
-Fried spicy noodles
-Stir-fried kale with salty fish
-Chinese sausage salad
-Bussaracum spice-dip with salty egg & crispy catfish
-Stir-fried cauliflower & carrot with oyster sauce
-Pork ball green curry
-Chinese herbal leave salad with pork & shrimps
-Spicy shrimp balls salad
-Vegetable spice-dip with fried pork
-Fish ball green curry
-Fried Cha-om in tamarind soup
-Shang Hai noodle soup with pork
-Fried glass noodle with pork
-Stir-fried pork spare with chili paste
-Deep-fried sun dried pork
-Pork noodle in bitter squash soup
-Fried pork with chili
-Ginger, shrimps, pork & chicken salad
-Crab meat & minced pork sausage
-Deep-fried chicken with cumin
-Fried noodle
-Sweetened coconut in coconut milk
-Fried mackerel salad
-Fish’s maw, crispy squid and peanut salad
-Chicken green curry
-Deep-fried E-San sausage
-Pork cake brochette with lemongrass
-Spicy-dip with salty egg & crispy catfish
-Broccoli, mushroom & carrot with oyster sauce
-Crispy yellow noodle with pork in gravy sauce
-Pork noodle soup
-Tuna in brown sauce
-Stir-fried pork stuffed pepper
-Steamed chicken curry with coconut milk
-Thick curry with chicken
-Mussel salad with lemongrass
-Traditional Thai vegetable soup
-Egg noodle soup with roasted pork
-Eggroll with minced pork and green peas
-Stir-fried pork spare ribs with chili paste
-Sweetened tapioca with corn kernels & young coconut
-Sa-rim
-Mango salad with anchovies
-Minced pork & corn cake
-Stuffed squid with minced pork in green curry
-Spicy lemongrass salad
-Spicy sausage salad
-Fish balls green curry
-Three kinds of vegetable in brown sauce
-Fish’s maw, crispy squid and peanuts salad
-Crispy chicken salad with lemongrass
-Pork leg in brown sauce
-Drunken pork with coconut sprout
-Spice dip young peppercorn with omelet
-Sweet crispy noodles
-Mussel salad
-Stir-fried squid with chili paste
-Fried noodles with chicken
-Steamed crabmeat with coconut curry
-Stir-fried chicken with yellow chili & bamboo shoots
-Fried squash with egg, pork and shrimp
-Spicy cockles salad with Lemongrass
-Cockles salad
-Stuffed chicken wings in thick curry
-Omelet with pork & vegetables
-Fried rice with ham
-Fried soft bean curd
-Minced shrimp on toast
-Stir-fried lettuce with shrimp balls
-Pork skin salad with deep-fried rice balls
-Spicy mushroom salad
-Spice dip & boiled egg
-Shrimp sauce dip with vegetables
-Chicken in pandanus leaves
-Sweet & sour fish
-Stir-fried chicken & mushrooms in chili paste
-Pork masaman curry
-Minced pork stuffed chicken legs
-Rice balls
-Spicy mixed salad
-Chicken sausage & pork salad
-Fried rice with pineapple
-Stir-fried pork in green curry sauce
-Spicy minced chicken salad
-Combination mixed spicy salad
-Baked chicken with vegetables
-Shrimp-stuffed fish cakes
-Yellow chicken curry
-Stir-fried crabmeat with curry powder
-Stir-fried chicken with cashew nuts
-Fried beef with oyster sauce
-Fried pork with basil leaves
-Fried pork cake
-Stir-fried grilled pork with curry paste
-Stir-fried young kale with oyster sauce
-Finger crab salad
-Minced pork, bean curd & bean sprout wrapped in large noodle
-Spicy seafood salad
-Stuffed minced pork & condiments in tapioca balls
-Stir-fried kale in oyster sauce
-Filet of fish in green curry
-Spicy crispy chicken salad
-Fried chicken with garlic & pepper
-Stir-fried pork with chili paste & mushroom
-Sweetened taro in coconut milk
-Crabmeat & pork sausage
-Boiled egg spicy salad
-Spicy morning glory Salad with shrimps
-Tuna salad with lemongrass
-Salty fish dip with vegetables
-Stewed chicken legs
-Mushroom & fish cake
-Fried chicken salad
-Spicy Tuna fish salad
-Crispy rice with minced pork dip
-Spice dip with green mango & Thai omelet
-Stewed duck noodle soup
-Stir-fried asparagus with crispy pork
-Sticky rice
-Stir-fried chicken with soya bean sauce
-Fried fish with basil leave
-Tamarind spice dip with omelet
-Chicken in red curry with green melon
-Fried rice with crabmeat
-Stir-fried Taiwanese vegetable
-Pork noodle soup
-Cowslip creeper flower in tamarind soup with shrimps
-Deep-fried fish in tamarind sauce & fresh ginger
-Deep-fried catfish salad with lemongrass
-Fried pork with pineapple
-Chicken curry puff
-Fried chicken with lemongrass
-Stir-fried chicken with chili paste
-Fried pork with basil leaves
-Chicken fried rice
-Spicy soft bean curd
-Fried Cantonese vegetable with oyster sauce
-Deep-fried spring rolls
-Fried potato Thai style
-Pork salad with eggplant and lemongrass
-Salty egg dip with vegetables
-Stir-fried squid with basil leaves
-Fried macaroni with chicken
-Fried kale with oyster sauce
-Stir-fried squash with pork & egg
-Fried rice with crabmeat
-Stir-fried chicken with fresh ginger
-Sesbania flower salad with shrimps
-Spice dip young peppercorn with Thai omelet
-Fish balls in wonton pastry
-Spicy black mushroom salad
-Shrimps dip with vegetables
-Spicy lemongrass salad
-Stuffed crescents with mung bean fillings
-Fried chicken with condiments
-Chieng Mai sausage salad
-Grilled pork in green curry
-Masaman chicken curry
-Steamed fish curry
-Stir-fried kale with crispy pork
-Sweet and sour chicken
-Fried fish balls with chili paste
-Pork in red curry
-Fried mixed vegetables
-Stir-fried bitter squash leaves with oyster sauce
-Stir-fried fish in brawn sauce
-Stir-fried cabbage with oyster sauce
-Three kinds of mushroom salad
-Spicy Shang Hai noodle salad
-Chicken noodle soup
-Fried fish & mushroom cake
-Stuffed sweet pepper with pork in brawn sauce
-Fried fish cake
-Deep-fried bean curd
-Stir-fried chicken & long bean with chili paste
-Fried egg topping with green peas & minced pork sauce
-Squids in green curry
-Fish balls noodle soup
-minced shrimp and pork in mashed taro
-Spicy fresh ginger salad with pork, chickens & shrimps
-Gravy noodle with pork
-Gravy noodle with chicken
-Steamed fish with ginger
-Stuffed bitter squash with pork in brawn sauce
-Cauliflower & broccoli with oyster sauce
-Kale & Chinese sausage fried rice
-Stir-fried squid with basil leaves
-Papaya salad
-Stir-fried pork spare ribs with chili paste
-Fried squids with curry powder
-Stir-fried chicken with basil leaves & coconut sprout
-Egg noodle with roasted pork
-Egg noodle with pork
-Egg noodle with chicken
-Boiled egg salad
-Deep-fried taro with black bean
-Deep-fried fish with chili paste
-Fried steamed fish in chili sauce
-Shrimp paste dip with vegetables & fried fish
-Sour soup with pork, potato & basil leaves
-Stir-fried mixed vegetables
-Grilled pork with spicy dip
-Flower tempura
-Stir-fried chicken with chili
-Fried chicken in pandanus leaves
-Green salad
-Salty fish & kale fried rice
-Fried fish cake with glass noodle
-Egg custard
-Steamed fish with plum
-Stir-fried roasted duck with chili & basil leaves
-Combinations of jelly
-Crispy rice cups
-Spicy fish balls salad
-Drunken pork with bamboo shoots
-Stuffed chicken wings with pork
-Deep-fried chicken with cumin
-Green mango salad
-Spicy dip fresh chili with deep-fried pork skin
-Deep-fried catfish with chili paste
-Baked pork with honey
-Steamed fish curry with fresh bamboo shoots
-Deep-fried breaded mackerel
-Stir-fried pickled vegetable with crispy pork
-Yellow noodle soup with chicken
-Stir-fried pork with chili
-Stir-fried pork balls with chili
-Deep-fried vegetable spring rolls with condiments
-Fried eggs topping with minced pork & green pea
-Fried rice with egg
-Fried Cha-om spicy salad
-Steamed mussels curry
-Three kinds of mock ark shells
-Stir-fried tuna fish with chili sauce
-Boiled quail eggs salad
-Deep-fried breaded fish balls
-Fried mackerel Hor d’ oeuvres with lemongrass
-Stir-fried fillet with celery
-Pork curry with morning glory
-Pork skin salad with deep-fried rice balls
-Fried fish spice dip with boiled eggs
-Baked chicken legs with kale
-Fried noodle Thai style
-Stir-fried vegetables with crabmeat
-Egg bean curd with minced pork, carrot & green peas
-Chicken fried rice
-Fish spice dip with boiled egg
-Spicy sausage salad
-Spicy chopped duck salad
-Grilled pork salad with kale
-Spicy mushroom salad
-Spicy squid salad with Lemongrass
-Spicy lemongrass salad
-Spicy catfish salad with green mango
-Spicy crabmeat salad
-Glass noodle salad
-Mussels salad with lemongrass
-Spicy shrimp balls salad
-Spicy Shang Hai noodle salad
-Glass noodle salad with shrimps, pork & chicken
-Grilled pork salad with lemongrass & eggplants
-Spicy coconut sprout salad
-Spicy banana bud salad
-Crispy chicken salad with lemongrass
-Spicy wing bean salad
-Grilled pork with spice dip
-Fried fish salad
-Spicy mussels salad
-Stir-fried chicken with long bean in chili paste
-Stir-fried pork with long bean in chili paste
-Stir-fried chicken & bamboo shoots with chili
-Stir-fried chicken & long bean in chili paste
-Stir-fried squids with chili paste
-Steamed Seabass with lime sauce
-Stir-fried fish balls with yellow chili
-Stir-fried catfish with yellow chili
-Minced pork in cucumber soup
-Fish stuffed bell peppers in dry curry
-Rice pastry with minced pork
-Spicy bean sprout salad
-Vietnamese pancake
-Deep-fried wanton pastry
-Tuna fish in dried curry
-Ham dips with vegetables
-Deep-fried breaded crab finger
-Pork & chicken sausage salad
-Chicken cake
-Pan-fried chicken with lemongrass, garlic & chili
-Deep-fried pork with salty fish
-Steamed Seabass in herb soup
-Grill fish spicy dip with boiled egg
-Cowslip creeper flower salad with shrimps
-Deep-fried eggroll wrapped with carrots & peas
-Spicy minced pork salad
-Stewed pork soup
-Royal Thai sweet crispy noodle
-Spicy-dip with salty egg
-Fish balls in green curry
-Deep-fried filet of fish in tamarind sauce
-Heaven dish
-Stir-fried pork with long bean in chili paste
-Deep-fried whole banana wrapped with soft sticky rice mixed
-Chicken in thick yellow curry
-Chicken wing in brown sauce
-Fried fish cake
-Stir-fried kale with salty fish in oyster sauce
-Crabmeat fried rice
-Steamed jasmine rice
-Minced pork toast
-Crispy cup with crispy noodles
-Deep fried spring rolls
-Deep-fried catfish with garlic & pepper in chili paste
-Deep-fried minced pork with salty egg
-Asparagus, baby corn & carrot in oyster sauce
-Deep-fried taro
-Spicy seafood salad
-Finger crab in wonton pastry
-Pork in thick curry
-Spicy glass noodle salad
-Shrimp paste dip with green mango & omelet
-Green curry with chicken
-Spicy chicken soup with mushroom
-Fried egg in brown sauce with minced pork & green peas
-Fried fish cake
-Fried chicken with cashew nuts
-Deep-fried filet of Seabass with black pepper
-Vegetarian fried rice
-Thai noodle with mushroom curry sauce
-Egg noodle with mock roasted pork
-Stir-fried vegetarian glass noodle
-Pineapple fried rice
-Crispy rice with vegetarian sauce dip
Deep-fried banana bud
-Spicy white mushroom salad
-Spicy black mushroom salad
-Soy bean dip with vegetables
-Mock baked pork with kale in brown sauce
-Steamed vegetarian curry
-Stir-fried green bean with chili paste
-Stir-fried Macaroni
-Deep-fried pumpkin stick
-Spicy pomelo salad
-Soft bean curd in thick curry
-Bean curd in soy bean soup
-Stir-fried vegetable in soy bean sauce
-Spicy mushroom salad
-Bean curd yellow curry
-Stir-fried asparagus with crispy pork
-Pan-fried Seabass with lemongrass, garlic & chili
-Stir-fried chicken with fresh chili
-Filet of Seabass in green curry
-Spicy chicken soup in coconut milk
-Spicy anchovy, chicken & crispy pork salad
-Chicken with cashew nuts
-Steamed egg with tomatoes and garlic
-Squid with curry powder
-Sun dried shrimp spice-dip with vegetables
-Salad with pork sausage
-Stir-fried pork with basil leaves & eggplant
-Bean curd with minced pork
-Sea food fried rice
-Fried fish fillet in red curry
-Deep fried fish spicy salad
-Stir-fried chicken with bamboo shoots in chili paste
-Bean curd and seaweed soup
-Bake squid with glass noodle
-Stir-fried sausages with oyster sauce
-Fried rice with egg and kale
-Mango salad with crispy fish
-Stir-fried spicy sour sausage
-Vietnamese pancake soup
-Mango salad with shrimp
-Fish ball in red curry
-Spicy mango dip and crispy catfish
-Stir-fried bean curd
-Dauk kae-flower stuffed with minced shrimp and pork
-Shark fin soup
-Chicken, crispy fish & pork salad
-Crispy fried squid
-Fried fish chili curry
-Pork spare ribs in thick curry
-Stir-fried cabbage, broccoli and carrots with pork
-Mackerel Fish in dried curry

And although I stuck to the delicious fresh fruits-- including some I had never had before-- for dessert, Roland tried everything-- and liked most of it. Here are some of the desserts over the course of the month (plus ice cream):
-Pandanus flavored taro in sweetened coconut milk
-Apple Salad
-Rainbow jelly
-Chinese dumplings, filled with minced bean
-Sweetened white potato in coconut milk
-Dates in syrup
-Sweetened tapioca in coconut milk & sesame seeds
-Pandanus rice and Thai melon in sweetened coconut
-Steamed coconut pudding
-Taro custard
-Palm fruit in syrup
-Sweetened taro
-Palm fruit in syrup
-Mixed fruit compote
-Mock Fruits
-Two-tone layer cake
-Steamed tapioca cake
-Candied banana
-Coconut jelly
-Grass jelly and palm fruit in syrup with crushed ice
-Colorful Thai desserts
-Tapioca pearl in sweetened coconut and longan
-Black glutinous rice pudding with taro
-Coffee jelly
-Mock fruits jelly
-Sweetened tapioca with corn kernels & young coconut
-Sweetened water chestnut with coconut flavor
-Potato in palm sugar syrup
-Sweetened black beans in coconut milk
-Water chestnut, palmfruit & lentils in syrup
-Sweet tapioca & coconut with pandanus flavor
-Fruit juice jelly
-Sweetened tapioca
-Fruits jelly
-Sweet-mixed banana with coconut
-Sticky rice with custard topping
-Tapioca & pumpkin in coconut milk
-Black bean jelly
-Guava salad
-Fruit salad Thai style
-Coconut balls in coconut milk
-Glutinous rice fingers
-Job’s tears in sweetened coconut syrup
-Job’s tears with lotus seeds in sweetened coconut syrup
-Sweetened Ruby chestnut in coconut milk
-Sweetened pumpkin in coconut milk
-Sweet steamed pumpkin
-Sweet steamed banana
-Ruby in syrup
-Sweetened banana in coconut milk
-Jackfruit in syrup
-Green tea jelly
-Sticky rice topping with sugar & coconut
-Traditional Thai dessert with ice & syrup
-Chamomile jelly
-Watermelon jelly
-Rambutan in syrup
-Palm sugar rice balls
-Traditional Thai dessert stuffed sweet coconut
-Steamed melon cake
-Pineapple juice jelly
-Glutinous rice finger
-Mango sherbet
-Pandanus coconut jelly
-Sweetened tapioca in coconut milk
-Three colors rice balls
-Basil seeds jelly
-Black glutinous rice pudding with taro and coconut milk
-Rice balls with poached egg in coconut milk
-Taro balls in coconut milk
-Rice balls with young coconut flesh
-Mock ark shells in coconut cream
-Corn pudding
-Rice pudding with longan
-Mung beans pudding
-Sweetened hornnut in coconut milk
-Longan jelly
-Steamed butterfly pea cake
-Steamed pandanus tapioca pearl cake
-Steamed taro cake
-Sweet golden net
-Sweetened pumpkin
-Taro custard
-Sweetened taro with coconut flavor
-Sweet potato in coconut milk
-Sweetened sticky rice in bamboo
-Sweetened Durian with sticky rice
-Coconut custard
-Sweetened palm fruit with coconut flavor
-Rice balls in coconut milk
-Wild mangosteen in syrup
-Carrot custard
-Sweet soft sticky rice
-Mung bean Thai custard
-Steamed coconut milk cake
-Glutinous rice fingers in coconut cream
-Rice pudding with longan
-Mung beans cake
-Pineapple in syrup
-Custard Salee fruit
-"Five Thai Treats" in coconut milk
-Taro, potato & pumpkin in coconut milk
-Tapioca pearls in coconut cream
-Pandanus fingers & Thai melon with crushed ice
-Sweetened tapioca pearl with corn kernels
-Steamed sweetened coconut milk with water chestnut
-Steamed tapioca pearl
-Sticky rice pudding with longon
-Wood Apple (Kathorn) in syrup with crushed ice
-Mangl Mangluck Jelly


UPDATE: July, 2009

I found the new Bussarucum, way down Suhkumvit and then up Thong Lo. It wasn't hard to find at all. It's in the back of a Chinese restaurant owned by the same folks. They still have the all-you-can eat buffet lunch for about $7 and it's pretty good. I couldn't not try it again but... I'll be sticking with Rasayana here on out.



UPDATE: November, 2011

Last trip to Bangkok I pretty much ate all my meals at Rasayana, which is both delicious and healthy and has a peaceful vibe. But it's far from where I stay. Had Bussarucum been back in the old neighborhood, I can tell you for 100% I would have eaten there a few times at least. And today I got an e-mail from them telling me that they HAVE moved back to the old neighborhood. I must have eaten in this restaurant in half a dozen locations over the years. But now I can't wait to go back. The new address is 1 Sri Wiang Road (off Soi Pramuan, which is between Silom and Sathorn). It's perfect for walking from where we stay on the river. And here's the map: