so long, 2012!

Song



Roy Harper, Stormcock

Sixto Rodriguez, Coming From Reality

Cat Power, Sun

More (original soundtrack), "music played and composed by Pink Floyd"

Zabriskie Point (original soundtrack), v/a



Fotheringay, s/t

Grimes, Visions

Beach House, Bloom

Lynyrd Skynyrd, Street Survivors

Destroyer, "Leave Me Alone"

Futurisk, "Lonely Streets"

Divine Fits, A Thing Called Divine Fits

Neil Young, Psychedelic Pill + Yuma



Bill Fay, Life is People + The Time of the Last Persecution

The Faces, BBC TV special, 1972

The Dirty Three, Toward the Low Sun

Tim Hecker, Live at the Red Roof, Pop Montreal

Sharon Van Etten, Tramp

Fairport Convention, Bouton Rouge session, 1968

Print







Manny's Delicatessen Restaurant brochure, ca. 1970


David Grann, "The Yankee Comandante:  A Story of Love, Revolution, and Betrayal," The New Yorker, May 28, 2012






Ian Frazier, Travels in Siberia

Errol Morris, Believing is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography)

Ariel Levy, "The Space in Between:  Naomi Wolf's Vagina:  A New Biography," The New Yorker, September 10, 2012

Henry James, Portrait of a Lady

Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild



Magnus Nilsson, Fäviken

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Eleanor Clark, The Oysters of Locmariaquer

John McPhee, The Crofter and the Laird

Jill Lepore, "The Lie Factory:  How Politics Became a Business," The New Yorker, September 24, 2012



Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

Jon Halliday, Sirk on Sirk

Mark Kurlansky, The Basque History of the World:  The Story of a Nation



David Jury, Graphic Design Before Graphic Designers:  The Printer as Designer and Craftsman, 1700-1914

Jessica Mitford, Hons and Rebels

Hugh Garvey (w/ Chef Andy Ricker), "Simply Thai:  A BA Cooking Primer," Bon Appétit, January 2012

Moving Images



Muhammad Ali:  The Greatest, dir. Klein

Treme, season 2

I Know Where I'm Going, dir. Powell

Searching for Sugar Man, dir. Bendjelloul

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, dir. Alfredson

Oslo, August 31, dir. Trier

Moonrise Kingdom, dir. Anderson



Stop Making Sense, dir. Demme

Blank City:  New Cinema, No Wave, New York, dir. Danhier

Museum Hours, dir. Cohen

A Separation, dir. Farhadi

Meek's Cutoff, dir. Reichardt

Monsieur Lazahr, dir. Falardeau

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, dir. Fincher



The Limits of Control, dir. Jarmusch

Ratcatcher, dir. Ramsay

Detropia, dir. Ewing & Grady

The Wire, seasons 1-5 (all over again)

Food & Drink



Green Chile Summer

Grilled Corn Summer

Hôtel Herman, Montreal, QC



Foodlab, Montreal, QC

Bao Bei, Vancouver

Toro, Boston



Zingerman's Roadhouse, Ann Arbor, MI

Revolver, Vancouver



Montreal bazaars

Santouka, Vancouver

crunchy granola



Neptune, Boston

Toshi, Vancouver



Cream-Nut peanut butter

Hudson's Hamburgers, Coeur d'Alene, ID

Boulangerie Niemand, Kamouraska, QC



summer peaches

The Farm House "Lady Jane" cheese + Les Amis du Fromage, Vancouver

Le Grand Aïoli, Alexandraplatz, Montreal, QC



Montreal food enterprise of the year:  Coq Asian

Furco, Montreal, QC



bo ssäm & ssäm bburritos

Miscellaneous



escapes to Vancouver

The Cornwallville Summer Social 2012, Cornwallville, NY

This American Life, "What Happened at Dos Erres"



Mystery Train, Gloucester, MA



summer swimming + cottage outings



Kamouraska, QC



bags by Erin Templeton

Le Creuset cookware (in black)



Cornwallville Soaps

Birdkage waxed canvas aprons

ping pong!


All the best to you in 2013 (?!!), from your friends at "...an endless banquet."  Thanks for reading!

aj

p.s. And if you're wondering what our most popular post was this year, it was our "Boston Notebook (go figure!)."

Top Ten #20

1. crab, crab tacos, crab louie

2. eating your way through the strip malls of Northern Virginia

3. Ways of Escape, Graham Greene



4. Upper Saranac Lake, NY



5. The Burden of Dreams, dir. Les Blank

6. esquites

7. A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

8. eating your way across Vancouver

9. Effi Briest, Theodor Fontane

10. Breakfast Lunch Tea, Rose Carrarini

8/29/07

Vancouver Diary 8: The Final Chapter

June 19, 2007

Our flight back to Montreal was a 2:00 pm departure, which meant we had to get to the airport at about noon. I made sure to make it out to Continental Coffee one last time to make a pick-up, but Michelle figured we had time for one more full-fledged food-related stop before going to the airport, as long as the place was more or less on the way. The question was where to go. Do we go back to one of the week's highlights? Hawker's Delight? We only really had a snack from there and it was right on Main. Toshi Sushi? Do they even do lunch, and, if so, would they prepare a take-out order for us? Or do we try someplace new? In the end we opted for novelty.

Duffin's Donuts

Michelle had read about Duffin's Donuts on Main and how there was some kind of Southeast Asian sandwich shop lurking within. She had a feeling Duffin's was worth a visit, and she was positive that a couple of take-out sandwiches were just what we needed for our flight. She insisted we'd be the envy of the entire passengers' cabin.

We weren't exactly sure what we'd find when we got there, but when we pulled in across the street things looked promising.

fig. a: signage, Duffin's Donuts

We're still not 100% sure of what we experienced at Duffin's Donuts. One thing's certain: it's located in an old ('70s?) doughnut shop. But beyond that, things get mysterious. The place is owned by a Southeast Asian family who maintained the shop's donut selection and their Canadian-style light meals, but then added a bunch of Southeast Asian treats to the menu. We've read accounts that the family is Vietnamese and that they serve Vietnamese sandwiches, but we've also read that they're Cambodian and that they serve "Vietnamese" sandwiches (why they wouldn't be Cambodian sandwiches in that case isn't clear to me). All we know is that they're known for their "hot torta" sandwiches, and that torta wasn't the only Spanish word on the menu. Michelle got the "hot torta" with machaca, while I got the carne azada number. Did all these Spanish terms indicate some kind of Filipino connection? We're still not clear on that. All we know is that we loved the whole Duffin's Donuts experience: the friendly service, the hybridity of the operation, and especially those "hot torta" sandwiches, which made for some awfully great airplane food. Overstuffed with avocado, tomato, and lettuce, and served on a big, puffy bun not unlike a Portuguese bun, both sandwiches featured generously seasoned, thinly sliced cuts of meat.

Did we end up being "the envy of the entire passengers' cabin"? I couldn't tell you. I was way too busy wolfing down my sandwich to notice.

Oh, and the doughnuts are good too.

Duffin's Donuts, 4898 Main St., (604) 879-5551

All in all it had been quite the week. A week filled with so many highlights, it took over a month to write about it.

Many thanks to Brady and Robin for getting hitched and for bringing together so many great people in the process, to S. and D. for being the consummate hosts and for somehow putting up with our powerful food fixations, and to all our other Vancouver friends, new and old, for making the 2007 "Yummers, Not Bummers" Tour such a success.

aj

Vancouver Diary 7, rev. ed.

June 18, 2007

Monday was our last full day in Vancouver.

fig. a: high-fibre lunch, Chinatown

There we were, wandering around Chinatown for the umpteenth time, looking for an old poster shop that I'd found up above a souvenirs shop back in 1999 (apparently it's long gone), getting hungry because of the Asian delicacies in prominent display at every turn (see photograph above), and just generally minding our business, when who should pull up next to us in a beat-up old Nissan, honking wildly, but our good friend Erin Templeton. We were looking for Erin because she'd just gotten back from Switzerland and Monday was going to be our only chance to get to spend some time with her, and it turned out she was driving around, looking for us, too. Fate.

She took us to see her house and then she took us on a very exclusive, personal tour of her brand-new Chinatown boutique, which had just opened days earlier.

fig. b: Erin Templeton @ Erin Templeton

Erin Templeton

The eponymously named Erin Templeton was the third of the three killer boutiques we visited over the course of our week in Vancouver (along with Eugene Choo and The Regional Assembly of Text). I was thrilled to see that she'd moved into the former home of Modernize Tailors (fittingly, they've moved into a modern building across the street), one of the most beautiful storefronts in all of Vancouver,

fig. c: entrance, Erin Templeton

right around the corner from the world-famous Jack Chow Insurance building. I was even happier to see what she'd done with the space.

fig. d: interior, Erin Templeton

We got to see the studio out back where she makes her lovely line of bags, sandals, and accessories and we got a chance to catch up. By the time we were done yapping we were good and hungry. Good thing, too, because we were heading towards a feast.

Legendary Noodle

We didn't actually go to Legendary Noodle, in the sense of walking into the place, ordering some food, and eating on premises, but we did walk by Legendary Noodle on a couple of occasions, and we'd evidently expressed that we'd very much like to get that Legendary Noodle experience at some point during our stay, because soon after we showed up at Brady and Robin's for a social call, Brady walked in the door with the most extraordinary take-out order we'd seen in quite some time, all of it from--that's right--Legendary Noodle. He started unpacking the spread and we were beside ourselves with anticipation.

fig. e: noodles from Legendary Noodle

Sure, we didn't get to watch the noodle pros at Legendary Noodle make fresh noodles before our very eyes, but that's okay because you see those thick-cut, homemade noodles in that Fried Thick Noodles w/ Celery, Onion & Greens? They were just as tasty as they look.

fig. f: spread from Legendary Noodle

The hits just kept coming--Cut Noodle w/ Lamb, Gai-lan w/ Oyster Sauce, Fried Pan Cake w/ Onion, etc., etc.--and everything was fantastic. A few hours later, we rolled on out of there with some leftovers in tow for S. and D. We couldn't believe our good luck: quality face-time with the newlyweds and another "must-taste" scratched off our list.

Green Lettuce

Against all odds, we were hungry again by 7:00 pm., and the timing couldn't have been better because we had one last "must-taste" to give a look-see: Green Lettuce.

fig. g: exterior 1, Green Lettuce

Now, Green Lettuce might very well have been the place we obsessed about the most during our Vancouver trip. Part of that had to do with the fact that it was one of the very last places we visited, so we had way more time to obsess over it than some of the other places on our hitlist. But it was also just the nature of the tip. We'd never heard of the place until we discussed the Vancouver food scene at length with Kildare "Eugene Choo" Curtis on the previous Friday. And, frankly, we liked what we heard: an Indian-style Chinese restaurant run by a Hakka Chinese family from Calcutta. We tried to imagine what Indian-style Chinese food might taste like and we got goosebumps. Plus, Kildare told us the place had a reputation for being the hottest, spiciest restaurant in all of Vancouver. That definitely piqued our interest. Later that same evening, when we told D. that we wanted to check out Green Lettuce, he only fueled our obsession. He started fantasizing about an all 3-chili pepper meal--nothing remotely mild or even medium, just the fiery, Indian-style hot stuff. An Indian-style Chinese gastronomical bonfire.

fig. h: rating system, Green Lettuce

Days later, when we finally got to Green Lettuce, we liked the look of things right from the get-go.

fig. i: exterior 2, Green Lettuce

Any place that insists on its firepower to that extent is all right by us. And the best thing is, after all that build-up, Green Lettuce didn't disappoint. Not in the least. Everything we had was outstanding, and while the single 3-chilli-pepper dishes that we ordered (okay, we chickened out a little at the sight of all those chili peppers) had some serious legs to it, the heat was smart, tasty heat, not just heat for the sake of heat. Faves? Like I said, everything was great--from the Vegetable Hot & Sour Soup, to the Hot Chili Vegetable Dumplings (served with a garlic, onion, and bell pepper masala), to the Masala Chicken (Dry) Fried Rice, to the Fried Green Beans (Dry) (among the best I've ever had), to the Pili Beef--but the ones that blew our minds were the chicken fried rice and the smoking-hot Pili Beef. What a way to cap the week! We tried to wrap our heads around Green Lettuce's "15% off on pick up" deal and what it might mean if we lived in Vancouver, but ultimately we just couldn't. It'd be too good to be true.

Erin Templeton, 511 Carrall St. (604) 682-2451

Legendary Noodle, 4191 Main St., (604) 879-8758

Green Lettuce, 1949 Kingsway, (604) 876-9883

aj

Vancouver Diary 6

June 17, 2007

Fittingly enough--it being a Sunday and all--June 17 was our most relaxed day in Vancouver, our day of rest.

I woke up thinking about the produce we'd gotten at the East Van/Trout Lake Farmers' Market the day before. I was also thinking about that as-of-yet unopened package of smoked ricotta from La Grotta del Formaggio.

fig. a: smoked ricotta, zucchini blossoms

I kept the mushrooms simple. They were so nice that I wanted to taste them relatively unadorned. Just some butter and some garlic, salt and pepper. The zucchini blossoms were kept pretty simple too. I just gently undid the petals and stuffed them with small hunks of that smoked ricotta, which, quite frankly, was dazzling. Probably the best cheese experience I've had since the smoked mozzarella epiphany we had outside of Joe's Dairy earlier this year. I then gently twisted the petals back together again and seared them in a bit of olive oil in a medium-hot pan--just a minute or two on each side. Eggs over-easy, toast, and Continental coffee completed the scene. The mushrooms and the zucchini blossoms and the garlic scapes (I almost forgot about the sautéed garlic scapes) were all pretty great--ideal brunch fare. I'm not the only one who thought so, either. Here, read all about it.

We ate brunch kinda late, so lunch didn't really come into play that day. We just went and caught a film at the Scotiabank Theatre, and as we rode up the escalator towards our movie theatre we noticed this out the window:

fig. b: what the...?

a bizarre, overgrown, rooftop grass tennis court sitting on top of a Denny's. We immediately envisioned some kind of site-specific artwork, a film, or, even better, a large-scale photo-conceptualist piece, this being Vancouver, after all. Mostly we just wanted to find a way up there so we could enjoy the perverse thrill of playing lawn tennis on the roof of a building. Or was that just moss?

Japa Dog

Anyway, when we left the cinema two hours later, we fully intended to try and find a staircase up to that tennis court, but we kinda got sidetracked. You see, we'd heard rumors that the one, the only, Japa Dog--home of the Japanese-style "special hotdog--was located kitty-corner to Scotiabank Theatre, at the corner of Burrard and Smithe. And, sure enough, when we got out on the street, there he was: the Japa Dog chef, along with his lovely assistant, and that unmistakable Japa Dog cart. Suddenly, lawn tennis just didn't seem as important.

fig. c: Japa Dog!

In fact, we were ecstatic. It looked even better than we'd imagined. We weren't hugely hungry, but NO WAY were we going to miss out on that Japa Dog experience. So we took a close look at Japa Dog's Japa-style menu and made a couple of selections: the all-beef Terimayo and the bratwurst Oroshi. The Terimayo, as you might have gathered, comes with teriyaki sauce and Japa-style mayonnaise. What you might not know, is that it also comes with sauteed onions and--yes!--shredded nori. It looks like this

fig. d: Japa-style Terimayo dog

and it tastes divine. The Oroshi, on the other hand, comes with "special soy sauce," chopped scallions, and pickled daikon. I preferred the Terimayo, but the Oroshi was pretty stellar too, and Michelle thought the two were equals.

Not surprisingly, Japa Dog has made waves in the two years its been open. It's gotten its fair share of attention and it's won a number of awards too. Trust me, it deserves all the attention it's gotten. We'd definitely give it an award. In fact, I'm gonna give it an award right now: AEB's "Best Fusion Dish in the World." "Ever."

All those snapshots and articles on Japa Dog's Wall of Fame were pretty impressive, but we were particularly struck by one photo in particular:

fig. e: "Mr. Ice Cube ate!"

"I love turkey!"? AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted might have lost some of his attitude over the years, but at least the man's got taste.

Japa Dog, corner of Smithe and Burrard

aj

Vancouver Diary 5

As you may or may not remember, in our last installment of our hugely popular Vancouver Diary series, it was Friday night and we'd finished an action-packed day (more or less) with some frozen fun from Casa di Gelato.

We now rejoin our intrepid heroes, as the AEB Players Theatre brings you...

June 16, 2007

June 16 was a Saturday. It was also Wedding Day. The event we'd been waiting for. The catalyst behind this whole Vancouver adventure.

We knew we had a big day ahead of us, but we'd heard the East Van/Trout Lake Farmers' Market had become quite the scene since the last time either of us had had the chance to visit, and T. & T. had expressed interest in making an early morning market run, so we got them to swing by and pick us up, and off we went.

fig. a: pink rhubarb, Trout Lake Farmers' Market

Trout Lake Farmers' Market

Things had changed. It was rainy and cool and it wasn't the nicest June morning, but it didn't seem to have dissuaded anyone from making their way to Trout Lake. There was quite a hubbub when we arrived--certainly busier than I remember back in the '90s. We'd been told to expect a "foodie feeding frenzy." We were never really sure if we were up against certified food fetishists or not--we didn't check I.D.s--all we knew is that Trout Lake's phenomenal selection of organics were definitely being snapped up in a hurry. Take that pink rhubarb, for instance: the whole crate disappeared in the space of about 15 minutes. Naturally, we were most strongly attracted by those things that we don't see here in Montreal, real West Coast exotica like these gorgeous mushrooms:

fig. b: mushrooms, Trout Lake Farmers' Market

No, those mushrooms haven't been touched up with Photoshop or otherwise altered. Yes, that's their real color. The poor woman who was selling them must have answered that question 150 times that day. We bought one of those assortments in the middle there just to cheer her up. Yeah, right. Who're we kidding? We bought those mushrooms because they were gorgeous and we absolutely couldn't resist. We also got a bundle of garlic scapes, some zucchini blossoms, and this magical jar of chestnut honey:

fig. c: chestnut honey, Arila Apiary

Kind of a strange combination of purchases, but we left Trout Lake happy, if a bit hungry. That was soon to change.

Atelier Gallery

After dropping off T. & T. and making a pit stop at Sun Fresh for a couple more steamed vegetable buns (a.k.a. breakfast), we raced back to the Chateau Vermont to change into our respective monkey suits for the Big Occasion. Then we joined D. & S. and made our way to the Atelier Gallery for a little pre-wedding culture. Our new friend Sarah had curated a show entitled

fig. d: It's official: Drawing Never Died

and we were pretty excited to go because the show brought together the formidable talents of two old Vancouver friends and two new Vancouver friends. There was even a little food art.

fig. e: drawing by Maxwell Simmer

Trouble is, that two-dimensional spread only made us hungry.

So we said goodbye to the gang and charted a course due north to Granville Island. That's where the wedding was--at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design--and Granville Island's also the home of a fish shack called Go Fish that had been highly recommended to us. It took us a few minutes to figure out where exactly Go Fish was because it's nowhere near Sammy J. Peppers or any of those other Granville Island tourist traps. Eventually we just tried to figure out where the fishing boats dock because, after all, Go Fish's motto is "in support of local fisherman." Sure enough, there it was, directly in front of a shrimp boat that was displaying some pretty impressive food art of its own.

fig. f: shrimp boat, Granville Island

Go Fish

We couldn't possibly sing the praises of Go Fish enough. Talk about West Coast dining at its best. Take one tiny little fish shack, add a patio to it so that your patrons can dine al fresco, put together a small but thoughtful menu including a few seafood sandwiches, some legendary fish & chips, and a few grilled fish specialties, deal only in sustainably harvested fish and shellfish, keep your prices surprisingly affordable, and what you're left with is the fish shack of our dreams. So much so that we went in intending to just have "a little snack" prior to the wedding, and we ended up having a pretty substantial little meal.

For her: the Granville Island beer-battered halibut with perfect fries and a lovely tartar sauce complete with fresh tarragon.

fig. g: halibut fish & chips plate, Go Fish, Granville Island

For him: Go Fish's wonderful "tacones" (cone-shaped tacos): one with grilled salmon, the other with grilled tuna, both of them very B.C. (as opposed to very Baja), but no less delicious for it.

fig. h: salmon & tuna "tacones," Go Fish, Granville Island

The Wedding

Okay, we were on a roll--no doubt about it--and the wedding didn't disappoint in the least. Of course, the Montreal contingent had to kickstart the rugcutting,

fig. i: Brady & Robin shake a leg

and T. in particular had to pull out her notorious "air sitar" routine in order to seal the deal, but the whole affair was beautiful. The ceremony was short but very sweet, the toasts were touching, the drinks were flowing, hell, even the food was great--exactly the kind of expertly assembled charcuterie & cheese spread we favor. Of course a slight wardrobe malfunction forced Yours Truly to split the seam, uh, scene early, but all in all: a huge hit.

Congratulations, Robin & Brady! Happy Month-iversary!

Oh, yeah: we made off like bandits too. The official party favors were produced by none other than Robin's design company, Hundreds & Thousands. We didn't hold back when it came to stuffing our pockets full of her fetching coasters and pencil & notebook ensembles.

fig. j: party favors by Hundreds & Thousands

Modern Club

These damn afternoon weddings. We were drunk by 4:00 and adrift by 7:00. Luckily we had a reservation at Modern Club to sample okonomiyaki for the very first time. We were hungover by the time we arrived, so we had a bit of a hard time deciphering the menu, and especially what distinguished "modern" okonomiyaki from its "post-modern" counterpart, but everything worked out fine in the end and those crazy Japanese "pizzas" that we'd heard so much about were totally delicious. Our favorite: "modern" (natch) with squid and shrimp.

The scary thing is, the night was still young when we left Modern Club. We piled into a car and made our way back east...

East Vancouver Farmers' Market, Saturdays @ Trout Lake

Atelier Gallery, 2421 Granville Street, (604) 732-3021

Go Fish, 1504 West 1st Ave., Granville Island, (604) 730-5040

Modern Club, 3446 Dunbar Street, (604) 739-0170

aj