Crime and Punishment

To quote Chekhov, I am in mourning for my life in this homey restaurant from Hell. 

Hello, tovariches! Back from Moscow, which was surprisingly grand, unbelievably clean, and easy to handle. My cholesterol count must be through the roof, as I spent ten days eating Russian food. This hearty and tasty cuisine, by the way, is the reason why almost everybody on my mother's side of the family succumbed to heart disease, and where I am probably heading as well. Alas, when in Russia, how can you not have the smetana*?
One evening, after walking enough miles for a Siberian forced march, we saw a cute little restaurant on a corner. Aromas of pasta sauce wafted from it. After all that borscht and varenikes, good old Italian pasta sounded like a swell idea.
So we walk in at around 10 pm, and a very sweet, smiling waitress welcomes us. The place looks like somebody cute's living room, full of tchotchkes. There is a big table with Japanese people and a couple of other tables. It takes her a while to bring us the menus. In general, service has been slow and erratic in Moscow, but not rude. Food always arrives cold and with not much chronological order.
My two companions order first, an appetizer and a main course each. She writes it down. Even though all the menus have an English translation, most waitstaff do not speak English, so like Alan Turing, they need to break the code and make sure that that which we are pointing to in a strange alphabet in the menu is the same thing we are ordering in Russian.
Then it's my turn. I order the tomato basil pasta. I am told: not possible.  She taps on her wristwatch. No pasta of any kind. So I order the fish, which Magnificent Arepa has ordered. No fish for me. No fowl either. No entrees. Apparently, my friends can have dinner, but I'm late to the party. While we are trying to figure out what on earth is happening, the waitress keeps running back and forth to handle the other tables and the kitchen, where I imagine, an ogre of a chef is wringing her neck for letting us in so near to closing time (11 pm).
After much pantomime, we understand that she is telling me that I can only have appetizers. At this point, the universal code for dining expectations is broken. How is it possible that two people at the same table will be served dinner, but not I?  In New York, the hostess would have made a face like she's smelling farts and said that the kitchen is closing in ten minutes, but this was not an option here. Here the option was: some of you will eat what you want, but not all.  One of you will eat what I tell her to eat.
Normally, I would not object to the only-appetizers plan, but the list of offerings was not very appealing. I ordered the herring with boiled potatoes and raw onion (like a cossack, you bet), but the rest was further down the scale of foods that hunter-gatherers in the Steppes eat. Stuff like boiled pork skins or cold vegetables. Nyet.
She brings our bottle of wine and starts uncorking it, still without addressing what is to happen to me. We gesture to her that before we drink, we need to solve my dinner problem. Our facial expressions denote a growing frustration. She keeps smiling, the mousy bitch. So far, she has gently steered me away from food but has not offered alternatives. She simply does not seem to understand what is my problem. I am to have herring. Is that not enough?
So, hungry, or rather quite hangry, I have a tiny little meltdown and I stand up and announce that we are leaving. Some sort of ado ensues and then the waitress points to the pasta carbonara and says that she can offer that.  How a pasta carbonara is faster and easier than the tomato basil one is a question that will haunt me until the end of time. Because of this kind of communication glitch, one spends a good amount of time in restaurants pondering questions along the time/space continuum such as, if everything takes so long, why does it all appear at the table at once? Or, it is possible that they were making the sauce from scratch, ran out of tomatoes, or Einstein was plain wrong?
Anyway, the waitress apologizes. I apologize. We drink to everyone's health. Food arrives. To the waitress' utter amazement, I exchange my hard earned pasta for the fish Magnificent Arepa ordered. By the way, Arepa ate pasta carbonara for three or four consecutive days, once both for lunch and dinner. They make a decent version in Russia.
We finish this food, which is quite tasty, and look forward to our friend's beef Strogonoff.  We wait. And we wait. And soon there is no one left in the restaurant, and the waitress is cleaning up. Then we start getting interesting cues, like the chef going out the door with a huge pyrex in hand (with which I'm convinced he will feed my friend's Strogonoff to his family and/or dog). The Strogonoff never arrives. The waitress smiles without explanation or apology until the bitter end.

*Cream: it's on everything.

Mexican Coke Is It

Art by Andy Warhol, who should be rolling in his grave.

Only a threat of this magnitude could rouse me from my long hibernation in the world of film reviews, dear readers. I am concerned about an extremely frightening scenario I stumbled upon here.
The headline screams "Could This Be The End of Mexican Coke?"
It is not the stuff the nightmares of cocaine fiends are made of. Just imagine: no more mountains of deeply adulterated, cheap and plentiful cocaine, a byproduct of the spilled blood of tens of thousands of Mexicans and of the voracious appetite for blow north of the Mexican border. That coke we don't care about. If that ends, goodbye and good riddance.
We are talking about Coke with a capital C. We are talking about the end of Mexican Coca-Cola, which is the only Coca-Cola worth drinking, in my estimation. It is made with cane sugar, as opposed to high fructose corn syrup, and while it will still make you fat, diabetic, and will rot your teeth just like the other one, the difference in the experience of drinking it is enormous. Plus, as poisons go, it is the less bad of the two.
As you all know, there is a difference between Coke that comes in a can (bad), a plastic bottle (worse), a two liter bottle (the pits), or the very best Coke, which comes in the classic curvaceous glass bottle, either small or medium. So it stands to reason that there is a difference if Coke is made with cane sugar or with corn syrup. You can taste it right away. Mexican Coke is less syrupy. It is less cloying. Less sweet. It is lighter, easier to drink, more refreshing. The very best Coke comes, ice cold, in a medium (probably 12 oz) glass bottle. Pour that cold Coke over a glass full of ice. Open happiness, indeed.
So now that the Mexican government is following the Bloomberg approach and wants to tax soft drinks (Mexico has the greatest consumption of soft drinks in the world and alarming rates of rising obesity and diabetes), Coca-Cola Mexico is threatening to switch to high fructose corn syrup, which supposedly is cheaper than cane sugar.
This is malevolent.  If I were the Mexican government, I would tax them double for making it with corn syrup. If people are already going to pay an extra tax for their coke, why would they want a worse Coke? Coca Cola will win this battle, like it wins all battles, because it is all mighty. But since it claims to be a nice company about happiness, that spends so much money trying to pretend their bottled water is not destroying the Earth and that Putin is a nice guy, they should have a public relations fiasco with this bullying threat.
Unfortunately, the majority of Mexicans won't give a damn if their Coke is made one way or the other. They may revolt at having to pay more for a drink they consume like water. But it is up to fineschmecking foodies like me and my indignant Facebook friends to man the barricades against this blatant attack on taste (and less bad health).

Bonjour Tristesse

I was recently in France, where pretty much everyday, like every French person, I put a golden, fragrant, crunchy, chewy baguette under my arm; and unlike every French person, waited to get home before tearing into it in the middle of the street.
Last Sunday, I went into a boulangerie and purchased a ficelle, which is a smaller, thinner baguette (so as not to appear like the grosse cochonne I am).
I ate this glorious thing sans anything. No butter, no jam, no jambon, no fromage. It was so spectacularly good, it did not need anything else. I ate it in the park and could have eaten five more, but I have my dignity.
New York may have pretty much everything the heart desires, but there is no good baguette to be found. Those of you who think there is, are deluding yourselves and should stop immediately.
We have found a very decent croissant and pain au chocolat, and French pastries a block away, but a simple, wholesome, perfect pleasure like a baguette, which is flour, salt, water and yeast, New York cannot muster. This makes me extremely sad.
Some say it's the water. Pourquoi?
I just feel like crying.

Mexican Food Porn Part Deux

I kept eating everything and everywhere. My good friend, Mr. Michael Parker, and his splendid cook Sra. Araceli, made a fabulous dinner with shrimp stuffed avocados and light, fluffy fried fish and Mexican ratatouille. It was a candlelit dinner, so the pictures of the beautiful table are rather dim.

Here's the table at my family's Seder.

And the traditional Passover plate.

Here's the table at my Middle Enchilado Brother in Law Passover lunch extravaganza.

My last important meal was at very good restaurant La Capital. We started with a refreshing mezcal shpritzer, dusted with sal de gusano, worm salt, which makes everything taste better.

The guacamole and chips here is comprised of thin yuca, plantain and potato chips.
The guac has pomegranate seeds in it. It all works.

I ordered caldo tlalpeño, which is a classic Mexican chicken broth with veggies. This one was elegant and a tad spicy. Mexico is soup heaven, because unlike the US, where apparently no soup is complete without industrial quantities of unnecessary cornstarch, here soups are thin but explode with flavor.  In NY I despair of finding decent soups (the only options are pho, ramens and asian soups - the rest is pathetic).

The Middle Enchilada ordered the now famous tuna sashimi tostadas, originally from restaurant Contramar, but easily copied elsewhere. They are amazing.

I ordered a pescado con chile y limón, fish with lime and chili, that was surprising because it was far more sophisticated than its name implies, and not spicy at all. Behind it you can see a glass of esquites, corn kernels mixed with lime and herbs, and the water in which they were boiled, with mayo on the side, just like on the street, but fancier.

At La Capital they make sopa seca de fideo, which is Mexican vermicelli soup, but dried out, and which I love. You can find this at any cheap fonda as well as in the fanciest restaurants, where they make it more presentable, if equally delicious.

For dessert we had meringue with raspberry coulis and vanilla sauce.

Fin.

This is Everything That Is Wrong With America

Right here:

And in a freaking Subway sandwich, to boot. Why not just Sriracha? Why creamy?
Cause this is America and we love to fuck perfectly good food like Sriracha, up.

The New York Tapas Scam

I submitted these comments on this article in the New York Times that prompted the food critic (who doesn't even have to shell out for his meals) to wonder about the sanity of the small food craze in this rapacious town. It is a subject that has long been simmering in my bile. Here is my beef:

This small plates craze is the biggest New York ripoff since the financial crisis. Certain clarification is in order.
I spent 10 days in Barcelona recently. The tapas there are the size of Wyoming. 
The first time we ordered tapas we were thinking skimpy NY portions so we let it rip: pimientos de padrón, serrano ham, croquettes, tortilla, gambas al ajillo, what have you. It was a meal that could have easily been shared by six people, or more.The tapas in NY are as overpriced as they are undernourishing.
Rajj and Montero are particularly notorious at this scam. I have been to their restaurant Pintxtos, where a montadito is a puny slice of bread with a Spanish schmear. The bill for 3 small plates and two beers came to over $60.00. Any tapa you have at a bar in Spain is generously served and you can see it without magnifying glasses. As the writer points out, the entire concept and philosophy of the tapa has been perverted into culinary armed robbery here in New York. It's time to revolt against it. 
It is the generosity of spirit of those local culinary traditions that doesn't translate in New York. That generosity is an essential part of the cuisine, and if it is not there, no matter how good the food, as far as I'm concerned, the meal is bogus. 

I rest my case

To make matters worse, recently I read something somewhere by some American genius who discovered the virtues of small glasses of beer (as opposed to the disgusting buckets they give you here for draft beers) as if they themselves had found the Higgs Boson under the carpet. Dude, anybody who has ever been to Spain knows that there is no fresher, cooler or better glass of beer than what the Spanish call a "caña". A small little glass, perhaps 8 ounces, of crisp, ice-cold beer that never warms up or loses its fizz.  I have never understood the benefits of drinking flat, stale, tepid beer from a huge glass, like they do here.  

He dicho. 

Crocodile Rock

I was crossing a placid, shallow creek that leads to the ocean in Playa Buena Vista, Costa Rica, and when I got ashore, I saw my friends in the other side gesturing with horror.  No more than ten feet from me a rocky shape moved in the water. Our friend Petra, a confident German, ran into the creek and shooed it with her foot. It was a crocodile, about 3 meters (10 feet) long. I was totally calm, safe and sound on the other side. I even made the international gesture for WTF? to Petra.
I never saw it as I crossed. Nothing moved as I crossed. But when it swam away, running away from Petra's foot, thrashing its tail and pushing his head above water, it was awesome and terrifying. And huge. The more I thought about the idea of me having waded only feet away from him, who according to Petra, was coming from where I was, creeped on me up to a slow, extended freak out. The rest of the group would not cross the creek after that.
Petra said crocodiles are shy. I'm lucky he wasn't hungry. I thought Petra had experience, being the manager of our hotel and used to living in the jungle for years. Later on I asked her how long she'd been in Costa Rica and she said 4 months.
I'm so happy I didn't know that then.
I'm relieved that none of us saw the beast as I was crossing, because I don't know if thrashing about like a maniac trying to reach the other side would have been appetizing to him. What does one do? Remain still as with bears, or run for dear life?
Here I was, depleting the world's reserves of DEET, trying not to be eaten alive by insects (I wasn't), only to find that I was close to being a special enchilada dinner for a crocodile. If you don't believe me, here's proof:

Fearless Petra Shooing Croc Away. 

Check out those teeth!

Foody Food Food

Because Cynthia asked for it:

Jersey tomatoes can kiss our Spanish ass. 

Fideua de la casa at Cervecería Catalana

I ordered half a ración of this noodle paella above and I soon regretted it. I could have eaten the whole thing.

Salteado de setas y calamares

Sauteed wild mushrooms and calamari (and fresh asparagus and jamón de jabugo). You bet.

Dinner: churros con chocolate

The hot chocolate at the Café de La Opera was so thick and intense, but not overly sweet, that it felt like I had five cups of coffee after.

Serious Travel

Barcelona is such a haven of sophistication, that it's been hard to find hilarious stuff to make fun of, which after all is one of the great pleasures of traveling. So far everybody has been nothing but warm and welcoming, except a woman with a verbissener punim who served me a pork and cheese sandwich the day I did the Modernism pilgrimage. And even then she wasn't rude, just bitter.
I went to explore the beaches and happened into a choir recital in a tent as part of some Catalan cultural event. I should have suspected something was afoot when I noticed the director of the choir had hair like Paganini and a neck brace. There was a big audience of mostly elderly people, at a par with the mostly elderly singers on stage. The conductor gave a longwinded introduction in which he explained the order of the songs and what they were going to sing and why. He apologized that the songs were in Spanish, but quickly pointed out they were from Latin America, not Spain, as he is proud to have them in his repertoire. He could not remember exactly the name of the poet who wrote the first song, so someone from the exasperated choir shouted it out. A very beautiful song by Mario Benedetti, arranged, he explained, for four voices. I waited with delight, as I know the song well. After concluding his lengthy explanation of each song by saying that they were going to sing all the songs back to back to make things move quickly, he started calmly tuning the voices in each section of the choir. This reminded me of those bands that take longer to tune their instruments than they take to play their set at rock festivals. People who do this sort of audience torture should not be allowed on stage.
Finally, the song began. I could not recognize one note. Everybody was out of tune and the arrangement was some sort of baroque fugue that nobody could follow, a striking example of pretentious provincial atonality. I ran away, shaking my head, feeling sorry for everyone, and a little miffed at whoever was the cause of the neck brace. Clearly, they did not apply enough pressure.

Yesterday, as we walked in search of an open bar (it was a holiday, but never fear, in this city of bizarre opening and closing hours, you will never want for food or drink), we witnessed a theft. A guy on a bike swooshed by and nabbed something valuable off a tourist's arm. Brazenly, as the street was by no means empty. The couple gave chase on foot, screaming, but the guy pedaled away. Apparently, this is so common, that to make tourist lives' easier, you can now report thefts at the front desk of your hotel and avoid the snaking lines at the police station. Awfully nice of them, isn't it?

Barcelona is swarming with tourists. Doesn't anybody work? Not even June yet and everybody in Europe seems to be on vacation (or is it unemployed?). This includes young English lads and molls that either drink since morning or can't hold their liquor already early in the evening, Russians who stand in narrow alleyways as expansively as if they were in Red Square, oblivious to other human traffic; Italians, who in my experience, are people who tend to scream at each other; the French, who are rather discreet and well behaved, as if to atone for the punishment they unleash on the hordes that visit them; and drunken Visigoths of various northern stripes. I bet they come to Spain for the generosity with which the Spaniards pour a drink. In the puritan Anglo-Saxon world, a regular gin and tonic such as they serve here would be considered a triple, a bucket, God bless 'em. I also bet that if the waves of tourists continue swelling, by the time September rolls around, the natives may not be as warm and welcoming as they are now.

By the way, if I were Undisputed Ruler of Earth (I am currently volunteering for the post, you guys) the following would be banned:

• Buskers that don't move and then move
• Buskers in general
• Long haired Incas with pan flutes (these in particular gall me to no end)
• Homeless youth with dogs to elicit pity. You can be a homeless youth, but spare us the dog. 
• People standing in front of tourist traps trying to lure you in
• Tourist traps
• I am tempted to say tourists.

La Boquería

At the fantastic market of La Boquería, the majority of the fishmongers are women. And the majority of the fish are awesome.

Exotic fruits which are then turned into exotic jellies:

Or exotic juices:

En Barcelona

Here are some incredible monuments in this spectacular city:

Monumento a la Croqueta

This croqueta de jamón ibérico de bellota at Casa Leopoldo cannot possibly be bested. We also had a whole grilled fish which was perfection.

Today, I walked for about four hours following a self-guided tour of Modernist architecture. Heaven.

To Add Insult to Injury

Check out the google ad my friend Cynthia got in Puerto Rico.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Not funny.

Oh Sugar

I saw that report on sugar by Dr. Gupta on 60 Minutes. I think he should be locked away and never heard from again. What irresponsibility, what vile yellow journalism, to demonize and slander one of the few pleasurable delights mankind still enjoys in utter innocence; one of the few pleasures rich and poor can enjoy equally.
To make people feel like pariahs because they want to enjoy an ice cream cone or a piece of cake. To compare sugar to freaking heroin! That is criminal.
But such is life in this crazy country, where no one has ever heard of NUANCE. Everybody talks about moderation but they wouldn't know it if it bit them in the ass. Yes, if you wash down your junk food with 5 liters of Coke a day, you may be signing up for limb amputation; but geez, stop treating food and drink as if they are poison.
There are other more poisonous stuffs in our midst. (Our current Supreme Court is one of them. The other is Republicans).
Sugar? Sugar is a honey.
Food and drink are sources of pleasure and culture and civilization. They are not out to get you. 
Sugar is not gonna kill you if you enjoy it in moderation. In fact, it may add years of happiness to your miserable, puny life.
The other day I went to Italian gelateria Amorino and had the medium ice cream cup (manifesting heroic restraint by avoiding the large size and the crispy, sugary cone, which I'm definitely having next time).
I had their chocolate hazelnut, which they modestly call L'inimitabile, pistachio and banana ice cream. The first two are bliss on earth. Happiness in a cup. All is well with the world. Life is beautiful. Orgasm of the mouth. The banana is just good.
One lick of that heavenly creamy L'inimitabile ice cream and I was ready to forgive everybody everything. I sat there licking my bliss in a more zen meditative state than any mantra could possibly achieve. That ice cream almost restored my faith in mankind (not that I ever had any to begin with). This has got to be better than crystal meth, no?
Dr. Gupta informs us that sugar raises dopamine levels in the brain, which is the substance that makes you feel good. Voilá! What could possibly be wrong with feeling good? Has Dr. Gupta tried the banana cream pie at The Dutch? The pain au chocolat or the financier at Millefeuille? A Ladureé macaron? Probably not. Otherwise, he wouldn't dare cast these libelous aspersions. Otherwise, he'd be a happy man.
So don't make it like a little dessert is a worse enemy than a lethal drug, you scaremongering vantzes.
We all know that sugar gets stored in the body as fat. You don't need to make it sound like Adolf Hitler has risen from the dead and is coming back to get us.
All you need to tell people is to get off their ass and try to eat more varied stuffs that are more natural. When it comes to refined sugars, exercise some sort of human restraint, is all we need to do. I do believe that high fructose corn syrup is more addictive than cane sugar, regardless of what 60 Minutes says. So have Mexican Coke instead of American Coke.
Sugar? You are going to have to pry it from my dead, cold hands, as they say.

Let's Rant Today

We haven't done it in soooo long, it's starting to feel like this Enchilada has lost her kick, but we can always count on someone to get a rise out of us, so here goes:

Yesterday, attending a performance of Other Desert Cities on Broadway, the guy stuffing the seat in front of me is wearing a white baseball cap. Every time he moves his head, instead of the stage, I see a huge blob of visor, flap or however you call it. This has happened before. Usually people take off their headgear as the lights go down, and in case they don't, one only has to ask politely and people will comply.
I had a feeling that with this individual it wasn't gonna be so easy. Who wears a white baseball cap to a Broadway play at 8 pm at night? In the sweetest voice I could muster, I said:
ME:
Sorry to disturb you, but will you please remove your cap when the play begins?
HUMAN STUFFED DERMA:
NO! I WILL NOT REMOVE MY CAP!
ME:
It is disturbing my view.
HSD:
You will see just fine.
ME:
No I won't.
HSD:
I DON'T FEEL COMFORTABLE TAKING OFF MY CAP!
ME:
Even in the dark?
I considered calling the usher, but there were plenty of empty seats around me so I switched seats and I let it go, not before saying:
"I want you to know that this is extremely rude and in bad taste. I asked you politely". 
Then I muttered "stupid people with caps" and "asshole" sotto voce, for dramatic flourish.
Now, if the guy had said, "I have a protuberance the size of Nairobi that will distract you far more than the lousy cap", or "you really don't want to have my naked pate with random hairs in front of you, lady, it's a horror show", or seriously, "I have a medical condition and I can't do that for you", I would have been empathetic.
But where the hell do neurotic New Yorkers get off with this sense of entitled self-pity? ME ME ME! I am special, so screw anybody else. Whatever happened to manners? Back in the day, you had to remove your hat any time you went inside. Those were the rules. Hey, back in the day people would go to Broadway in evening attire, not jeans and sneakers. I wished I could channel Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey and give this whiner a piece of my mind. I hate that show (oh yes I do) but Maggie Smith is God's gift to mankind. She is immortal.
Next:
I am addicted to Farmland Dairies Skim Plus Chocolate Milk with Omega-3. I have a bowl (or two) of that with Cheerios every night and I credit this diet with losing 7-8 pounds since the Summer. Roll your eyes as much as you want. The milk is creamy, tastes strongly of chocolate, and last time I had a cholesterol screening, my good cholesterol went up. Heaven. Now, this baby does not come cheap: almost six bucks for a half gallon. I guzzle it like a Hummer guzzles gas. Alas, the last two times I bought it, it had changed. Gone was the creaminess, gone was the chocolatey flavor, now it was plain mediocre milk with a faint taste of chocolate. The price, however, remains the same, if it has not gone up. In the Morton Williams in front of my house, prices rise by the hour. Anyway, you bet I gave them a call. And spoke at length about my disgruntlement to the answering machine. Very politely, but not, as devastatingly as Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.

Jewish Aztec Cuisine

My friend Cathy alerted me to this story on NPR about Jewish Mexican Cooking. This is what I commented on the NPR page, expanded here for your enjoyment:

When I read the headline of this story, my heart stopped. I thought it was about my grandfather Samuel Gmora, who used to be the caterer at Temple Bet El, and also had a Jewish food restaurant in the Condesa neighborhood, called Taam Tov Kosher, when I was a little girl. Of course, the Shlejters preceded him for many years, because by the time he catered in Bet-El nobody ever went to Justo Sierra anymore. My bobe taught my zeide how to cook Jewish food and many Mexican Jews, including myself, still remember his delicious banquets. In my family, we still have Gefilte Fish Veracruzana, which is the greatest fusion food ever: Gefilte Fish with a sauce of tomatoes, onions, olives, capers and blond chiles.

There is also a Mole-Matzoh Gratin at the Passover Seder. And according to legend, my bobe made the meanest kosher mole in Mexico City.

I remember Sra. Dora Schmidt from when we all used to live in la Condesa. She and my mom, and other Jewish ladies used to have coffee at the undulating counter at Woolworth's! I'm happy to see she is healthy and well and glad to see these delicious traditions getting the attention they deserve.

The Real Chamoy

Every time an unsuspecting tourist lands on this fair island, we take them to eat soup dumplings at Joe's Shanghai and then walk them around the tea stores, Chinese pharmacies, and weird foodstuffs purveyors of the cabinet of wonders that is Chinatown.
I like to go into candy store Aji Ichiban because they have free samples of candied and preserved fruits, which I gobble right after I've had a sumptuous Chinese meal and my gut is about to explode, like that guy's in The Meaning of Life.
So I'm there, speaking in Spanish, explaining that in Mexico we have something similar called chamoy, and the employees brighten up at the name and point me to two samples of preserved plums: the real Chinese chamoy, one version sweet, and the other sweet and salty.

Original Chinese Chamoy

I was ecstatic to confirm that indeed, there is something in China called chamoy and some enterprising Chinese person must have decided that Mexicans had to have it too. Another theory could be that Mexican tourists came by Aji Ichiban, screamed chamoy, and the employees just decided to go along. I subscribe to the first theory because I was told by the employees at Aji Ichiban that the word chamoy only describes preserved plums and no other fruit. They sounded authoritative. 
Now, I love Mexican chamoy faithfully, as any true Mexican should, but I have to say that our version is chazerai* compared to the Chinese one. I'm not talking about powdered Chamoy, which I think would make Chairman Mao spin in his grave, and which Mexicans are starting to put on everything, but about the dried plums. In Mexico, the dried plums are super salty and tart, and they are actually apricots. There are red apricots in red brine that make your soul pucker, and give you instant high blood pressure, they are so salty and acid. Mexicans add chili powder to chamoy, making it sweet, salty, acid and spicy. We all know it's the best kind of junk candy there is.

Mexican powdered Chamoy, now in several artificial flavors.

Mexicans love chamoy, although our chamoy is as authentic as our Philadelphia sushi rolls with lox and cream cheese. In fact, chamoy has kind of had a renaissance, as there are chamoy stores at malls where you can have a chamoyada (shaved fruit flavored ice with chamoy), or chamoy covered popsicles, or bars where martinis, micheladas or margaritas are garnished with chamoy. The original brand was always Miguelito but now everybody and their mother has a version of chamoy. Chamoy has exploded. On Google I found images of something called a Rosca de Chamoy, like a chamoy Bundt cake. I can't even fathom what it's made with.

Google image search of chamoy.

Alas, I could not find a picture of the preserved fruit chamoys. I'm afraid they may have disappeared from the Mexican candy repertoire, which would be tragic.
The Japanese have a version of preserved plum paste called umeboshi, which is supposed to be a digestive. I love it too.
And because it is supposed to be a digestive I just gobbled an entire bag of the two Chinese chamoys as I wrote this post.

*horrible junk.

Kimchi Taco Vs. Tacos El Idolo

After my French class (oui, mesdames et messieurs, I continue to grapple with this sadistic language), I could not resist stopping at the Kimchee Taco truck parked on Astor Place. Just so you know, Korean tacos are pretty much the only fusion taco I'm willing to accept, except for tacos árabes, Arab tacos, which are a Mexican invention. Why Korean? Because their barbecued beef and pork work well inside a tortilla, and some of the Korean flavors overlap with the Mexican palate.
The Kimchee Taco truck offers three assorted tacos for $7. I chose BBQ beef and shredded pork. The pork filling was excellent. The beef filling was tasty but ice cold. I told as much to the nice owner guy and he chose not to believe me. The tortillas were tiny, which is okay, but what is not okay is that they were cold and stiff and tasted like corrugated cardboard. Non-Mexicans still do not understand how to serve a tortilla soft and warm. The day they do may be the day the world finally comes to an end.
Kimchi Taco serves the tacos with something they call pico de gallo which is super spicy and tangy and not bad, I surmise made with radishes and scallions. Luckily I ordered the kimchi on the side because both salsas would have completely seared my mouth and overpowered the taco itself. The problem with the Korean pico de gallo is that it also comes straight from the fridge so dudes, (and this goes for Chipotle too) please understand that you can't put frigid stuff on top of a hot taco.
I had an epiphany last night which may help explain why most gringo taco concepts will never work here: hygiene laws. If the city demands that the food be kept in the fridge until the last possible minute, you are never going to get a decent taco experience. That is the only explanation I can find for tacos being cold. This can be easily circumvented by making the fixings less vulnerable to spoiling and appropriate for room temperature. Whatever you put on top of a taco has to be room temperature, otherwise you completely ruin the taco, no matter how tasty.

I felt guilty as I passed by the Tacos El Idolo truck, which is parked right on the corner. So I ordered an agua de horchata because of the Korean lingering spiciness, and then stayed for a taco de carnitas. This taco was $2.50, but it was at least twice as big and plump and had two much better, warm slightly greased tortillas. It was dressed with chopped onions and cilantro as it should be, and was served with a slice of unfortunately dessicated lime and radish (which I find unnecessary). It was pretty tasty. If you do the math, El Idolo is a much better deal because it is much more food and more satisfying. You can't possibly have room for three such tacos, and you will only be paying 50 cents more. The tortillas are warm, so is the filling and all is good with the world.
Now that going to restaurants in New York has become an activity that only the 1% can afford, food trucks provide excellent cheap alternatives. The taco trucks make New York an even better city, if that is even possible.

In Siam

I'm not going to find out what they actually serve in the restaurant above.

Talk about sensory overload! Just looking at all the Bangkok street food makes your head spin. There is so much food that looks so good, and some that looks so beautiful and strange, and some that just looks strange, that I actually believe I'm going to lose weight because I get sated just by looking at it.

Beautiful and strange food.

Just strange.

There are hordes of people out here, in certain places, less Thais than all kinds of foreigners, most of whom I have nothing to do with except for the fact that we are tourists. There are certain male specimens that exemplify European colonialist degradation to such an extent that someone should embalm them (alive, if possible) and put them in The Museum of the Appalling.  Have you ever seen Diego Rivera's depictions of deformed, depraved, syphilitic Spanish conquerors? Like that, but three dimensional, alive and thoroughly repulsive. Then there are their more enlightened brethren, who come here looking for Nirvana and they seem to be solemnly serious about it (they also seem to be following my diet of looking at food only). Then there are the backpackers. I backpacked back in the Pleistocene period, and it is amazing to me that people still have not figured out it's a royal pain in the ass. But there is an entire street dedicated to backpackers and their cheap ways and it is one of the tackiest streets I have ever seen, so their sense of superiority somehow seems misguided.
Among the backpackers of both sexes are those that distinguish themselves by dreadlocking their hair into massive, impenetrable beehives. They walk around with elongated necks, like Nefertiti, super proud of their updos, which I'm afraid serve as youth hostels for bats and other creatures.
Instead of their pictures, here are some pictures of beautiful places in Bangkok:

There are many Israeli travel agencies that advertise themselves with huge signs in Hebrew, and this somehow feels perfectly at home with the surrounding alphabets: Thai, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese. Latin script is not the be all and end all, you know. As for the Thais, they are mostly very gracious and pleasant, if rather inscrutable.

As in any underdeveloped country, there is no shortage of polite misinformation, taxis whose meters  decide to stop cooperating, in cahoots with the driver, etc. You would have to be a virgin tourist to confuse a tout with a friendly host, but here they take touting to another level. In fact, in the Olympics of touts, Thai touts would be gold medalists because they make the extra effort: they tell elaborate and quite convincing lies. To be honest, if it wasn't for our detestable Lonely Planet guide, I probably would have behaved like a virgin myself. (My gripes with Lonely Planet are legion, but just to name a couple: 1. They send you to places that are not there. 2. I defy anyone to make sense of the way they number their maps. If you find number 24, or number 85, which is right next to number 13, for instance, I'll erect a statue in your honor).
Bangkok is huge and spread out and doesn't make a lot of sense, with incredible temples and humongous shopping malls, but a river runs through it and I keep imagining what it must have been like in the 30s, when there were no eyesores, and you could run into Sam Spade, or Mata Hari, as you shivered from malaria and typhoid, at the veranda of the Hotel Colonial.

Mata Hari would not be caught dead in this modern monstrosity

They did not preserve much of the old buildings, which is a shame.  But what Bangkok lacks on finesse, it makes up with moxie.  What you see on the street can take an almost hallucinatory character, and I mean that as the highest praise.

Amulet market.

Someone else's dentures for sale.