The Meandering Noodle

Portugal - Lisbon

So, I should probably have done this trip report earlier when the trip was fresher in my mind, but I didn't have this blog up yet. In September I went on this amazing trip in Portugal. I think Portugal is one amazing country and it seems to be very underrated. It's a very nice city to walk around and to just explore. The many hills, trams and small windy cobblestone roads made for a very cool city to just get lost in.

 Since it was by the seaside, I assumed that there seafood would be pretty good. I was not wrong - it was delicious! All the seafood that I had there was so fresh. The clams, shrimp, fish were all spectacular, but far and away my consistent favorite in Portugal was their octopus!

The first restaurant that I realized they were doing something amazing with their octopus was in A Travessa. The octopus was deliciously charred on the edges but it basically melted in your mouth in the middle. I never knew octopus could taste like that. I just assumed that it would taste kinda like calamari, where it is always a little chewy. However, A Travessa, I learnt was a fancier restaurant. They served a bunch of small little appetizers that are supposed to be shared by the table followed up by a main course and a desert. Their presentation seemed to be atypical for Portuguese restaurants, which didn't seem to care too much about presentation, but the food looked delicious and photographed well!

Olive tapenade appetizer.

There deserts weren't bad either!

We went to another more traditional Portuguese restaurant which also turned out to be a big hit, Solar dos Presuntos. During lunch time, this place is packed with regulars, of the business men sort. Tons of people came through here wearing suits and they all seemed to be on very very good terms with the owners. What was interesting to see, was that the owners seemed to be eating lunch at this place as well - which can't be a bad sign! They had a table on the first floor in front of the kitchen where the entire family seemed to be hanging out, through the entirety of the lunch time service. And obviously we went straight for the seafood.

The octopus was amazing. Done differently than the previous restaurant but still so so good.

These garlic prawns were also a big big hit. I was mopping up the olive oil sauce with the bread even after all the prawns were gone.

Finally for the main event, I had their feijoada with seafood. I think feijoada just translates to beans. It was served with rice. I love eating beans and rice, but once they added their seafood with hits of clams and prawns, it became an instant home run for me. A word of warning, though. After frequenting a few restaurants, portion sizes in Portugal are not small at all! Not even on an American standard. Haha, so needless to say, I was stuffing myself every time we got to the main course because it seemed like such a waste to not eat all of this delicious seafood! I'm going to have to learn some serious self control if I ever go back to Portugal.

Make it snow

So the day we arrived into Beijing, it was snowing. Apparently the Chinese government decided that they needed to make it snow, and figured that making it snow on Sunday would be the least disruptive to businesses. So, they made it snow on Sunday. Since it's almost always a drought there it never snows, so I thought it'd be cool to post a couple pics of snow in Beijing.

Alley behind our hotel.

Forbidden City

DaDong Beijing Roast Duck

You can't go to Beijing without trying Beijing Kao Ya (Peking Roast Duck). Although people can try this dish almost anywhere in the world, the one that you can get in Beijing is still that much better. The past couple times I've gone to Beijing, my favorite restaurant to try this dish has been Da Dong Beijing Roast Duck restaurant. I first heard about this restaurant through Fuschia Dunlop, she wrote an article about this restaurant in the Financial Times. It quickly became one of my favorites. I really enjoyed the different condiments that Da Dong gave that came with the dish. There was grated garlic that you use with the pink radish and of course there was the sweet hoisin sauce with spring onion and cucumbers. One thing that I had never seen anywhere else was that they served the duck skin with sugar - the sugar's supposed to cut through the fat. 

 

After a while, I just stopped eating the pancakes and just kept on munching on the duck itself. However, not only was the roast duck good, they had a bunch of other delicious dishes.

Sichuan style shredded duck wing. It had a nice little "ma la" kick to it that makes your tongue tingle.

This was a braised eggplant dishes. It had delicious pieces of whole roast garlic which I could not stop eating. I'm a big fan of Da Dong, and every time I go to Beijing and try to frequent this restaurant.

Da Dong Roast Duck Restaurant

Noodle Bar, Beijing

I want to kick off this blog with one of my all time favorite foods, noodles! I was just traveling around Asia with some of my friends from high school and we visited one of my favorite noodle shops in the world, the Noodle Bar in Beijing.

It's basically a bar that seats 14 people or so, where you show up, sit down and treat yourself to nice hearty bowl of wheat noodles. I've always gotten the same thing when I'm there, I get this mixed noodle where they give you the a little bit of everything: brisket, tripe and tendon! It's amazing. What I really like about this restaurant, is that unlike a lot of other restaurants in China, they don't flood you with choices. In fact, they basically only have three types of soup noodles. There's a beef one, where you can select what cut of beef you want, there's usually a vegetarian option, and then there's a rotating monthly special. Though you don't have much of a choice, what they do, they do damn well! As an added flair, they'll freshly prepare each order of noodles and will "pull" each bowl to order. It's pretty fun watching the chef effortlessly prepare your noodles.

We arrived in Beijing when the government decided to send missiles into the atmosphere to make it snow! So it was freezing outside. There's nothing better than coming in from the cold and having a nice steaming bowl of delicious soup noodles. It just hits the spot.

Noodle Bar, gong ti bei lu, chao yang district, Beijing, (behind pacific century place)

北京朝阳区工体北路, 太平洋百货南门对面