Restaurant Report: Bahor in Florida
Located in the middle of a strip mall in North Miami Beach, Bahor must seem like a UFO to most locals. Save for emigrants from the post-Soviet space, how many Floridians have ever heard of Georgia (the...
View ArticleUzbek Adventures, Part 2: Chorsu Bazaar
As I mentioned in my last post, Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, doesn’t have the same touristic appeal as Samarkand or Bukhara. The 1966 earthquake caused massive destruction, and gave the USSR the...
View ArticleRomanian Duck Pâté Pantin and Cluj-Style Vegetables
Despite my original intention to go to the Finger Lakes for the January duck season like I did last year, I ended up making other plans. My only waterfowl hunting trip this season has been a weekend in...
View ArticleUzbek Adventures, Part 3: Tashkent’s Eateries
In Lonely Planet‘s Central Asia travel guide, the Eating section for Tashkent starts as follows: “You’ll eat better in Tashkent than anywhere else in Uzbekistan and perhaps even than most of Central...
View ArticleVánočka, Czech Christmas Bread
Many Europeans countries share the tradition of preparing a kind of sweet bread, often with dried fruits, for religious holidays. Germany has Stollen and Italy eats panettone, while Russia makes kulich...
View ArticleUzbek Adventures, Part 4: Bukhara
Returning to Uzbekistan after a sojourn in Tajikistan feels a little bit like reaching the promised land after crossing the desert. A Tajik desert with decrepit Soviet relics, hellish hotels, hellish...
View ArticleAn Evening of Georgian Natural Wines
I’ve been wanting to write about Georgian wines for quite a while now. First I promised I would include a chapter about Kakheti wineries in my Georgian Adventures series, and completely forgot about it...
View ArticlePovitica, Croatian Walnut Roll
Walnut rolls are common in many cuisines of Eastern Europe. Hungarians eat bejgli, Slovenians have potica, and Croatians make povitica, generally for Christmas and Easter. The dessert counts many...
View ArticleUzbek Adventures, Part 5: Eating in Samarkand
One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia, Samarkand is just a short ride from Bukhara, whether by road or by rail, thanks to the new super fast Afrosiyob trains. Just like in...
View ArticleCumanian Lamb Wellington, Galuska and Lecsó
Every year around Easter, I invariably muse that it would be nice to post an Eastern European lamb recipe on these pages, and then realize that lamb isn’t really eaten with any regularity in that part...
View ArticleUzbek Adventures, Part 6: Samarkand’s Siyob Bazaar
In my last Uzbek Adventures post, we caught a glimpse of Samarkand’s restaurants. We had lunch by the Registan and tasted exotic kebabs and wines in the Russian part of town. The Bibi-Khanym Mosque is...
View ArticleVarškės Spurgos, Lithuanian Farmer Cheese Fritters
Nearly every country counts some kind of sweet fried dough among its desserts. Americans eat doughnuts, Indians have gulab jamun, the French make beignets, and I’ve already written about fritule,...
View ArticleGeorgian Adventures, Part 10
It recently dawned on me that I somehow managed to write an entire series of posts about Georgia, and barely talk about Georgian wine, except for a quick bit about Racha. The omission wasn’t...
View ArticleFood Perestroika’s Signature Plov
I know, I know, this blog is already filled with plov recipes. I published my first Uzbek plov entry almost eight years ago here, then I used it as stuffing for a roasted leg of lamb here. I tried a...
View ArticleMoscow Rules, Part 1: Uzbekistan Restaurant
This is exciting! After nearly eight years of blogging about Eastern Europe, I’m finally writing my first travel series about Russia, albeit the distances physically traveled are relatively small —...
View ArticleWhat Vladimir Putin Eats, Part 6
Over six years ago, I started asking myself this seemingly simple question: “What does Vladimir Putin eat?” If the man’s every move is covered by a small army of reporters, surely his meal preferences...
View ArticleRussian Spring Lactone Eggs Benedict
I know this recipe title is a bit hard to parse. You might be wondering if I’m talking about a new Russian Spring movement aiming to depose Tsar Vlad, or if Lactone is a brand of shampoo. And what is a...
View ArticleSummer Recipes, 2018 Edition
It’s that time of year again! As I’m off to a remote Eastern European destination in search of amazing blogable stories (this year, Montenegro), I won’t be posting for a few weeks. But that’s the...
View ArticleMoscow Rules, Part 2: White Rabbit
Perched on the top of the Smolensky Passage, under a sort of glass dome, a few steps away from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Arbat, White Rabbit is named after the famous rodent in Lewis...
View ArticleNew Russian Brioche, Herring, and Foie Gras
To go with the Moscow Rules series of restaurant reports that I’ve recently started, I intend to create recipes that are directly inspired by or adapted from the dishes I ate during my visits to each...
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