Santini - Lisbon, Portugal

Lines are intimidating. Raised in a society that emphasizes convenience, long lines are frightening. We want things now not later. Even if we're starving or want what others desire, we're more likely to take the least resistant path. Santini, near Lisbon's center (a short walk from the Restauradores' metro stop), seems such a place. The word "gelati" is delectable, their red and white decor inviting, but the line acted as an UNO reverse card.

Coupled with this long line was my previous experiences with Portuguese inefficiency. This could be a 30 minute wait, but the ice cream looked so good. I stayed.

The line was moving well, a good sign. Another excellent sign appeared - the sight of additional fortification. Desserts, coffee, and a sign proclaiming "the best chocolate cake in the world".

There it lies. A chocolate cake, its world's bestest claim untested. If you make it to Santini, please let me know if it matches expectations. The line was moving remarkably fast and the reasons why were soon apparent. You order first and get a ticket which you'll present at the gelati counter. This was great production flow and similar to another great gelato place in Barcelona.

I could nearly savor my future ice cream. Successful customers were walking past with their colorful ice cream. I wanted to take an ice cream troll toll, but I resisted such lowbrow reflexes.

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Several people (4-6) manned the gelati counter quickly taking orders and swirling them into cups and cones. Right before you get to the counter, there's a display board to the left listing all the varieties. One complaint - you can't see the ice cream before ordering. They are in silver containers and always lidded.

Meloa (honeydew) and abacaxi com hortelã(pineapple with mint). This cost €2.50. The meloa was so good and the mint subtly came through the pineapple flavor. I'm a huge fan of honeydew melon and they nailed the flavor.

Abacate (avocado) and Doce de ovo com pinhão (egg cream with pine nuts). This also cost €2.50. The avocado was nicely fatty, the doce de ovo struck a good balance. The pine nuts were few but present. I'm glad they didn't overpower.

Good to the last drop, I recommend Santini's. The line moves rather quickly, so don't be intimidated as I was two weeks ago. The decor is pleasant and inviting with its red and white colors. They have approximately 20 flavors to try. It's reasonably priced especially considering the ice cream's superb flavor and taste. And the line only took 10 minutes or less - Brava! Read the English scoop on this place here.

Meet Lindy Hop Portugal

Enough of the food, where are the dancers? After all, I'm here for the dancing, right?

Monthly dances are held at Maus Hábitos near the Coliseu do Porto. This video is from April's dance. Portugal has a small, but mighty and growing scene. New dancers continually filter in and progress from beginner to advanced. If you're ever visiting, be sure to check out the Lindy Hop Portugal website. Their parties go from 23h to 04h, so be prepared for that later start and much later finish.

The music will be fun since you'll be in the capable hands of DJ Abeth (above) and DJ Joe (below).

The dancers are friendly, welcoming, and want to dance with you. How could you resist Monica, leaders?

Also know that if you visit Porto and have the option of choosing Super Bock and Sagres beer, choose Super Bock. Carlos knows.

Even when there's much dancing, there's always time to chat and catch up with friends or make new acquaintances. Meet Isabel. She's never blurry.

If you look like Sylar from Heroes, be prepared for special treatment. Meet Diana, Joao Lourenco, and Abeth again.

Porto also has amazing views. There's much sightseeing to do even when indoors. Notice the casted shadows of dancers.

So, come out and visit Portugal. Porto and Lisbon both have excellent swing dance scenes with great people. And there's a great event coming soon called the Atlantic Swing Festival. Enjoy the rest of the pictures.

Most pictures were taken after a long exhausting 4 hour aerial workshop. Then they danced until 4am and some even came to Leça da Palmeira for Sunday aerials.

Patisserie Orientale - Brussels

Walk purposefully without intent scanning your surroundings. Let your brain naturally process incoming images. You're not blind to anything, seeing everything. Great food finds are made this way. Then when purposefully trying to find your serendipitous discovery again, is it hidden?

This was my Patisserie Orientale experience in Brussels. Found it by accident Saturday, tried to find it Sunday and couldn't, gave up and then rediscovered it.

 A patisserie could be your ordinary French bakery, but the Orientale elevates that concept. Look below at the colorful dessert mounds. Dates, figs, almonds, walnuts, pistachio, and more are featured here. This is the place for nifty dessert creations.

 Here are Saturday's selections back to front. A bird's nest with almond "eggs", an almond and pistachio carrè fantaisie (fancy square), green pistache & amande bourse (meaning bag), and l'orange corne de gazelle (horn of gazelle). My favorite was the bourse for taste and design. Second was the square dessert for the fruit sweet underlayer.

 Sunday's adventure led me to a larger tasting. Workouts were in my future. From top left working clockwise we have a twisted pastry with sesame seeds and a syrup (possibly date?), pastry stuffed with crushed nuts and date or fig paste, almond date hearts with some framboise in the filling, amande and mandarine bourse, pistache and noix de coco rocher (boulder), and a packaged dessert of crushed petals around a dense date and pistache mixture (bonus citrus notes).

These selections were based on color and potential ingredients. Afterwards, I wanted to magically transport this place back to Porto then to Colorado. Winners were the twisted pastry especially with the bring you down to earth sesames, the bourse thanks to the amazing mandarine flavor, and the rocher (ahhhh... coconut).

Patisserie Orientale is located near the Grand Palace at #19 Rue du Marche-Aux-Herbes GrasMarkt. Prices are €2.50 per 100 grams.

My Parents, the Original Locavores

The locavore movement is popular, garnishing much press in Denver and Boulder, Colorado. If a restaurant isn't growing food and plants directly outside its establishment (Mercury Cafe), it has its own garden located elsewhere (Squeaky Bean, Black Cat Farm Table Bistro, Fruition), or sources local products. This is an expensive restaurant list, but there are many less expensive options (Organixx and SAME Cafe).

Supporting these local restaurants are good for several reasons. It encourages a lower carbon footprint. It will encourage other restaurants to do the same. In other words, don't pay lip service to the eat local credo. I also find that local high quality products treated with as few chemicals as possible, though more expensive, deliver more nutrients per dollar. An immediate google search shows this is a naive view, but I seem to function at a high level longer on Frasca's salumi plate (tested at parkour at Apex Boulder) than McDonalds. Are our bodies more efficient at mining nutrients from less processed food products?

These thoughts and more led me question why I enjoy good food. Well, not just good food, good quality food. Cheesecake Factory can be good in the right circumstances, but Osteria Marco's burrata, Root Down's corn cheesecake, Pizzeria Locale's pizza, are vastly superior. Well, I can thank my parents for my obsessions. I wasn't raised on superior sushi or lived next door to an amazing pizza place. I benefited from local beef (raised by my grandparents and locally butchered), a backyard garden including raspberry plants and fruit trees, and food delivered every 6 weeks from a local co-op that got its food regionally. We were ahead of 2005 when the locavore term was reputatedly first coined.

Our diet was pretty varied because my siblings and I shared some food allergies, most notably wheat and dairy. My parents also decided that our diets would not feature sugar or chocolate and there was no coffee or alcohol in the house. This meant we discovered alternative food products such as amaranth, millet, spelt, honey, maple syrup, brown rice syrup, tofu, faux bacon and cheese, rice milk, egg substitute powder, carob and more at a young age. My mom had to be pretty creative in the kitchen.

And guess what? It's still fun discovering new foods and now restaurants. And even though I have yet to try chocolate (gasp!), I can appreciate it and gift it (Christopher Elbow anyone?). Side note: He was probably my first great food find, discovered up the back stairs of a local Kansas City restaurant before he got his own place. Try Glace also if you're ever in KC.

Well, I'm off to deliver Marcolini chocolates to the doctor that stitched me up. Enjoy the good food and instigate your own meet ups.

Table 6 charcuterie: tasso ham, lamb bacon, pancetta.

K-Touch - Brussels

Find the Brussels Stock Exchange, face away at the three streets stemming opposite. Take the left most street until you see the large tree on your left. Eat here. Those were the words spoken by a new Belgian acquaintance. Like a man who drank too much absinthe and scotch (I had), I "smoothly" bumbled my way to this restaurant at 22:45h. Like a hazy red beacon, it's sign beckoned from the tree's branches (from another perspective).

Open until midnight, K-Touch is an affordable option in the Grand Palace's district. According to my friend, it also serves remarkable food (agreed) amongst this street filled with Thai, Indonesian, and Vietnamese restaurants. I fell upon the menu like a starving man. #03 Tom Yam Haed (spicy soup with mushrooms and lemongrass, €5) and #32 Kaeng Deang Kai (chicken, red curry, coconut milk, peanuts, Thai vegetables, €11) were the choices. To fend off my stupor, I was given these rice crisps that tasted slightly of cheese.

Brussels is wonderful like this. Food seems to either features cheese or raspberries. It's simple, it's tasty, and I like it.

First course, the Tom Yam Haed soup. Swimming with perfectly thick mushrooms, the broth was fragrant and medium spicy. It was quite welcome since any warmth was tempering off as the evening continued. The place mat served as the perfect backdrop.

 Next was the Kaeng Deang Kai curry. It hit the right spice notes - quickly eatable while zinging the taste buds. The chicken was plentiful, the vegetables too few, but all the food seemed high quality. The complimentary rice and the curry disappeared quickly.

This is a teaser for their food presentations. The curries are simple, a double ceramic bowl layer, bottom with candle for heat, top with curry. Other serving dishes with vegetables and meats were more elaborate.

 I'm very thankful for this recommendation. It's great to enjoy good multi-cultural restaurants at affordable prices. You can thank Belgian's liberal immigration policy for this. The service was friendly here also. Brussels is more service oriented than Portugal while the tipping policy is identical. This means less frustration and a happier dining experience.

More art, other lit areas as seen through the stairs. The WC is tucked around the stairs.

37, Place Saint-Gery 1000 Bruxelles, Brussels. Total bill: €16 (rice crisps complimentary).

Tour D'y Voir - Brussels

Trying new food is like crack. I'm pretty temperate and boring at home. In Denver, this means lunch is either Chipotle or Panda Express. Dinner is eggs, pizza at Whole Foods, or proteins bars before and after crossfit workouts at Apex Movement. Then introduce me to a new restaurant and watch me go crazy. Unlike others' entertainment budgets, mine is dedicated solely to food. This is amplified on my weekend trips from Portugal.

Tour D'y Voir is a crazy example. I discovered the restaurant Saturday when a Brunello Cucinelli store caught my attention. I was there too early for the advertised lunch special and wanted to wander. Then five minutes after Sunday breakfast, I was across the street eyeballing the place. I walked past it and noticed their lunch special advertised. A good sign, but I just ate. I walked away, I walked back, Tintin preached that I already ate, Captain Haddock added "blistering barnacles! eat man!". Captain Haddock won.

Welcome to Tour D'y Voir, home of the €16 three course lunch special. Read their online menu and you'll understand why Captain Haddock won. Located on Level 1, above a salad place, I was nervous that I was dressed improperly (shorts, tshirt, backpack) and that a reservation would be required. Fortunately, their staff put me right at ease, assuring me there was room and ushered me to their left side dining area.

This place is elegant and refined without being snobby. Notice the outdoor view, the furnishing, the paintings and their fetching menu:

 If you're ordering their lunch special, you won't require this menu. It's certainly fun to browse, though. They also have a nice wine selection. Sunday's lunch was not written anywhere so you must forgive my secondhand descriptions and be satisfied with pictures. The server apologized that first course could not be well translated into English, but I was sold with the words "pasta, cheese".

Even then, words were missed in translation. Here we have a small salad with a fruit vinaigrette (framboise perhaps?) accompanying the cheese (fromage) stuffed pastry (not pasta) topped with a tangier vinaigrette. The softened cheese had notes of sweetness (amazing my handwritten notes read). The pastry shell had the consistency of flaky phyllo dough.

The second course featured chicken and vegetables. The baked potatoes were lightly seasoned without their skins. The vegetables were cooked perfectly soft and retained their flavor essence. Not mushy, but separated easily with a fork. The chicken had such a savory smell. It was slightly moist with no hints of dryness. Bedding the chicken was brown gravy and two large onion slices. The onions were cooked until naturally slightly sweet.

Finally, I finished with the third course. It was a choice of coffee or dessert (beer cake). This beer cake was simply amazing. There is a slight beer-like taste amongst its doughy consistency. It doesn't overpower you, but simply states "I'm different than the rest". It was topped with vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce. Like snow, powdered sugar covers the plate. The crust was flaky and underneath was a dark brown boba-like layer. Each scoop of dessert revealed a new delicious flavor.

Tour D'y Voir opened my eyes to Brussels fine dining scene. I wanted more. Even if I missed Brussels Resto Days, I still had this lunch special. It even bettered my entire 2011 Denver Restaurant Week experience. The staff was friendly, helpful, quiet and efficient. The dish pacing was great and in between I had complimentary seasoned olives, bread and butter.

I strongly recommend this place for its service, decor and most importantly, it's food. And it's dog friendly too.

Enjoy the rest of the pictures. Here we have this dining area's bar (there's another dining area to the right as you come up the stairs).

Tour D'y Voir slowly filling up. Hushed conversation filled the room. Dress ranged from casual to business.

Comfortable seating for drinking enjoyment and conversation. Notice the artwork too.

The box containing my €16 bill.

Tintin and Snowy downstairs.

Captain Haddock at Level 0.

Le Perroquet - Brussels

Know the word resto when in Brussels. And when you see posters for Resto Days act quicker than me. I missed Brussels restaurant week by 1 day. That's what happens when you don't pay attention until Sunday, May 15 at 12:42am and the last day was May 14.

Life goes on, so Sunday was food voyeurism day. As I mentioned before, the gallery district is a restaurant bastion. Le Perroquet greeted me Sunday morning. Their brick facade was a welcome sight along with their indoor and outdoor seating options.

Home to some parakeet art, Le Perroquet also sports a pita heavy menu. I had seen pitas advertised at other small restaurants the previous day so my curiosity won. That, their vast selections and good prices.

I placed my order when I was informed that the kitchen would open in 10 minutes at 12pm. Being that it's too early for good people watching, you can content yourself with a book, a beer, or the aforementioned parakeet art. Besides the bird lurking amongst the liquor bottles, there are painted wood carvings strewn about.

My order was based on two things. First, "Spicy" seemed too typical an order. Second, I felt Middle Earthy. Voila! The Mogador (€7.20)! Blanc de poulet, lardon, raisin sec, oignon cuit, salade mixte.

Brimming with small bacon cuts (lardon), seasoned chicken breast (blanc de poulet), yellow raisins, onions (oignon cuit), mixed greens, it was ideal. The smell was amazing, it was savory as it was colorful. Packing a satisfying punch, it was a welcoming way to begin a Sunday morn. Perfect for a hobbit in other words. The Mogador was also accompanied by four sauces. From the top left working counter-clockwise, I will attempt to describe them - chive yogurt, tangy vinegar (the winning pairing), mediterranean, and 1000 island. I was very happy for these choices and that they were complimentary.

In Portugal, everything is charged to you. Nothing comes with the meal free of charge. Brussels restaurants all had complimentary items as you will discover in my future posts. It's fun discovering countries' restaurant cultures and learning their differences. Just be flexible and ask questions if you're unsure.

The service was great here. Prompt attention was given when I arrived and during my meal. The WC is downstairs to the right of this carving.

Le Perroquet filled up nicely as the afternoon wore on. People shared the wooden tables and chairs with friends or strangers. Notice the man to the left. Lightweight blue blazer with varied plaid lining on the bottom third of the jacket, round black rims, distinguished white hair, cuffs showing a bit, black and white wingtip shoes that fit his essence. His outfit was worth a furtive picture.

The outdoor seating slowly filled too. Nothing like being comfortable with your pet.

Le Perroquet is located at Rue Watteeu 31 - 1000 Bruxelles. Go there, sample more than I did, take many pictures.