True Thai

So what's a girl to do when she's down? I don't know about you but for me it is all about comfort food. The day I found out that my new boots are being held hostage in Paris while the job fell apart around me, I went for my style of comfort food, which basically means food slathered with peanut sauce. I feel so sad for people who have peanut allergies because, in my book, they are really missing out on a lot of deliciousness.

Esteemed foodies may sneer at my predilection for peanut sauce, but they really shouldn't sneer at True Thai. This is, in my humble opinion, the best Thai food that I have had in Minnesota. It is kind of shocking that I have never written about it but this changes that. I have simply never had a dish that disappoints. Apparently, many people think the same as the size of True Thai is at least double what it was on my first visits 5+ years ago.

As I sat at True Thai this past week eating my Rama Spinach Curry with Tofu, first I felt guilty for eating a menu item that is labeled "a favorite with Minnesotans". Then, I said the hell with it and enjoyed every bite. It is basically a dish of spinach and protein slathered in a heavy coconut milk peanut sauce. The spinach redeems the arguably dessert-like ingredients. Along with another of my favorites, fresh vegetarian spring rolls (with another type of peanut sauce to dip in), this is potentially the dish I would want as my last supper. Or maybe it is just the "to hell with it, I want to love every bite" dinner.

The menu at True Thai goes well beyond the "Minnesota Favorites" with pages on interesting looking dishes that would probably take a good citizen a year to get through. I have enjoyed the curries, the noodles, the appetizers and simply never been disappointed. The servers are also fast and friendly, but don't seem to mind if you linger at your table for hours either.

One final aspect that makes me like True Thai is it's location. Yes, it isn't next to my house but it is right off the the highway and very close to the U of M. This means that it is an easy stopover and that there are always plenty of grad students on dates to watch blush at each other. I kind of love it.

Thumbs Up: Great food, easy vibe, location
Thumbs Down: Not a whole lot

True Thai 2627 East Franklin Minneapolis www.truethairestaurant.com

Sad

What a week!

My heart hurts for the people impacted by the fire at 50th and Bryant. I have worked with the team at Heidi's on Taste of the Nation and they are great people and I also adore their food. Accidents happen but it just not very much fun so my thoughts are with you.

In other sad news of the week, my company decided to last minute cancel my move to France. I was supposed to leave tomorrow. I'll get to go pick up my things in the apartment there so I guess I get one more trip to France but I am very sad. I was really looking forward to this opportunity and had spent a lot of time recently sitting on the Rosetta Stone rather than out discovering new great food here...

Guess that's life...

Food Lit: Remembrance of Things Paris

My excitement is building for my Parisian adventure and it certainly isn't tempered by the amount of reading I am doing about France, and Paris in particular. I turned immediately back to one of my old favorites, Gourmet magazine and found that a number of years back Ruth Reichl put together a collection of pieces about Paris from the magazine and published them into a book covering decades of Paris eating, from writers post WWII until just a few short years ago. The book: Remembrances of Things Paris: 60 Years of Writing from Gourmet.

The collection is a fascinating pieced together overview of the last 50 years of culinary history in Paris, from the shortages post war to the glitz and glam of Maxim's in its hey day to the rise of nouvelle cuisine. Some of the more interesting pieces were about the moving of Les Halles (the huge wholesale market) out of the center city and into suburban warehouses, its void filled with a horrible indoor mall that I remember thinking was ugly on a high school trip. I was also highly entertained by an article called "The Christening" describing a traditional christening brunch amongst the uber wealthy. It was an incredibly witty and tongue-in-cheek piece, critical to the point of almost "in your face" rude. And, then there is Maxim's restaurant, which seems to hold the fascination of a generation of expats in Paris, a social "seen and be seen" restaurant in its post-war heyday. All of the books on Paris I pick up seem to mention this restaurant, where royalty and Hollywood stars dined side by side, uncomfortable squirming and wondering if they indeed had the best seats in the house. I just Googled and you can still go to Maxim's although the pictures look an awful lot like tourists on their website and not royalty...

There were two key themes running through this collection. Both types of pieces were interesting and completely relevant, even those that were 60 years old.The first theme was "change" and reporting back to U.S. readers of Gourmet how Paris is different "now" than in the memories of the times Gourmet subscribers may have visited, before wars, nouvelle cuisine, the rise of the bistro over haute cuisine, and the influx of automobiles. The other theme was how the "other half" lives, specifically the incredibly wealthy set, with their visits to Maxim's, extravagant Cartier jewelry and Dior haute couture.

Overall, this was a very interesting grounding in some of the culinary and gastronomic history of high-end Paris. If you aren't interested in this topic, it isn't a fluffy book to pick up but if history piques your interest, this book is fascinating.

Sidetrip: Zurich, Switzerland

My sadness of leaving my new Paris apartment was easily reversedwhen I stepped off the high speed train in Zurich, Switzerland where my college roommate and her husband waited, having moved to this German section of Switzerland a few months previously.

It was my first visit to Zurich! In the course of my two days there, I think we walked the entire town, seeing the views, the Chagall windows, and the largest clock hands in Europe. Oh, and of course eating! For late lunch, we fought tooth and nail for a table at Sprüngli, the downtown patisserie with a lunchroom above. We slurped the rich hot chocolate while eating minestrone soup and pastries. An odd combination, perhaps, but it seemed the perfect tasting lunch. I loved that the hot chocolate was significantly less sweet than its Swiss Miss counterfeit reproduction. There was even sugar on the side to add in…

Who knew that a vegetarian restaurant could be such a hot spot in Zurich? On Saturday night, the two story megaplex of Hiltl bar and restaurant was swarming with tables filled with young trendy locals and expats. The restaurant’s Twitter site was even projected on the wall, diners making comments as they ate. The menu ranged widely from India to North Africa and most interestingly to me, traditional Swiss specialties prepared vegetarian. We shared a sweet potato risotto to start, which was rich in flavor although a bit crunchy. For my main, I tried a seitan version of Züri Geschnetzeltes, with rosti on the side. The dish was interesting but a bit on the bland side, the white wine with mushroom sauce having very little oomph. The rosti potatoes, much like thicker has browns, were made with yellow potato and were quite delicious although The good Jewish boy at the table commented that he preferred onion filled latkes to these pure potatoes. His Cordon Blue variation with seitan and smoked tofu was much more flavorful, finding the smoky umami that I suspect the pork typically delivers. LS’s meal moved south towards India with the Colonial Rice, a rich curry with rice, nuts, fruits and vegetables. Overall, it was great fun to be able to try “Swiss German” food as a vegetarian and the modern atmosphere of this restaurant takes vegetarianism to a new kind of trendy. I seriously can’t believe that the restaurant is over 100 years old, founded in 1898.

Sunday morning, JS made up a batch of crepes to start the day, inventively creating a tasty persimmon jam as a filling, having been staring at the persimmons in Swiss shops but not quite sure how to use them. Tasting it raw the night before, jam seemed the right way to go. After breakfast, he finally got LS and I off the sofa and out of our chatty catch-up to head back out to conitnue exploring Zurich. The adventure around the side of the lake was one filled with flavor, from the old man feeding thousands of birds to the extensive le snacking that we embarked upon. (I know that we were in German speaking Switzerland but I have a fondness for the “French” word le snacking so it became our theme for the day). We started with roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. Our 300 grams gave us each a good handful of warm, sweet nuts to peel and warm our hands. From chestnuts we moved to pretzels, bought from a cart filled with endless pretzel varieties covered with different seeds or filled with sandwich fixings, even hot dogs. We chose a pretzel covered with raclette cheese, the same variety of cheese used for the traditional Swiss cheese dish that I encourage you to Google as I haven’t yet had it myself!


From pretzels we headed over to the fancy cafeteria of the Globus department store, where we rested in the warmth and split a veggie sandwich between the three of us, hypnotically entranced by the conveyer belt of sushi across the room. A final treat was the gelato at the train station as I bid a fond farewell from Zurich. I don’t think JS really came to wish me goodbye; it was all about the gelato.

My train then rolled across the Swiss landscape to Nyon for one more day of meetings, a quick sleep at an Amsterdam airport hotel, and back to Minneapolis. To wait.

Sidetrip: Nyon, Switzerland to Paris, France

I am back in Minneapolis and sitting here waiting… well, working, packing and waiting. I got my brief glimpse of what is to come and now I sit waiting to go pick up my work visa in Chicago then head back to Paris. Suddenly the snow emergency doesn’t seem as appealing as the organic bakery ½ block from my Paris apartment.

I had a great 10 days overseas in Switzerland and France, moving back and forth between a society where written rules are de rigueur (Switzerland) and another where I think the unwritten social rules hold a mightier weight (France). The expat stories of friends and coworkers who have moved to Switzerland only rival those I have heard about Dubai.

I started in Nyon, Switzerland for meetings, staying right on Lake Geneva, where I was shocked to see the boats all still in the water. Unlike our grand lakes of Minnesota, this one doesn’t freeze over even with snow on the ground. The falling snowflakes in Switzerland were magical. I strategically seated myself in meetings with a view of the Alps out the window in the distance. My colleagues teased me about my slowly returning French language skills as we dined one evening at the I had a delicious and rich mushroom risotto. I was shocked by my first bite, having had low expectations, as risotto is the winter plat du jour of a vegetarian option but our proximity to Italy must have made a difference. By far, the best non-truffle mushroom risotto I have had! And now I should hopefully be able to pronounce Millefeuille correctly.

Two days after arriving in Switzerland, I hopped a flight to Paris where in between meetings, I started to explore my neighborhood, getting my bearings and grabbing a brochure from the only yoga studio I saw thus far (no classes on weekends). I slowly started distinguishing the shops hidden behind the activity of the streets, discovering a strangely large number of florists, dry cleaners (le pressing) and fancy eye glass frame stores on nearby blocks. I walked into the closest café, stood at the counter like a local (lower price) and ordered a café au lait only to later learn of my faux pas as one only drinks café au lait for breakfast; it is café crème the rest of the day. In the evenings, I tried some of the local restaurants, attempted French conversation with waiters then climbing up the steps to my new apartment, keeping my footfalls quiet, having been warned about a fussy downstairs neighbor.

Come Saturday, I shut down the heaters and headed out with a sad turn of head until I return. My sadness was easily reversed, however, when I stepped off the high speed train in Zurich, Switzerland where my Junior year college roommate and her husband awaited, having moved there a few months previously. More on Zurich to come...

Initial Glimpses of What's to Come

This past week, I have been rushing about Europe in between meetings but in the midst of it all I got to check out my new apartment in Paris. It is in a great location in the 16th Arrondissement (one of the twenty neighborhoods of Paris) on the western side of the city on the Rive Droite (Right Bank of the Seine). More on the rest of my trip soon but now it is back to Minneapolis to anxiously await my visa so I can head back to Paris at the end of the month and start my job.

Here are five initial ramblings:

1. My first hypothesis on why French women are so thin: I have a gorgeous apartment... but it is 70 steps up to get there. How much fromage (cheese) will this work off, I wonder?

2. It is lucky I have time to return to Minneapolis to rethink my wardrobe. I wish I owned more scarves as everyone in Paris seemed to have one on at all times, inside and outside.

3. The fromagerie (cheese shop, I am a little excited about the cheese if you haven't noticed...) around the corner from my new apartment has been in business since 1890. Did Minnesota exist in 1890? JK

4. The fancy Club Med gym nearby costs 275 euro a month. It would be cheaper to have liposuction at the end of 5 months.

5. I am going to have very healthy teeth and bones. There is a ton of calcium in Paris water and thankfully it tastes good too! Paris restaurants are also required to give you tap water if you ask for it so no need to waste pastry dollars when the eau du robinet (tap water) will do just fine. Hope I can say the same for its effect on my hair.

Subo

I am going to join in the with the other half of the Subo reviewers and say that I thought that it was basically fine. I just wasn't wowed.

First, the welcome was about as far from wow as you could get. Both times that I visited the host station was confused, frantic and thus a bit rude. I admit to having no reservation but it wasn't like I showed up at the peak dining time of 7pm. Also, I will admit it, I hate talking on the phone, which is why I characterize myself as a millenial versus gen y. Subo doesn't have OpenTable, easily accessed from my iPhone, so I am just going to show up and hope for the best. So, yes, I showed up to a busy restaurant and asked for a table. The first time, this resulted in a bar table. No problem. The second time the hostess almost seemed on the brink of telling us to leave before another guy swooped in and took our name, resulting in a table in the back dining room about 20 minutes later. The politics at the host stand were weird and fascinating to watch.

An unpleasant welcome was followed both times by perfectly fine service (miss on welcome and then a hit on table service). Timing of dishes was still a bit shaky, the first time long waits and the second time strange time periods between dishes. We can chalk that up to the new restaurant growing pains. But, more importantly, to the food. The greens (bok choy), which we were recommended on our first visit, were watery, cold and sad but the mushroom rolls wrapped in thin sheets of tofu were unique and tasty. Similarly, on the second visit, the green curry potato croquettes were subtly tasty but my tofu hot and sour was neither hot nor sour. Hit and miss, hit and miss. Thus, no standing ovation.

The manager at Subo is a Frenchman and on the first visit I mentioned the move to France (not the blogging) which resulted in plenty of champagne served in lovely stemless champagne glasses. The chanmpagne drugging on my first visit made me come back to try Subo again before blogging about it. I realize the power of champagne. But even with all of the lovely bubbly I just can't give Subo a comparison to Momofuko. I have never been to Momofuko but let's note that it is on the S. Pelligrino list of top 50 restaurants in the world. Subo doesn't go there.... it was fun and sometimes delicious but let's get real.

Thumbs Up: Great re-decoration of the Hell's Kitchen space into a nighttime restaurant, mushroom rolls, nice French manager
Thumbs Down: Not living up to the immediate food reputation, strange hosting going on

Subo 89 south 10th Street Minneapolis www.suboexperience.com

Paris and an Uptown Condo

I was going to wait to tell you the BIG NEWS until I was there but here it goes and for good reason... I AM MOVING TO PARIS FOR FIVE MONTHS.

My day job came to me and tentatively wondered if I would be up for it. Um, are you kidding??? This is the opportunity of a lifetime to be able to spend time in the homeland of haute cuisine, attempt to become fluent in my failed high school French, and basically have the food experience of a lifetime. If only I didn't have to do that day job. I took them up on it and will be in Paris working through the end of June and announced to them that I will take all of July off to keep exploring for an extra month. I will be back in Minneapolis in August (and maybe a visit in between).

I am moving for real around February 20th (waiting for the work visa that needs to be picked up in person in Chicago) but am in Paris this week getting the keys to my apartment in the 16th arrondissement in Auteuil between business trips in Switzerland. Now the reason I am telling you all now: I started to do some research on things I want to do in Paris and realized I am going to go broke between the Susan Loomis cooking class and the macaroon course at the Ritz Escoffier. Oh, and if I want to even try a Michelin starred restaurant, I might have to take on a second mortgage. So....

Anyone want to sublet my condo in Uptown (Lyn-Lake) from end of Feb through July? It is a lovely two bedroom built in 1915, all hardwood floors, Pottery Barn decorated, updated kitchen with gas stove, dishwasher and a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer, washer/dryer, deck with grill, GARAGE. Basically, it is a dream Uptown condo (my dream anyways). Pop me an email at twincitieseats@gmail.com if you have any interest and we can start talking. Please help me support having an amazing experience in Paris.

AND, for all you foodies who have spent time in Paris, please please comment and email with your suggestions and connections! I need some foodie friends in Paris and amazing food recommendations for Paris and France.

P.S. The blog will continue... a Minnesotan's perspective on la vie in Paris. Red Pepper to Poivron Rouge. How do I make that feminine? Hmmm.