The Meandering Noodle

Brussels, Belgium

 

I decided that I need to get this post out of the way before I forget everything. Back in September, I was visiting my sister who was going to school in London. She had a free weekend, and we decided to take a trip somewhere. Initially, we wanted to go somewhere in England. But after careful research, we discovered that it only took two hours to go to Brussels from London on the Eurostar!

 Before this trip, I did not know much about Brussels, however, while I was there, I discovered great bistro food, delicious beers and amazing fries. I used to be a big fan of super thin crispy fries, but after this trip, I think I'm converted, I much prefer thicker fries now.

Okay, one of my favorite restaurants on this trip was Chez Vincent. They served delicious bistro food there. Although I didn't try any of their steaks, they all looked amazing. What caught my attention, though, was the steak tartare or Filet Américain which is what is referred to in Belgium. I could not remember the last time I had a steak tartare, and after a year of living in China, where the quality of meat is suspect, I wanted to indulge, in RAW beef. Well, I was not disappointed. I'm often confused when people eat sushi, but look upon steak tartare with disgust. If you like sushi, steak tartare will not disappoint. This one was spot on. The small bits of onions and capers and whatever else they mixed into it provided small bits of surprises that were amazing. My sister got the mussels, which were also really good. Dunking the thick cut fries into the mussel broth to soak up all that goodness was very satisfying.

Another gem that I discovered in Brussels was their beers. They were damn good. One of the things I miss most about living in America, is all the good microbrews that are available to Americans. I guess this was one of the reasons why I enjoyed my trip to Brussels, too. I could indulge in the wide varieties of beers that they had there. Before the trip I had only known about Duvel, but now I realize there is so much more to beers in Belgium.

With all the eating, and drinking, we didn't sightsee too much. We were only there for two days. But there was this one square where they had some pretty cool architecture.

It's pretty hard to miss the square, I can't remember its name right now. But it's really easy to find, it's right near another one of Brussels landmarks - a peeing boy! That's right, talk about a strange landmark. I was actually really underwhelmed when I saw this supposed tourist attraction.

Oh, and I'll leave you with one last picture. I discovered that Belgium is really famous for their chocolate. Me? I'm not a big chocolate fan, and I bought some chocolate there, and I'm still not a huge chocolate fan. My utility for high end chocolate is pretty low. I'd be just as satisfied with a snickers bar as I was with the fancy chocolate that they had in Brussels. But the box does make for a nice picture. I believe this box of chocolate was from Galler.

Chez Vincent, rue des Dominicains 8 - 10, 1000 Bruxelles, 0032 (0)2 511 26 07.

Taiwanese Bento Boxes

 
 So when I was looking around for apartments in Taipei, I came to realize that it seems that all kitchens are very small here. In fact, a lot of the one bedroom apartments I saw only had one burner, and I was lucky if there were two burners. It seems as if the Taiwanese, or at least the people in Taipei, don't cook. Because of this, it seems that a lot of restaurants here cater to a lot of single diners, and they also make it very easy to get your food to go. Just like the dumplings I got that came in these small to go cardboard containers.

 
 Well, one of my favorite "to go" dishes that I've been getting has been the Taiwanese bento box. If you go get chinese rice dishes in China, Hong Kong, or Singapore, very often, there is one main dish over rice and a sparse serving of vegetables. Yes, they can be very good, but there's not much variety. The great thing in Taiwan, is that there are a lot of Japanese influence, since it was a Japanese colony. The bento box, or Biandang (便當) as it known in Chinese, made its way from Japan to Taiwan in the early half of the 20th century - it's been popular ever since.

 
 I'm pretty sure that all the dishes in a Taiwanese bento box is Chinese in origin, but it comes in Japanese packaging. It makes this rice dishes so much more interesting to be able to have all these different flavors come in a separate box designed for one person to eat. Very often in Chinese restaurant to have the full variety of flavors you need many people to eat the many dishes, but not when you have a Taiwanese bento box! Now the usual bento box here has your main protein, rice, some type of pickled vegetables, a stir fried vegetable, tofu and a whole egg. Now, mine pictured above has considerably more stuff there's more meat over my rice and some fish as well. I've been told that there are no hard a fixed rules to the bento box and each place does things a little differently.

 So the bento box that I've been having the most is from Formosa Chang. At first I was confused by their covers, since they don't serve any pizza! But I recently found out that it's a chain all over Taiwan and they outsourced their design to a T-shirt company called Pizza Pizza Cut Five. I was disappointed to learn that it was some huge chain, because I thought I was frequenting some mom and pop joint, but I've gotten over it. More importantly, the place serves good food, it's cheap, and best of all... it's right near my apartment! The last point is quite important when you wanna just go out, grab something quick to eat and pass out on the couch.

Taipei Potstickers

Well, I recently just moved to Taipei, and in the confusion of my move I had left my camera back at one of my relative's place in Hong Kong. Well, I just got my camera back and I decided to share with you some of the simple pleasures that I've been enjoying in Taipei.

Just based of first impressions, it seems that Chinese food in Taipei is much more diverse than individual cities in China. What I mean is that in Shanghai, it seems that the casual eatery was much more Shanghai centric, and the same goes for restaurants in Beijing. However, in Taipei, the casual eatery seems to reflect food from all over China, however, with a Taiwanese flair.

 Since I haven't gotten around to buying kitchen equipment yet, I've been sampling a lot of the restaurants near my apartment. One of my favorites is a dumpling restaurant. I don't know if these are the best dumplings I can get, but it's less than 5 minutes walk from my apartment so that's good enough for me. Pictured above is my favorite kind, pot stickers (guo tie). Typically, the pot stickers that I have seen are crescent shaped, but these seem to be like the ones in Beijing where they are long and cylindrical. They also have these packets of a sweet hoisin like sauce, and hot sauce which tastes very much like Tapatio hot sauce that I used to have back in Texas, except less runny. In China, the only sauce that people used to put on dumplings were soy sauce and vinegary, but these are much much better! The icing on the cake is that each of these pot stickers cost 5 NTD which is roughly 15 cents. So lately I've been getting ten of these pot stickers at lunch for $1.50!