A day that begins with the dead, always ends in sex. Such is the continuity of life and the balance that goes with all things. We paid our respects to the genius of Oscar Wilde, the beauty of Edith Piaf, the mastery of Frederic Chopin and the madness of Jim Morrison at Pere Lachaise cemetery; enormous, and in spite of the throngs of people visiting it, incredibly calming. That was, of course, until I nearly wanted to throttle someone to death for disrespecting the dead. It was at Oscar Wilde’s grave and a Frenchman, quite eager on taking photos, was clambering all over the grave next to Oscar’s to get the perfect photo, whilst his wife laughed at him as he desecrated this grave. Infuriating! Nevertheless, the inscription on Wilde’s grave is one that I have always remembered and cherished as the words of one of the most prolific and gifted writers: “and alien tears will fill for him, pity’s long broken urn. And his mourners will be outcast men, for outcasts always mourn.”
Le Moulin de la Galettes, Paris
Charcut, Calgary
It’s always fun when you go to a restaurant and either you or someone you’re with knows the chef or someone important at the restaurant. There’s always great service, little surprises and generally a sense of feeling special. However, there are a few rare occasions when knowing someone at a restaurant can work against you, and it was none too obvious that it was a bad idea knowing the people who ran the restaurant at Charcut in Calgary. My friends T&A knew the good folk behind one of Calgary’s finest eateries and I wished that on this occasion they hadn’t for the simple reason that we pretty much ended up tasting 95% of the menu – the chef wanted us to taste everything! Dear god! I’ve never eaten so much meat in my life! It was all so incredibly tasty and well cooked and wonderful but there was no way in Christendom that the 3 of us could, would or should have eaten everything that came before us. Naturally, we did feast on the remains for a further 2 days! But what a feast, what a fantastic feast it was! A case of man vs food, and here, food won!
Vij’s, Vancouver
Whilst there was no shortage of great food on my travels through the Americas, the one bit of eating that is dire across South and North America is Indian. There seems to be a disastrous lack of quality Indian restaurants for the discerning diner. By quality, I naturally mean restaurants of a calibre we have in London, after all, greasy Indian eateries are a dime a dozen the world over with varying degrees of shock and horror, and very few making it to the list of ‘decently edible’. However, before I ventured into the western hemisphere, a couple of friendly travellers that I met in Sri Lanka insisted that whilst in Vancouver, I make a trip to a restaurant called Vij’s, Canada’s seemingly most celebrated Indian restaurant. Of course, the nature of it’s celebrity status was only revealed when I actually landed on Canadian soil and the name Vij’s rang out like a insistent echo; everybody knew of it, almost everyone had been there or wanted to go there and the man himself, Vij, was a bit of a celebrity with his cookbook, his supermarket products, his endless charm and what not.
Pok Pok, Portland
I did laugh out loud and possibly may have even done a chicken walk to the sound of Portland’s hottest restaurant, Pok Pok. Having discovered a very decisive and accurate listing of some of America’s best restaurants, Pok Pok had been on my radar and as it so happened that I had a friend who I was visiting in Portland, the opportunity was there for the taking. To bolster this decision, a couple of friendly diners with whom I struck up a foodie rapport at Red Farm in New York further mentioned Pok Pok’s claim to culinary fame as one of America’s finest Asian restaurants. Having won the James Beard Foundation award for Best Chef, Northwest 2011, Andy Ricker’s brand of Northern Thai cuisine has no problems filling the rafters, with people constantly queueing to sample the fare. Luckily, being a table of two not opposed to sitting at the bar, we were let in almost immediately to start our feasting….
