Portugal: Não, obrigada

Having spent a few days in Portugal and loving everything I tasted - the cheese, the fish, the bread ... nothing was fancy or complicated and everything exploded with flavor - Sweet Diablo was a real letdown. First of all, diablo is the Spanish word. The word for devil in Portuguese is diabo. One might argue that Sweet Diablo isn't officially a Portuguese cafe, but the website exlaims "bemvindo!" or "welcome!" and references "childhood experiences in Portugal." Still, I'm confident I wouldn't have noticed this if the food had been more than fine. We shared two sandwiches (a Porto and an Evora), which tasted oddly similar and were pretty small for the price. My biggest issue was that the sandwiches were warm and the arugula in the Evora was cooked, i.e. stringy and flavorless. We also had a soup of the day (beef and bean), which was wan beyond belief. My soup-fiend of a one year old wouldn't touch the stuff. And this kid eats unsalted rice cakes and sugar-free cheerios. To be fair, we didn't try any of the desserts and they do claim to make the world's best chocolate cake. Sadly, this is another example of a restaurant trying to serve food they think people want because they are eating it other places. But DC doesn't need another fancy sandwich shop (especially mediocre fancy sandwiches). A cafe serving the food that office workers in Lisbon enjoy might really be something.

Sweet Diablo 1200 19th Street, NW, DC

Poland: Don't Go Back to Rockville

That REM song doesn't actually have anything to do with anything, but it's a real song about Rockville, Maryland (maybe it's because I hail from the other side and am uninformed (I can think of two songs about Arlington), but there can't be too many songs about Maryland and maybe no other songs about Rockville?). Rockville happens to be the home of The Kielbasa Factory, the closest thing I could find to a Polish restaurant in the DC area. There are a couple places around that claim to be Polish, but were more generally Eastern European with leanings in other directions, such as Hungary or oddly, Scandinavia. So on a snowy Sunday we set out in pre-Christmas traffic for The Kielbasa Factory, which as you might expect, is a haven for Polish expats. They sell all kinds of Polish treats, from a wide variety of kielbasa (not surprisingly), dried mushrooms, jams, dairy products, even Polish toiletries and magazines. We escaped with a pound of the classic kielbasa, some Polish bacon, a pack of buckwheat groats, two cartons of potato and cheese pierogis, and four Paczki or doughnuts (when I asked the surly check-out woman what kind of doughnuts they were, meaning what type of filling, she said "they are Polish." In addition to being Polish they were also filled with plum jam.) The kielbasa and bacon made for a very tasty stuffed cabbage and the pierogis were deliciously doughy, but the Paczkis were a real disappointment. They look really, really good in the picture on the Kielbasa Factory website, but they were not fresh and the jam was not good quality. I'm not really a doughnut person, but I do have fond memories of rose jam-filled doughnuts in Warsaw. Alas..... I don't know that I'd drive all the way to Rockville just for The Kielbasa Factory, but if I found myself nearby, I might very well pop in for a package of pierogis or other Polish delight.

The Kielbasa Factory
1073 Rockville Pike, Rockville

The Philippines: Meh again

There are a multitude of boring mostly baby-related reasons that it took me so long to make it to the Philippine Oriental Market (aka POM). Also, they closed for a month or so over the winter...I will spare you the boring nap-related details and also encourage you to spare yourself a trip to POM. As the name suggests, this is a little market selling Filipino products, but there is also a hot bar of-sorts. As they do not have a website, finding their opening hours, etc. is a little tricky. Google did let me know that they close at 4:30 pm, but it was only after I showed up at 2:45 hoping to get something I could heat up for dinner, that I learned that "lunch is from 12-2!" The couple that runs the place is really sweet, though, and they gave me what was left for cheap or free (a strange sweet bun with flavorless yellow cheese in it and a random little chicken leg). I also came away with some glass noodles and adobo rice, both of which I really wanted to like, but they tasted like generic Asian food that you might find in a shopping mall food court. I had such high hopes for this place and it doesn't feel good being negative when the owners are so nice. It's possible that I missed something great by being 45 minutes too late, but the food I did get to try suggested otherwise.

Philippine Oriental Market
3610 Lee Hwy, Arlington

Moving Day: from Pakistan to Peru

I won't be eating Berlin anymore -- or at least not regularly -- as we have up and moved (back) to DC. I happily admit that this project helped me to discover some corners of Berlin that I wouldn't have otherwise seen and some really interesting and in a few cases really delicious restaurants. This isn't the place to weigh the merits of Berlin vs. DC, but each city has some good things going on. In the almost seven years I lived in Berlin, the food scene changed a lot and improved in many ways. Still, I don't believe it's a great food town and I'm not sure it's building a solid foundation (ie, one based on it's own traditions vs. those borrowed from Brooklyn or LA or ....). Great "ethnic" food is a real dark spot in Berlin's food scene and a real bright spot in the DC food scene. So if nothing else, continuing this project picking up where I left off (with P for Pakistan) should be a lot of delicious fun. I should move to a different blogging address and maybe I will, but mostly writing for my own amusement with mainly my parents for readers.....I lack the motivation to do it just yet. In the past month I've managed to enjoy a Pakistani and Peruvian meal. My little offspring is turning into a real champion eater (on some days/of bread products), but he limits my restauranting to some extent, as well as, my recording these outings......so the details of these meals are fuzzy....I wish I could tell you if we ate at Ravi Kebab I or II, but no matter as they are almost next door to each other. We got the Ravi kebabs (lamb) and the okra curry daily special. The kebabs came with rice, curried chickpeas, and naan. The meat and bread are cooked to order, making this not quite fast food joint and it is cash-only, so not the most convenient place either, but the food was very good, if not quite life-changing. The main shortcoming of the kebabs - less than top-quality meat, is hard to avoid in "ethnic" restaurants (although this is notably and increasingly less true in the US (vs Germany) where "ethnic" cuisines are increasingly available in fine(r) restaurants). The okra curry, however, was really good and I regret not having ordered the vegetable yogurt curry. Note to self: next time focus on the daily vegetable curries. While Berlin has a few Peruvian choices, there aren't more than a handful of Peruvians, so the restaurants cater primarily to Germans. Not the case in the DC area. We picked Huascaran Restaurant because of it's relative proximity to home and because it offered more than rotisserie chicken (despite the fact that so-called Peruvian chicken is a big DC-area thing and often delicious; we were in the mood for something more). Huascaran has a good vibe. It's not very big, but on Saturday night most of the tables were full. The place has a good, warm atmosphere with the exception of the two televisions tuned to a Spanish-league soccer match and a college football game. The owner is clearly present in the dining room and nobody minds a loud, if-jolly infant sprinkling waffle crumbs everywhere. The food, alas, is less amazing. We really liked the ceviche - nothing revolutionary, but refreshing. It's served with a chunk of sweet potato and big choclo, unexpected but a good chaser for the dish's heat. We also shared papas a la huancaina and a papa rellena (a potato dumpling of sorts, stuffed with minced meat). Both were edible, but sort of blah. We also shared a seco de carne, basically a beef stew with a good hit of cilantro and the cabrito (goat). Both suffered from the old cheap meat problem. Sigh. There is a dessert case with alfajores (sandwich cookies filled with dulce de leche) and a few other treats. I love alfajores and this is the only bad one I've ever had. The filling was somehow tasteless and the cookies, while appropriately crumbly, tasted of margarine and fake vanilla. Still, I liked something about this place - the vibe is warm and you do feel transported to another place for a little while. I'd go back and try one of the soups or wait for summer and return for the ceviche. Ravi Kebab 350 and 250 N. Glebe Rd., Arlington Huascaran Restaurant 3606 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria

Norwegen: das Roh und nicht das Gekocht

Munch's Hus is the self-proclaimed only Norwegian restaurant in Germany. I went for lunch with a friend and a baby that did not want to sit still and watch us eat Norwegian food. Although they offer a lunch deals (choice of meat or fish) for 6 or 7 Euros, the specials (a very basic-looking meat lasagna or fish with beets) didn't appeal on the day we were there. Instead, we shared two appetizers, the Rondane plate and the Sognefjord plate (named after a national park and the world's third largest fjord, respectively, in case you were wondering). The Rondane plate features a couple different sausages and hams made from elk and reindeer plus a few Norwegian cheeses, which are possibly the least cheese-like cheeses on the planet. The Sognefjord plate is, as you might expect, a seafood plate of various smoked and cured fish. Both were good, but in hindsight, we didn't really sample anything that required cooking. Still, the menu looks interesting (halibut in a blueberry-saffron sauce?) and I would definitely return to try something more elaborate. Munch's Hus Bülowstraße 66

Nigeria: mittendrin

Nigerian food (or African food for that matter) has yet to become trendy. Every now and then someone predicts that it is about to conquer our culinary shores, but so far it hasn't and I don't see it happening anytime soon. It's too bad because the dishes (admittedly a very tiny sample) we enjoyed at Ebe-Ano were really delicious. Of all the cuisines I've tried in the name of this little project here, I've been the most surprised (and mostly pleasantly so) by the African ones. Now that the Royal Aerostar Berlin is "closed until further notice," Ebe-Ano (much more centrally located, I might add) is at the top of my list of places I would definitely go back to and wish more people would check out. The menu is divided into rice and yam dishes - referring to which carb accompanies the dish. Yam is actually a dumpling of sorts made from white yam or manioc flour (along the lines of fufu), basically a big ball of gluey starch. From the yam side of the menu, we shared an okra stew, which was flavored with dried fish (a major seasoning in Nigerian cuisine, similar to the way ham flavors many vegetable or bean dishes in Spain) - not a combination western diners are likely familiar with, but it really works. Nigerians would have pulled off pieces of the dumpling and used it scoop up the stew (we were provided with a bowl of water for cleaning our fingers), but not being practiced and with nobody in sight to copy, we used the utensils also provided. Our second dish was recommended by the waitress and although it is vaguely described on the menu as something like vegetables and rice, it was our favorite. The vegetable seemed to be mostly spinach, though perhaps this changes based on season or availability, and was also flavored with dried fish - again delicious. For some of the dishes, you can choose to add a piece of meat or fish and here we added fish (hake maybe?), which was cooked to a tender, golden and crispy perfection. Like at Royal Aerostar, the food is served with a hot sauce - it has a great, fruity flavor, but is hot hot hot. Ordering a Nigerian Star lager is therefore essential and delicious. In addition to good, interesting food at very reasonable prices, Berlin's African restaurants, Ebe-Ano included, seem to function as community centers of a sort for expats from the respective countries. At Ebe-Ano a group of men was hanging outside on a warm evening yelling good-naturedly at neighborhood kids. Other places have had computers for skype calls home, electronic game machines, and televisions tuned to a national station. These things are in addition to a meal that tastes for most of the clientele, I presume/hope, like home. As Berlin's trendsetters have yet to declare Nigerian (or African) food cool, the cooks are cooking for their countryfolk. They'll likely warn you that the hot sauce is really spicy, but you'll get the same food as everyone else. You won't be able to order a mango lassi or a swimming pool cocktail and they probably haven't spent much money decorating, but you will get a tiny glimpse into another world. I've eaten in these trendy places in Mitte (not only there, but things seem particularly bad in certain Bezirks) - the food costs more and tastes like less and you generally get a glimpse of other people who look just like you. Ebe-Ano Pohlstrasse 52

Neuseeland: flach und weiss

Not much comes to mind when I think about New Zealand cuisine. Lamb? Kiwis? Wikipedia will tell you about Maori cuisine, a fusion of Polynesian ingredients and techniques with local New Zealand ingredients, but as native American cuisines are not regarded as typical American fare, Maori cuisine is not considered New Zealand's national cuisine. Instead, it is apparently similar to Australian cuisine - British (New Zealand was a colony) with lots of international influences, particularly Asian. (I'd be very interested to sample a traditional cookie, the Afghan biscuit, an iced chocolate cookie with a crunch from cornflakes. Why it's associated with Afghanistan, I cannot say.) In recent years, New Zealand became associated with coffee culture. I'm not sure how this came to be, but according to newzealand.com, the country "has more roasters per capita than anywhere in the world." Flat whites are to New Zealand (and Australia) what cappuccinos are to Italy. Until visiting Antipodes, a little Mitte-Prenzlauer Berg cafe run by a couple of Kiwis, I had yet to lay eyes or mouth on a flat white. A flat white is, for your information, "a less milky brew with textured rather than frothy milk." So, like a latte, but with a higher ratio of coffee to milk or a cappuccino with less foam. The flat white is apparently very tricky to make and will say that Antipodes makes good coffee, but I'd have to broaden my experience with flat whites before I can make an authoritative statement on this particular drink. I will add that their chai latte is awful - made from one of those syrups or powders and much, much too sweet. I respect their decision not to serve decaf coffee (the owner told me they weren't happy with the quality of the one they previously had). Even as a temporary decaf drinker, I think decaf is sort of silly. But by their own logic, why serve a sub-par chai? Still, this is mostly quibbling as they are all about coffee and their coffee is very good (I tasted my husband's). I also have good things to say about their sandwiches. In a city full of dreadful belgete broetchen, the "filled rolls" available at every bakery in the country - the bread tastes like cotton batting, the meat and cheese offerings are always the same - salami, some dreadful tomato-mozzarella aproximation...., and they are always smeared with Remouladensauce or remoulade sauce of the cheapest order, meaning it tastes like bad miracle whip. Anyway, the sandwiches at Antipodes are much more interesting; not ground-breaking perhaps, but certainly not what you'll find everywhere else in town. One of my companions had a toasted sandwich with salami and peppers that looked very tasty. It's not the cosiest cafe, but I'm tempted (especially once my coffee hiatus is over) to go back for brunch and try their eggs benedict. P.S. New Zealand (and Australia) are often referred to as the Antipodes as they are vaguely antipodal to Europe - the Antipodes Islands of New Zealand are almost antipodal to London. Antipodes Fehrbelliner Str. 5