Good Bars I visited in 2012 and 2013

I traveled a lot last year and this one (2013). In order to try to remember some of the best bars I went, I thought I would document them here with photos if possible. In no particular order!  

Berlin Summer nights

Club Visionaire in Berlin with Mike - Berlin at its best in the summer. Sitting on the river. Red lights. Atmosphere. Big bottles of beer. Punks. Poets. Ah - Berlin!

Bar du Nord, Carouge, Switzerland - a great selection of whisky and a fine place to spend a night when you are stuck in Geneva. It had a sort of rockabilly vibe to it. As rockabilly as Geneva gets at least.

A little bar art

Bar 23, Bangkok, Thailand - a dark dank hole in the wall with excellent djs playing the Smiths, the Cure, and all new music... I just love it. It's when I finally felt at home in Bangkok.

to give you a feel for Bar 23

White Marble wine bar in Hoi An, Vietnam - a touch of lovely colonial looks in a nice shop house but they need to replace the soundtrack and get out of the 90s!

Raskolnikoff Hotel/ Cafe in Dresden with Mike  - cold white wine and pelmeni dumplings. Looks like not much from outside but old and atmospheric with a lovely little garden in the back. a great place for drinks before heading to the punk rock club in the chemical factory.

Heurigen in Vienna - little tiny vineyards where you drink the local wine made right there and sample some great hearty food to go with it - in this case - roast pork, schmaltz, fresh veggies, and great Austrian bread. First time I went to one of these places was in 1998 with my boyfriend Michael Reiner and I fell in love with them.

WTF, Bangkok, Thailand - you can get a horse's neck in an alley in Bangkok and feel like you are in NYC. It's an art gallery on top and the music is often good. The drinks are strong.

Galaxy Hut, Arlington VA - good music, great beers on tap, a seedy dive with a lovely 'futuristic' vibe.

A feel for the ambience of the Red Lounge

Mao's Red Lounge bar in Hanoi, Vietnam - a bit scuzzy and crazy. I loved it! Maybe its because they were playing Guns and Roses after I had drank bottle after bottle of fruit flavored rice wine.

The Bucket List Beach Bar in Sydney, Australia - cute boys playing bongo and guitars, awesome fish and chips, ice cold Australian white wine on Bondi Beach. I felt like I was in a movie. Of course, I had just returned from Papua New Guinea and was in shock from falling through the floor of an government building there but still - it was a lovely place.

Ku De Ta in Samanyak, Bali, Indonesia - wanna be cool and listen to great music and drink cocktails while looking at the perfect beach? Try this place.

Foreign Correspondent's Club in Phnom Penh, Cambodia - its a bit overpriced but its got atmosphere. It's hot, the ceiling fans are working overtime, and you can have a cold gin and tonic and feel the ghosts of journos past.

L'Atelier Charonne in Bastille, Paris - I love Django Reinhardt and although this bar doesn't have the best atmosphere, a man in a pencil thin mustache who played the stand up bass came over and serenaded me one August while i was in Paris so it has my heart. To me, I felt as if I were a broke boheme in the 30s scraping together enough for a nice campari and falling in love.

Le Bar in Metropole Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam - Delightfully dry martinis. It'll put a hole in your wallet but sometimes you want to pretend you are Graham Greene (or Sir Roger Moore or Charlie Chaplin or Somerset Maugham!) in Southeast Asia.

High Spirits, Pune India - wanna hang out with the most high spirited energetic Indian hipsters in Pune? Go to High Spirits! It has it all - a live reggae band, a dance floor, pool tables, gorgeous young drunk fools!

Ice Bar at Titanium

Titanium, Bangkok, Thailand - home of the famous all girl rock band that really rocks! Also an ice bar and my birthday shots. Fun in a sleazy part of town on Sukhumvit Soi 22 - becoming less sleazy since they tore down Washington Square (??) but sleazier from the outside than the inside!

Union Grill, Yangon, Myanmar - okay so maybe its not that much different than what you could find in most gentrified places in Southeast Asia but I had been suffering along in Rakhine State and to find a nice glass of wine, good waiters, and lovely decor made me happy.

Adhere the 13th Blues Bar, Bangkok, Thailand - I thought it would suck. Most of the live Thai musicians I have seen doing western music have sung phonetically and unenthusiastically. But these guys are the real thing. And its got a great atmosphere too! Down near Khao San road in a small cramped place... great music!

The Dove on Broadway Market, London, UK - I went on a freezing cold sunny day in April with my friend Brian. We sat in a cute little snug, people played board games, beautiful young hipsters got drunk, we talked about life and the meaning thereof all Sunday until it was time to go home. I loved it so much. 

Eating my way across Japan (well through Tokyo and Kyoto): Part 1

In February of this year, I took a week trip to Japan with my friend Alec. He was going skiing for a week in the North but neither of us had ever been to Japan and we wanted to see what it was like. For me, of course, the food was a big draw.

We started in Tokyo where I spent three nights in a Ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) with its heated bath. One of the highlights of the Ryokan is the Japanese breakfast in the morning.

Green Tea, pickled vegetables, miso soup, rice, and a piece of salmon and some omelet. Nori on the side to mix in with rice! Delicious way to start the day.

At the Ryokan, they also have lovely green tea in the room for you to sip while you sit on the pillows on the tatami mats. In Ryokan Sawanoya, where I stayed in Tokyo near the Ueno park, the tea was particularly good.

With a little origami crane to say hello!

When Alec arrived we explored a crazy area called Shibuya which is filled with trendy Tokyo teenagers shopping and milling about. It's home to the craziest street crossing in the world. I didn't think to go up to the 2nd floor Starbucks and take a video but here's one to give you a feel for it. We were there at night so it was bathed in neon lights too...

After feeling a bit overwhelmed, we just went into a sushi place never suspecting it was a conveyor belt sushi place! We felt so proud of ourselves for mastering the technology!

The menus are printed in front of you and you use a touchscreen television screen to select 3 dishes and your beverages.

 Then they whiz along the conveyor belt quickly to your "station" at the bar. 

Delicious! I made a dent. And it was cheap!

Alec demonstrating proper chopsticks technique. Note the big pile of plates from our neighbors nextdoor.

After a fast and furious day in Tokyo, we got up early the next morning to take the Shinkasen (bullet train) to Kyoto. And since it was Alec and I, we got SNACKS! We were obsessed with the Japanese snacks and a trip to 7-11 was always a treat. 

Onigiris are rice balls in a cool wrapper that keeps the seaweed crisp and the rice moist!

Often filled with salmon, salmon roe, umeboshi plum (salt pickeled sour plum), tuna, and fish roe. The one I got on the train was tuna mayonnaise and then I got another one that was salmon. It was a lottery as I couldn't read the Japanese.

Japanese 7-11s actually produce decent food! No gross burritos here!

Look at that selection!

We bought rice cracker snacks (our favorite had crab on them), aloe vera flavored jelly squares, Japanese chocolate, hot green tea from a heated rack, Asahi and Sapporo beer, jasmine green tea, some gloves, moisturizer, and numerous other things.

Up next - part 2! Eating our way through Kyoto!

On the hunt for Mexican food in Amsterdam

This week, an American friend of mine suggested that we try out a Mexican restaurant in Amsterdam. Now, I'm extremely cautious about mexican food (and hamburgers) in Europe. In general, they don't taste right. Either they substitute bad ingredients or they make concessions to the local taste (cucumbers instead of pickles on burgers?!?!, Whole wheat buns? ). My sad experience with trying "salsa" throughout the world has made me reluctant to eat it outside of North America. I try to make it a priority to eat Mexican food when I'm in the US - in NYC, in DC, in California - I'll try it in South Carolina but usually there I only want to drink margaritas and eat chips and salsa. Although with the influx of Mexicans into the state, I've heard rumors of "real"  taquerias in West Colombia that I've been on the hunt for.

Anyway, the restaurant that we went to is called "Tomatillo" and it was sold to me as "Exactly like Chipotles". Here's my review:

Looks: Tomatillo's operating model is just like Chipotle. The menu has the same options: burritos, soft tacos, chips and salsa and salads. You can get beer and wine but no margaritas. The tables are brushed metal with high stools and the decor is reminiscent with framed photos of latin america and an open kitchen. Very clean and nice. They play "lounge" music and they deliver.

Advantage: Tomatillo - the lack of margaritas is made up for by the fact that you can get it delivered to your house.

My meal:  I had a dos equis beer, chips and salsa and guacamole and a chicken fajita burrito.

The meat:
Now the best thing about Chipotle is their chicken. Their chicken is marinated in crack cocaine and is delicious - its salty and a bit spicy but not overwhelmingly tasting of one thing or another. its still a bit fatty but tender and juicy. I ate this chicken almost every day for two years.  At Tomatillo, there appeared to be cinammon in the marinade for the chicken in the chicken fajita burrito I had.  While I didn't mind it, it just added a "what's that flavor" to the chicken that I wasn't expecting. They claim its marinated in an adobo marinade.
Advantage: Chipotle

The burrito:
It was double wrapped in paper and tinfoil which helped because it was messy. It had beans, rice, meat, and veggies in there. I saw big roasted red peppers.  At Chipotle, the other thing I really like is that they use romaine lettuce instead of iceberg (although they are always super stingy with how much they give you) but I couldn't really tell what lettuce was in my Tomatillo burrito. I suspect it was iceberg.  The black beans were more soupy and less whole pure black beans than Chipotle and there was no option of pintos. but I like black beans so this was fine.
Advantage: Tied

The chips:
At Tomatillo ,the chips were actually made there on premises and crispy - tortilla chips are the biggest problems in the Netherlands... these were good but not salty enough. I love the Chipotle chips becaus they are thin and crispy and served in a paper bag.

Advantage: Tied

The Guacamole:
The Guacamole had too much lime in it and not enough chunks of Avocado. And it was WAY too expensive for the amount I got. At Chipotle, you get a giant scoop for 1.50 and I paid for a little to go souffle cup for 3.50 euros. but it was pretty good compared to most guac here.

Advantage: Chipotle

The beer:
They had a selection of Mexican beers - Dos Equis, Negro Modelo, and Corona and served it with a lime and without a glass, which I liked but they need to crank down the temperature of the cooler a bit since Mexican beer needs to be cold, in my opinion.

Advantage: Tied - the 'generic' alternative is Heineken at Tomatillo which is better than Bud.

The Salsa:
Now, for the most important part....the salsas. I ordered the Chipotle medium spicy salsa and the Habanero extremely spicy salsa... on a scale of spicy from 1-10 with 1 being tomato sauce from a can and 10 being biting a habanero pepper in Jamaica, I would give the Chipotle medium spicy a 4 and the Habanaero a 5. I didn't consider either to be spicy. The chipotle wasn't even as spicy as Old El Paso spicy taco sauce.  And they pureed their salsas which I normally don't like but I noticed a lovely looking pico de gallo on the serving board so next time I go back, I might try that.

Advantage: Chipotle

Overall grade: For Amsterdam, this is the best Mexican (Tex-Mex) that I've had. But as far as "just like Chipotles" - I would give it a B-. But I'm now sufficiently intrigued about how authentic it can get to Los Pilones and try their margaritas.