photo by newyork8080
I have a love and hate relationship with Strand. The "hate" part, for those interested, will be explained at the end of this posting, but let me start with the "love" one. For a hardcover-loving bibliophile rat I am, Strand is simply a great place - one of the best in the world. It's big, cavernous (they claim to offer "18 miles of books") and full of surprises...
Read the rest of: "Stranded on Broadway"»  I am not exactly a frequent visitor at tea salons
- a fact pretty much ensured by the very presence
of the Y chromosome in my DNA.
Yet, since about a year ago, I regularly find
myself at a place that ranks suspiciously well on
the tea connoisseurs' list of Montreal cafés and
restaurants.
And what do I order there? Tea. And cookies...
Read the rest of: "Tea and Cookies at Nocochi"»
 For all of us who like to go to restaurants
and imagine we've been invited to somebody's
dinner party, there's now a perfect place
to do just that.
Chicago native Daniel Rose (who originally came
to France intending to study philosophy... more on that later)
runs his 16-seat restaurant called " Spring"
almost as some sort of a one-man show...
Read the rest of: "Spring in Paris"»  There are many methods of discovering good restaurants and avoiding bad ones in an unfamiliar city.
The simplest one I know of involves walking secondary streets of the target neighborhood in the evening, taking note of restaurants that quickly fill up with locals. Avoid the empty ones, avoid the ones with people who look like tourists. Above all, avoid the ones with menus in English. Obviously, read the menus. That's pretty much it.
As simple as the method may be, most of the time it just works. Et voici my latest Parisian discovery: L'Absinthe Café in the 3rd arrondissement (not to be confused with the restaurant L'Absinthe in the 1st)...
Read the rest of: "L'Absinthe Café: First Impressions"»  A visiting Parisian recently made me laugh. Stretched on the grass next to the esplanade in the
Old Port,
she suddenly noticed Habitat 67's retro-futuristic assemblage across the Lachine Canal.
" Et ça" - she said peering confusedly at the distant building - " Ce sont des logements sociaux?" ("And that... that's a housing project?"). I laughed because although nothing could be further from the truth (the internationally acclaimed building houses well-to-do Montrealers - one could even say, the city's elite) many people somehow make a similar mistake. They are put off by the building's stern look, uninviting color and absurd shape, and so they wrongly assume something of the sort can only be used to house the underclass. I am here to clear up the confusion and defend the merits of Habitat 67...
Read the rest of: "The Habitat"»  Attitudes to public drinking in Italy seem to be more lax than in most other places I've been to. This is hardly shocking if you remember that we're talking about a wine-exporting Mediterranean country, but still, what you can matter-of-factly do here may very well surprise your typical New Yorker.
One example: during our last expedition to Rome (which neatly coincided with Ree's birthday), we got it into our heads to finish the evening with a glass of champagne next to the Trevi Fountain. Guess what?
Read the rest of: "Drinking Champagne by the Trevi Fountain"»  They are a familiar sight on the banks of the Seine - those faintly weary people manning dark-green wooden stalls filled with used and new books, postcards, posters, paintings, compact disks, LP's other pre-digital-era media curiosities.
They are Paris Bouquinistes - a tribe that has existed (and flourished) since as far back as mid-16th century, although it was only from the late 1790's, when they were first officially recognized, that les bouquinistes gradually came to occupy most embankments on and around Île de la Cité - despite organized resistance from the more "orderly" bookstores which, as you know, are aplenty in Paris...
Read the rest of: "Paris Bouquinistes"»  I am not a wine connoisseur, and completely hopeless when it comes to Hungarian wines, so I am not going to give you any advice to guide you through the wine list at Aszú. Heck, I didn't even try any Hungarian wines there! My mission for the night was much simpler: to have a decent terrace meal in the
Old Port
and enjoy a nice conversation with my dining partner who happened to be another SiteBits contributor...
Read the rest of: "Dinner at Aszú"»  |
