Singapore • Hong Kong • Thailand • Indonesia • Malaysia • Vietnam • Macau • Philippines • Burma • Cambodia • Brunei • Laos SINGAPORE SG$6.90 ● HONG KONG HK$39 THAILAND THB160 ● INDONESIA IDR45,000 MALAYSIA MYR15 ● VIETNAM VND80,000 MACAU MOP40 ● PHILIPPINES PHP220 BURMA MMK32 ● CAMBODIA KHR20,000 BRUNEI BND6.90 ● LAOS LAK48,000 TRAVEL + LEISURE SOUTHEAST ASIA MARCH 2009 France Live like a local in village bistros WHISKY 101 LEARNING HOW TO MAKE A SINGLE MALT Journey through a cultural cuisine Penang MARCH 2009 Manila Magic Urban meets chic in classic style FOOD & DRINK SPECIAL BEIJING’S BEST BURGERS, SINGAPORE STALLS, VEGGIE FOOD IN ASIA AND MORE 5 secret kitchens you must visit now Hong Kong Plus: Fly long-haul for less GOING GREEN GUIDE TO ORGANIC FARM STAYS travelandleisuresea.com SOUTHEAST ASIA
Transcript
Sin
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SINGAPORE SG$6.90 ● HONG KONG HK$39THAILAND THB160 ● INDONESIA IDR45,000
MALAYSIA MYR15 ● VIETNAM VND80,000MACAU MOP40 ● PHILIPPINES PHP220
Introducing two partners with exclusive offers: Cathay Pacifi c and The InterContinental Hong Kong
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For card members departing out of Bangkok, you will enjoy an exclusive business class fare on Cathay Pacifi c as much as 50% off from published fare!
For card members departing out of Singapore, your companion travels for free when you purchase a special business class fare!
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Terms and Conditions: Bookings and payment must be made with the American Express Platinum Charge Card. Flights can only be booked through American Express Membership Travel Services. Taxes and fuel charges are excluded. Fares subject to availability. Mixed class is not permitted. Singapore offer: Fare is based on two people traveling together for the entire journey. Fares are valid for sales and ticketing between January 1, 2009, and May 31, 2009, and for travel between January 1, 2009, and June 30, 2009. Outbound journey must commence on or before June 30, 2009. Thailand offer: Fares are valid for sale and travel between January 4, 2009 and April 30, 2009. Blackout periods apply between April 4-6, 2009, and April 9-15, 2009. Outbound journey must commence on/before April 30, 2009.
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Inclusions: Daily Breakfast for up to two people • Club InterContinental access for up to two people • Complimentary formal afternoon tea service for up to two people per room, once during your stay • Room upgrade subject to availability upon check-in • Late checkout until 4pm (subject to availability)*Applicable to Contemporary Superior Plazaview and Contemporary Deluxe Plazaview rooms only
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Stay four nights and pay for three* at InterContinental Hong Kong
Enjoy great deals when traveling fromBangkok or Singapore to Hong Kong
Issue IndexSOUTHEAST ASIABangkok 30, 48
Hong Kong 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 89
Kuala Lumpur 44, 72
Indonesia 72, 84, 89
Laos 33, 72
Macau 89
Malaysia 40, 89
Manila 56
Penang 100
Phnom Penh 38
Singapore 30, 42, 89
Taipei 77
Thailand 33, 72
Vietnam 33, 50, 72
ASIAChina 33, 89
Shanghai 67
Sikkim 134
Tokyo 64
THE PACIFICSydney 142
AFRICAEgypt 124
THE AMERICAS
New York 64
U.S. 40
EUROPEFrance 112
Italy 55
London 46
Scotland 80
(Destinations)03.09
World Weather This Month
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(SGD) (HKD) (BT) (RP) (RM) (VND) (MOP) (P) (MMK) (KHR) (BND) (LAK)Singapore Hong Kong Thailand Indonesia Malaysia Vietnam Macau Philippines Burma Cambodia Brunei Laos
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(Contents)03.09
100 Eat the Breeze In Penang, every dish has a history
and every meal adds to the
memorable lore. By ROBYN
ECKHARDT. Photographed by
PABLO ANDREOLOTTI.
GUIDE AND MAP 110
112 Village Fare Want to dine like a local in southern
France? Look no further than the
village bistros. By CHRISTOPHER
PETKANAS. Photographed by
FRÉDÉRIC LAGRANGE.
GUIDE AND MAP 122
124 Up the Nile The markets of Aswan, grand
archaeological sites of Luxor and
ancient landscapes await GINA
ALHADEFF on her river cruise
in Egypt. Photographed by
MARTIN MORRELL.
GUIDE AND MAP 133
99-134Features
134 Dragon Season Returning to Sikkim, author
KIRAN DESAI reflects on the
spirituality of the Himalayas.
Illustrated by CHRISTIAN
PELTENBURG-BRECHNEFF.
GUIDE AND MAP 141
Special● Lands of Plenty > 89
Discover the latest food fads, hot
lunch deals, best hawker stands and
much, much more about eating and
drinking in Asia.
>112 Preparing for lunch in the south of France.
29-50Insider
67-84T+L Journal67 Dining
Eating out is serious business in
China’s vibrant financial capital.
BY JENNIFER CHEN
72 DrinkCoffee in the region dates back to
well before your corner franchise,
writes ANTHONY MECIR.
77 ReflectionsWhen visiting Taipei, JEN LIN-
LIU now finds that food provides
a connection to her family’s past.
80 ObsessionsA weekend of learning how to
make single malt in Scotland.
BY ALEXANDRA MARSHALL
84 Going GreenA farm near Jakarta aims to help
youth, save the earth and provide
a respite from the modern world.
BY ROBYN ECKHARDT
12 Editor’s Note 16 Contributors 18 Letters 20 Best Deals 22 Ask T+L 25 Strategies 142 My Favorite Place
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DepartmentsCover
55 IconStay warm with Italy’s cashmere
classic. BY MARIA SHOLLENBARGER
56 FashionManila’s design maestros.
64 What’s In Your Bag?Keeping it light with J.Crew’s creative
director. BY CLARK MITCHELL
30 NewsflashNew restaurants, Siem Reap nightlife
and Asia’s top cooking schools.
36 EatHong Kong’s top private kitchens.
BY LAURA MILLER
38 NeighborhoodA Phnom Penh street gets funky. BY
SONIA KOLESNIKOV-JESSOP
40 Cool JobsDrinking on the job. BY JENNIFER CHEN
42 ChefsRising stars in Singapore’s kitchens.
BY EVELYN CHEN
44 Street EatsThe hawker heart of Kuala Lumpur.
BY ROBYN ECKHARDT
46 Trends Going retro in London. BY SUSAN
WELSH and ALISON TYLER
55-64Stylish Traveler
Outside Manila Cathedral, Philippines. Photographed by Nat Prakobsantisuk. Styled by Araya Indra. Hair and make-up: Chechel Joson/CLKD. Model: Kelly/CLKD. Silk bustier by Jojie Lloren. Skirt by Chanel. Bag by Amina Aranaz. Necklace by Bea Valdes.
>56
48 ClassicsBangkok’s bowlful of memories.
BY JENNIFER CHEN
50 The BasicsSaigon’s best banh mi. BY NANA CHEN
(Contents)03.09
>64>67
>46
SINGAPORE SG$6.90 ● HONG KONG HK$39THAILAND THB160 ● INDONESIA IDR45,000
MALAYSIA MYR15 ● VIETNAM VND80,000MACAU MOP40 ● PHILIPPINES PHP220
BEIJING’S BEST BURGERS, SINGAPORE STALLS, VEGGIE FOOD IN ASIA AND MORE
5 secret kitchens you must visit now
Hong Kong
Plus: Fly long-haul for less
GOINGGREENGUIDE TO ORGANICFARM STAYS
travelandleisuresea.com
SOUTHEAST ASIA
151740-T&L S E Asia-D1 5-2.ai 63.25 lpi 71.57° 05/02/09 4:45:18 PM151740-T&L S E Asia-D1 5-2.ai 63.25 lpi 18.43° 05/02/09 4:45:18 PM151740-T&L S E Asia-D1 5-2.ai 66.67 lpi 0.00° 05/02/09 4:45:18 PM151740-T&L S E Asia-D1 5-2.ai 70.71 lpi 45.00° 05/02/09 4:45:18 PMProcess CyanProcess MagentaProcess YellowProcess Black
12
ERE AT Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia, we have an
important internal debate starting at around 11:45 A.M. every day, and that is what
to have for lunch. Seems like a simple question, but the biggest issue we have is one
of choice. The street on which our offi ce is located is a smorgasbord of smells,
colors, sounds, street-side vendors and tempting hole-in-the-wall eateries that do
delicious noodles, duck, som tam, curry, pad thai, and Chinese and Korean food.
Also within a stone’s throw, we can eat excellent Italian and French fare, fi sh and
chips, pizzas or burgers, and extremely tasty sandwiches (bacon and avocado being
my favorite). Food has become so internationalized that people—at least in cities—
are spoiled for choice, and that’s a trend we see everywhere. But here in Asia,
arguably the center of the food world at the moment, it’s not just a matter of making
one choice from hundreds of others; the very fabric of society is woven around the
enjoyment of food and drink. So it seemed a natural decision to devote an entire
issue to the subject.
The backbone of this special content is our nine-page Asian food special (“Lands
of Plenty,” page 89), which I found fascinating to read as I reviewed the issue before
press time. As well as the authentic dining experiences we’ve unearthed across the
region, I love the guide to vegetarian food in Asia (I’m a lapsed veggie myself ) as
well as the survival guide to street food. Elsewhere in the magazine, “Whisky 101”
(page 80) piqued my interest thanks to my Scottish heritage and my love of Islay
single malt, and I was intrigued to read about the vibrant dining scene in Shanghai
(“Shanghai’s Endless Feast,” page 67). All of this is whetting my appetite, so I’m
looking forward to a lovely home-cooked Thai meal when I fi nish work, although I
have to say—and this is a cliché, of course—that even after nearly a decade in Asia,
I still can’t beat my mom’s cooking.—MATT LEPPARD
TRAVEL + LEISURE EDITORS, WRITERS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS ARE THE INDUSTRY’S MOST RELIABLE SOURCES. WHILE ON ASSIGNMENT, THEY TRAVEL INCOGNITO WHENEVER
POSSIBLE AND DO NOT TAKE PRESS TRIPS OR ACCEPT FREE TRAVEL OF ANY KIND.
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Slug:Location (T+L Journal)
T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E . C O M | M O N T H 2 0 0 7 00
Dear Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia readers,
We trust you. We trust your judgment. That’s why we want you to rate your global travel experiences for us, in the 2009 Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards. These awards are recognized as travel’s highest honor, so it’s time to give back to those hotels, spas, airlines, cruise lines, travel companies and destinations you loved in 2008. And this year is a very special year, with readers of all eight global editions of Travel + Leisure now able to participate in the awards.
So visit www.travelandleisure.com/intl/ and tell us exactly what you think. The full global results will be published in our August edition.
Matt LeppardEditor-in-ChiefTravel + Leisure Southeast Asia
2009 World’s Best Awards
HOW TO ENTER: Log onto www.travelandleisure.com/intl/ and fi ll in a few simple details, then vote! No purchase is necessary. Closing date: March 20, 2009.
For your favorite hotels, spas, airlines, cruise lines, travel companies and the destinations you love—in the only truly
GLOBAL travel survey that matters!
VOTE NOW ATwww.travelandleisure.com/intl/
CHAIRMAN
PRESIDENT
PUBLISHING DIRECTOR
TRAVEL+LEISURE SOUTHEAST ASIAVOL. 3, ISSUE 3
Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia is published monthly by Media Transasia Limited, Room 1205-06, 12/F, Hollywood Centre, 233 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong. Tel: +852 2851-6963; Fax: +852 2851-1933; under license
from American Express Publishing Corporation, 1120 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036, United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Produced and distributed by Media Transasia Thailand Ltd., 14th Floor, Ocean Tower II, 75/8 Soi Sukhumvit 19, Sukhumvit Road, Klongtoeynue, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand. Tel: +66 2 204-2370.
Printed by Comform Co., Ltd. (+66 2 368-2942–7). Color separation by Classic Scan Co., Ltd. (+66 2 291-7575).
J.S. Uberoi
Egasith Chotpakditrakul
Rasina Uberoi-Bajaj
AMERICAN EXPRESS PUBLISHING CORPORATION
This edition is published by permission of
AMERICAN EXPRESS PUBLISHING CORPORATION
1120 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036, United States of America.
Reproduction in whole or in part without the consent of the copyright owner is prohibited.
Dave Wong, Joe Yogerst, Adam Skolnick, Robyn Eckhardt, Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop, Lara Day,
Cedric Arnold, Steve McCurry, Peter Steinhauer, Nat Prakobsantisuk, Graham Uden, Darren Soh
REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS / PHOTOGRAPHERS
Robert Fernhout
Lucas W. Krump
Michael K. Hirsch
Kin Kamarulzaman
Shea Stanley
Gaurav Kumar
Kanda Thanakornwongskul
Supalak Krewsasaen
Porames Chinwongs
PUBLISHER
VICE PRESIDENT / ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGERS
CONSULTANT, HONG KONG/MACAU
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER
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Robyn Eckhardt Eckhardt initially fell in
love with Asian food in
Sichuan province. It’s
an affection that emerges
in several stories this
month, particularly in
Penang (“Eat the Breeze,”
page 100) and at a
learning farm outside
Jakarta (“Planting Seeds,”
page 76). “Penang boasts
the country’s best eats.
Combined with its lively
street culture and friendly
locals, the assignment was
pure a purely hedonistic
pleasure,” she says.
Gina Alhadeff While
the Egyptian-born writer
was spending four days
cruising from Aswan to
Luxor in a small ship
(“Up the Nile,” page 124),
she had plenty of time to
contemplate the identity
of her native land: “The
country has changed a
great deal since I was a
child, yet the sensibility of
the people has stayed the
same. Egyptians are still
fundamentally quizzical
and serene.” Alhadeff also
writes for Vogue and
Architectural Digest.
Jen Lin-Liu “I didn’t
always like Chinese food,”
admits Lin-Liu, who
refl ects on eating in
Taiwan this month
(“Taipei on the Menu,”
page 77). “In fact,
growing up in southern
California, I remember
disliking L.A.’s
Chinatown. The drive
was long, the restaurants
noisy and we always had
to go to a smelly Chinese
supermarket afterwards.”
Lin-Liu has overcome all
of this and then some: she
now lives in Beijing.
Christian Peltenburg-Brechneff
To illustrate this month’s
feature on Sikkim (“Dragon
Season,” page 134), the
artist traveled in the
northern Indian state under
the guidance of Princess
Hope Leezum Namgyal, daughter of
the former queen Hope Cooke. “The
royal family helped me plan my trip, so
I had access to the landmarks that are
usually off-limits.” His drawings, along
with journal entries, appear in his book
Homage: Encounters with the East
(Glitterati Incorporated).
(Contributors)03.09
Christian Peltenburg-Brechneff.Above: An illustration of Sikkim.
✉E-MAIL T+L SEND YOUR LETTERS TO [email protected] AND LET US KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS ON RECENT STORIES OR NEW PLACES TO VISIT.
LETTERS CHOSEN MAY BE EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPACE. THE LETTER OF THE MONTH RECEIVES A FREE ONE-YEAR SUBSCRIPTION TO TRAVEL + LEISURE (SOUTHEAST ASIA ONLY). READER OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN LETTERS DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THOSE OF TRAVEL + LEISURE SOUTHEAST ASIA, MEDIA TRANSASIA LTD., OR AMERICAN EXPRESS PUBLISHING.
(Letters)03.09
A Model CoverYour December cover defi nitely
caught my attention amid a rack of
magazines—normally including your
own—that seems to be little more than
a collection of cover models that have
little to do with the real world or with
the contents of that issue. So kudos on
your anniversary cover full of teasers
of what’s inside, which I noticed was
also your biggest issue yet. Just give us
a bit more cover variety in the coming
months.—AARON KO, HONG KONG
China Explained I recently discovered Travel + Leisure
Southeast Asia, and it’s now my favorite
magazine. I am really impressed at
how your team is able to capture the
intricacies and diversity of Asia. I
personally loved “China Made Easy”
in the January 2009 issue because
I have always wanted to visit this
intimidating country; the tips in the
piece will defi nitely help me plan for a
memorable and meaningful vacation.
With T+L as my guide, should I ever
get lost, I would know how to fi nd my
way home.—CHERYL GARCIA, MANILA
Pattaya Re-imaginedSurely that’s not actually Pattaya in
your latest issue [“A New Look for
Pattaya,” January 2009]? The new
Dusit or D2 getaway looks nothing
like most other resorts in any of my
previous impressions of Pattaya. What
gives?—STU BENTLEY, BANGKOK
EDITOR’S REPLY Pattaya is a complex
destination, certainly, but one that’s evolving
fast. Keep your eyes on T+L SEA for more!
Etiquette EssaysI enjoy reading T+L Southeast Asia
each month, particularly the nitty gritty
of travel around this part of the world.
That’s why I would like to suggest that
you cover in detail how travelers should
visit religious sites. There seems to be
a general lack of knowledge on this
topic.—CECIL GAMARRA, MALAYSIA
Flying PerksFrequent-fl ier updates are always
timely, so your story on the subject
[“Frequent-fl ier Secrets,” January 2009]
was a good read. Instead of dwelling
on the negatives to do with travel,
I fi nd that being an elite member
in one or two programs is the best
solution for easing headaches. For my
troubles, I get to skip long airport lines
at check-in, have lounge access and
even, occasionally, am upgraded. One
thing your story didn’t mention was the
effect frequent-fl ier programs have on
how you travel. I now book trips more
carefully, fl ying at times when I know
the business-class section might not
be full and I’m more likely to get an
upgrade.—RITA ANGELES, MANILA
LETTER OF THE MONTHFresh Eyes on IndiaThe upbeat tone of your India story [“The New Delhi,” January 2009] was refreshing. In parts a great city and in others a mess, I’m the fi rst to admit that I have a soft spot for the Indian capital, much like your writer who says he fi rst went there for three days and ended up staying three weeks. Every time I go to Delhi, I end up seeing something I never could have imagined along the lines of the “jungle,” or central ridge in the middle of this city of 17 million people that is mentioned in the story. As always, it’s chance encounters with residents that stay in the mind. It always amazes me when people put down a destination they’ve never been to. I hope more visit the Indian capital and now, for obvious reasons, its cross-country rival Mumbai also.—TED WACIK, JAKARTA
18 M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
INDONESIA
Special promotion at
The Ubud Village
Resort & Spa
(62-361/978-444;
theubudvillage.com).
What’s Included
Daily breakfast;
daily afternoon tea;
welcome fruit basket
and chocolates;
complimentary Internet;
free village tour; and
late check-out (based
on availability). Cost
From US$180, through
March 31. Savings Up
to 49 percent.
Celebrate the arrival of spring and take a quick break. Here, seven fabulous getaways in Asia■ CHINAShangri-la Winter Explorer package at the
Banyan Tree Ringha (86-888/533-1111;
banyantree.com) in Yunnan. What’s Included Daily breakfast; a village tour or ski program for
two; and RMB300 in spa credit. Cost From
RMB1,480, through March 31, two-night
minimum stay. Savings Up to 70 percent.
Chi Spa Experience package at the Shangri-La Hotel Chengdu (86-28/8888-9999; shangri-
la.com). What’s Included One-night stay in an
executive river view room; daily breakfast; one
Himalayan Healing Stone Massage; and free
Internet. Cost RMB1,888, through March 31.
Savings 30 percent.
■ THAILANDWeekday special rate at the dusitD2 baraquda pattaya (66-2/636-3333; dusit.com).
What’s Included Accommodation in a club
deluxe room; breakfast with free-fl owing wine;
use of the club lounge; complimentary local
calls and Internet; 20 percent discount on
laundry and at the spa; and a 30-minute foot
massage. Cost Bt7,000 per night, through
October 31. Savings 23 percent. FR
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20 M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
The lobby at the Banyan Tree Ringha.
Spa package at the dusitD2 chiang mai (66-
2/636-3333; dusit.com). What’s Included Three-night stay in a deluxe room; two
Swedish massages; daily breakfast; welcome
drink and gift; round-trip airport transfer;
and late check-out at 3:00 P.M. Cost Bt11,470,
through July 31, booking code “3 Nights Spa
Package.” Savings Up to 42 percent.
Good Morning Bangkok package at The Metropolitan (66-2/625-3333; metropolitan.
como.bz). What’s Included Daily breakfast;
daily fruit plate; 15 minutes free Internet
access in the business center; and
complimentary yoga/stretch class. Cost From
US$145 a night, through December 31.
Savings Up to 40 percent.
■ VIETNAMRelaxation Spa Package at the Caravelle Hotel (84-8/3823-04999; caravellehotel.com) in
Ho Chi Minh City. What’s Included Two
nights in a deluxe room; daily breakfast; a 60-
minute body massage; and a 30-minute
manicure/pedicure, facial or shave.
Cost US$498, through March 31. Savings
20 percent. ✚
DEAL OF THE MONTH
A pool villa at The Ubud Village Resort & Spa, in Bali.
(Best Deals) 03.09
CNSG-0812-006-CRA-001p.ai 12/12/08 10:20:34 AM
Q: (Ask T+L)03.09
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✉ E-MAIL T+L SEND YOUR QUESTIONS TO [email protected]. QUESTIONS CHOSEN FOR PUBLICATION MAY BE EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPACE.
Given the economic climate, where will the travel deals be this year?—CYNTHIA MAK, SINGAPORE
This might very well be the year to ask
for a discount even when you don’t
expect one. All predictions are that
short-haul trips will be the norm this
year, so search for deals close to home.
It’s easy to see that Thailand is offering
a plethora of deals across the country.
Other countries you may have not
thought of visiting are worth a look too.
Put the Philippines in that category.
Tourism stalwarts like Malaysia and the
more popular islands in Indonesia might
test your bartering skills more but are
still worth a visit. More remote parts of
Indonesia are still pricey, particularly
when it comes to airfares. Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos remain popular.
That said, each is offering discounts
aplenty if you’re willing to shop around.
What should I do if I have my passport, wallet or mobile phone stolen while traveling?—STEFANIE OCAMPO, MANILA
A big headache no matter how you slice
it, but the fi rst thing you need to do is
cancel your credit cards and your mobile
phone card. Next, contact the local
police to report the theft and get written
documentation for insurance purposes.
Thirdly, contact your country’s nearest
embassy or consulate to report your
missing passport. And keep duplicates
of your passport, credit card and mobile
phone details—one set to leave at home
and one to bring along with you on
your trip. Before you go, note down the
contacts for your embassy and credit
card company (not necessarily the
issuing bank), and mobile phone details.
It’s also worth checking out how easily
your bank can provide a cash advance.
A: As is so often the case, the
further off the beaten track,
the better. With the idea of remote
sites in mind, both Samal Island off
southern Mindanao and the trio of
reef systems due east of Palawan, are
excellent choices. Samal is an easy day
trip from Davao and offers two
Japanese wrecks from World War II to
explore. Tubbataha, Jessie Beazley and
Basterra are more natural and, in
actual fact, offer some the best reef
diving in the world. Mantas and whale
sharks are also abundant along this
series of reefs. November to May is
the best season, with this month being
the peak time for dive trips to the
underwater life–rich archipelago.
—SHAMEEN VUDDIN, KUALA LUMPUR
I’M PLANNING A DIVING TRIP
TO THE PHILIPPINES. DO YOU
HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS
FOR REMOTE DIVE SITES?
(Strategies) 03.09
T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9 25
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Low-cost Long-haulMore of Asia’s budget carriers now offer long-distance routes to Europe and Australia, as well as regional fl ights. LUC CITRINOT looks into the latest trend in fl ying
T ONY FERNANDES, THE FOUNDER and CEO of
AirAsia, is not a man of understatement. Late last
year, when the company announced the launch
of fl ights between Kuala Lumpur and London by
AirAsia X, the group’s long-haul subsidiary, he proclaimed,
“I have a dream.” He then spoke about his desire to emulate
the late Sir Freddie Laker, a British aviation pioneer who
introduced cheap air travel between the United Kingdom
and the United States in the 1970’s. “I always dreamed to be
able to offer affordable fl ights to London, being fascinated
by Freddie Laker,” he said. “What we faced in the past—
such as SARS, opposition from monopoly airlines or fuel
price hikes—were worth the pain as we fi nally succeeded
in making this dream come true: fl ying to Europe, and
especially to London,” he added.
For all the bally-hoo, AirAsia X’s fl ights to London’s
Stansted Airport—which start this month—do mark an
important development for the region’s budget carriers. It
also underscores how low-cost airlines have reshaped fl ying
in Asia. Today, more than a dozen discount airlines operate
around the region—compared with three carriers in 2002—
with more legacy airlines, such as Korean Air, planning to
get in on the game.
Until now, though, few of the no-frills carriers exhibited
any enthusiasm for tackling routes to other continents.
Longer fl ights eat into quick turnaround times, a crucial
part to low-cost carriers’ fi nancial success. With long-haul
fl ights—those that last more than six hours—there has been
even less enthusiasm from budget carriers. Regulations on
night fl ights and rest periods for crew members also lengthen
turnaround times. In addition, passengers on long fl ights
generally want free meals and more legroom. »
strategies | airlines
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M26
In December 2005, Tiger Airways was
the fi rst budget carrier to offer fl ights to
Australia, with its Singapore to Darwin
route—a fl ight that clocks a less-than-
onerous four hours (it later scrapped that
route in favor of Singapore–Perth). Since
then, Jetstar, the low-fare subsidiary of
Australia’s national carrier Qantas, has taken
the lead in offering fl ights between Australia
and Southeast Asia.
With AirAsia blazing the trail, more
budget carriers are looking into fl ying long-
haul. Fernandes is convinced that AirAsia’s
formula for success can be transferred to the
long-haul model. He’s repeatedly argued
that, with more passengers than traditional
airlines, AirAsia X would be able to keep
costs down. AirAsia X has big ambitions in
Europe as well as the Middle East, planning
several routes to Germany, Dubai and
Bahrain by 2010. Cebu Pacifi c is hoping to
fl y to the Middle East and the United States.
The specter of Oasis Hong Kong, a low-
cost, long-haul airline that went bankrupt
after only a year of operation, doesn’t haunt
Fernandes. “They had a weak technical
structure and no name outside Hong Kong.
To succeed in the long-haul business, you
need a worldwide known brand and a
supporting network of connections,” he said
at a press conference in London last
December. That and a little luck. Here’s a
quick look at the Southeast Asian budget
carriers that offer long-distance routes.
AIRASIA X (airasia.com)
• Routes Kuala Lumpur–Hangzhou (fi ve
times a week); Kuala Lumpur–Gold Coast
(four times a week); Kuala Lumpur–
Melbourne (daily); Kuala Lumpur–Perth
(daily); Kuala Lumpur–London (fi ve times
a week).
• Aircraft Airbus A330 and A340 (on its
London route).
• Extras Need extra legroom? Consider the
Premium XL seats, which are similar to
business-class seats with a seat pitch
(legroom) of 38 inches; they cost from 35 to
50 percent more. Passengers can reserve
their seats when they book (for a fee of
RM25) or pay RM25 for express boarding.
• Costs and fees Booking service fee RM10;
check-in luggage from RM20; excess
luggage from RM20; food and beverage
from RM3; and a “comfort kit” (earplugs,
eyes mask, pillow and blanket) from RM25.
JETSTAR AIRWAYS (jetstar.com)
• Routes Bali–Darwin (daily); Bali–
Melbourne (twice a week); Bali–Perth (three
times a week); Bali–Sydney (four times a
week); Bangkok–Melbourne (three times a
week); Phuket–Sydney (three times a week);
Singapore–Darwin (daily); Singapore–Perth
(daily); Saigon–Darwin (fi ve times a week);
Jakarta–Perth (three times a week).
• Aircraft A330 with 303 seats or A320 with
177 seats (all one class).
• Extras On its Airbus A330’s, Jetstar has 38
seats in its StarClass cabin. The seats boast a
38-inch pitch, and a ticket includes
beverages, meals, video-on-demand, an
amenity kit, access to Qantas Club lounge in
Australia, priority seating and a 30-kilogram
baggage allowance. All passengers can pick
their seats for no extra cost when they book
their ticket.
• Costs and fees For economy class
passengers, video-on demand, headsets and
blankets must be purchased; snacks and
drinks also have to paid for, with prices
starting at A$3.
TIGER AIRWAYS (tigerairways.com)
• Routes Singapore–Perth (daily).
• Aircraft Airbus A320 with 180 seats.
• Extras Passengers booking from Thailand,
Malaysia or Vietnam can book through-fares
to Perth, instead of booking separate tickets.
• Costs and fees A S$5 booking fee;
checked-in luggage is priced from S$15; and
seat reservations are available for S$25. Food
and drinks start at S$3.
VIVA MACAU (fl yvivamacau.com)
• Routes Macau–Sydney (four times weekly).
• Aircraft Boeing 767-200ER or 767-300,
with 245 seats in a two-class confi guration.
• Extras Premium class features 24 seats
with extra leg room; premium-class
passengers also get meals, drinks and a 30-
kilogram baggage allowance.
• Costs and fees Excess baggage charged
A$20 per kilogram. ✚
HOW TO FLY BETTER WITH LOW-COST AIRLINES1 Shop around. With certain Southeast Asia destinations, passengers enjoy more choice than ever. Sign up for newsletters to get the latest word on specials.
2 Book early. The earlier you the book, the lower the fare. With special promotions, check to see when they start and log in just after midnight to secure the fare.
3 Delays are still a big problem with budget carriers. If you need to book a connecting fl ight, give yourself at least three hours between arrival and departure.
4 Check the fees. Fuel surcharges, luggage fees, priority boarding and other hidden costs might make that ticket more expensive than you planned for.
5 Log on to save time. Most low-cost airlines provide a number of services on their websites, including check-in and ordering meals.—L.C.
The Club. Sunway Resort Hotel & Spa’s promise of a new luxury that is inspiring, modern and appealing.
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Retro revival.Vintage style is all the rage in London <(page 46)
Quick bites.Where to get the tastiest sandwiches in Saigon <(page 50)
(Insider)
Tell no one.The best private
kitchens in Hong Kong
(page 36) >
+ • Stir-fry with the masters
• Phnom Penh’s chicest shopping street
• Old-time eats in Kuala Lumpur
Where to GoWhat to EatWhere to StayWhat to Buy
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30 M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
insider | newsfl ash
Khmer CoolSiem Reap is burnishing its reputation as one Southeast Asia’s hippest small towns
with the opening of Nest Angkor (Sivatha Blvd.; 855-63/966-381; nestangkor.com).
Co-owner Joseph Polito, the man behind style icons like Hotel de la Paix and Nest
Bangkok, designed the café–restaurant to feel like the patio of a chic private home,
with intimate, candlelit daybeds tucked away in a lush tropical garden. Under a
canvas-tented roof, guests can choose from an expansive cocktail menu that claims to
be one of the region’s best, while sampling dishes that blend Mediterranean and Asian
fl avors and listening to DJ-spun ambient tunes.—NAO M I L I N D T
ASIA’S HOT NEW TABLES
BAMBOO CHIC BANGKOK Located on the 4th fl oor of Le Méridien Bangkok, this jazzy, lounge-style restaurant is a standout among the city’s many pan-Asian eateries. Chef Kunihiko Hamada serves up Japanese and Chinese food with a modern twist; must-try dishes include the blanched oysters marinated in ponzu sauce; black
cod roasted with Chinese fi ve-spice, wrapped in grilled spring onions; and the rock lobster–mango–avocado roll. Diners can order half-portions — the perfect solution for trying a variety of dishes. 4th fl oor, Le Méridien Bangkok, 40/5 Surawong Rd.; 66-2/232-8888; dinner for two Bt2,000.
BLT STEAK HONG KONG New York—based chef Laurent Tourondel brings his winning take on the American steakhouse to Asia at this cozy, brick-lined bistro. In a city already awash in red meat, Tourondel deploys Gallic fl air on top-quality, well-aged U.S. and Australian beef. The menu does offer fowl and fi sh, including some
Cantonese-infl ected dishes. Take it from us: stick to the meat and all-American sides such as creamed spinach and mashed potatoes laced with jalapeños, and save room for the lemon meringue pie. Shop G62, ground fl oor, Ocean Terminal, Tsim Sha Tsui; 852/2730-3508; dinner for two HK$1,400.
PRIVÉ SINGAPORE This streamlined 88-seat spot actually opened in 2007, but it’s got a new menu courtesy of recently appointed executive chef, Wayne Nish of New York’s late, great March. Nish might have been an early proponent of fusion, but his latest outing is a return to European restraint: roasted quail with foie gras and
spinach; rack of lamb with walnuts and white coco beans. There’s also an impressive cheese selection, including the prized époisses. Book well in advance: with this much star power, reservations are hard to come by. 2 Keppel Bay Vista, Marina at Keppel Bay; 65/6776-0777; dinner for two S$136.
CÉPAGE HONG KONG The fi rst foray outside of Singapore by Les Amis, this swish eatery is helmed by Thomas Mayr, the former head chef of the group’s fl agship restaurant. The menu refl ects Mayr’s long-held fascination with all things Japanese; ingredients such as Kagoshima beef, kobu and Japanese organic eggs make appearances. Well-executed dishes such as char-grilled prime rib and braised beef cheeks show off his French-trained fi nesse. Skip the sweets and head straight for the plate of French farm cheeses. 23 Wing Fung St., Wanchai; 852/2861-3130; dinner for two HK$1,200.
BO.LAN BANGKOK Thai cuisine in a fancy setting usually means listless dishes watered down to suit Western palates. Not so at this stylish, intimate new eatery opened by a young Australian—Thai couple who met while working at David Thompson’s Nahm in London. On the menu are items seldom seen in most sit-down Thai restaurants in Bangkok: a surprisingly nutty coconut soup with dried fi sh; a curry made with grilled beef and a local bitter green; a salad with smoked rainbow trout. Eating here will change your perceptions of Thai food. 42 Soi Pichai Ronnarong, Sukhumvit Soi 26; 66-2/260-2962; dinner for two Bt2,000.
RED SKY BANGKOK This urbane wine bar is perched on the 55th fl oor of the Centara Grand at CentralWorld. The wood-clad patio is the place to be, with a jaw-dropping, nearly 180-degree panorama of downtown Bangkok (and glass barriers to shield diners from strong winds). Service is prompt and gracious. We recommend the beef carpaccio to start, followed by the Bresse pigeon — which was meltingly tender — and the bread and butter pudding with whisky ice cream for dessert. But bear in mind that you’re defi nitely paying for the spectacular views here. 55th fl oor, Centara Grand at CentralWorld; 66-2/100-1234; dinner for two Bt5,400.
E A T
A F T E R D A R K
T+L picks some of the region’s most notable openings. By JENNIFER CHEN
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CHEF CHAN YAN TAK, the executive chef at the Four
Seasons Hong Kong’s Lung Keen Hing, is the world’s
fi rst and only Chinese chef to be awarded three Michelin
stars. He shares his hometown favorites with T+L.
● EAT “I prefer to eat at home—I cook myself, so the
food is better than in most restaurants. I always make
something simple: Chinese soup, steamed fi sh or pork,
maybe sautéed beef with vegetables. When I go out I like
to go to a dai pai dong, where I can eat noodles and have a
drink with friends. Mui Kee on Kimberley Road, Tsim
Sha Tsui and Tung Po Dai Pai Dong on Java Road,
North Point are good places to have supper after
work.” ● SEE “Before I go home, I stop by the wet
market near my fl at. Sometimes guests ask to visit one
near the hotel. I show them how to look for freshness,
quality and color, and how the produce changes from
season to season. You can see everything there—it’s very
different from a supermarket.” Central Market, Graham and
Peel streets, Central. ● DO “To relax, I watch movies at
home or at the cinema—my favorite fi lm is The Godfather.
I listen to music too. Sometimes my colleagues ask me to
go to karaoke. I always sing the oldies, like ‘Unchained
Melody,’ ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water.’ Those are the
best songs, and they’re good for learning English!”
California Red Green Box Karaoke, 2nd fl oor, Elizabeth House,
Percival St., Causeway Bay; 852/2893-3103.—L A R A DAY
Chan Yan Tak
FIVE QUESTIONS
32 M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
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HONG KONG SETS ASIDE ITS love
of mammon momentarily for
loftier pursuits this month with
the 9th Man Hong Kong
International Literary Festival
rolling into town (festival.org.hk;
March 8–18). Bookworms will be
able to mingle with the likes of Margaret Atwood and
Nam Le, the author of the critically acclaimed collection
of short stories, The Boat. T+L Southeast Asia caught up
with Le recently to get his take on travel and writing:
● What’s the relationship between writing and
traveling for you? “I guess it’s not a stretch to say that
the reasons why I travel and why I write/read are similar:
to see other things, other places, situations and people,
through other eyes. If the ultimate good in fi ction lies, as I
believe, in its ability to transport readers, I hope the
hopscotch itinerary of the stories in my book constitutes
part—though not the only part—of the journey.”
● When you travel, are you consciously taking notes
for future stories? “It seems counter-intuitive but there’s
neither a very strong nor a very obvious correspondence
between my travel experiences and my fi ction’s material. I
tend to quarantine the two from each other. That said,
traveling does continually recalibrate my awareness of the
world—and my relationship to it—in a way that feeds
directly into my fi ction: it deconditions me—my
expectations and assumptions of people and places—and
keeps me in that crucial, charged discomfort zone. It
forces me to really bear down on things.”
● You were born in Vietnam, raised in Australia and
then went to school in the U.S. — did your background
prepare you for a peripatetic life? “To be honest, I’m
not sure. I do have an element of wanderlust in my
temperament, but who knows where that comes from?
Someone else with a similar background might easily cite
it as grounds to stay put in one place for good!”
● What’s your relationship to Vietnam? “My
relationship with Vietnam is complex. I was born there.
I’ve been back three times. Vietnamese is my fi rst
language. I feel a deep connection with my family
heritage and, yes, I’d like to explore it further. Maybe
Australia is home and maybe Vietnam is my homeland.
But I’m still coming to terms, both on and off the page,
with what that might mean.”—J.C.
B O O K S
Writing Asia
newsfl ash | insider
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33T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9
Don an apron, grab a wok and learn from the masters. Here, a taste of the region’s best cooking schools, where students are taught authentic Asian favorites.—J.C.
MARTHA SHERPA’S COOKING SCHOOL HONG KONGIn a no-frills kitchen located in Mongkok, respected cookery teacher Martha Sherpa provides hands-on instruction in Chinese and Thai cookery, including lessons on dim sum, vegetarian food, Chinese barbecue and wok skills. This is not a school for spectators: students are expected to chop, cook and clean from start to fi nish. But the pay-off is huge; Sherpa is a one-on-one kind of instructor, and tailors classes to meet her students’ needs.
WHAT YOU LEARN COST WHERE
A COOK’S TOUR
Chocolate CityTwo new shops in Hong Kong devoted to all things cacao. By C A R M E N T I N G
■ VERO Homegrown artisan chocolatier VERO has fi nally opened its much-
anticipated boutique–chocolate lounge–wine bar. Hidden in Fenwick Pier on the
Wanchai waterfront, the 334-square-meter minimalist space is easy to miss, but
worth the detour. Chocoholics can watch their treats being made in the spacious
show kitchen, and then browse the humidity-controlled glass showroom that
houses VERO’s creations, all made from premium chocolate from Venezuela.
Looking for instant gratifi cation? Order the satisfyingly thick hot chocolate.
Serious addicts can sign up for chocolate-making classes. 1st fl oor, Fenwick Pier, 1
Lung King St., Wanchai; 852/2559-5882; verochocolates.com.
■ DEBAUVE & GALLAIS Chocolate connoisseurs rejoice. One of the oldest
and fi nest chocolatiers in France, this prestigious bonbon maker has set up a
Hong Kong outpost. Founded by Louis XVI’s pharmacist, Debauve & Gallais
has supplied European monarchs with bittersweet treats for more than 200 years.
The shop stocks 60 different types of handmade chocolates, from dark chocolate
truffl es to petit, gem-like macaroons. Shop 309–310, Lee Gardens, 33 Hysan Ave.,
THAI COOKERY SCHOOL CHIANG MAILocal chef Sompon Nabnian practically started culinary tourism in Thailand when he founded his school in 1993. Nearly 16 years on, the Thai Cookery School still ranks among the best — Sompon is a mine of information, and he and his instructors speak excellent English. On offer are basic courses and master classes aimed at professionals and accomplished home cooks. Opt for the classes taught in the large sala next to Sompon’s suburban home.
From Bt990
per person
47/2 Moon Muang Rd.; 66-53/206-388 or 66-53/
206-315; thaicookeryschool.
com
YANGSHUO COOKING SCHOOL YANGSHUORun by an Australian expat, this school in a converted farmhouse boasts an idyllic location by the Li River. One- and two-day courses on the fundamentals of Chinese cooking are offered, and dishes include some of the region’s specialties. More advanced cooks can arrange private classes.
RED BRIDGE RESTAURANT & COOKING SCHOOL HOI ANClasses include visits to local markets and farms, and a scenic boat cruise down the Hoi An River. In a riverside open-air pavilion, students learn to make classic Vietnamese dishes such as beef pho and grilled chicken and banana fl ower salad; morning classes include a lesson on rice paper–making. Bring your bathing suit — there’s a lovely, 20-meter pool that’s part of the school and adjoining restaurant’s 1-hectare complex.
From US$23
per person
Book at Hai Scout Café; 98 Nguyen Thai Hoc St.; 84-
510/933-222; visithoian.com
TAMARIND CAFÉ LUANG PRABANGLaotian dishes might rely on lemongrass, galangal, nam pla, tamarind and other familiar Southeast Asian ingredients, but their fl avors are utterly distinct from the better-known cuisine of neighboring Thailand. Find out more at this laid-back café-cum-school by the Nam Khan River. Authenticity is prized here — so be prepared for encounters with indigenous ingredients such as bamboo grubs and water buffalo bile.
US$25 per person
Ban Wat Nong; 856-20/777-0484; tamarindlaos.com
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insider | restaurants
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
HONG KONG
Hong Kong’s Secret Spots French touches on Creole cooking at Magnolia; enjoying a meal at Gitone.
I N A CITY WHERE BRASH, boastful
display is the norm, some
of Hong Kong’s best eating
experiences aren’t advertised or even
signposted. Private kitchens are Hong
Kong’s version of speakeasies; but
instead of booze, their raison d’être is
food. Originally started in the late
1990’s as a way to get around Hong
Kong’s restrictive health regulations
and high rents, these unlicensed
venues have earned a following among
the city’s chowhounds, dishing up
everything from Shanghainese to
Creole to haute cuisine. Book several
days in advance, bring a bottle, and
go with an open mind: the bill of fare
usually depends on the chef ’s whims
and market offerings. Here, our top fi ve
private kitchens.
LE BLANC• The Place This eatery’s simple
name belies its eccentric clutter and
bohemian ambience. Velvet drapes
Hong Kong’s Culinary Secrets. Five outstanding private kitchens where you can tuck into some of the territory’s tastiest, home-cooked meals. By LAURA MILLER
hanging from the ceiling separate the
tables and create an air of intimacy.
The décor is that of a batty maiden
aunt’s apartment; an out-of-tune
piano shares space with gnomes and
other bric-a-brac. The old-fashioned
furnishings set the perfect stage for Le
Blanc’s fi ne French fare. After whetting
your palate with bread and pâté, the
fi ve- to seven-course meal proceeds
in classic French bourgeoisie order:
entrée, poisson (fi sh), potage (soup), sorbet,
plat principal (the main with side dishes),
and fi nally dessert and cheese. The best
surprise comes at the end with the bill:
the minimum charge here is HK$290
per person.
• The Food Delectable French, from
pan-seared foie gras to decadent
platters of cheeses imported from
France, with escargot de Bourgogne
and confi t de canard in between.
Sixth fl oor, 83 Wanchai Rd., Wanchai;
852/3428-5824; no corkage fee; open
Monday–Sunday nights.
GITONE• The Place Gallery and pottery studio
by day and Shanghainese dining room
by night, Gitone is a rising star in off-
the-beaten track Sai Wan Ho. Started
in a Wanchai apartment 10 years ago,
it relocated to an elegant and roomy
ground-fl oor space opposite a leafy
playground in April 2008. Gitone is
the brainchild of renowned local artist
Terence Lee. His chunky yet elegant
ceramic cups, bowls and fi gurines are
scattered throughout the gallery, and
strikingly simple portraits adorn the
stark white walls. But it’s his Shanghai-
born parents who provide the
inspiration for the menu. As dusk falls,
round tables replace pottery wheels and
the two extensive, nine-course menus
(one vegetarian) are carefully prepared.
If you’re lucky, Lee’s parents will make
an appearance.
• The Food Eight cold appetizers—
including pickled cucumbers and
drunken chicken—set the scene, but
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T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9 37
the seven main courses steal the show.
Among the standouts are the stir-fried
crab served with glutinous rice cakes
and green beans, sweet-and-sour
deep-fried garoupa with pinenuts and
the sublime braised pig’s knuckle in
sweet soy sauce that juxtaposes crisp
skin with meltingly tender meat. Shop
27–28, Ground Floor, Lei King Wan, 45 Tai
Hong St., Sai Wan Ho; 852/2527-3448;
HK$380 per person; corkage fee HK$50 per
bottle; open Monday–Saturday nights.
DA PING HUO • The Place Imagine dining in a
gallery where an artist acts as your
waiter and his wife plays the role of
the chef. Dinner becomes performance
art at this industrial-chic Sichuanese
restaurant run by Wang Hai and his
wife Wong Siu King (who also provides
after-dinner entertainment, serenading
diners with Chinese opera arias in
her apron and Crocs). The couple
offers two seatings: one at 6:30 P.M.
and the second at 9:15 P.M. With local
foodies thronging the tables for Wong’s
perfect rendition of Sichuanese dishes,
reservations are hard to come by.
• The Food Sichuanese food revolves
around the pairing of fi ery red
chilies and tingly Sichuan pepper to
produce mala, a scorching, numbing
sensation. Wong dishes up favorites
17 Po Yan St., Sheung Wan; 852/2530-
9880; HK$450 per person, no corkage fee;
open Thursday–Saturday nights.
CORNER KITCHEN• The Place An airy kitchen-cum-
dining room, Corner Kitchen seats
just eight. In fact, the only difference
between dining here and supping at a
friend’s is that owner Vivian Herijanto
hands everyone an apron. A meal at
Corner Kitchen doubles as a cooking
class. Herijanto once worked as a chef
at some of New York’s top restaurants
including Jean-George Vongerichten’s
Spice Market; while she remains
passionate about food, she soured on
the restaurant industry’s cutthroat
nature. She’s also a food stylist with
impeccable taste—sitting down at the
exquisitely decorated teak table is an
aesthetic as well as gustatory pleasure.
• The Food “A kitchen without
boundaries” is how Herijanto describes
her eatery. The menu traverses the
globe, from Bali to New England.
Learn to make ikan betongol (Indonesian
tuna salad), coq au vin or Catham
Bay cod stew—the choice of recipes
is varied, but they’re all delicious.
Ground fl oor; 20 Po Hing Fong, Sheung Wan;
852/2803-2822; HK$1,000 per person;
no corkage fee; open Monday–Friday for lunch
and dinner, and Saturday for lunch. ✚
such as mapo dofu, Chengdu pork
dumplings and spicy noodles with soy
beans. Ground fl oor, 49 Hollywood Rd.,
Central; 852/2559-1317; HK$280 per
person; corkage fee HK$150 per bottle; open
Monday–Saturday nights.
MAGNOLIA• The Place In a two-story shophouse
tucked inside a side street in Sheung
Wan, Lori Granito pays tribute to her
native New Orleans. A cozy sitting
room faces an open kitchen downstairs;
this is where the evening starts, over
platters generously laden with tasty
canapés. After watching Granito’s staff
expertly whip up Creole classics, diners
are then invited into one of the three
private rooms upstairs, where Granito
herself gives a description of the
night’s menu. Seating is communal; the
gregarious chef–owner confesses that
she’s fond of “forcing people to make
friends”—not a diffi cult task in these
convivial surroundings.
• The Food Authentic New Orleans’
favorites from Granito’s family annals.
Think hearty seafood gumbo (based
on her mother’s recipe), jambalaya
studded with succulent shrimp,
crawfi sh pie, fork-tender Cajun
barbecue ribs and freshly baked
cornbread. T+L Tip Save room for the
luscious pecan pie. Ground fl oor, Shop 5,
Home Cooking From left: Vivian Herijanto of Corner Kitchen; the pound cake at Magnolia.
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M38
insider | neighborhood
VIEW
PAMPER
Located at the back of the fi rst fl oor of an old house with beautiful original tile fl oorings, 3 Spa Bliss (No. 29 Street 240; 855-23/215-754) is one of the best spas in town. After your treatment, browse the downstairs boutique, which stocks dresses and Asian-inspired designs made out of whispery, colorful Indian cottons; home furnishings; and lovely silk purses and bags.
Like other former French colonies, Cambodia is rife with fi ne Gallic fare. To sample some of Phnom
Penh’s best cuisine, head over
to 4 The Wine Restaurant (No. 219
Street 19; 855-23/223-527; set lunch US$11; dinner for two US$50), which is famed for its foie gras menu and extensive wine list, courtesy of its Toulouse-born chef and co-owner, who hails from Toulouse. Though quiet at lunchtime, this stylishly spare restaurant is abuzz at night, with diners tucking in some of the house specialties like duck liver pôelé, coq au vin and beef Rossini. The owners also plan to open the city’s fi rst gourmet delicatessen, offering black sausage and rillettes.
Started by German documentary fi lmmaker and art lover Nicolas Mesterharm, 5 Meta House (No. 6 Street 264; 855-23/224-140) is Phnom Penh’s foremost contemporary art gallery. Besides regular exhibitions by local artists, screenings of art-house movies are also held in this petite space. Manager Lydia Parusol is a mine of information about the local art scene.
Floor-to-ceiling boxes of colorful beads line one wall of 1 Water Lily Creation (No. 37 Street 240; 855/12-812-469), the boutique-cum-atelier of long-time Phnom Penh resident Christine Gauthier. Using old beads and buttons found at fl ea markets, the native of France designs nature-inspired necklaces, brooches, earrings and rings; prices start at around US$50 for a necklace. If you’re hankering for something one-of-a-kind, she can make a customized creation.
Drop by for lunch at 6 The Shop (No. 39 Street 240; 855-23/986-964; lunch for two US$14), which offers an appetizing selection of soups, salads and panini in a bright and airy ambience. Take a seat in the small courtyard in the back and make sure to pair your meal with one of their inventive blended juices. It also has wonderfully sinful pastries, but you might want to head a few doors down to 7
Chocolate (No. 35 Street 240; 855-23/998-638), where handmade truffl es are produced on-site.
SHOP
EAT
SNACK
From bedspreads to place mats, 2 Couleurs D’Asie (No. 33 Street 240; 855-23/221-075) offers a tempting selection of Cambodian silk home furnishings. Look out for the
candle holders and small boxes in which rose petals or seeds are
Scott Kerkmans, Chief Beer Offi cer. It might sound like a joke, but this American is serious about his suds. By JENNIFER CHEN
Bottoms’ Up Clockwise from above: Scott Kerkmans, Four Points’ chief beer offi cer; in Beijing; and a pint of lager.
U.S.A
42
Singapore’s Culinary All-stars.
Four young chefs are taking the city’s dining scene by storm. By EVELYN CHEN
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
JUSMAN SO SAGE Anointed Rising Chef of the Year at a
gourmet food festival in Singapore last
year, 31-year-old Jusman So started his
career at the Hilton Singapore.
Impatient to helm his own kitchen, he
opened Sage in 2005 and since then,
has earned accolades for his renditions
of hearty yet refined French fare.
Don’t come here expecting an East-
meets-West approach: “I do not eat
fusion food, so I will not cook fusion,”
So says bluntly.
PERFECT MEAL Pan-seared duck foie
gras on pear and walnut chutney,
Muscat poached fig with spiced port
wine glaze; charcoal-grilled Kurobuta
pork loin with red cherry chutney on
slow cooked terrine of pork cheek
topped with yellow corn polenta and
lavender-scented honey glaze; and
warm chocolate soufflé with Amaretto
ice cream and vanilla bean custard.
7 Mohamed Sultan Rd.; 65/6333-8726;
dinner for two S$230.
SEBASTIAN NG EMBER Six years ago, Sebastian Ng was made
an offer that he could not refuse: his
own restaurant in cheap chic Hotel
1929 on the outer edges of Chinatown.
Both the hotel and restaurant went on
to spur a revival in the historic
shophouse–lined area—once a seedy
red-light district. Over the years, Ng
has expanded his gastronomic empire
to include Ember Bangkok and the
recently opened Braise on Sentosa
Island. The talented Ng, 34, however,
keeps his feet firmly rooted in Ember’s
kitchen, where he continues to wow
diners with his subtle, Japanese-
inflected cuisine. His crispy tofu with
foie gras–mirin reduction and cold
angel hair pasta with konbu (kelp) and
abalone are alone worth a trip. “I like
the pure, clean flavors of Japanese
ingredients,” Ng says.
PERFECT MEAL Cold angel hair pasta
with konbu and abalone; pan-seared
Chilean sea bass with mushroom and
smoked bacon ragout, truffle-yuzu
butter sauce; and warm banana tart
with homemade lavender ice cream.
Hotel 1929; 50 Keong Saik Rd.; 65/6347-
1928; dinner for two S$200. CO
UR
TE
SY
OF
EM
BE
R (
3)
insider | chefs
SINGAPORE
Kitchen Talent Clockwise from left: Sebastian Ng, Ember’s chef; a table laid out for dinner at Ember; the banana tart at Ember.
43T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9
WILLIN LOW WILD ROCKETThree years ago, 37-year-old Low gave
up a lucrative career in law to start a
restaurant at a charming hostel
perched atop serene Mount Emily
Hill. To match the offbeat locale, Low
began pairing local condiments such
as laksa paste, chai po (dried salted
turnip) and dried shrimp with
European staples such as pesto and
pasta. The result? An utterly unique
yet distinctly Singaporean cuisine. “I
want my guests to experience the
flavours at Wild Rocket—nostalgic
and comforting, yet different,” says
Low. Though he’s now got three
restaurants under his belt and more
plans brewing, Low can still be found
in Wild Rocket’s kitchen, concocting
new dishes or tweaking old ones.
“These days, I like to use kaffir lime
leaf in place of lemon,” says Low of his
popular laksa pesto pasta. “Add this to
a seafood dish and it will sing.”
PERFECT MEAL Seared tuna rocket
salad with light ginger dressing; laksa
pesto linguine with tiger prawns and
quail eggs; roast Chilean sea bass with
chai poh confit on light congee; and
dark lava chocolate gateau with
flambé bananas. Hangout @ Mount
Emily; 10A Upper Wilkie Rd.; 65/6339-
9448; dinner for two S$150.
MICHAEL HAN FIFTYTHREE A heady meal at Heston Blumenthal’s
legendary Fat Duck in 1999 convinced
Michael Han, then studying law at
Bristol University, that his true calling
was in the kitchen. Though he
completed his degree (and even earned
a master’s in law), Han apprenticed
himself at some of Europe’s most
innovative restaurants, including
Mugaritz just outside San Sebastián,
Noma in Copenhagen and his original
source of inspiration, The Fat Duck.
At his first solo venture, which opened
in January, the 31-year-old Han brings
a green conscience to his daring food.
“Whenever possible, I want to reduce
our carbon footprint,” says Han.
Initiatives like sourcing oysters from a
Singapore farm, installing an energy-
efficient induction system in the
kitchen and using olive pits in place of
charcoal as a source of sustainable fuel
underscore his point. Han also plans to
convert a plot of land adjoining the
restaurant into a vegetable garden.
PERFECT MEAL Potatoes and
nasturtiums, coffee and Parmesan;
Iberian pig, caulif lower and malt;
textures of pear, coriander and
yoghurt. 53 Armenian St.; 65/6334-
5535; dinner for two S$350. �CL
OC
KW
ISE
FR
OM
TO
P L
EF
T:
CO
UR
TE
SY
OF
SA
GE
(3
);
CO
UR
TE
SY
OF
WIL
D R
OC
KE
T (
2)
; C
OU
RT
ES
Y O
F F
IFT
YT
HR
EE
Hometown Heroes Clockwise from left: Willin Low of Wild Rocket; Wild Rocket’s signature laksa pesto pasta; Michael Han from FiftyThree; scallops at Sage; chef Jusman So at Sage; Sage’s dining room.
44
insider | street eats
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M Photographed by PABLO ANDREOLOTTI
JUST A STONE’S THROW FROM THE GLITTERING Bukit
Bintang shopping drag, Imbi Market is a throwback
to Kuala Lumpur’s colorful past and home to some of
the city’s best old-style street fare. Half of the covered, open-
air structure is devoted to a traditional wet market—one of
the last in the rapidly re-developing city center. Gourmands,
however, should head immediately over to the other side,
where dozens of vendors—many of whom migrated from
Jalan Imbi 25 years ago to make way for a mall—serve
spectacular versions of Malaysian hawker dishes.
Grazing is the best strategy at Imbi (whose offi cial, seldom-
used name is Pasar Bukit Bintang) and arriving with an
empty stomach is a must. Allow at least an hour to browse
through the stalls, many of which don’t bear any names.
With so many delicious specialties on offer, picking the best is
almost impossible, but these stalls are a good place to start.
Keng Swee Café’s kopi peng (RM2.25)—thick, black as
night, and served over ice in an oversized glass mug—packs
a caffeinated punch guaranteed to clear the cobwebs.
Nearby, an elderly vendor and his wife cut thick wheat
noodles to order for pan meen (RM4.50). Specify “dry” and
you’ll get a tangle of noodles tossed in dark soy sauce,
topped with fried minced pork and crispy ikan bilis, and
accompanied by a saucer of sour and fi ery sambal.
If fresh spring rolls appeal, then join the queue at Sisters
Popiah, where the staff roll lettuce leaves, sautéed jicama,
bean curd strips and chili sauce into thin, soft, wheat-fl our
wrappers for their Malaysian-style popiah (RM2.50). In the
middle of the market, a Wellie-wearing husband and his wife
team dish up toothsome wonton mee (RM4.50) and, on
with coconut milk, sparkling with lemongrass and lime leaf,
and possessing a subtle, creeping heat—over wonton
noodles. Look for their hand-written sign, which simply says:
IPOH DRY CHICKEN CURRY.
There’s an exceptional nasi lemak (from RM3.50) at a tiny
shop hidden behind clothing vendors at the food court’s rear.
Boasting rice heavily scented with, but not soggy from,
coconut milk, it’s served with a choice of curries, including a
beef rendang that rivals any Malay grandmother’s.
Still have room for dessert? Dueling stalls near Imbi’s
entrance tempt sweet tooths with their impressive display of
kuih, or traditional, home-style sweets (from RM0.80).
Ketayap (pandan-colored pancakes rolled around coconut
and palm sugar) and angkoo (sunset-hued glutinous rice cakes
fi lled with sweet yellow bean paste) are good bets. Jln. Melati
behind Medan Imbi. The food court is in full swing by 7 A.M. and
closes down by half past noon. ✚
Imbi Market. Inside Kuala Lumpur’s heart stands this testament to its hawker traditions. By ROBYN ECKHARDT
No-Frills EatingClockwise from left: A family tucks into breakfast at Imbi Market in Kuala Lumpur; preparing the dough for fried crullers; a cheap and cheerful meal.
MALAYSIA
46
insider | trends
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
London Goes Retro. In these back-to-basics times, vintage style is the rage across town, from old-school candy shops to the speakeasy scene. By SUSAN WELSH and ALISON TYLER
Photographed by MALÚ ALVAREZ
U.K.
Hope and Greenwood,in Covent Garden, stocks handmade chocolates and classic candies.
47
■ THE CANDY CROWD The shelves at
Hope and Greenwood, in Covent Garden (1
Russell St.; 44-20/7240-3314; hopeandgreenwood.
co.uk), are fi lled with crystal dishes of
handmade confections and glass jars brimming
with British sweets, from humbugs to giant
gobstoppers. A 1950’s feel reigns, thanks to the
decorative antique tins (for sale), a soundtrack
of jaunty jazz and packets of sweets labeled
RATIONS. Cocomaya (35 Connaught St.; 44-
20/7706-2770; cocomaya.co.uk), near Hyde
Park, sells handmade chocolates in whimsical
forms, such as medallions made from casts of
antique coins.
■ THE CHIP SHOP The resurrected Geales,
in Notting Hill (2 Farmer St.; 44-20/7727-7528;
dinner for two £45), which fi rst opened in 1939,
draws families and fashionable types alike for
upmarket beer-battered fi sh and chips. An
original wooden specials board listing dishes of
yore, such as mushy peas and shandy, pays
tribute to the previous incarnation.
■ THE SWING SET At Bourne &
Hollingsworth (28 Rathbone Place; 44-20/7636-
8228; cocktails for two £14), a louche basement
bar in Fitzrovia, a stylishly retro crowd downs
gin fi zzes and channels the spirit of prewar
Bright Young Things. The DJ’s get the crowd
swinging to big-band hits. Light-footed
Londoners are also stepping into the Rivoli
Ballroom (350 Brockley Rd.; 44-20/8692-5130;
londonrivoliballroom.co.uk) for the swing and rock
’n’ roll nights—and to lounge amid the original
scarlet 1957 interior, all velvet draperies,
fl ocked wallpaper, chandeliers and oversize
Chinese lanterns.
■ TEATIME Unashamedly basic Treacle
(110–112 Columbia Rd.; 44-20/7729-5657;
treacleworld.com) is keeping the British teahouse
alive. Open only on Sundays (as well as
Saturdays during the high season), the shop
sells tea and ginger beer, and a selection of
fairy cakes, Victoria sponges and other treats.
Vintage tea caddies, teapots and china are for
sale. For more glamour, head to the Waldorf
Hilton (Aldwych; 44-20/7759-4083; hilton.co.uk),
which has re-introduced its afternoon Tango
Tea in the sumptuous Palm Court; guests can
relive 1920’s elegance and take to the fl oor,
accompanied by a fi ve-piece band. ✚
The Old Is New Clockwise from above: Geales, in Notting Hill; sweetshop Hope and Greenwood; Geales’s take on fi sh and chips; sidewalk seating at Geales; dressing the part at Bourne & Hollingsworth; old-fashioned indulgences at Hope and Greenwood.
insider | classics
48 M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
Bowlful of Memories. This remnant of vanishing Bangkok serves up fi ne Thai-Chinese fare and nostalgia. By JENNIFER CHEN. Photographed by WASINEE CHANTAKORN
BUSINESSES OFTEN DON’T have a long shelf life along Bangkok’s
frenetic Sukhumvit Road. Restaurants morph into tailoring
shops overnight; food stalls spring up in parking lots, and then
vanish within weeks. A few years ago, an entire strip of bars disappeared
one night, only to re-emerge months later as a park. But on the corner
of Sukhumvit Soi 15, one presence has remained constant for nearly
a century—Yong Lee. It’s a minor miracle that this no-frills Thai-
Chinese eatery has survived; countless mom-and-pop operations on
Sukhumvit have fallen victim to the city’s mall-building frenzy. Not that
owner Opas Watcharintrawut hasn’t had offers. “A lot of people have
approached me, but I want to save the land for my kids,” says the
sparely built 73-year-old.
Born in Hainan, Opas moved to Thailand when he was fi ve. Back
then, the restaurant was surrounded by paddy fi elds and water buffaloes;
the soi across the street was a canal. One thing that hasn’t changed over
the decades is Yong Lee’s extensive, tattered menu, listing everything
from Thai standards such as tom yam gung to seafood specialties like
blood cockles in a spicy-sweet sauce. The thing to order, however, is the
roast duck: served over rice or, as we prefer, chopped and fanned over
a generous bowl of egg noodles, complete with blanched greens and
scallions (ba mee ped yang in Thai). It’s a substantial meal, but if you’re
really famished, add wontons—juicy little packets of pork and shrimp—
to the mix. Just make sure to get there early, especially on weekdays
when offi ce workers pack the tiny, 11-table space during lunchtime and
the eatery runs out of duck well before its 8:30 P.M. closing time. �
THAILAND
Yong Lee, a taste of old Bangkok. Left: Owner Opas Watcharintrawut. Above: A bowl of ba mee ped yang.
insider | the basics
50
ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREAT
sandwiches, banh mi is
Vietnam’s original fusion
dish. The French supplied the
baguettes, richly savory pâté and cold cuts,
while the Vietnamese added shredded dried
pork, pickled daikon and carrots, cilantro,
spring onions, cucumber, and depending
on the establishment, chili—all topped by a
drizzle of soy sauce or fi sh sauce. In Saigon,
banh mi is an institution; virtually every
street corner downtown has a sandwich
vendor. Here’s our pick of the city’s best
banh mi: Most banh mi joints are simple
stalls that provide takeaway sandwiches.
But some enterprising restaurateurs are
bringing banh mi indoors, providing tony
surroundings and air-conditioning. Bright,
modern and airy, Bamizon (9 Nguyen
Van Chiem, District 1; 84-
8/3824-8091; sandwiches from
VND22,000) offers a banh mi
fi lled with coarsely textured
pâté and slices of tender
roasted pork belly. • Another
upmarket favorite is Black Cat
(13 Phan Van Dat St., District 1;
84-8/3829-2055; sandwiches
from VND93,800). The
Californian chef–proprietor,
Geoffrey Deetz, is fanatical about making
everything for his innovative takes on
banh mi from scratch, from the baguettes
to the cognac-laced pâté to the sausages.
Two standouts are the banh mi with lamb
meatballs with pâté (VND79,000) dressed
in a Malay curry sauce and the Saigon
(VND79,000), which combines pork with
pâté and lime mayonnaise. • If you’re
hankering for something spicier, check
out the popular Anh Phan Bakery (164
Cong Quynh, District 1; 84-8/3909-0934;
sandwiches from VND11,000), a pared-down
storefront. Choose from a wide assortment
of fi llings—chicken sausage, shredded dried
chicken, barbecued pork and pork sausages.
• Near the New World Hotel is smart
takeaway Ta - Banh Mi Thit (259 Le Thanh
Ton, District 1; 84-8/3822-9703; sandwiches
from VND13,000). Order the Special No.
4 (VND18,000)—an assortment of cold
cuts with toothsome pork belly that’s got an
addictively crunchy barbecued skin. • Nhu
Lan Bakery (66–68 Ham Nghi, District 1; 84-
8/3829-2970; sandwiches from VND15,000)
is a 24-hour establishment that produces
jumbo-sized banh mi. We loved the kebab-
inspired banh mi (VND15,000), stuffed with
steak off the spit paired with cucumber,
chili, lettuce and mayonnaise. �
Saigon’s Tastiest
Sandwiches. Five eateries that
take the city’s most popular portable meal, banh mi, to
new heights. Story and photographs by
NANA CHEN
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
A waitress at Black Cat in Saigon. Above: The banh mi sandwich assembly line.
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StylishTravelerF A S H I O N . . . 5 6 | P A C K I N G L I S T . . . 6 4
Whenever you’re headed somewhere wintery, make sure to wrap yourself up in a classic Loro Piana cashmere scarf from Italy. Photographed by NIGEL COX
T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9 55
A SENSE OF STYLE
lies at the heart of
all things Italian.
Consider this
simple shawl: a 1.5-by-1.5-
meter swath of woven silk-
cashmere that has for decades
been a staple of the collections
of Loro Piana, maker of the
fi nest cashmere on the planet.
Block-printed in ton-sur-ton
patterns or in monochromatic
shades ranging from fi or di latte
cream to bright raspberry to
basic black, it’s both whisper-
light and deliciously warm,
adding a dash of whimsy
and a dose of practicality to
your travel wardrobe. Which
is why, for everyone from the
frequent fl ier to the jetsetter, a
Loro Piana shawl is the perfect
companion—as appropriate
(and fabulous) draped over your
shoulders at a palazzo wedding
in Rome as it is keeping you
cozy on a long-haul fl ight.
(Loro Piana has stores at various
locations in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul
and China; loropiana.com.)
—M A R I A S H O L L E N B A RG E R
SOFT TOUCH
Cotton jumpsuit, Eairth; cotton jacket with pearl
trim, Chanel; velvet sandals, Gaupo; bamboo
necklace, Bea Valdes.
Take a fresh look at the Philippine capital. Here, T+L mixes and matches some of the country’s brightest fashion talents with heavy-hitters of the international scene. Photographed by NAT PRAKOBSANTISUK. Styled by ARAYA INDRA
MANILA MASTERSM
fashion | stylish traveler
Pleated chiffon dress with beading, Kate Torralba; cotton coat, Louis Vuitton; velvet sandals, Gaupo; snakeskin print bag, Prada; gold-and-crystal necklace, Bea Valdes; sunglasses, stylist’s own.
Opposite: Chiffon top with feather trim, Charina Sarte; silk trousers, Chanel; shoes, Fendi; ostrich leather clutch, Amina Aranaz; wood cuff and black enamel ring, Wynn Wynn Ong.
Printed jersey top, Barba; printed silk skirt, Prada; two-
tone sandals, Gaupo; satin bag with sea-snake trim and straw
67T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9
T+L Journal~ T R E N D S , C U L T U R E , F O O D A N D M O R E ~
DRINK 72REFLECTIONS 77
OBSESSIONS 80GOING GREEN 84
Shanghai’sEndless FeastEating out is serious business in mainland China’s vibrant financial capital. By JENNIFER CHEN. Photographed by DARREN SOH
CHINA
Villa du Lac. Inset: Le Platane staff greet guests.
S OMEWHERE BETWEEN THE OVEN-BAKED black cod
with spring onions and the braised pork served
with two mini mantou, it hits me that clichés do have
a ring of truth around them. In this instance, I
realize that it is possible to have too much of a good thing.
This epiphany comes towards the end of an eight-course
meal at the Whampoa Club, a lavish Chinese restaurant in
Shanghai’s Three on the Bund complex. It isn’t a negative
refl ection of the food in front of me, which I happily carry
on eating. But this is my fi nal dinner in a weeklong trip
punctuated by round-the-clock dining, and my insides are
begging for penance. By the time dessert—yogurt-and-
strawberry ice cream with dragon fruit—comes around, I
manage to down only a few spoonfuls, and then slump
in my seat. But judging from the feasting patrons in the
gilded dining room, I’m probably alone in feeling any
remorse over gluttony. So after dinner, I troop downstairs to
Jean-Georges and squeeze in two more desserts, including a
show-stopping pain perdu with a scoop of nutty brown-butter
ice cream and a praline sauce.
Excess, after all, is Shanghai’s ruling ethos. At least that
was the case during my visit last October, before China’s
economy began showing symptoms of the global economic
malaise. Shanghai before Mao ran on a surfeit of sex, drugs
and other shady business. And while it’s no longer Asia’s
most notorious fl eshpot, its present-day incarnation still owes
much to outsized appetites and ambition. Why stop at a few
distinctive skyscrapers when you can litter the entire skyline
with architectural icons? Why settle for second place after
Hong Kong when it comes to wheeling and dealing? Simply
walking down Nanjing Road—Shanghai’s glitzy shopping
drag—is enough to induce the kind of glazed-eye stupor
brought on by overindulgence.
Shanghai believes, without a trace of irony, that greed is
good, and that voraciousness naturally manifests itself in the
dining scene. More than 31,000 eateries are listed in
Shanghai alone on dianping.com, a popular restaurant
review website. You can run through the whole litany of
dining experiences in this town: from a humble dumpling
shop to a swanky, marble-clad temple of haute cuisine, and
everything in between. Yet even with marquee names like
Jean-Georges Vongerichten and the Pourcel twins blazing
the trail, Shanghai’s fi ne dining scene is one that is still
evolving as locals get the hang of ordering a claret with
dinner and ending a meal with a plate of runny cheeses.
Michelin Guides, after all, did go to rival Hong Kong fi rst.
68 M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
t+l journal | asian scene
A private room at Jean-Georges. Right: Chocolatiers at work at Laris. Opposite, clockwise from left: Le Platane’s menu board; vino at Jean-Georges; Le Platane’s chef–owner Justin Quek; an Art Deco fl ourish at the Whampoa Club; seafood and truffl es at Le Grange.
With that in mind, I choose to dine at the city’s classiest
establishments, starting with an eatery opened by one of the
early pioneers of serious-minded, European cuisine here.
Following stints in Toulouse, Los Angeles, Miami and Kiev,
Jérôme Lagarde arrived in Shanghai to head the kitchen at
the Pourcel brothers’ Sens & Bund. After four years of
running the 180-seat restaurant, he decided to strike out on his
own, and with the backing of a few fellow Frenchmen, opened
La Grange last summer. Unlike the showy Sens & Bund,
Lagarde’s new home, which seats only 40 people, exudes
intimacy and unpretentiousness, from its rough-hewn wooden
sign to its comfortable leather banquettes. Lagarde’s chicly
turned-out wife, Audrey, runs the front of the house during
the day, accentuating the eatery’s family-run feel.
The simplicity of the décor, however, is deceptive.
Lagarde, a proud native of France’s Pays Basque, runs a
tight ship: the maître d’ and servers go about their tasks with
quiet effi ciency, even as the tables fi lled up—a rarity in
China. The wine list numbers 600 bottles, and the food also
hints at grander ambitions. Duck carpaccio arrives at my
table with a miniature galette aux pommes, a dab of tart
raspberry sauce, and shavings of black truffl e and grana
padano. That’s followed by dense, chewy gnocchi with
grilled lobster and morels, dressed with a sauce fortifi ed with
lobster-infused olive oil. The best discovery, though, lies with
the cheese course—a generous wedge of nutty Ossau-Iraty
cheese from Lagarde’s home region and a spoonful of thick
black cherry jam.
Given the level of execution here, it comes as a surprise
when Lagarde declares that the quality of dining has
actually slid in his time in Shanghai. “There’s no Ducasse or
Gagnaire who’s coming here,” he points out, mentioning
two celebrated chefs who both have outposts in Hong Kong.
“If you eat at a Western restaurant here in Shanghai, you
can close your eyes and not know where the food is coming
from. It’s the same food everywhere.”
Justin Quek, the chef–proprietor of the lakeside Le
Platane, sees things differently. “These things take time.
Singapore and Hong Kong—10 years ago, who would spend
so much on Western food? China takes time,” he tells me
with a rat-a-tat delivery that betrays his Singaporean roots.
Quek, who established his reputation for exquisite French
fare at Singapore’s Les Amis and La Petite Cuisine in Taipei,
also takes heart in the homegrown talent—his staff consists
of chefs who’ve loyally followed him from Taipei and local
youths—and the increasing ease with which he can source
T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9 69
»
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M70
t+l journal | asian scene
produce and other ingredients in China. While Lagarde
imports up to 90 percent of his ingredients, Quek regales me
with loving descriptions of the white asparagus from Jilin,
the garlic in Hainan, and Yunnan’s famous cured ham and
“heavenly mushrooms”—morels, chantarelles, black truffl es.
“Don’t tell me you can’t fi nd any good products in this
country,” he scolds.
Those local ingredients are very much in evidence the
night I dine at Le Platane. Quek, who opened Le Platane in
March 2007, now has two other eateries: the casual bar–
bistro Fountain and Villa du Lac, an upscale Chinese
restaurant. The jewel in his crown, however, remains Quek’s
fi rst restaurant, which occupies a shikumen house in
Xintiandi. Across the street stands the building where, in
1921, members of China’s Communist Party met in secret.
They would have undoubtedly disapproved of the decadent,
bourgeois sensibilities that went into decorating Le Platane:
hand-painted pale-green silk wallpaper; armoires inlaid with
mother-of-pearl; crystal chandeliers; large gilt mirrors.
Our meal, too, would rankle Mao and his austere
compatriots: a satisfyingly earthy mushroom cappuccino
(made with those heavenly Yunnanese fungi); kingfi sh
carpaccio with shavings of Yunnanese black truffl es and
micro greens; truffl e-infused foie gras xiaolongbao; a tangle of
house-made tagliatelle with crab meat; and succulent roasted
suckling pig with a crisp layer of crackling skin that’s
paired—because over-the-top isn’t a derogatory term in
Shanghai—a slice of Wagyu beef. To round off our meal,
we’re presented with a delicate circle of pastry topped with
caramelized apples.
EVEN WITH THE ASIAN FLOURISHES, Quek’s cooking is
still recognizably classical French, and at both Le
Platane and La Grange, you’d have no trouble
identifying the food in front of you. That’s not the case at
Jade on 36, Shanghai’s only restaurant devoted to molecular
gastronomy. From the moment you enter the 36th-fl oor
space, you’re confronted with the unexpected: in the foyer,
diners have to step around an abstract 4.3-meter sculpture of
intersecting rods that’s meant to be a traditional rice bowl,
radically deconstructed (even after a few glasses of wine, I
still didn’t quite see it). A sci-fi –esque white ramp leads to an
avant-garde dining room designed by Adam Tihany of Per
Se and Le Cirque fame, who stridently upends traditional
Chinese motifs.
The food is equally startling. Though chef Paul Pairet left
A tasty beginning at La Grange. Right: Taking in the view of the Chinese metropolis from Jade on 36. Opposite, from left to right: Alfresco dining at The Fountain in Xintiandi; Eric Johnson, the chef at Jean-Georges; ready for dinner at Jean-Georges.
WHERE TO EAT
Jade on 36 36th fl oor, Pudong Shangri-La, 33 Fucheng Lu; 86-21/6882-8888; tasting menus from RMB450.
Jean-Georges 4th fl oor, Three on the Bund, 3 Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu; 86-21/6321-7733; dinner for two RMB1,700.
Jishi Go with a crowd. 41 Tianping Lu; 86-21/6282-9260; dinner for two RMB400.
Laris The seafood bar at this sleek, marbled spot is worth the splurge. 6th fl oor, Three on the
Bund; 86-21/6321-9922; dinner for two RMB900.
Le Grange 794 Julu Lu; 86-21/6248-2185; dinner for two RMB1,200.
Le Platane 373 Huangpi Nan Lu; 86-21/5383-2998; dinner for two RMB1,000.
Whampoa Club 5th fl oor, Three on the Bund; 86-21/6321- 3737; dinner for two RMB1,000.Villa du Lac 383 Huangpi Nan Lu; 86-21/6387-6387; dinner for two RMB1,100.
the restaurant last fall, his wildly inventive cuisine is still
featured in the various four-to-eight-course tasting menus. As
you’d expect from a culinary high-wire act, some of the
dishes fall fl at. I wasn’t won over by the ponderous hunk of
teriyaki-glazed beef attached to a Flintstone-sized rib. But
radish); and luohao huotui (greens with Yunnanese ham). The
waiter cuts me off before I can order more, bluntly saying, “I
think you have enough.” And he’s right. �
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M72
t+l journal | drink
IN THE RUGGED HIGHLANDS of southern Laos,
American entrepreneur Lee Thorn melts into a
dreamlike bliss as, relating his story of sorrow and
success, he pauses to pick up his cup and take a sip.
“I’m telling you, it’s the best coffee in the world. I know
I’m prejudiced, but I’m totally convinced. It’s unique, it’s
different, it’s new,’’ says Thorn, a once-troubled Vietnam
War veteran who has pioneered coffee’s revival in Laos
following decades of confl ict and isolation.
For the world’s average coffee drinker, Laos and Southeast
Asia in general don’t immediately spring to mind when
thinking of the drink. Images of vast Brazilian plantations,
historic Viennese coffee houses and American mass
marketers of the brew are more likely to pop up.
But here are the bare facts: Vietnam has emerged as the
world’s second largest coffee exporter after Brazil, while
Indonesia occupies the number four spot following
Colombia. Coffee culture, once relegated to open-air
markets and Chinese shophouses, has spread across the
region in varied guises, with Southeast Asian consumption
rocketing along at 20–30 percent growth a year—and it’s not
all imported. Premium Arabica coffee from the highlands of
Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and even Cambodia’s remote
Ratanakiri Province fetches top prices on international
markets and, in blind tastings, often beats the competition.
Take Thailand. Instant coffee with powdered milk used to
be the dreaded staple at all but the top-class hotels not so
long ago, especially in provincial areas. Now, an upcountry
journey, let’s say from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, can easily
become a caffeine lover’s delight. Even many gasoline
stations offer fi ne coffee at charming kiosks complete with
espresso machines or at one of the proliferating locally
owned chains like Café Amazon. Along country roads, it
won’t be long before you spot a sign for kafae sot, literally
“fresh coffee,” but meaning that good quality stuff as
opposed to the instant variety that’s usually served at little
mom-and-pop stands.
Coffee MakersThe popular drink’s hold on Southeast Asia dates back much longer than the appearance of your favorite corner franchise, writes ANTHONY MECIR. Photographed by BRENT T. MADISON
T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9 73
In Chiang Mai, Thailand’s northern hub of culture and
tourism, awaits world-class taste from the nearby mountains,
savored in artsy hangouts, alfresco cafés or the award-
winning Wawee Coffee chain started by young local Kraisit
Foosuwan, where for every cup you drink, one baht goes to
support hill-tribe children.
Coffee in Southeast Asia is often linked to some genuinely
good works. In the region’s highlands, the fi nest beans
emanate from the villages of some of the most
disadvantaged people. This is no gimmick to make
corporations look like good guys.
Plagued for three decades by nightmares and guilt, Thorn
went back to make personal reparations—and fi nd peace—
by seeding a number of aid projects in Laos in areas once
heavily bombed by U.S. warplanes. Along the way he hit
upon forming a co-operative among dirt-poor farmers in the
Bolaven Plateau where French colonials in the 1920’s had
established a thriving coffee industry under well nigh perfect
conditions for Arabica: cool temperatures and rich volcanic
soil above 1,300 meters.
Enter Thorn, providing villagers with some of the old
French Arabica rootstock along with loans at low interest
rates, technical expertise and export markets. Today, the co-
operative’s Fair Trade–certifi ed beans, sold in the country as
Lao Mountain Coffee, commands some of the highest prices
on world markets and rave reviews.
Also highly rated are brands coming out of the Thai
mountains—Hilltribe Gourmet, Doi Chaang, Duang Dee
Hill Tribe Coffee, Doi Tung and Lanna Coffee—which have
been developing since the late 1960’s when Thailand’s King
Bhumibol Adulyadej initiated efforts to replace fi elds of
poppies with substitute crops. Coffee proved among the best
and most lucrative. One of the project leaders was American
missionary and agriculture expert Richard Mann, whose son
Michael is now behind a co-operative of 250 families in 25
villages growing coffee, much of it produced organically
under forest canopies and sold under the Lanna Coffee
brand. From the hills, it makes its way to Chiang Mai where
you can drink it at the co-operative’s own welcoming Lanna
Café and feel doubly good since profi ts go to fi ght human
traffi cking and other local woes. You can now ask the baristas
at Starbucks for the muan jai, or “wholehearted happiness’’
brand, and it will be Michael’s co-operative coffee.
W HILE MANY OF THESE developments are relatively
recent, coffee’s history in Southeast Asia
stretches back more than three centuries. The
Dutch introduced the drink to Java in the 1690’s, from where
it spread to other regions of the far-fl ung Indonesian
archipelago. In 1740, a Franciscan monk brought the fi rst
coffee bush into the Philippines, which remains one of the
few countries to grow all four commercially viable »
In Southeast Asia’s highlands, the fi nest beans emanate from the VILLAGES of some of the most disadvantaged people
Coffee Culture Clockwise from above: An Akha woman picks ripening coffee in Thailand; a farmer dries coffee beans; washing coffee berries.
varieties—Arabica, Liberica, Excesa and Robusta (normally
planted at lower altitudes and often processed into instant
coffee). The British started plantations in Malaysia in the late
18th century, while their French colonial counterparts began
growing superb coffee about a century later in the Central
Highlands of Vietnam.
Long before the age of Starbucks, early risers would
gather in the kopitiam, the traditional breakfast and
coffeeshops of Malaysia and Singapore, at market stalls in
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and simple Chinese eateries
in Thailand for their morning pick-me-ups. The beverage
varies across the region but is essentially made by passing hot
water through a cloth fi lter—kafae thung, or “bag coffee” as
Thais call it—and usually adding sweetened condensed milk
and sugar. Iced versions were and continue to be popular.
Side by side with such traditions, contemporary coffee
culture got its start in the 1990’s, boosted by the advent of
the internationals—“the Starbucks effect,” as some call it.
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M74
Early risers would gather at market stalls in
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia for their
PICK-ME-UPS
t+l journal | drink
GUIDE TO ASIAN COFFEE
The now ubiquitous American chain opened its fi rst shop in
Singapore in 1996, using the island republic as its “strategic
gateway into Southeast Asia.” It arrived in Thailand two
years later and in Indonesia by 2002; in Singapore and
Bangkok, it’s now diffi cult to fi nd a shopping mall that
doesn’t have a Starbucks. But local competitors, both chains
and chic, stand-alone cafés, were quick off the mark and
often outpaced the outsiders in ambience and quality of
their gourmet offerings. Some even expanded abroad:
Thailand’s Black Canyon cafés are now found in seven
other countries.
Home-grown cafés have also mushroomed in Singapore.
Among the fi rst and still the best, Coffee Club, was fi rmly
rooted in Singapore’s history. It’s owned by Hiang Kie,
which was founded in 1936 and is one of the biggest coffee
traders in a nation that hosts one of the largest coffee
exchanges in the world. Having expanded to more than 20
branches, it serves the whole gamut that modern Southeast
Asian coffee lovers have come to expect, from its top-selling,
calorifi c iced mocha vanilla (macchiato topped with vanilla
75
WHERE TO DRINK
BANGKOKDoi Tung Coffee Embedded in a popular market, it serves its own brands from a royal development project. Suan Lum Night Bazaar, Rama 4 Rd.; drinks from Bt59.
CHIANG MAILanna Café Superb coffee straight from hill tribes found in the nearby mountains of northern Thailand. 81 Huay Kaew Rd.; drinks from Bt30.
HANOIAu Lac Café Sip it in the quiet courtyard of a French villa in the heart of Hanoi. 57 Pho Ly Thai To St.; drinks from VND25,000.
HO CHI MINH CITYGivral Café and Restaurant Hangout of spies and journalists during the Vietnam War. 169 Dong Khoi St.; drinks from VND52,000.
JAKARTABakoel Koffi e A 130-year-old institution. 25 Jln. Cikini Raya; drinks from Rp23,000.
KUALA LUMPUR
Yut Kee This Chinese kopitiam has been around since 1928 and thankfully has fought off change. Its Hainanese food is also highly rated. 35 Jln. Dang Wangi; drinks from RM1.25.
VIENTIANETalat Sao It’s a no-frills affair at the city’s morning market, but plenty of buzz and bustle as you sample Lao coffee in market stalls the way the Lao drink it. Lan Xang Ave.; drinks from LAK8,400.
ice cream and a drizzle of chocolate syrup) to the old-
fashioned, Chinese-Malay-style kopi baba.
Indeed, Southeast Asians are now increasingly drinking
their own brews, rather than relying purely on imports. But
one local variety you are unlikely to taste happens to be the
world’s most expensive—commanding prices that run as
high as US$1,320 a kilogram—and arguably the best. It’s
kopi luwak, found mostly in Indonesia but whisked away to
lucrative markets in the United States and Japan. In polite
language it’s described as being made from coffee berries
eaten and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian
Palm Civet, the end result reportedly being complex and
heavenly fl avors.
Thorn, among others, would argue about which brew
owns the title of best in Southeast Asia. “Its bouquet is rich,
round, sweet and slightly spicy,” he says of Lao Mountain
Coffee in vocabulary worthy of any ecstatic oenophile. “Its
fl avor is balanced, soft and mellow and treats each area of
the tongue with an exciting fl avor. Never harsh or acidic, its
mellow, neutral fi nish delights the tongue.” �
Best Beans Left: Selecting seedlings. Below: Inspecting roasted coffee. Opposite, clockwise from bottom: Sorting berries; cooling coffee before it’s bagged; a group of pickers.
Promotional Feature
SPONSORS:
Residents and visitors alike will soon get the
chance to indulge their tastes for all things
Spanish with two events coming in March
and April 2009. First off, between March 31, 2009,
and April 1, 2009, a fl amenco show performed by
Maria del Mar Moreno will be held at the Petronas
Twin Towers Auditorium.
In María del Mar’s show “Jerez Puro, Esencia,” María
del Mar defi nes the dancer’s purity. The malagueña of
Mellizo, sung by Manuel Malena accompanied on the
guitar by Domingo Rubichi, is followed by Antonio
Malena’s tonás to prologue María del Mar’s dance of
siguiriyas, in which she exhibits the characteristic
intensity of the style. Dancer Juan Ogalla interprets
soleá por bulería with a long heelwork section.
Meanwhile, at the Hotel Hilton Kuala Lumpur, from
April 2, 2009, to April 9, 2009, chef Paco Roncero and
his team will host classes, live demonstrations, wine
tasting and more. Starting in 1990 at Zalacain—a three-
Michelin-star restaurant—Paco joined the Ritz hotel,
also in Spain’s capital. After several years of training,
he joined the Casino de Madrid Banquet Department,
where he was appointed head chef in 1996, and went
on to win awards in the Young Chefs’ Championship
and a third one in the Spanish Championship.
Kuala Lumpur’s
SPANISH GOURMET WEEKWHEN: April 2, 2009–April 9, 2009WHERE: Hilton Hotel Kuala Lumpur.HOW TO BOOK: 60-3/2264-2592
With the sponsorship of the Spanish Tourist Offi ce and Turismo Madrid and a special collaboration with the Spanish Embassy.
FLAMENCO SHOW: JEREZ PURO-COMPAÑÍA MARIA DEL MAR MORENOWHEN: March 31, 2009–April 1, 2009WHERE: Petronas Twin Towers AuditoriumHOW TO BOOK: For tickets, please call the DFP Box Offi ce on 60-3/2051-7007 or email: dfp_boxoffi [email protected]
This flamenco show is a co-presentation between Turismo Madrid and Dewan Filarmonik Petronas, with the kind sponsorship of Cámara de Madrid and Roca Johnsson Suisse. It is also a special collaboration between Vinos de Madrid and the Spanish Embassy.
Meet Madrid’s famous chef, Paco Roncero, and enjoy traditional Spanish culture, all in Malaysia’s magical citySpanish
Week
M Y HUSBAND AND I TRAVELED TO TAIPEI in December to attend a belated
wedding banquet my father was throwing for us and to pay respects to my
grandfather, who had died 100 days earlier. But even with familial
responsibilities hanging over my head, what I thought about most en route to
Taipei was a street-side stall serving up hot bowls of doufu hua, a sweet, sometimes-gingery soup
with soft tofu.
There are few places in the world where the people are as obsessed with food as in Taiwan.
Rarely will you see so many little stands crammed together serving an endless variety of snacks,
ranging from giant, fl attened discs of fried chicken steak eaten out of a paper pouch to huge
towers of shaved ice fl avored with red beans or mangoes or strawberries. And then there are
the varied restaurants, serving everything from Thai to vaunted French, though hardly anyone
bothers with fancy places because the street-side stands are so good.
refl ections | t+l journal
»
Visits to the Taiwanese capital were a chore as a child, but JEN LIN-LIU now fi nds that the city’s food provides a link to her family’s past. Illustrated by WASINEE CHANTAKORN
Taipei on the Menu
TAIWAN
T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9 77
t+l journal | refl ections
78 M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
populated areas in the world, according to my father.
Since it was late in the afternoon, only a few tables
were occupied at the open-air restaurant that looked
onto a street congested with BMW’s, trucks and taxis.
The hot soy broth came lightly sweetened and was
paired with you tiao, long, deep-fried crullers whose
name literally means “oily stick.” We dipped our you
tiao into the soy milk and the balance of something so
crisp, savory and deep-fried going with something as
wholesome and healthy as soy milk made it a very
enticing combination.
Other accompaniments came, including pan-fried
pork pot stickers, folded to leave the fi lling partially
exposed and fried in batches so they stuck together;
fan tuan, a roll of fi rmly packed rice wrapped around
another you tiao and dried pork; and pan-fried
shredded radish cakes with a mouth-watering sauce
made from soy, sugar and garlic.
As the four of us happily munched down the
carbohydrate-heavy meal, Craig and his parents
pondered how the Taiwanese remain so rail thin. It’s
a comment I, too, get from others who ask me,
“How can you possibly be a food writer at your size?”
My secret, one Taiwanese know well: I hide it in my
gut. If a child were to draw a sketch of me, a good
depiction would consist of long lines, representing my
legs and arms, protruding from a big circle, for my
well-fed body.
T HE NEXT DAY, I SQUEEZED into a deep purple
qipao, a tight-fi tting traditional Chinese dress
that did nothing to hide my gut. Our wedding
banquet was held at a multi-story restaurant called
Hai Ba Wang, where the price of the dishes increased
with every fl oor. In a private room on the eighth fl oor,
Craig and I greeted 60 of my relatives, some of
whom I had never met and most of whom were
entirely unfamiliar to Craig. We bowed deeply as they
presented us with red packets.
As the procession of dishes began, I was able to
quickly surmise that the food was more varied and
elaborate than what Craig and I served at our
wedding reception in San Diego a couple months
before. In place of our simple surf ‘n’ turf, our
Chinese wedding banquet consisted of plate after
plate of fresh seafood, from yellowtail sashimi to
whole lobster to steamed crab with sticky rice. The
only snafu occurred when the shark’s fi n soup came
out: my grandmother couldn’t understand why
Craig’s parents, Caucasian and from Massachusetts,
refused to eat such a treasured delicacy.
My parents grew up in Taiwan and migrated to
America in the 1970’s, where I was born. As a child, I
traveled to Taiwan several times, and each time I felt
uncomfortable and disconnected. The streets were
too chaotic, and the restaurants too noisy. As I got
older and my Chinese got rustier, I found it more
diffi cult to communicate with my relatives. But since
moving to Beijing eight years ago, I’ve traveled to
Taipei often and have felt more a part of it each time,
as I grow more accustomed to Chinese ways of life
and Taipei transforms into a modern city.
On my latest trip to Taipei, I was accompanied by
my husband Craig and his parents who also live in
Beijing. We were able to squeeze in a good meal on
the streets before our wedding banquet the next day.
After helping my in-laws check into a hotel not far
from where my grandmother lived, the four of us
piled into a taxi for the nearby New World Soy Milk,
a well-known roadside restaurant.
The neighborhood of Yong He is famous for its
soymilk shops. Separated from downtown Taipei by a
river, Yong He, with its packed alleys and six-story tall
buildings, is supposedly one of the most densely
We feasted on tissue-thin millet crepes stuffed with
stir-fried vegetables, crushed peanuts and DRIED PORK
79T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9
Across the room, my father, who had moved back
to Taipei several years ago, was animatedly speaking
to one table about the battles that he and I had over
the years. Ironically, he said, he had come to respect
me because of our disagreements. He lingered far
longer than Craig and I had when we’d made the
rounds. Making multiple toasts at each table, his face
was happy and as red as the wine.
After changing out of the qipao and into jeans that
evening, I craved street food. But my parents were
treating Craig’s parents to a meal, and my father
insisted on taking them somewhere more proper. After
touring a Buddhist temple, we headed to the original
Din Tai Fung, the famous dumpling restaurant.
Along with dumplings in a bamboo steamer came
a laminated instruction card. When biting down on
the dumplings, diners could scald themselves on the
soup nestled inside. The card told eaters to drain the
soup from the dumpling onto a porcelain spoon and
savor it fi rst before eating the meat and the wrapper.
What the card did not say was that the delectable
soup was made from pulverized pork skin, a secret I’d
learned when interning in a restaurant in Shanghai,
where soup dumplings had originated, more or less.
The next day, my father’s family held a memorial
service for my paternal grandfather, who had died a
few months before at the age of 89. The informal
service was held in the home my grandparents had
shared for 30 years. Now, with my grandfather gone,
my grandmother lived by herself, insisting on
cooking, cleaning and doing her own laundry.
Months before, I had fl own to Taipei for my
grandfather’s cremation, and I had been surprised at
how large a role food had played during the
ceremony. A pig’s head, a whole chicken, plates of
fruit and cups of water had decorated the altar.
When the monk said prayers over his body, he had
dropped cooked bits of rice into the coffi n lined with
fake American dollars that my grandfather would
take with him into the afterlife.
Now, several months later, food was again center
stage. My grandmother and aunts busied themselves
in the kitchen, assembling 12 little pink baskets
containing items like stir-fried green beans, dried tofu
and shredded radishes—all dishes my grandfather
had enjoyed. Larger offerings, like deep-fried
fl ounder and barbecued pork, were placed in front of
an altar that had been set up in the dining room.
Twenty relatives, including Craig and I, prostrated in
front of the altar, and my father and his siblings took
turns reading letters they had written to their father,
sobbing—with the exception of my stoic father, the
oldest of fi ve children—and then burning the
personal notes in a tin receptacle that had been set
out on the balcony.
Having concluded our nuptial celebrations and my
grandfather’s memorial, Craig and I were free to
roam the vibrant markets of Taipei. Even as the
city modernizes, linked together with an extensive
subway system, trendy Japanese-style cafés and the
Taipei 101 tower, Taiwanese continue to shop and
eat on the streets, as we witnessed at the Linjiang
Road Market late one morning.
Old ladies in sweats and stylish young women in
high-heeled boots pushed their way through the
market, perusing the fresh vegetables and meats. A
shirtless man chanting prices in a rhyme stood over
huge baskets of yams and garlic. On fi rst glance, the
market didn’t feel that different from mainland China:
the streets were dirty and strewn with pieces of trash
while shoppers nudged and bumped their way through
the narrow aisles created by the vendors.
But upon examining the street food, we knew we
were somewhere entirely different. We feasted on
tissue-thin millet crepes stuffed with stir-fried
vegetables, crushed peanuts and dried pork; soft
glutinous rice mochis fi lled with chocolate mousse that,
sprinkled with fl our, resembled delicate little
snowballs; and fi nally, I found a roadside shop that
sold my beloved doufu hua, the sweet tofu soup. On
letting the tofu rest on my tongue for a moment, I
realized that I was fi nally home. �
World Soymilk King 284 Yonghe Rd., Sec. 2; 886-2/8927-0000; dinner for two from NT$167.
Hai Ba Wang 59 Zhongshan North Rd., Sec. 3; 886-2/2596-3141; dinner for two from NT$1,670.
Din Tai Fung 218 Zhongxiao East Rd., Sec. 4, Lane 216; 886-2/2721-7890; dinner for two from NT$1,000.
Linjiang Food Market corner of Linjiang and Tonghua roads; dinner for two from NT$167.
Kao Chi 150 Fuxing South Rd., Sec. 1: 886-2/2751-9393; kao-chi.com; lunch for two from NT$800.
Yong He Dou Jiang Da Wong Chinese breakfast: hot soy milk and shaobing you tiao. 102 Fuxing South Rd., Sec. 2; 886-2/2736-7560; NT$150.
GUIDE TO EATING IN TAIPEI
80
D ESPITE MY SCOTTISH HERITAGE, I’ve never been wild about tartan.
Braveheart bored me to tears, I haven’t exactly yearned for haggis, and
it only takes a few bars from a bagpipe to set me reeling—toward
some Excedrin. But after my father died a few years ago and I spent
some quality time with his dear elder brother, I began to feel the old country’s pull
at last. A passionate amateur genealogist, my uncle had painstakingly assembled a
loose-leaf binder full of information about my ancestors, including Robert
Marshall, who, like so many other poor Scots, sailed to Prince Edward Island in
the late 18th century. Robert was a weaver and a teetotaling Presbyterian deacon.
Had he known that I, his descendant, would trek to Dumfries and Galloway in
Scotland’s southwest—the native land, according to my uncle, of all Marshalls—
not to fi nd God or plaid but to learn how to make whisky, he certainly would have
sent some fi re and brimstone my way.
Whisky (no “e” in the Scottish version) is the country’s most widely appreciated
tradition, but it’s not exactly self-evident why someone would visit the southwest of
The Scottish Lowlands, distilled into a weekend of learning how to make single malt. ALEXANDRA MARSHALL barrels in
Whisky 101
t+l journal | obsessions
Scottish Blend Clockwise from left: Rolling hills in the southwest of the country; whisky casks await; the Bladnoch Distillery; owner Raymond Armstrong inspects the single malt.
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M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
SCOTLAND
81
Scotland for it. Although the country has four recognized
whisky regions—the Highlands, Islay, Campbelltown and the
Lowlands—Highland distilleries get all the glory, not to
mention most of the market share. (There are only four
Lowland distilleries, compared to dozens in the north.) But
the dry, delicate, very lightly peated Lowland single malts,
which are subtler than their knock-you-out up-country
cousins, should not be overlooked, and no one is better
disposed to prove it than Raymond Armstrong, the voluble
owner of Bladnoch Distillery, Scotland’s southernmost
producer. Located on the river Bladnoch, right next to
Wigtown in the southern Machars (near the old Marshall
stomping grounds of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright and now-
defunct Maxwelltown), Bladnoch was established in 1817 to
produce single malt for drinking, blending and exporting to
the English, who preferred the lighter taste of Lowland
scotch. After a century of independent production,
Bladnoch was bought and sold by company after company,
until 1994, when Armstrong, a Belfast native of southern
Scottish descent, snatched it up as a vacation property. At
fi rst prohibited from production, he was allowed to refi re the
still in 1998 and brought on master distiller John McDougall,
late of the Laphroaig, Springbank and Balvenie distilleries,
to help him develop his grassy, citrusy signature style. Last
year, the distillery put down only 40,000 bottles; Armstrong
hopes to double this yield soon.
Thanks to distillery tours, tasting events and the twice-
yearly Whisky School, which is unique in its intensity and
hands-on teaching style, Bladnoch now draws about 25,000
visitors a year to an area that otherwise attracts mainly »
Lively Isles Clockwise from below: Traffi c on the Isle of Jura; the sleepy island; taking a break at the Bruichladdich Academy on Islay.
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The dry, delicate, very lightly peated Lowland
single malts, which are subtler than their knock-
you-out up-country cousins, should not
be overlooked
T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9
Robert Burns devotees bent on retracing the Bard of
Scotland’s every pit stop. But the velvety green, gently
undulating hills and meadows of Dumfries and Galloway,
dotted with sheep and divided by fences of rough-hewn
slate, are some of the most achingly beautiful countryside I
have ever seen. The pastoral calm is balanced by a craggy
coastline and dark forests of ancient, knotted trees. There
are no roadside billboards or modern real estate
developments, and fl ame-topped pheasants dart across the
deserted roads more often than pedestrians.
As a result, locals can spot enrollees in Armstrong’s
Whisky School—a jolly weekend of mashing, brewing,
distilling, discussing and, fi nally, tasting single malt scotch—
rather easily. When I was pulled over for erratic driving after
our second session, Galloway’s fi nest instantly recognized my
complimentary lab coat and allowed me to talk my way out
of a DUI with an entirely true tale of having spent the day
absorbing stillhouse fumes. The 12 other students, all men
and most middle-aged, had trekked to Bladnoch from as far
away as Canada and Denmark. Some were spirits retailers;
all shared an advanced-geek level of knowledge about “the
water of life” (the meaning of uisce beata, or whisky, in Gaelic)
that put mine to shame. They hadn’t paid US$1,000 apiece
just to drink, after all. “Here we learn the small details,” Erik
Hansen, a fi ftysomething carpenter from Denmark, said.
“When we clean equipment and why; to
what degree we heat the water for
mashing; what to do with the steam from
the stills. The people who come here are
another kind of people.”
And then there was me. Day One began
at 8 A.M., when the boiler was turned on,
but I got lost on the distractingly scenic
11-kilometer drive from my stately manor
inn in Newton Stewart, Kirroughtree
House (on whose grand staircase, legend
has it, Burns used to recite poetry). By the
time I stumbled in, the group was already
touring the washback tuns, enormous pine
barrels full of sugary barley extract and
water just pumped from a steel mixing
tank called a mash tun. There Armstrong
began the impromptu discussions that
would fi ll the weekend: how to tell if the
mash tun is draining properly into the washback (watch the
texture of the foam); how to ensure consistency in the still
after you’ve pumped in the two-day-fermented beer (distill
slowly); how to make sure the cows don’t get drunk off the
fermenting mash pumped back out as their feed (carefully
squeeze it out so as to extract the sugar water). Whatever
Bladnoch’s stillman, an affable bear of a man named John
Herries, would have to do in a normal weekend—check
82 M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
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There is downtime, so the gents and I
could warm up our PEPPERY mutton
pies on the still
Still Life From top: A view of Bruichladdich Distillery; the distillery’s Mark Reynier; the remote Isle of Jura; at work in the Jura distillery.
t+l journal | obsessions
GETTING THEREWigtown, close to the Bladnoch Distillery, is a two-hour drive from Glasgow.
WHERE TO STAY Glenapp Castle Ballantrae, Ayrshire; 44-14/6583-1212; glenappcastle.com; doubles from £375, including breakfast and a six-course dinner.
Kirroughtree House Newton
GUIDE TO SCOTTISH WHISKY
Stewart, Wigtownshire; 44-16/7140-2141; kirroughtreehouse.co.uk; doubles from £90, including breakfast and dinner.
WHAT TO DOBladnoch Distillery Whisky School Two-
and-a-half days of tastings and hands-on instruction in single-malt production. 44-19/8840-2605; bladnoch.co.uk; £400 per person, including three lunches and one dinner.
WHISKY SCHOOLS The Jura FellowshipFour-day course on one of Scotland’s most remote islands (Jura is a two-hour ferry ride from the mainland town of
Kennacraig). Students are housed at the distillery’s Jura Lodge, which opened last year and features eclectic interiors — vintage fridges, gazelle antlers, Bakelite phones — by Parisian interior designer Bambi Sloan. The course includes three dinners with tastings and the option of having the distillery age a cask of single malt you help bring to the barrel stage. 44-149/682-0385; isleofjura.com; £1,000 per person.
Springbank Whisky SchoolThis is a week-long program at a still-operating 1828 distillery in Campbelltown, a historic whisky town (it was home to more than 30 distilleries in its 19th-century heyday) on the Mull of Kintyre. Unlike most producers in this part of the country, Springbank
malts all of its own barley, and it also does all of its bottling on-site. Students are put up at nearby Feorlin Guest House, a six-room bungalow owned by a local couple. 44-158/655-2009; springbankdistillers.com; £875 per person.
Bruichladdich Academy Three-day course at a seaside distillery on the Isle of Islay that also includes evening trips to the pub, live folk-music performances, and informal talks on local history. Face time with the operators in charge of each step of the whisky-making process is a main thrust of the program. Basic accommodations are provided (for four nights) at the recently refurbished Distillery House. 44-149/685-0221; bruichladdich.com; £850 per person.
Alexandra Marshall is a T+L (U.S.) contributing editor.
levels, open valves—we would do, too. Every student would
become part owner of a keg set to age eight years, and on
Day Three, the last day, we would fi ll and rack our shared
barrel—and stock up on hooch from the gift shop.
Despite the generally brisk pace at Whisky School, there is
downtime. And so the gents and I could warm up our
peppery mutton pies on the still; loll among the daffodils on
the riverbank; shuffl e around reading the snatches of Burns’s
poetry that Armstrong had posted on the grounds; sample
the clear, fi ery, 150-proof new-make spirit (unaged whisky)
that is like grappa made from freshly mowed grass; and then,
perchance, pop on the stillhouse’s novelty tam-o’-shanter
(called a See You Jimmy hat), climb into an empty 10,000-
gallon still, and clang around. I am only the third woman to
have participated in that time-honored Bladnoch ritual. It’s a
little like spelunking through a metal cave, perfumed by eau
de hangover.
Though my fellow students seemed most focused on their
wash still journals, it was the tasting, on Night Two, that I
was looking forward to. For what good is all the discussion of
peated malt versus unpeated malt, of aging in bourbon
versus sherry casks, if we couldn’t then sample the
difference? And so, as McDougall led us through about 10
different bottles, we discovered that a young bourbon-casked
malt was reminiscent of musty sneakers, and an immature
heavily peated experiment gave off a whiff of kippers. By
the time dinner was done—yes, they served haggis—the
piper was called in, the See You Jimmy hat was passed
around, and suddenly Armstrong ordered me up to the front
of the room to recite “The Brownie of Blednoch” into a
microphone. A 62-line poem written in 1825 in Scottish
dialect by William Nicholson (a.k.a. the Bard of Galloway),
it’s about a touchy troll seeking handyman work from
Bladnoch’s long-ago villagers. “Rob’s lingle brak as he men’t
the fl ail/At the sight o’ Aiken-drum,” I croaked. If old
Robert Marshall could have heard me, that night’s many
drams would have been the least of his troubles. My
classmates, however, seemed to love it.
On my last few days in the area, at my uncle’s behest, I
puttered around Galloway looking for Marshalliana.
Ancestral tourism is big in Scotland, as the ladies working at
the tiny Stewartry Museum in Kirkcudbright confi rmed:
they get about 40 people a day—mostly MacLellans,
formerly the bigwigs of the area. (There was one Canadian
MacLellan monopolizing the 18th-century census records I
was hoping to scour, but, not looking to restart the clan wars,
I waited my turn.) I came up empty everywhere I looked,
and decided I was willing to leave the minutiae of the birth
and death records to my uncle. This generation of Marshalls
is motivated by more sybaritic passions, I concluded as I
hopped up the Burns trail to Ballantrae, one constabulary
north in southern Ayrshire, for a night at Glenapp Castle, a
regal hotel set in wildly majestic gardens, fi lled with Colefax
and Fowler prints, polished French antiques, and more truffl e
honey and artisanal cheese than even I could manage. My
travels through Galloway had made me immensely proud of
my origins, but the time had come to start a few new
traditions of my own. �
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83 T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9
84
t+l journal | going green
Planting SeedsA farm near Jakarta aims to help local youth, save the earth and provide a sanctuary
from the modern world, writes ROBYN ECKHARDT. Photographed by DAVID HAGERMAN
Organic produce from the farm. Clockwise from left: One of the managers lends a hand; toiling out in the fields; harvest time.
INDONESIA
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
IT’S HALF PAST SIX in the morning and I’m
high in the hills above Cianjur, a small
agricultural town about two hours—in good
traffi c—south of Jakarta. I spent the previous
night in a rustic bungalow on the grounds of the
Maleber Tea Plantation, and after a cold-water
mandi, I’m glad for the rising sun that’s burning off
the last fi ngers of cool nighttime mist. As I pick my
way down the rocky path that fronts the bungalow’s
veranda, I greet women sporting fl at-brimmed
bamboo hats and men wreathed in clouds of clove-
scented cigarette smoke, plantation workers on their
way to a day’s labor in the terraces. From the village
of tile-roofed cottages nestled on the slope below
rises a chorus of chicken squawks and the
mechanical purr of a motorbike.
A stay at Maleber promises breathtaking sunsets,
plenty of crisp air and solitude, as well as the
opportunity to hike the plantation’s tea trails, tour
its late 19th-century tea processing facility and
pursue side trips to nearby Gede Pangrango
National Park. But there’s more to Maleber than tea
and pretty views. The plantation recently became
home to The Learning Farm, a nonprofi t that aims
to change the lives of vulnerable youth by teaching
them how to farm organically. I’ve come to learn
how the organization combines its twin goals of
saving the Earth and rescuing at-risk kids.
After a warming breakfast of bubur (creamy rice
porridge topped with chicken, vegetables and fi ery
green chili sambal ) purchased from a vendor just
outside the plantation’s gates, I make my way to the
double-storied villa that serves as The Learning
Farm’s offi ce, dormitory and canteen. Its current
“batch,” or class, consists of 24 Javanese men
ranging from 15 to 25 years old, a mix of newbies
and graduates who’ve returned for more training.
In the middle of the villa’s manicured lawn,
students stand in a tight circle around Miftah Zam
Akhid, a cheerful moon-faced man who joined the
farm six months earlier. Each morning, Miftah
briefs them on the day’s tasks. This morning he
passes out packets of seeds to a few before
instructing others to drop to the ground for push-
ups—a punishment for breaching rules the previous
day. A raucous sing-a-long ends with a chorus—
“Organic? Organic! Organic? Organic! Poison …
No Way!”—accompanied by hand clapping, and
then the students scramble for shovels, pitchforks
and hoes, and head to their classroom: a 5,000-
square-meter plot of land adjacent to the house, set
amid a patchwork of other small farms.
W E’RE NOT JUST GIVING the students technical
skills,” Jiway Tung, the project’s manager
tells me later that morning. “We’re trying to change
attitudes, and that’s a far harder thing.”
Tung came to Indonesia from Brooklyn in 1992 to
teach English and study silat, an Indonesian martial
art; stayed to earn a master’s degree in history; and
then, with his Indonesian wife, took up organic
farming in the Javanese village of Tugu, an
experience that introduced him to the predicament
of Indonesia’s under-educated rural youth. “There
were so many kids who hadn’t even fi nished
elementary school, and they were just at loose ends,”
he recalls, shaking his head. He set up a weekend
program to teach them English, computer skills
T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A R C H 2 0 0 9 85
Field Work Left: A class outdoors. Right: To start with.
and handicrafts, » “anything to occupy them and
maybe help them earn a living.”
Inspired by his experience in Tugu, while
studying in the United States he came up with the
idea for a non-profi t that would promote organic
farming and provide nonformal education for
vulnerable youth. When he approached American
NGO World Education for fi nancing, they signed
on. With additional funds from other donors, he
returned to Indonesia and launched The Learning
Farm at the end of 2005. Although World Education
still funds Tung’s position, the farm is now
supported by a variety of private sector sponsors.
It is currently training its fi fth group of students,
who undergo a series of interviews to ascertain their
suitability for the program. “It’s more of an art than
a science,” assistant project manager Ngalim, who’s
been with the farm since its inception, says of the
interview process. “Motivation and commitment for
the long term is what we’re looking for.”
During the four-month course, the students
receive instruction in entrepreneurship and life
skills, as well as organic-farming techniques. Highly
motivated graduates can return for an additional
two to eight months to add management and
marketing skills, and every graduate who takes up
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M86
farming receives regular visits from staff geared at
helping them maintain their momentum.
THESE ARE YOUTH WHO people said would never
take to this kind of work,” Ngalim says with a
grin. “We see them not just taking to it, but
succeeding.” I’ve just spent the morning in the fi elds,
where students hoe up clods of heavy black soil,
loosen it with pitchforks, and mix in goat manure
and homemade compost. The farm is in the fi nal
stages of its relocation to Maleber from its original
home in the nearby hill town of Puncak but the
work remains the same. Miftah offers advice as
needed, but for the most part the kids learn by
doing, working with a modicum of chitchat—until,
that is, mid-morning break, when pitchforks and
hoes became air guitars as on-the-job restraint gives
way to youthful energy.
Most of the students, according to Tung, “arrive
lacking discipline and a regular routine,” needing to
adjust to the farm’s rigorous 5:30 A.M. to 10:30 P.M.
schedule. Yet the graduation rate has risen to 70
percent. And there are real success stories. Miftah
shares his favorite, about the “pure street kids,
tattooed ankle to shoulder” from Yogjakarta who,
after initial diffi culties, so took to the program that
they had to be forced out of the fi elds in the
evenings. “Getting them to look inside themselves
and change was very diffi cult,” Ngalim says, “but
once they understood what organics was about they
began to love the plants.” The alumni now run a
farm that supplies produce to organic restaurants in
Yogja and serves as a teaching tool for students from
a nearby agricultural university.
t+l journal | going green
Some pure street kids so took to the program, they had to be forced out
of the fi elds in the EVENING
Farm Fresh Left: Feeding the earth. Right: A taste of the non-profit’s produce.
GETTING THEREMaleber is accessible from Jakarta by Silver Bird Taxi Service. 62-21/798-1234 or 62-21/794-1234; Rp700,000 one way.
WHEN TO GOThe Cianjur hills see more rain than much of Java. Try to avoid the rainy season, from mid-November through March, when downpours can last all day.
WHERE TO STAYMaleber Tea Plantation Simple but clean and comfortable bungalows, and single, double or triple rooms. The rooms are better than bungalows, with numbers 1–4 being the best. Ciherang, Pacet, Cianjur; 62-263/523-331; doubles from Rp70,000.
GUIDE TO ORGANIC FARM STAYS
THE NEXT DAY, I RISE before dawn and follow a
guide up into the tea terraces to a wooden
watchtower. My hopes of a spectacular sunset are
dashed as clouds envelop the forested peaks, but the
tranquility and invigorating air compensates.
I then visit The Learning Farm’s old home in
Puncak where I fi nd Eka, an animated former teen
magazine editor who joined the farm because “we
are really doing some good here,” supervising
students as they ready produce for customers. The
farm delivers 30 kinds of vegetables and herbs
directly to customers in Jakarta and Bogor three
times a week. Sales not only raise money but also
allow students to learn fi rsthand about marketing
and customer relations.
As I snack on just-picked carrots, the students pull
the last of the season’s bounty—vivid crimson and
green spinach, perky green onions, tiny cherry
tomatoes and extravagantly full heads of leaf
lettuce. After weighing and divvying the produce,
they gingerly pack it into sacks labeled with
customer names and place it in a cooler. Deliveries
will go out fi rst thing in the morning.
Back at the farm I speak with a few students. All
evince a strong intellectual engagement with their
vocation, and I’m struck by how passionately they
advocate not only organics as a way of farming, but
farming as a way of life. “To tell the truth, when I
arrived here I wasn’t that interested,” says Andri, a
quick-to-smile former warehouse worker from West
Java who has returned to supervise the farm’s
nursery and acquire additional technical skills.
“Most people think that farming is just hard work,
but what you learn here is that there’s a real science
involved. And it’s fun.”
Novus Puncak Resort & Spa The resort has 20 tile-fl oored, Javanese-themed rooms, some with balconies, and a spa and swimming pool. 180 Jln. Sindalanglaya Raya, Cipanas-Puncak; 62-21/532-3672; novuspuncak.com; doubles from Rp550,000.
WHERE TO EATMaleber Tea Plantation The plantation can arrange meals to be served in its dining room with advance notice, though note that larger groups get priority. 62-21/798-1234.
WHAT TO DOThe Learning Farm Tour the farm and, if you wish, work alongside students in the fi elds. A donation of Rp100,000 per person is suggested. [email protected].
Walks and Tea Factory Tour Arrange at the Maleber reception. 62-263/523-331; Rp2,500 per person.
Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park This 15,000-hectare park has trails leading to waterfalls, lakes, tropical mountain forests and volcanic landscapes. Apply for a permit (bring a copy of your passport) at the Park Offi ce. Guides are not required, but if you want to trek extensively, you’ll want to hire one. Jln. Raya Cibodas, Cipanas, Cianjur; 62-263/512-776; gedepangrango.org.
Cibodas Botanic Garden This beautiful 80-hectare tropical research station, which was originally planted in 1860, sits at the Cibodas entrance to Gede Pangrango.
Twenty-year-old Tibi, who grew up helping his
parents grow rice conventionally, admits to
adjustment problems. “We’re disciplined from the
moment we wake up at 5:30 A.M. That’s tough.” But
in just a few weeks he’ll graduate, and he’s
determined to convert his entire village to organics.
“Now I know how to farm healthily. I want to start
my own farm and run it organically, compost to
harvest, and teach others how to do the same.”
Project manager Tung hopes that villagers who
farm adjacent fi elds will see that organic techniques
combined with direct market access—selling to
consumers and supermarkets rather than to
middlemen—can earn them a better living, and
perhaps save Java’s precious farmland from falling
into the hands of developers.
“We’ve come in low profi le, and we’re not going
to chase neighboring farmers,” he hastens to add.
“But already they’re beginning to ask the students
why they farm the way we do.” ✚
A viewing platform at the Maleber Tea Estate.
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BEIJING’S BEST BURGERS, SINGAPORE STALLS, VEGGIE FOOD IN ASIA AND MORE
5 secret kitchens you must visit now
Hong Kong
Plus: Fly long-haul for less
GOINGGREENGUIDE TO ORGANICFARM STAYS
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SOUTHEAST ASIA
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T+L SOUTHEAST ASIA DISHES OUT THE BEST IN ASIAN FOOD, GIVING YOU INSIDER SECRETS ON THE REGION’S LATEST CULINARY TRENDS, GREAT LUNCH DEALS, MOUTHWATERING STREET EATS AND MUCH MORER E P O R T E D A N D W R I T T E N B Y R O B Y N E C K H A R D T, J E N L I N - L I U , D AV E N W U A N D J E N N I F E R C H E N
OF PLENTY
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MACAU Robouchon à Galera (3rd
floor, Hotel Lisboa, 2–4 Avenida de Lisboa;
853/2888-3888; hotelisboa.com) might
have received three stars in the new
Michelin guide—the first and only
restaurant in Macau to do so—but
that doesn’t mean that you have to
break the bank to dine here. This
formal French restaurant with an
Asian flair, run by Joël Robouchon,
provides three-, four- and five-course
lunches priced between MOP368 to
MOP588, a huge savings over the
MOP2,100 degustation menu at
dinner. The set-lunch offerings include
dishes like “Japanese egg yolk in herb
ravioli, watercress and sea urchin in its
own juice” and “braised Wagyu beef
cheek, pepper aromatic and
Dauphine-style creamed potatoes.”
HONG KONG Robouchon’s Hong
Kong venture, the more casual
L’Atelier Robouchon (4th floor, The
Landmark, 1 Exchange Sq., Central;
852/2166-9000; joel-robuchon.com),
offers a HK$398, three-course lunch
special, which is enjoyed at a counter
with barstools that overlooks the open
kitchen. • The two-Michelin-starred
Caprice in the Four Seasons hotel (8
Finance St., Central; 852/3196-8888;
fourseasons.com) offers fantastic views of
Victoria Harbour, contemporary
French cuisine, and a HK$380, two-
course weekday lunch special. On
weekends, the restaurant sweetens the
deal by throwing in a glass of wine.
The menu has plenty of ingredients
rarely seen in Asia, including roasted
guinea fowl and venison.
BEIJING Maison Boulud (23 Qianmen
Dong Dajie; 86-10/6559-9200;
legationquarter.com), which opened last
May, offers an extravagant three-
course lunch at just RMB165 with
mouthwatering items like steak tartare
with poached quail eggs and brioche-
crusted snapper that have defined
Daniel Boulud’s refined-yet-rustic
French cuisine. Maison Boulud is the
chef’s first venture in Asia and is led by
executive chef Brian Reimer, who
worked under Boulud at his f lagship
restaurant Daniel in New York for
three years before moving to Asia. •
Just next door is Ristorante Sadler (23
Qianmen Dong Dajie, Beijing; 86-
10/6559-1399; legationquarter.com),
which offers a similarly competitive
RMB160, three-course lunch special
with contemporary Italian cuisine
brought to you by executive chef
Riccardo La Perna. The 32-year-old
chef, who hails from Sicily and worked
previously at Milan’s Armani Café and
Park Hyatt, scatters whimsical touches
like grape “caviar” on his appetizers,
and recent samplings from the lunch
special include main entrées like
cuttlefish canneloni and braised beef
cheek with smoked pumpkin gnocchi.
SHANGHAI A fantastic lunch and
weekend set brunch is on the menu at
the sexy, riverfront dining room at
Jean-Georges Shanghai (Three on the
Bund, 3 Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu; 86-
21/6321-7733; threeonthebund.com). For
RMB228, diners get a three-course
lunch with Jean Georges signature
items like foie gras brûlée with sour
cherries and candied pistachio, and
newer dishes like slow-baked salmon
with roasted pumpkin seeds. If that’s
not cheap enough, perhaps the
lunchtime bento box, at RMB188—
comprised of a sampling of any four
dishes on the prix-fixe lunch menu—
will do the trick. Or dip into the very
popular weekend brunch (RMB188),
which includes four small portions of
smoked salmon, eggs Benedict,
pancakes and French toast, plus
pastries, juice, and coffee or tea.
Asia’s Best Lunch Bargains. Feeling the pinch lately? These fine restaurants offer top food at rock-bottom prices. By JEN LIN-LIU
CAPRICE JEAN-GEORGES MAISON BOULUD RISTORANTE SADLER
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The Dish
Seventy years ago, Ng Ann Ke’s grandfather set up a little hawker stall in Malacca Street selling popiah rolls — wafer-thin wheat flour crepes wrapped around braised julienned turnips, bean sprouts, garlic, a dash of chili, sweet hoisin sauce and, unusually, a handful of crisply fried fish skin. Four generations on, Ng and his son still make the crepes by hand. Patience is required as Ng folds up each popiah à la minute in a crowded, noisy suburban hawker center; but with every crunchy bite, it’s clear the wait was worth it.
Where
Popiah Old Long House Popiah #01-03, Block 22 Toa Payoh Lorong 7
Who Makes the Best?
Hokkien mee is a fragrant mix of yellow-hued egg noodles stir-fried in a pork stock with prawns, garlic, squid and crunchy cubes of lard. Food-mad locals generally agree that Nam Seng is one of the best interpreters of the dish, though no one dares engage the dour elderly owner in any conversation beyond a timid order. Wearing goggles as he cooks (because of an eye condition caused by nearly four decades of standing over hot flames), he eschews the traditional addition of sambal. “My noodles are already so good, why do you need it?” he says.
Hokkien Mee Nam Seng Hokkien Mee #01-32 Old Airport Road Food Centre, Block 51 Old Airport Rd.
You won’t find a more authentic Singaporean breakfast experience then this: in a small nondescript coffee shop by a busy road under twirling ceiling fans, the clientele sits around circular marble-top tables happily cracking soft-boiled eggs into a shallow saucer. The only accompaniments are a sprinkling of white ground pepper, a splash of soy sauce over the perfectly cooked eggs and a side plate stacked with pillow-soft toasted white buns slathered with jade-green kaya (a thick jam made fresh each morning with eggs, pandan leaves and coconut milk).
Kaya Toast Chin Mee Chin#01-32 Old Airport Road Food Centre, Block 51 Old Airport Rd.
Ignore the namesake dish, the star attraction here is Loo Kia Chee’s Hainanese pork chops. In 1946, Loo’s father began dishing out his perfectly crumbed, tender cutlets marinated with five-spice powder and draped with curry sauce to hungry wharf workers. Over the decades, the clientele has changed but the recipes — including the tender cabbage braised in soy sauce — have remained consistently good. Today, the curry gravy of Nyonya spices and chilli paste is still gently cooked for two days; its wafting fragrance hits the nose long before the dish arrives at the table.
Hainanese Pork Chop
Loo’s Hainanese Chicken Rice #01-88, 57 Eng Hoon St.
It says something about how good these prawn fritters are that loyal customers start lining up before Quek Lin Seng and his wife arrive around noon to their dimly lit stall. Each fritter is made fresh so the wait is considerable. Quek sandwiches fat grey prawns and bean sprouts between dollops of floury batter streaked with shallots and eggs. After a few minutes in hot oil, the fritters emerge golden and crunchy, and then served with garlicky chilli sauce, five-spice spring rolls, cubes of omelet, fatty cuts of sausages, fish cakes, fried tofu and, for a balanced meal, cucumber discs.
Prawn Fritters Five Spice Prawn Fritter 56A Zion Rd.
Singapore’s Hawker Icons. In a city that’s overrun with joints that are hip-today, gone-tomorrow, DAVEN WU hunts down the true stalwarts
MSG MINUTE Naturally occurring glutamate — which we experience as umami — has long played a role in Asian cuisine. But it wasn’t until the early 20th century that a Japanese scientist managed to isolate, synthesize and introduce it to the world as MSG
M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
specıalfood
The origins of chopsticks aren’t clear, but they were widely in use in China by the Shang
dynasty (1766 B.C.–1122 B.C.). Mainland Chinese use up to 45 billion disposable chopsticks a year {
One of the most adored dishes on the Malaysian peninsula, curry laksa—a coconut and chili-based noodle soup—is
eaten around the clock. Its origins are murky, but the prevailing theory states the word “laksa” is derived from the
Persian for noodle—laksha, which literally means slippery. One thing is clear, at some point in history, a cook
decided to mix the noodles in a broth flavored with curry leaves and curry paste and a hawker center classic was born. Not
all laksas are the same: there’s also assam laksa (sometimes called Penang laksa) and a host of regional variants on the
theme. Curry laksa is perhaps the most widely found in Singapore and Malaysia. But be careful about where you order;
connoisseurs recommend finding a specialist hawker who’s been plying laksa for years.
Dish Deconstruction: Curry Laksa. Ever wonder what exactly goes into a bowl of laksa? ROBYN ECKHARDT breaks down this Asian classic
Contrasting with the tender noodles are crunchy bean sprouts. Fastidious curry laksa makers also add snake beans and wedges of eggplant. Once the bowl is assembled it’s topped with a flurry of golden fried shallots, caramelized to lend a sweet note to the spicy
Recipes vary from cook to cook, but at its most basic the soup begins as a fish-based broth (some cooks throw in a bit of pork) that’s then flavored with a paste made from pounded dried chilies, shallots, garlic, galangal, lemongrass, coriander and cumin. Fresh curry leaves add depth. A superior soup is spicy but not scorching and luxuriously coconut-y, but not heavy enough to induce a stupor.
{
Prawns (blanched quickly to retain a bit of bite) and unappetizingly named but marvelously briny blood cockles (added raw, to be gently cooked by submerging in the hot soup) add a taste of the sea. Some vendors also add squid and/or cuttlefish and fish balls or cake. Fowl is added in the form of poached and shredded chicken breast. Soft, porous taufu pok (deep-fried bean curd) and thin rectangles of pork skin (in non-halal versions) act as sponges, soaking up the delicious gravy.
Served on the side are sambal belacan, a condiment with a kick made from pungent shrimp paste pounded with fresh chilies and kalamansi. The tartness of the citrus lightens the unctuous broth, lifting the heavenly bowlful to new heights.
Though in theory most any noodle — from thread-thin beehoon to wide kuay teow — can go into curry laksa, most aficionados stick to chewy yellow mee.
1837), along with deliciously dainty pastries.—J.C.
We asked Bouqdib to pick his all-time favorites...
Tea Manjhee Valley SFTGFOP1, black tea Place of Origin Himachal Pradesh, India Qualities Grown at altitudes of up to 1,500 meters, it’s harvested between March and October; when brewed it has a “delicate, floral taste,” says Bouqdib. Infusion Time 3 minutes Water Temperature 95º C
Tea Maloom FTGFOP1, black tea Place of Origin Nepal Qualities “A great rarity,” Bouqdib says of this tea, which results in a sweet, berry-flavored brew. Infusion Time 3 minutes Water Temperature 95º C
Tea Oolong Prestige Tea, blue tea Place of Origin Vietnam Qualities Bouqdib praises this tea for its “intensely grassy” aroma and jade-colored leaves, which produce a sweet, delicate brew with a slight toasty aftertaste. Infusion Time 4–5 minutesWater Temperature 95º C
Tea GFBOP1 Marinyn, black tea Place of Origin Kenya Qualities This African specialty produces a “full-bodied, flavorful tea.” Infusion Time 2–3 minutesWater Temperature 95º C
Tea Gyokuro Samurai, green tea Place of Origin Japan Qualities “This tea is a work of art, hand-picked once a year,” notes Bouqdib. Grown from a sweet, small-leaf variety, this tea has a slight (but pleasant) vegetal aroma. Infusion Time 2–3 minutesWater Temperature 50º C
Tea Pu-er 1998 Place of Origin Yunnan, China Qualities A fermented tea that recently suffered a speculation-driven bubble, Yunnan’s famed pu-er produces an intense, earthy liquor. “Full and empowering,” says Bouqdib. Infusion Time 5 minutes Water Temperature 95º C
Reading Tea Leaves. Asia’s original caffeinated beverage is making a comeback. But do you know your oolong from your lapsang souchong?
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1 Don’t boil water! While boiling water is imperative to tea bags, it harms loose-leaf tea, affecting the
aroma and flavor. Instead, the water
should reach a simmer of around 95
degrees Celsius; for white and green
teas, the temperature should be even
lower—around 70 degrees Celsius.
Always fill your kettle with cold water.
2 Warm your teapot and strainer by
rinsing them with hot water. When hot
water hits something cold, it
immediately starts to cool down—not
ideal conditions for tea.
3 Put the tea in the strainer, a
teaspoon per cup, and then into the
warmed teapot. Let it sit for a bit (the
steam helps to develop the aroma).
4 Pour the simmering water onto the
tea until all the leaves are submerged,
and cover. Steep the tea for the
required time and then promptly
remove the strainer. If you steep a tea
for too long, it becomes bitter.
5 Give the tea a stir to evenly
distribute the tannins and then pour.
“Teas from great gardens should not
be drunk too hot,” says Taha Bouqdib
of TWG Tea. “Let them stand a few
moments after steeping, so that the
palate can better appreciate the most
subtle of fragrances.”
6 Good-quality teas can be infused
up to five times; just add more hot
water and remember to let it steep for
less time with each infusion.—J.C.
How to Make a Proper Cuppa. Our step-by-step guide to brewing loose-leaf tea
Tea Trivia All types of tea are from the
same plant, called Camellia
sinensis, which can live up to a
hundred years. As with wine, the
terroir influences the quality,
taste and aroma of a tea.
The color of a tea doesn’t
actually refer to the hue of its
leaves; rather, it’s a way of
classifying different teas
according to how long they’ve
been oxidized — from unoxidized
white teas to aged pu-er.
All
types of tea
are Tea that has been steeped a
long time actually has less
caffeine than a brew in which
the leaves have been sitting in
water for a few minutes. That’s
because all the caffeine in the
leaves is released in three
minutes. The longer tea leaves
are in water, the more tannin is
released and the less potent the
caffeine becomes.
High-quality tea uses only
the bud and top two leaves — the
youngest and freshest — on a
branch while most teas use the
bud and the top three or four
leaves. White teas use the young,
downy buds, and in the case of
White Peony, the first, tender
leaves. In China, white teas are
highly prized, and were once
reserved only for the emperors
and nobility.
Tea has catechins, a type of
antioxidant that reduces the risk
of heart disease, stroke and
diabetes. Tea is also a source of
fluoride, which helps prevent
tooth decay.
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Being a vegetarian in East Asia can be challenging. Buddhism might have deep
roots here and vegetables regularly feature in many Asian meals, but make no
mistake, Asians love their meat and seafood. Fish sauce sneaks into many Thai and
Vietnamese dishes; in Indonesia, vegetarians are often served chicken in lieu of meat (ayam
is ayam, not daging). Only China has developed a wide-ranging vegetarian cuisine that’s on
par with what India has to offer. Still, it’s pretty tough-going for vegetarians outside of
China’s major coastal cities.
Don’t despair. Vegetarians now enjoy a wider choice of eateries. It’s still a far cry from
Berkeley, California, though, so we’ve cobbled together a list of easy-to-find meatless
dishes from around the region and other tips for our vegetarian readers.—J.C.
Vegetarians’ Guide to Eating in Asia. T+L picks some of the best bets for meatless dishes and veggie restaurants in the region
Asian Vegetarian ClassicsDish WarningWhat’s in it?
Gado-gado Recipes for this Indonesian salad vary, but the basic ingredients are the same: cooked vegetables (cabbage, string beans, young jack fruit, bitter melon, water spinach and bean sprouts in any combination), raw vegetables (carrots and/or cucumbers), boiled potatoes, fried tofu or tempeh and boiled eggs, topped with a peanut sauce (sambal kacang).
Where
Gado-gado is usually accompanied with prawn crackers.
A lot of restaurants serve limp, soggy gado-gado. For an excellent version, try
The Peacock Café (The Sultan Hotel, Jln. Gatot Subroto, Jakarta; 62-
21/570-3600; sultanjakarta.com).
Gaeng som cha-om khai
This orange-hued lip-puckeringly sour curry — made with ginger or galangal, tamarind,
green vegetables, curry paste, palm sugar and fish sauce — features chunks of acacia-leaf omelet swimming in it.
Fish sauce is used in this dish, and the curry paste usually contains shrimp paste.
Vegetarian-specialists Khun Churn (120/2 Nimmanhaemin Road, Soi 7, Chiang Mai; 66-53/224-124) also dish up meatless versions of Thai classics such as khao soy and laab (made with mushrooms).
Som tam From Thailand’s northeast, this street-stall classic has a few regional permutations. In Bangkok, som tam thai is the most widely found. It’s sweeter than other variations, and it usually has green papaya, tomatoes, garlic, carrots, bird’s eye chilies, string beans, tamarind juice, lime juice, palm sugar, fish sauce, roasted peanuts and dried shrimp.
You can ask the vendor not to put in the dried shrimp (gung heng), but most street stalls won’t have a ready substitute for fish sauce.
Street vendors produce the best som tam, but if you want to sit inside, join the
queues at Som Tam Nua in Bangkok (392/14
Siam Square Soi 5; 66-2/251-4880).
Su cai jiao Many dumpling joints in Taiwan serve a vegetarian version. Recipes vary, but
they usually consist of a filling made with dried mushrooms, tofu, rice vermicelli and chopped greens stuffed inside a flour wrapper.
This dish is safe for vegetarians, though you might not be able to resist ordering another!
The vegetarian dumplings at Taipei’s venerable Din Tai Fung (194 Xinyi Rd., Section 2 near Yongkang St.; 886-2/2321-8928; dintaifung.com.tw) are as scrumptious and substantial as the meatier ones.
Goi cuon chay
Vietnamese soft spring rolls with rice vermicelli, pickled carrot and daikon, fried tofu, lettuce, bean sprouts, mint and cilantro. Chinese chives and peanuts are sometimes included.
Another all-clear for veggies, though be sure to specifically ask for these; there are meaty versions.
A vegetarian oasis, Com Chay Nang Tam (79A Tran Hung Dao, Hanoi; 84-4/942-4140) dishes up innovative, meatless takes on Vietnamese food. F
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“
��Would you rather be at home
or on the road?
Alford: I like what we’re doing now—
being somewhere else but living
somewhere else.
Duguid: On the road, out and about. I
don’t like knowing what’s going to
happen tomorrow, and I like the
engagement that happens when I
travel and the freedom from the day-
to-day responsibilities of home. ��Airplane food or no?
Duguid: Plane food. There’s no point
starting a trip believing you can
control your environment, and that
should begin at the airport. ��What are the first few things
you do when you arrive
somewhere new?
Duguid: I learn the basic words of social
navigation and appreciation—
“Hello,” “Goodbye,” “Excuse me,”
“How beautiful!”, “How delicious!”—
from people at my guesthouse. Then I
wander, without my map at first, just
to see what I come across.��Tell us about a particularly
memorable meal.
Alford: In 1977, I was living in India.
Every evening I ate at a place that was
also an orphanage. I remember eating
banana leaf rice and the new kids
who’d never seen a blond foreigner
would just stare and stare.
Duguid: We eat with our heads and our
hearts. In a Tibetan village in 1985,
we were sleeping on a roof and just
starving. There were boiled potatoes
and coarse salt, nothing else. That
meal I remember because we were in
need and those potatoes were so good.��Where does one go in Asia to
eat fabulously?
Alford: Thailand. India’s way up there,
but Thailand’s easier. The food’s more
abundant, more diverse. I especially
like the afternoon markets where you
can buy prepared foods.
Duguid: Anywhere in Southeast Asia,
including Guizhou and Yunnan.
[Elsewhere] Georgia is a place with an
unbelievably complex, wonderful
cuisine. And Ethiopia is the perfect
place for vegans—there are 200 fasting
days a year, on which no animal
products are eaten. ��And where’s a good place to
sample the local spirits?
Alford: Thailand, for lao khao, rice liquor
made on farms. In Taiwan there are
incredible liquors like jiapi, a medicinal
liquor, about 60 proof, that’s sort of a
brandy but not.
Duguid: There are wonderful Chinese
liquors in Mae Salong, northern
Thailand. My advice: take a friend so
you have someone to sample with and
bring some fruit juices so you can try
them as cocktails as well as straight. �
Q+A. ROBYN ECKHARDT talks to husband-and-wife cookbook-writing team Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford, authors of Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China
I’m A Vegetarian
JAPANESE
“Wo chi su
Ngóh sihk jaai
Watashi wa
bejetarian desu
Ch’aeshik juwi
imnida
Dichan (female)/
pom (male) gin
jae
K’nyom nyam
m’hoab boo-ah
MANDARIN
Saya tidak makan daging
CANTONESE BAHASA VIETNAMESE KOREAN
Tôi an cha
THAI KHMER
CO
UR
TE
SY
OF
NA
OM
I D
UG
UID
AN
D J
EF
FR
EY
AL
FO
RD
97
99
(T+L)03.09
100 Every dish has its day in PENANG 112 LIVE and dine like a local in France 124 Cruising along the NILE in luxury 134 SIKKIM: land of beauty and mystery
ON THE NILE AT ASWAN, EGYPT. PHOTOGRAPHED BY MARTIN MORRELL
Eat the
In Penang, every delicious dish comes with its own bit of have at the historic Malaysian getaway will only add to the
100
breeze
history and, as Robyn Eckhardt writes, every meal you memorable lore. Photographed by Pablo Andreolotti
A portrait of one of Cheong Fatt Tze’s wives in his Georgetown mansion. Far left: Eating at an old Georgetown café is a great introduction to the island. Left: Minced meat cakes, typical Nyonya Baba fare.
101
102
N A BALMY SATURDAY
afternoon I’m at a table in Kota Selera, a food court next to
Penang’s 18th-century Fort Cornwallis, listening to rain thrum
on the corrugated metal roof. The sudden shower that cut short
my stroll along the ramparts has become a monsoonal down-
pour, so I settle in to wait it out with a plate of mee goreng.
In Penang every dish tells a story. My fried noodles start with
Indian Muslims from Tamil Nadu who sailed to the island to
trade in areca nut—or pinang, from which the island gets its
name—centuries before British Captain Francis Light per-
suaded the Sultan of Kedah to grant it to the British East India
Company in 1786. It continues with the Indian Muslim labor-
ers, merchants, traders and money-lenders who settled there
afterwards. These foreigners—called “Mamak,” for the term
many Tamil Muslims use to address their seniors, “mama”—
left their mark on the local cuisine, in the form of dishes cooked
in a potent paste of dried red chilies.
My mee goreng is cooked by Shahul Hameed, a solid, serious
Tamil Muslim who’s rented a spot at Kota Selera for more than
30 years. He follows a recipe inherited from his father, who
began selling mee goreng from a stall at Penang’s old port in 1942,
when the Japanese occupied the island. As I dig into the noo-
dles, a carrot-hued tangle crowned with sotong mamak, or squid
simmered in a fi ery blood-red sauce made from roasted and
ground dried chilies, I ponder the dish’s lengthy story. History
resides everywhere in Penang, from street signs to smart pre-
war shophouses and ornately embellished colonial mansions.
Often, it’s on the plate in front of you.
I MADE MY FIRST VISIT TO PENANG FIVE YEARS AGO, lured by
tales of exquisite Nyonya fare and a street-food scene to rival
any other in Southeast Asia. I don’t think I saw much of the
island outside of its hawker stalls, coffee shops and restaurants
on that visit, for all I remember is an endless banquet of famous
local specialties: asam laksa and laksa lemak, char koay teow, »
OA group of Malay schoolgirls on the Georgetown promenade. Clockwise from right: Passing the day behind one of Penang’s characteristic awnings; preparing nasi lemak, a rice in coconut cream offering, with care at a local market; a typical street corner in Georgetown’s historic center.
103
184104
pasembur, rojak, lorbak and prawn noodles. I’ve since returned
as often as I can, making a point each time to interrupt my
morning-to-midnight grazing for proper sightseeing. In the
last fi ve years, Penang has experienced rising tourist numbers
and a recent growth spurt that’s earned it unoffi cial status as
Malaysia’s second city. Yet it has managed to retain its allure,
in the form of a unique combination of unspoiled beaches,
vast tracts of green space and a relatively intact heritage.
The island’s crown jewel is Georgetown, built by the
British after they declared Penang part of India near the end
of the 18th century. It was later incorporated, along with
Singapore and Malacca, to form the British Straits Settlements.
To walk the city’s orderly grid is to trace its history as a trad-
ing center that attracted settlers from all over the world.
Streets, in addition to being named after the former
British empire—King and Queen streets in Little India—and
early leading landowners and local administrators—Francis
Light named Georgetown’s fi rst thoroughfare, which runs
alongside Fort Cornwallis, after himself—remember the var-
ied ethnic groups that contributed to its architectural eclecti-
cism, multi-layered culture and unique culinary landscape.
Acheen Street was home to spice traders from Aceh and
Cintra Street, named after a Portuguese port, became the
base for Eurasians. The builders and craftsmen who arrived
on Penang from Kerala as convict laborers and are credited
with some of its loveliest architectural fl ourishes settled on
Kampong Malabar, while Penang’s early Chinese traders set
up shop on China Street.
Georgetown’s collection of prewar buildings, the largest in
Southeast Asia, includes southern Chinese-style temples and
arcaded shophouses and opulent mansions built by Nanyang
Chinese—the indigo boutique hotel Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion
is the best example—Peranakan Jawi and Baba Nyonya, the
latter two descendents of unions between Indian Muslim and
Chinese traders and local women. But that’s not to say that
the city—which, together with Malacca, was awarded UNES-
CO World Heritage status last year—is merely a theme park
monument to prewar architecture. Among its backpacker
cafés, “antique” shops and travel agencies there still exist
second- and third-generation hawkers, old-style restaurants,
artisan food makers and small-scale craftsmen plying their
trades as they have for decades.
In places like Restoran Aik Hoe, life proceeds at much the
same leisurely pace it did when the doors opened in 1952.
Shortly after dawn, the old Cantonese teashop is crowded
with patrons—retirees with grandchildren mostly, and »
There still exist third-generation hawkers, old-
105
style restaurants and artisan food makers
Opera Oriental Cuisine offers a fusion menu as eclectic as its interiors. Opposite: Chefs at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel.
the odd backpacker who’s wandered over from Chulia Street
—sitting around marble-topped tables sipping tea, gossiping
and nibbling on dim sum selected from gigantic bamboo
steamer trays. I’ve spent hours in Aik Hoe’s friendly embrace,
hunkered over plates of toothsome bean-curd skin wrapped
around minced pork and bowls of creamy congee drizzled
with garlic oil and topped with ginger strips. A table at the
front of the restaurant is an excellent spot from which to
observe the action on Carnavon Road. Basket-toting house-
wives stride purposefully to Campbell Street Market, a lovely
brick corner building with cast-iron columns, modeled after
pedicabs adorned with gaudy plastic fl owers and grannies
hassle the kitty-corner pork seller cleaving ribs from half a
carcass. The crowd thins only around 9:30 A.M., when Lucy’s
Perm Parlour across the street opens for business.
ON THIS TRIP, I STAY AT 110 ARMENIAN STREET, a beauti-
fully refurbished prewar shophouse in an area of Georgetown
settled by Armenian traders from India. The Sarkies broth-
ers, former owners of Penang’s Eastern & Oriental Hotel and
Raffl es in Singapore, were the community’s most famous
members. Armenian Street is gradually gentrifying: other
shophouses have been spruced up and turned into galleries
and a German-owned café, and rumors abound that a row of
four more will soon be converted to a boutique hotel. Yet the
quiet, narrow lane feels anything but twee. A right turn from
the double wooden-door entry of my temporary abode takes
me to what was the Penang base of Sun Yat-sen, engineer of
the Chinese nationalist revolution, and to a grand mansion
that once belonged to Syed Mohamed Atlas, an arms smug-
gler who supplied the Acehnese resistance to Dutch rule in
the late 19th century and is now the site of the Islamic
Museum. In the opposite direction, two corner kopitiam serve
strong, sock-brewed coffee and host hawkers dishing up won-
ton mee and curry laksa. In between, shophouses in various
states of repair are occupied by long-resident families going
about their daily business.
Georgetown owes much of its lively street culture to the
Chinese temples and clan houses that dot its lanes. Armenian
Street boasts fi ve ancestral temples belonging to the island’s
most prosperous Hokkien clans, from China’s Fujian prov-
ince. One night I walk back from a spectacular dinner at Goh
Huat Seng, a half century old Teochew restaurant on Lebuh
Kimberley that specializes in lor ark (duck braised with
Chinese fi ve-spice) and steamboat cooked the old-fashioned
way in charcoal-fi red copper braziers, and turn the corner to
fi nd a full-blown Chinese opera in progress. Extravagantly
made-up performers clothed in poster paint–bright costumes
Georgetown owes its lively street culture to the 106
Chinese temples and clan houses on its lanes107
A DVD shop with a difference in Georgetown’s Little India.
On this shady beach, the visitor must make do 108
A staff member at the calming Jing-Si Books and Café in Georgetown. Opposite: The refined Eastern & Oriental Hotel.
with powdery sand, sky-blue water and solitude109
stride across a small stage erected across the street from Yap
Kongsi, an ancestral hall and adjoining temple belonging to
the Hokkien Yap clan. Worshippers carrying offerings stream
in and crowded banquet tables spill out into the courtyard.
Each year, clan members pool funds to stage the perfor-
mance, which lasts fi ve days, in celebration of the temple’s
patron deity’s birthday. That night and the next I fall asleep
to the clash of symbols entwined with the sinuous, high-
pitched intonations of the opera singers.
TWENTY MINUTES NORTH OF GEORGETOWN, street culture
gives way to beach culture. Penang’s sand-and-surf scene cen-
ters around Batu Feringghi, an approximately 2-kilometer
stretch of coarse honey-hued sand anchored at its eastern end
by the upscale Shangri-La Rasa Sayang resort. If the pace is
slow on Georgetown’s Carnavon Road, here it has to be
described as absolutely sluggish. On Batu Feringghi you can
rent a speedboat, a Jet Ski or an ATV, though on the morning
of my visit most beachgoers opt for a lengthy lie-down punctu-
ated by occasional forays into the placid ocean. A bit of his-
tory resides here too, in the form of the Lone Pine Hotel, a
battened-wood colonial relic whose wide lawn harkens back to
the days of croquet and a proper beachside afternoon tea.
For most travelers a journey to Penang’s “other side” ends
here, but I’m intent on seeing some of the island’s west. The
stretch of road from Feringghi to Balik Pulau, an agricultural
town settled in the late 1700’s by Chinese and Malays from
southern Thailand, cuts inland at the Malay fi shing village of
Teluk Bahang and its deserted sweep of sand. It then winds
up and over hills dotted with fruit plantations—April through
June is the best time to sample Penang’s fabulously creamy
durian in situ—before dropping to a valley thickly planted
with coconut trees. I arrive in Balik Pulau too late for its large
Sunday pasar tani (farmer’s market) but just in time for lunch,
which I split between two laksa stalls facing off across the
main street. Though the mildly spicy, lushly coconut Siamese
laksa dished up by the fi rst vendor is notable for its pungent
galangal and lemongrass, I leave a piece of my heart with the
second-generation asam laksa cook who bestows upon me a
bowl chili-hot, tamarind-sour broth packed with fi sh and
topped with shreds of pineapple, cucumber and mint. I wash
both versions down with an oddly refreshing Penang special-
ty: fresh nutmeg juice tartened with sour plums.
Beyond its laksa and Sunday market, Balik Pulau features
some fi ne old shophouses, Chinese and Indian temples, and
an elderly silversmith who crafts charming miniatures of »
110
WHEN TO GOHigh season runs December through Chinese New Year and during school holidays in August. May to August is the dry season.
GETTING THEREAirAsia, Malaysia Airlines, Silk Air and Thai Airways all offer fl ights to Penang.
GETTING AROUNDTaxis charge a fi xed fl at rate. A ride from Georgetown to Gurney Drive, for example, costs RM12, and island tours, RM30 an hour.
WHERE TO STAYEastern & Oriental Hotel Every suite includes a comfortable living area; some offer sweeping sea views. 10 Lebuh Farquhar; 60-4/222-2000; e-o-hotel.com; doubles from RM485.
Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion Thirty-eight rooms arranged around a central courtyard in a lovingly restored mansion. 14 Lebuh Leith; 60-4/262-5289;
cheongfatttzemansion.com; doubles from RM250.
110 Armenian Street Beautifully refurbished, eclectically decorated two-story shophouse in the center of Georgetown. 110 Armenian St.; 60-4/955-1688; [email protected]; rooms from RM1,500 inclusive.
1926 Heritage Hotel This former British offi cers’ quarters offers simple but comfortable rooms in 24 restored link houses. 227 Jln. Burma; 60-4/228-1926; 1926heritagehotel.com; doubles from RM140.
G Hotel Rooms, suites and apartments feature minimalist furniture. 168A Persiaran Gurney;
60-4/238-000; ghotel.com.my; doubles from RM300.
Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Resort Rooms feature dark timber fl oors and luxe bed linens. Jln. Batu Feringghi; 60-4/881-1966; shangri-la.com; doubles from RM600.
Lone Pine Hotel Fifty rooms in what was Batu Feringghi’s fi rst hotel. Jln. Batu Feringghi; 60-4/881-1511; lonepinehotel.com; doubles from RM260.
WHERE TO EATAND DRINKBeach Blanket Babylon Drinks, light snacks and ice cream. Lebuh Farquhar, Georgetown; 60-4/261-0289; drinks for two RM50.
Restoran Aik Hoe Old-style teahouse serving excellent dim sum, congee and noodles. 6 Carnavon Rd., Georgetown; dim sum for two RM16.
Hameed Mee Sotong A good choice for noodle dishes. Kota Selera Food Court, Padang Kota Lama; noon to 8 P.M.; RM3.50.
Goh Huat Seng One of Penang’s oldest and best Teochew restaurants. 59A Lebuh Kimberley, Georgetown; 60-4/261-5811; dinner for two RM45.
Kheng Pin Coffeeshop Hawker dishes are served at this 65-year-old coffeeshop. 80–82 Jln. Penang, Georgetown; 60-4/263-7711; lunch for two RM15.
Opera Oriental Cuisine & Lifestyle Gallery Offering a fusion take on Asian dishes. 3-E Penang Rd.; 60-4/263-2893 dinner for two RM85.
Shing Kheang Aun An eatery specializing in Hainan and Penang dishes. 2 Lorong Chulia, Georgetown; 60-4/261-4786; dinner for two RM50.
Gurney Drive Hawker Center A nighttime selection of Penang specialties. Persiaran Gurney; 4 P.M.–4 A.M.; dishes from RM2.50.
Song River Café It’s hard to go wrong at this food court set in a converted bungalow. 65 Persiaran Gurney; 60/124-899-219; dishes from RM2.50.
Nyonya Secrets Authentic home-style Nyonya fare. 32 Jln. Servis; 60-4/227-5289; dinner for two RM50.
Colonial Restoran Hainanese specialties in a nostalgicsetting. 35 Armenian St., Georgetown; 60-4/261-4489; lunch for two RM40.
Rainforest Bakery Quality pastries and breads from a London-trained baker. 300 Chulia St., Georgetown; 60-4/261-4641; pastries and breads from RM1.50.
David Brown’s Restaurant & Tea Terraces Colonial favorites served in a nostalgic setting on Penang Hill. Upper station, Penang Hill; 60-4/828-8337; lunch for two RM75.
Kim Laksa Lam Kong Coffeeshop, 67 Main Rd., Balik Pulau; 11 A.M.–5 P.M. (closed Wednesdays); Siamese laksa RM2.50, nutmeg juice RM3.50.
Bocadillo Café Open-air café serving fresh juices, breakfast and sandwiches beachside. Jln. Bayusenja, Batu Feringghi; breakfast for two RM50.
The G Spot Live jazz in a sleek, contemporary setting. G Hotel, 168A Persiaran Gurney; 60-4/238-000; drinks for two RM60.
Jing-Si Books and Café A calming stop for literature and a cup of tea. 31 Beach Rd.; 60-4/917-4567; drinks for two RM10.
GUIDE TO PENANG
everyday objects like woks and abacuses. It also boasts prox-
imity to Pantai Pasir Panjang. On this tiny strip of shady
beach you’ll fi nd no hotels, cafés or bars, and no lounge chairs
or water sports equipment for rent. Instead, the visitor must
make do with powdery white sand, an uninterrupted view
over sky-blue water to the horizon, and utter solitude, inter-
rupted only by the occasional put-put of a long-tail fi shing
boat engine.
ONCE PENANGITES WENT TO GURNEY DRIVE, Georgetown’s
former north beach front, to makan angin, or “eat the breeze,”
while strolling beneath its coconut trees and casuarinas. Now
they—and any visitor remotely interested in food—head
there to eat. I like to save Gurney for my last evening on the
island, because if I’ve missed out on one or another local
specialty, there’s a good chance I’ll fi nd it there. I’ll start at the
hawker center at its northern tip with a plate of char koay teow
fried up by Ah Meng, who’s been manning his wok since the
1950’s, perhaps, or a serving of mee java, a Malay–Chinese
dish of yellow noodles cooked in a thick tomatoey sauce and
topped with prawns and curried squid.
On this last visit I opt for rojak, a weirdly wonderful mélange
of fruit, cucumbers and bean curd mixed with a sweet and
savory shrimp paste–based sauce and sprinkled with peanuts.
Then I walk the promenade to Song River, one of a number
of sea-facing colonial bungalows along Gurney Drive that
have been turned into food centers. Five years ago I savored
my fi rst taste of Penang street food at Song River: ikan bakar,
a meaty wedge of stingray sporting a charred glaze of honey-
sweetened bean paste studded with softened garlic shards and
chopped chilies. I still remember it. Tonight’s version, cooked
by a hawker who’s been toiling away at Song River for more
than a decade, is as wonderful as ever. In Penang the past
continues, perfectly. �
MA
P B
Y W
AS
INE
E C
HA
NT
AK
OR
N
In Penang, you can’t go far without stopping for a memorable meal.
Village fare
Want to live—and dine—like a local in southern France? Look
no further than the village bistros scattered throughout the region’s
countryside. Christopher Petkanas uncovers fi ve small-town cafés
that offer an unforgettable taste of authentic French culture.
Photographed by Frédéric Lagrange
112
Preparing for lunch at Les Deux Nines.
Since it is often the only spot to congregate and buy a newspaper in a
village, as well as the place’s only business, the bistro acts as switch-
board, nerve center and lifeline. But when it goes the village goes too:
the countryside is crowded with the tombstones of isolated communi-
ties whose populaces have bolted to the cities, looking for life. Yet save
the bistro and you give villagers a reason to stay. You save the village.
Travelers who hate being led by the nose are crazy about these insti-
tutions. Even if they can’t understand the gossip they overhear or the
mutterings of the town drunk, they love the atmosphere of a social hub
where non-villagers are received alongside the widowed pensioner
nursing a pastis and the nonagenarian in carpet slippers shopping for a
baguette. Rotary Clubs favor these places for their annual dinners, just
as new parents book them for christenings. In the corner, often, is a
bunch of guys behind a wall of smoke, playing cards and arguing about
de Gaulle. On the other hand, it’s not as if everyone is born 7 meters
from the front door. A couple of months ago, I ran into the director
Adrian Lyne at Café de la Lavande, in Haute-Provence, dining on a
magnifi cently fatty sauté of veal with salsify.
Is there anyone who doesn’t like to eat well and for not a lot of
money? Who doesn’t want to help mend the holes in the economic
fabric of a Provençal backwater? For some scholarly French pulse-tak-
ing I used to go to the basement level of the Paris department store
BHV, the farmers’ market in Velleron in the Vaucluse, a certain drogu-
erie in Roanne. These bistros are better.
They and their host villages are a threatened species. But maybe not
for long. Bistrot de Pays, a grassroots initiative, creates new multiservice
bistros and supports existing ones, grouping them into regional net-
works. Choose a network and the work of planning an itinerary for a »
he village bistro that may
or may not also function as a café, grocery store and bread drop-off is
one of rural France’s coziest, most sustaining traditions.
T
Bistro Life From top: Signage with panache;
peaches stuffed with almonds at Café de la
Lavande in the tiny village of Lardiers; the café’s
exterior. Opposite: Chef Emmanuelle Burollet at the
bar of the Provençal café.
A looking-glass view of Le Bistrot de Pierrerue.
Opposite from top: Emmanuelle Burollet’s
cherry clafouti; the road out of town; local parking.
great back-roads trip is done for you. Most of the association’s 210
members are in the south, in the Midi-Pyrénées and Provence, but
circuits are planned for the entire country.
To qualify, the locality must have a population of less than 2,000
(“off the map,” it obviously can’t have a tourist offi ce), and the bistro
must be the village’s sole business, or at least just one of a few (the oth-
ers can be butcher’s shops or boulangeries but not bistros). Owners sign
an annually renewable contract, agreeing to attend training classes and
regular meetings at which experts deliver talks on olive oil, say, or how
to cook wild fi eld greens. According to the Bistrot de Pays charter, they
also pledge to play ambassador by furnishing guides and brochures and
being knowledgeable enough about points of interest in their area to
answer tourists’ questions.
Members are asked to sell postcards, newspapers and regional food
products; hold periodic events like concerts and boules tournaments to
bring villagers together; and use ingredients and serve dishes identifi ed
with the locale. If at lunch you eat a goat cheese made nearby and want
to visit the producer, your waiter should know if this is possible and, if
it is, how to arrange it. In the absence of a full or set menu at specifi c
hours, a casse-croûte, or snack, of local foodstuffs like charcuterie is avail-
able throughout the day.
Ideally, the bistro should be open year-round and operate as a place
where fresh bread is dropped off daily and sold. Beyond bringing the
community a notch closer to self-suffi ciency, the symbolism is powerful:
a village that can offer its people bread controls its destiny. If the bistro
has no grocery component, the deal is that residents can buy or borrow
staples like fl our and butter from the kitchen. This feature is particu-
larly geared to elderly inhabitants who may be village-bound or have
no way of getting to a supermarket.
For their dedication to the cause and an annual fee of US$150,
Bistrot de Pays owners are consigned a rack for printed materials and
a sign with the association’s logo, a rural landscape customized for each
region: a perched village for the Drôme, a castle for the Ariège, a mus-
keteer for the Gers. Early members still use the glass-fronted cabinets
they were given to present items for sale. While the charter is not always
as rigorously enforced as it might be, bistros have been stripped of their
cabinets and kicked out for noncompliance. Missing from the charter
but a not-unknown feature of the genre is a sometimes charming,
always authentic cruddiness. The French seediness enshrined in La
Mini Auberge, also in Haute-Provence, is as holy as any Romanesque
church in the neighborhood and as such not to be missed.
Across the Durance River, the mayor of St.-Jurs believed so strongly
in a bistro/café/grocery/bread drop-off that he built one, Les Deux
Nines, with municipal funds. Before construction began on the village’s
lone business, he knew that Eloïse Donnini, one of 150 residents, would
run it. The grocery is adorable, a playtime vision of an épicerie. It stocks
Orangina, boar pâté, lemons, chestnut purée, eggs, jars of pieds et
paquets (lamb’s feet-and-tripe bundles), rice and horse-milk soap. The
dining room is fi lled with bouquets of dried phlomis, collections of
antique soup tureens and battered straw hats, and tables laid with faded
checked cloths and mismatched vintage plates. A cabinet displays the
range of Henri Bardoui Provençal aperitifs and digestifs, honey, honey
cookies, and honey-and–pine-sap boiled candies. Views are of the »
Country Class Clockwise from above: Chef Eloïse Donnini; the village of St.-Jurs; a meal of smoked ham, olive-and-red pepper cake and feuilleté aux anchois; a lavender field near St.-Jurs.
119
Valensole Plateau, the world’s largest living carpet of laven-
der. Thousands of hectares of the plant bump right up
against the horizon.
Home cooking is so abused as a come-on by restaurants in
France you go expecting the worst and are served it. But the
set menu at Les Deux Nines interprets the term as it was
understood before corruption. Typically there are four appe-
tizers: tapenade with tuna, an acceptable complication of
the classic; endive-and-walnut salad; cured ham, tasting of
hazelnuts and looking like folds of burnished leather; and a
crusty carrot confection, neither cake nor custard, spiced
with cumin. A main course of beef daube, fl avored with bit-
ter-orange peel and fl anked by slabs of polenta, is as gelati-
nous as Donnini likes it, which is very, a happy sign that she
couldn’t care less about wooing tourists. The menu includes
a cheese course and two desserts, a fl an and a walnut tart.
Forty-eight kilometers from St.-Jurs, an allée of chestnut
trees leads to Le Bistrot de Pierrerue, in Pierrerue, whose 500
inhabitants last year celebrated fi ve births and six marriages
and mourned fi ve deaths. Old-timers remember going to the
bistro as children to screen movies. The unlikely people
behind Pierrerue’s only storefront are Maryvonne and Mark
Marinelli, Americans in their forties who formerly owned a
corporate catering company in North Carolina. He’s in the
kitchen, she’s out front in the dining room, running what is
really the village’s common living room, hung with what the
French call souvenirs de concierge. The reference is to the alleged
mauvais goût of these postcards mounted on slices of wood
and shellacked, popular 1950’s keepsakes now collected for
their kitsch value.
The Marinellis’ worries about being accepted ended when
a local agency that promotes small businesses gave them an
interest-free loan—“And they knew we were American!”
Mark says. Aside from his very limited French and
Maryvonne’s accent, there’s nothing that betrays the bistro
as being run by foreigners. This is true not just of the atmo-
sphere but the food: silky quenelles of chicken-liver mousse;
a lush duckling à la provençale (zucchini, tomatoes, green
olives); tarte Tatin. The only grumblings have come from an
employee of the town dump who would like the couple to
open at 7:45 A.M. rather than 8:00 A.M. so he could have a
coffee before going to work. The bistro doesn’t offer newspa-
pers or bread because a truck passes through the village with
them every morning. A second truck selling groceries comes
by on Wednesdays, triggering a fashion show of housecoats
and support stockings.
You could have a long lunch in Pierrerue and, driving
lazily but with a hidden sense of purpose, cover the 64 kilo-
meters between it and L’Oustau de la Font in the medieval
village of Reilhanette, in the Drôme, in time for dinner. As a
white-tablecloth restaurant (well, the cloths are actually
beige), L’Oustau breaks the Bistrot de Pays mold, playing
against type with napkin rings; fl at, square plates squirted
with jus and reductions; an exhaustive wine list with an entire
page of red magnums (including a 1995 Châteauneuf du
Pape from Château Beauchêne for US$220); polished ser-
vice; edgy vegetable sorbets; fi sh with vanilla! The plates are
a little impractical, but how can you not admire a commune
of 131 souls that obliges fashion?
Stuck to a rocky hill face, Reilhanette is lavender and épeau-
tre (wheat berry) country, wide-open, a little stark, humbling.
The ruins of a 12th-century fortifi ed castle crown the village,
and a church from the same epoch has three Baroque altars
and a reliquary with a morsel of Saint Eutrope’s radius. The
other reason for visiting is L’Oustau, which occupies an
ancient stone house beside the old public laundry basin there
where the village drops quickly away and the fi elds, knitted
into a valley with a mountainous backdrop, take over.
Obviously the odds were not in favor of a demi-gastro ver-
sion of a Bistrot de Pays here, but chef Ludovic Monier »
The ruins of a 12th-century fortifi ed castle crown the village of
Reilhanette, and a church from the same era has three Baroque altars
Dining alfresco at Les Deux Nines. Opposite from top: Chanterelle
mushrooms, a favored ingredient; the Lardiers countryside; Café de la Lavande’s menu board.
and Jean-Michel Valéry, his front-of-house associate, were determined
not to serve ham sandwiches and steak frites even if it meant their kids
went shoeless for a while. Both in their thirties and unafraid of a 14-
hour day, they bet that, beyond vacationers, a serious restaurant would
fi nd an audience with people who live in the area if the portions were
generous, or rather extravagant.
They weren’t wrong. The mayor and town council order thick slices
of a sucré-salé terrine that dares and succeeds. Alternating layers of foie
gras and spice bread, it’s set off by a little dice of pineapple dusted with
Sichuan pepper. A fi rst-course beggar’s purse—a crackling sheet of
Moroccan brik loaded with leeks, pearl barley and three disks of fresh
goat cheese—is cut with a coulis of black Nyons olives loosened with
olive oil. Monier overreaches a bit, but it’s in nobody’s interest to dis-
courage a chef in a challenging location who’s raising the bar and is so
keen to please. His lovely hand-painted water pitchers and organic
sourdough bread are from a potter and a baker with a wood-burning
oven down the road. You can’t argue with that.
L’Auberge—also in the Drôme, in St.-Pantaléon-les-Vignes—calls
itself a restaurant gastronomique, and while it is not most people’s idea of
one, like L’Oustau it earns your indulgence. The food is good, so who
cares? Fifty-eight kilometers northwest of Reilhanette, St.-Pantaléon is
a modest Côtes du Rhône wine village that looks across vineyards and
apricot and cherry orchards to the foothills of the Préalpes. At one
point in its 146 years, L’Auberge also incorporated guest rooms, a gro-
cery, a café and a gas station. It’s a café–bistro only now, but still the
village’s beating heart, anchored beside a washhouse and a thread of
river under a canopy of wide-waisted plane trees. Permanently parked
outside the entrance as a prop, next to a pyramid of wine casks, is a
beautiful old Renault Juvaquatre, the ultimate French paysan getabout.
The tiny post offi ce across the street keeps the kind of manically precise
and maddening hours that govern provincial life in France (it’s open
from 8:45 A.M. to 11:15 A.M.) and is the only place besides the bistro in
St.-Pantaléon where its 320 citizens can enjoy a cash transaction, buy-
ing their stamps at the window and a baguette or croissant at an impro-
vised table on their way out.
Magali Charousset and Brice Lambeaux met at hotel school in
France in the 1990’s, became a couple and took over from her parents
at L’Auberge fi ve years ago, setting up housekeeping on the second
fl oor. She cooks, he does everything else: watering a customer’s bulldog,
running upstairs to fetch his hoodie for a Dutch lady who didn’t pack
for the mistral, pouring into pretty etched glasses the on-the-house
sangria-like aperitif of red wine from the village cooperative, apple
juiceand crème de cassis. Charousset and Lambeaux are so fresh-faced
and approach their jobs with so much optimism they’re like a pair of
bistrotiers in a children’s book. Or maybe the creators of Ratatouille
should make a movie about them.
Charousset is a young fogy, mounding vol-au-vents with crayfi sh,
splashing trout with walnut vinegar, using only beef cheeks in her
daube, sweetening a succulent quail with prunes and raisins and fl am-
ing it with cognac, roasting peaches with red wine. She also has ideas
of her own, some a little weird for such an old-fashioned girl. Soupe au
pistou—Provençal vegetable soup—comes not with the traditional
sauce of basil, garlic and olive oil, but with a teeny bouquet of the »
00
GUIDE TO SOUTHERN FRANCE’S BISTROTS DE PAYS
WHEN TO GOThe region is at its best from late spring to early fall.
GETTING THEREFrom Paris, take the TGV (tgv.com) to Avignon, from where you can rent a car there. Plot your route and fi nd more information on Bistrots de Pays at bistrotdepays.com.
WHERE TO EAT AND STAYCafé de la Lavande Place de la Fontaine, Lardiers; 33-4/92-73-31-52; lunch for two US$74.
LOCAL INN: Le Jas de Boeuf Lieudit Parrot, Cruis;
33-6/50-97-96-37; colourdimensions.com; doubles from US$182.
L’Auberge Place du Village, St.-Pantaléon-les-Vignes; 33-4/75-27-98-27; lunch for two US$95.
LOCAL INN: Une Autre Maison Pl. de la République,
Nyons; 33-4/75-26-43-09; uneautre maison.com; doubles from US$130.
Le Bistrot de Pierrerue Rue de la Ferraille, Pierrerue; 33-4/92-75-33-00; lunch for two US$54.
Local Inn: Le Couvent des Minimes Hôtel & Spa Mane en Provence; 33-4/92-74-77-77; couventdesminimes-hotelspa.com; doubles from US$429.
Les Deux Nines Place Bellevue, St.-Jurs; 33-4/92-74-30-73; lunch for two US$70.
LOCAL INN: Château d’Esparron Esparron-de-
Verdon; 33-4/92-77-12-05; esparron.com; doubles from US$184, which includes breakfast.
L’Oustau de la Font Le Village, Reilhanette; 33-4/75-28-83-77; lunch for two US$100.
LOCAL INN: Richarnau Aurel; 33-4/90-64-03-62;
richarnau-provence.com; doubles from US$92, including breakfast.
herb in a glass of water, a can of oil posed directly on the table and
chopped red onion(!?). Charousset is a chef whose concept of great
winter food is pot-au-feu, poule au pot and tête de veau. You just have to
assume she’ll come around to serving soupe au pistou the right way.
The gold standard of Bistrots de Pays in the Midi is Emmanuelle
Burollet’s camera-ready Café de la Lavande, lost in the countryside in
Lardiers, population 120, 100 kilometers from St.-Pantaléon. AOC
Haute-Provence olive oil from Burollet’s own trees is drawn and sold
from a stainless-steel canister inside the front door. Bare wood and tile-
top tables are freighted with old silver and lyrical still-lifes of lychees,
squash and clementines on ceramic platters. Armfuls of fl owering
almond branches screen soccer trophies behind the bar.
The hors d’oeuvres variées are amazing, and not because you’re drunk on
charm. Artichokes are prepared à la grecque (braised with lemon, olive
oil and coriander seeds), cornichons are fanned atop house-made duck
pâté, and a gratin of puréed salt cod hides a fl eecy interior. The daube
is yet more unctuous than Donnini’s. This may be out in the sticks, but
Burollet is no bumpkin. For dessert, prunes join apples not in a cake but
a terrine.
Lardiers’s only other business is a pottery. Burollet would like a few
more to shore up the place. She says she can use the help, but she is sav-
ing it by herself. �
Christopher Petkanas is a T+L (U.S.) special correspondent.
GREATVALUE
GREATVALUE
GREATVALUE
GREATVALUE
00
Café de la Lavande announces its status as a Bistrot de Pays. Opposite: Outside Le Bistrot de Pierrerue; the bistro’s eggplant terrine with red peppers, tapenade and a goat cheese; a doorway in the 500-person village of Pierrerue in Haute-Provence.
the thriving markets of aswan. the grand
archaelogical sites of luxor. the lush, ancient
landscapes. gini Alhadeff returns to egypt for
a luxuriously unhurried riverboat cruise on
the nile. photographed by martin Morrell
Views of the Nile from the steamship, Sudan, traveling from Aswan to Luxor, Egypt.
N THE SON ET LUMIÈRE SHOW AT THE TEMPLE OF PHILAE, the actor playing the Nile
River spoke with a British accent, and what a booming voice he had. I detected a
note of erotic innuendo, too: “When I embraced your walls, your columns fal-
tered,” the Nile told the goddess Isis. Still, they did not seem well suited for their
parts as they went declaiming around Philae, lighting up the pillars, then the
façade, then a hall. The great French archaeologist Jean-François Champollion
came in now and then sounding like Hercule Poirot.
I was content to admire the view from my balcony at the Cataract Hotel in
Aswan the next morning, and relieved that the Nile was sticking to gurgling
noises. There is nothing wrong with seeing a ruin from a distance, I mused, sizing
up the Aga Khan mausoleum, golden-dust–colored amid the arid dunes of south-
ern Egypt. A turbaned old gentleman engraved on an intricately inlaid artwork
right above my bed appeared to be pondering what he would sell me that after-
noon in the souk. The French doors to my wood-enclosed balcony creaked sug-
gestively as the wind pushed them open. At other luxury hotels, immense staffs »
IN THE SON EN T
River spokeRi
note of erono
tered,” the ter
parts as thepa
façade, thenfaç
came in nowcam
I was conI was con
126
On Water Clockwise from above left: The Sudan’s staff; Ahmed, one of the steamship’s three captains; leaving Aswan at daybreak; wicker chairs and breakfast tables on deck. Opposite: Asmraf, one of the waiters on the Sudan, wearing a tarboosh.
110
The Sudan, docked in Aswan.
129
of engineers make sure creaking is
eliminated. But here, in deference per-
haps to Agatha Christie, it’s permitted.
Christie wrote parts of Death on the Nile
at this hotel, then continued aboard the
steamship Sudan, which I was to board
the next afternoon to cruise the Nile for
four days, from Aswan to Luxor.
The brocaded walls of my historic
room in the hotel’s old wing were lit-
tered with representations of ladies on
pink satin settees in wonderful sitting rooms enclosed by those
ubiquitous accessories of Moorish architecture and pleasure
in general, wooden moucharaby lattice screens. Arches
opened onto lush gardens. I could have done with a little set-
tee myself a few hours later at the souk in Aswan, while look-
ing at scarves and capes and djellabas, my head swimming
from the variety to which my relentlessly kind merchant sub-
jected me. This is, of course, what is meant to happen. One
is not there, as in a mall, merely to get what one needs. One
is there to engage in a personal relation with a fellow human
being. And once you engage in it, you cannot go off thinking
the one next door is better. In a souk, destiny draws you to the
merchant who has the slightly lesser shawl, or the slightly
more expensive one. No matter: Destiny draws you there and
there you stay, settee or not, and usually, especially if you don’t
fi nd exactly what you require, you will emerge with several
things you defi nitely did not need, and a vague sense of
fatigue and disappointment and duty done that a cup of tea
will set to rights. That is how a souk works. The next day you
return to look for the scarf or tablecloth you didn’t see the fi rst
time around, but which the drawn-out shopping spree of the
day before has washed your eyes to appreciate.
In the Moorish dining room of the Cataract, called 1902
for the year it was inaugurated, a waif in a white dress with a
zigzag hem and bare legs sang “Strangers in the Night” to a
backing track coming out of a karaoke machine, whose knobs
she fi ddled with between songs. Studying the menu, I didn’t
know whether to have the fi sh just so I could have rice in a
little pyramid with its top sliced off, or the lamb just so I could
have the okra. Some childhood twinge made me yearn for a
plate of rice and okra like my grandmother’s cooks so regu-
larly produced in our house in Alexandria, where I was born.
The menu listed a dish dedicated to Lord Mountbatten, ten-
der veal cubes for Princess Diana and a fi sh named after
Princess Feryal.
Ahmed, the guide who came to escort me to the boat the
next day, said I was the fi rst person he’d ever met who didn’t
think the light show at Philae the most
thrilling thing ever. It made me feel
jaded. But I had started traveling
through Egypt while still in my moth-
er’s belly, and my father had driven
through the night on the road from
Cairo to greet my arrival in Alexandria,
so I felt I had some excuse.
We drove all the way down the cor-
niche, past dozens of boats: the Nile
Beauty, Nile Romance, Nile Odyssey, Nile
Legend, Nile Ruby, and a number of King Tuts—I, II and III.
Finally, we stopped at what seemed like the end of the more
crowded docks before the biggest boat of them all, a vast hull
with darkened windows. It became clear that we had to go
through its belly—through a grandiose lobby with fl owery silk
damask on the walls and a few windows of glittery gold and
diamond jewelry—to reach the Sudan. We passed through
another boat, this one more modest. Beyond it, quietly pretty
in the most moving way, was the Sudan. It was the perfect ship,
the ship I’d dreamed of, on two tiers with 23 cabins and fi ve
suites, overlooking wide generous decks equipped with tables
and wicker chairs from which to admire the slow-moving
scenery. On the top deck, one could recline on comfortable
chaise longues. This yacht, whose engine is more than 100
years old, had belonged to King Fouad, and in my cabin,
which had large curved windows gazing out on the Nile, a
faded wedding portrait of King Farouk (who succeeded his
father in the 1930’s) and his bride hung over the bed.
The dining room was wood-paneled, and its low ceilings
reminded me of Harry’s Bar in Venice, with matching low
tables and chairs. The tables were set with white Flanders-cot-
ton tablecloths, and every day different arrangements of fresh
fl owers, such as pink gladiolus or yellow daisies, made their
appearance. The meals consisted of simple and delicious
Egyptian–Continental dishes: meatballs or shawarma kebabs
with rice and baked caulifl ower, for instance, or baby okra in
tomato sauce, and homey desserts such as mahallabiyya pud-
ding. The waiters wore stately maroon or navy djellabas with
white arabesques down the middle, a wide sash at the waist,
and a red tarboosh (as the fez is called in Egypt).
We spent the night in port and left Aswan at 5:45 A.M. after
some maneuvering of the boat—which I heard, waking
briefl y. One shore was thick with palm trees, and I awoke
again later as the sun was rising from behind them. There
were rocks jutting into the Nile that were partly covered by
shrubs; a tin house on a fl at; small wooden boats—two of
them, green and blue. A man crouched in one; another »
This yacht, whose
engine is more
than 100 years old,
had belonged to
King Fouad. My
cabin had curved
windows gazing
out on the Nile
130
man “beat the water” to “wake up the
fi sh,” as our guide Maissa, an elegant
and cultivated Egyptian lady from
Cairo, put it.
The opposite shore was desert-like,
and there was a road on which automo-
biles rarely passed. Sitting close to the
large wood-framed windows, which ran
all around one half of my cabin, I
watched the Nile and its shores and the
light visiting it gently at all hours, in
varying intensities. I could hear the water beneath the hull of
the boat. Now and then the boat’s engine emitted a kind of
reassuring roar. We passed by low barren hills on both sides.
My twin gold-caned beds glimmered in the sunlight.
At the breakfast table of the steamship Sudan, the pear jam,
a fragrant, thick, reddish compote with large chunks of fruit,
was homemade. For the few days that my journey on the Nile
toward Luxor lasted, I was reminded constantly of my child-
hood home, since the ship’s kitchen seemed to be run very
much like my grandmother’s: small-grained Egyptian rice was
served at practically every meal, to be soaked up in some fra-
grant sauce with tender bits of poultry or fi sh.
I went up to meet the boat’s captains, in the booth above the
top deck. There were three, all named Ahmed, and they
worked in shifts, though they were always somewhere near the
bridge, which they slept in, or by the steering wheel, which
was placed before a high, wide seat on which the Ahmed cur-
rently at the helm sat cross-legged in his sand-colored djellaba.
The director of the cruise, Mr. Amir, a delightfully reserved
Copt, has been in charge of the boat for seven years and
seems to cherish it almost in a manner normally reserved for
members of one’s family. The Sudan runs as smoothly as its
well-oiled pistons, which sit in an exposed well at the entrance
to the boat for all to admire. Large wheels on either side churn
the waters of the Nile into white froth and heave our graceful
vessel gently along its course downstream.
I got used to emerging from my room onto the wide deck
and climbing the generous winding staircase to the higher
deck and terrace, or to the lower one where the bar and din-
ing room were. A bell was rung for meals, and every time we
returned from one of our excursions, which usually took place
in the morning to avoid the heat, we were greeted with a glass
of mint or carcade tea.
Mohammed Adil, the chief engineer, showed me around
the engine room when I asked to see it. There was a narrow
route through the various scalding-hot moving parts of it, and
not enough space to stand up straight. He walked backwards,
Temple visits,
sublime as they
were, felt like an
intrusion into the
activity of doing
nothing with a
view of the Nile
before one’s eyes
bending forward at the waist so as not
to hit his head, delicately holding my
hand and indicating when I was to
duck as I walked forward, also bent
double, so that we seemed to be danc-
ing a minuet, though in a set from Fritz
Lang’s Metropolis.
When I went to town to get spices at
the souk, I bought saffron from Iran,
pepper from Sudan, mint, cumin, cur-
cuma. The saffron turned out to be, as
my Lebanese friend in Luxor, the hotelier Zeina Aboukheir,
get good saffron in Egypt.” But it was sealed in a colorful little
basket and sewed up with straw, so I continued to hope it
might be the real thing till the end of my journey.
WE STOPPED TO SEE the temples of Kom Ombo
and Edfu on the way to Luxor, so that all the
drifting and languor wouldn’t turn us into
smokers of hashish like the characters in
Naguib Mahfouz’s Adrift on the Nile. The visits to the temples,
sublime as they were, felt like an intrusion into the perfect
activity of doing nothing with a rolling view of the Nile
before one’s eyes. Still, it was on the walls of Kom Ombo,
which means “city of gold,” that I fi rst noticed a style of
representing the human fi gure turned sideways, with the belly
button facing forward. There was also a depiction of a
woman giving birth, a baby descending between her legs.
The forceps, already in use in Ptolemaic times and also pic-
tured, was the symbol of birth.
Kom Ombo is the most breathtaking ruin on the Nile, with
its thick round columns partially supporting the roof, but
Edfu is a proper temple. Esna, a town without tourist shops
because tourists don’t stop here, could only be glimpsed from
our mooring. By the third day the landscape had changed
entirely, with desert-like beige mountains in the distance. I
never tired of lying on a deck chair upstairs and watching one
shore, then the other, till it was time for dinner.
The boat reached Karnak fi rst thing in the afternoon on
the third day, then Luxor toward evening: it was all lit up, and
there was an impressive allée of illuminated sphinxes leading
to the main entrance of the city. I made my way to Zeina’s
wonderful Hotel Al Moudira, which she opened in 2002 and
which is a kind of oasis of fragrant gardens and high-domed
rooms set in the midst of a still rural part of the Delta.
I went to meet François Larché, a French architect who has
worked at Karnak for more than 20 years, and who runs »
117
On Land Clockwise from above left: Hotel Al Moudira owner Zeina Aboukheir at her Luxor property; the hotel’s sitting room;artifacts at the temple of Ramses III, in Luxor; the Red Chapel of Hatsheput, at the Open-Air Museum in Karnak.
The Temple of Edfu, outside Luxor.
133
GUIDE TO CRUISING THE NILE
WHEN TO GOMost Nile cruises sail year-round; from September to May is opti-mal, when the weather is mild and breezy.
GETTING THEREEmirates, Korean Air and Singapore Airlines all fl y to Cairo from Asia. From Cairo to Aswan or Luxor, take one of Egyptair’s frequent fl ights.
WHERE TO STAYASWANPyramisa Isis Island Resort Set amid 11 hectares of land-scaped gardens on an island, the resort has spectacular views of the Nile. Isis Island; 20-97/231-7400; pyramisaegypt.com; dou-bles from US$132.
LUXORHotel Al Moudira The 16-hect-are property is made up of high-domed buildings with wooden latticework, private entrances and patios. Rooms have ham-mam-like bathrooms and are surrounded by gardens. Hager Al Dabbeya, West Bank; 20-012/392-8332; moudira.com; doubles from US$306.
Winter Palace This Sofi tel- managed property overlooking the Nile, near the temple of Luxor, was built in 1886 for European aristocracy. Corniche el Nil; 20-95/238-0422; sofi tel.com; doubles from US$280.
CAIROFour Seasons Hotel Cairo at Nile Plaza 1089 Corniche el Nil; 1-800/332-3442 or 20-2/2791-6900; fourseasons.com; doubles from US$440.
Nile Hilton Hotel 1113 Corniche el Nil; 1-800/445-8667 or 20-2/2578-0444; hilton.com; doubles from US$180.
Oberoi Mena House Be sure to book a room that looks out on the pyramids at Giza, which are within walking distance. Pyramids’ Rd.; 20-2/3377-3222; oberoimenahouse.com; doubles from US$360.
CRUISING OPTIONSAbercrombie & Kent Sun Boat IV A&K has comfortable boats, with Internet access, lounge pools and private docks, which means faster, more accessible loading. From Aswan to Luxor; 1-800/652-7963; abercrombiekent.com; from US$1,995 for three nights, including meals and activ-ities, based on double occupancy.
Assouan An intimate boat, equipped for 16. Excursions are tailored to each passenger, but those who crave creature com-forts should know the boat does not have air-conditioning or a pool. The emphasis is on the natural surroundings. From Luxor to Aswan; 33-1/4225-7716; nourelnil.com; from US$1,570 for seven nights, including meals, activities and excursions, based on double occupancy.
La Flâneuse du Nil A seven-bed-room sailboat, fi t for 14 passen-gers. Trips are tailored for fi rst-timers or Nile afi cionados. From Luxor to Aswan; 33-1/4286-1600; vdm.com; from US$1,100, based on double occupancy.
Oberoi Zahra This vessel has spacious accommodations, spa suites and a pool. The boat has private docks and Wi-Fi, and an
Egyptologist has daily lectures. From Aswan to Luxor; 1-800/562-3764; oberoihotels.com; doubles from US$3,790 for seven days.
Sonesta St. George I Travcoa Escorted Journeys takes small groups of 18 on a guided trip down the Nile. Passengers stay in presidential suites. The tour also encompasses the Upper Delta’s ancient sites. From Cairo to Luxor; 1-800/992-2003; trav coa.com; from US$5,795 for 12 days, meals and activities includ-ed, based on double occupancy.
Sudan The 1885 steamship underwent a renovation last year to include revamped cabins and bathrooms in the 1900’s style. The sundeck is the best spot to watch the changing scenery. From Aswan to Luxor; steam-ship-sudan.com; from US$2,600, based on double occupancy.
Triton Explore Cairo and sail the Nile aboard this 40-passen-ger ship. Enjoy tours and lec-tures led by Lindblad Expeditions’ expert guides. Itinerary includes Cairo, Luxor and Aswan; 1-800/397-3348; expeditions.com; from US$6,680 for 15 days, meals, activities and excursions included, based on double occupancy.
the Open-Air Museum there. I walked past a chapel fl anked
by two broken pink obelisks that are facsimiles put in place to
hold up the structure’s fragile walls. Larché arrived about 20
minutes late, a tall, thin man with blue eyes, pale gray shorts
and a wide-brimmed straw boater. The museum was bliss-
fully tranquil, enabling one to visit the reconstructed buildings
in peace. The Red Chapel of Queen Hatshepsut, with its
black granite and red quartzite walls, is a modernist’s
dream—a smooth solid block with a single portal on a façade
that is slightly higher than the roof. Under Larché’s supervi-
sion, 315 original blocks, which until 1997 had lain side by
side, were fi tted, along with newly carved blocks of the requi-
site dimensions, to form the structure. Larché pointed to the
walls of the Amenhotep chapel whose striated alabaster walls,
he said, resembled “moiré silk.” The reconstructed buildings
are particularly moving as a work of the imagination: any
missing pieces were replaced, but unlike the original ones,
bear no reliefs—proving that architecture might be repro-
duced quite convincingly, but not art.
Larché explained how the buildings are being reconstruct-
ed, puzzled together piece by piece as more funds become Gini Alhadeff is a contributing editor for T+L (U.S.).
available. “Archaeology,” he said, “is very political. Sometimes
our work is interrupted for months.” All of the buildings and
fragments in Karnak’s Open-Air Museum come under his
supervision, except for two temples that Henri Chevrier, the
fi rst Frenchman to have participated in this particular dig,
had assembled beginning in the 1920’s.
As Larché and I headed toward the exit, I asked him, “Are
you used to the heat?” He said that no, one never got used to
it. His hands were worn, the skin cracking and taut. On the
main street we ran into a guard who greeted Larché and
complained he was tired. Larché said, “All the guards at
Karnak are tired.” This one had asked him for a bicycle, and
Larché joked he’d get him an armchair on wheels instead.
I wasn’t tired, but as I returned to Al Moudira for coffee
with Zeina and prepared to leave Luxor, it occurred to me
that I had spent a good deal of time on the Nile in a daze—
daydreaming, observing the rhythms of river life. The Sudan
is a beautiful fl oating world, smaller than the smallest island.
If I close my eyes, I feel I am still on it, happily adrift. �
DRAGON SEASONRETURNING TO SIKKIM IN INDIA’S FAR NORTH — THE CORE OF HER NOVEL THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS — KIRAN DESAI REFLECTS ON THE BEAUTY, VIOLENCE AND SPIRITUALITY OF A MISTY HIMALAYAN REALM, WHERE NATURE ULTIMATELY DWARFS ALL HUMAN CONCERNS. ILLUSTRATED BY CHRISTIAN PELTENBURG-BRECHNEFF
metal grilles in the windows. Some are as yet unspoiled; the
pigments are jade, bronze and garnet. They are faded, but
the demonic energy still seems potent. The fl oors are of teak
and the prayer wheels are made of buffalo hide. Photographs
of head lamas are displayed at the altars, and should you ask,
“Is he still alive?” you sometimes get the answer “Yes, his
reincarnation is here already.”
In the years after the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950,
Sikkim became a haven for fl eeing monks. Residents describe
the hillside burning scarlet as if with fi re while lines of monks
came streaming down the old salt and wool trade routes from
Lhasa. They’re still leaving. The monasteries of Tibet are
being emptied at these borders. Visit antiques shops in
Darjeeling, and if they deem you a serious buyer, bundles of
dirty cloth and newspaper are taken from beneath the coun-
ter, unwrapped to reveal treasures being offered for a pit-
tance. It is so dreadfully sad to see the heritage of a nation
being sold in this soiled, ignominious way, sold by the desper-
ate, bought by the unscrupulous. Silver and gold prayer books
and scroll containers; prayer wheels made of bone, silver,
copper, leather, wood, coral and turquoise; and jade bowls so
transparent the day shines through to illuminate patterns of
deep thunderclouds approaching.
Delicate border politics with China, Bhutan and Nepal
account for a heavy military presence here. The North is
largely off-limits to even Indian visitors, and in the rest of the
state, passes are checked and rechecked, policemen making a
little extra fi nagling bribes for permission to drive through
sensitive areas. Foreign nationals must request permits to visit
Sikkim. Their stays are limited to 15 days.
TERRIBLE LANDSLIDES. The roads falter across a vast
morass of boulders. Sometimes they are transformed
into riverbeds. I travel from Gangtok in the east to
Pemayangtse in the west, stopping at all the monasteries
along the way in a hired diesel Jeep Commander, a skeletal
frame attached to a rough, kicking machine, so every organ is
given a tremendous shake. Monsoon clouds billow into the
ABOVE, IN FORESTS OF BAMBOO, THE 138
View of the Himalayan peak Kanchenjunga, from the Sikkimese town of Pelling.
MONKS CHANT THEIR LAST PRAYERS139
vehicle, hiding everyone from each other, oneself from one-
self. Now and then, a brief moment of sun, and dozens of
butterfl ies sail forth, yellow, iridescent blue.
On these broken roads, squatting in circles, sitting on the
rocks, having a leisurely chat as if in a living room, for it is the
single place at this time of year that is not squelchy and over-
grown with foliage, are bands of resting villagers. A group of
women in ruffl ed fl owered nighties, which have become a
daytime fashion here, admire a baby. The baby has big kohl-
lined eyes and a large black painted spot to ward off the evil
eye. They get up to let our Jeep pass, resettle, and entertain
the laughing baby by pelting him with lantana fl owers.
Large signs—BARRACKS, CANTEEN, OFFICERS’ MESS—mark
sad concrete buildings. Groups of soldiers jog by in comically
big shorts, skinny legs sticking out, looking not nearly sturdy
enough for combat. But when I ask the driver if he thinks
India is properly defended against the Chinese, so close across
the mountains at Nathu La, the old trade pass into Tibet, he
says: “Oh, we are well defended. No need for worry. With
roads like these how many Chinese will make it over?”
Perhaps the bad state of the roads has also kept many mon-
asteries remote. They feel so far from the world and its dirty
problems, it is jarring then to descend to military checkpoints
and see these two aspects of Sikkim side by side, to witness
how this place with a fairy-tale reputation has faced the prob-
lems of the modern world, with tragic consequences.
The British began their forays into this region in the early
1800’s, starting tea plantations in the drenched and misty
landscape after they lost their monopoly on the tea trade with
China. Darjeeling was forcibly annexed from Sikkim by the
Raj in 1861. The British took Kalimpong from Bhutan after
the Anglo-Bhutanese war of 1864. They brought in Nepalis
to work the tea plantations, for the area was too sparsely
populated to provide suffi cient labor. Soon the Lepchas, who
practice Bon, a form of animism, and who believe that they
are descended from sacred Kanchenjunga snow, became a
minority in their own hills. The population is now 75 percent
Nepali, less than 20 percent Lepcha. Later India adopted
much the same attitude toward Sikkim as the British had
earlier. Despite a desperate attempt to keep his kingdom’s
sovereignty, the last chogyal of the only Himalayan Buddhist
kingdom other than Bhutan was forced, after a plebiscite, to
succumb to the vote of the Nepali majority. Sikkim was
annexed by India in 1975. Wary of a similar fate, Bhutan
adopted an aggressive policy against its Nepali population,
attempting to keep out new immigrants. Nepalis were also
hounded from the Indian states of Assam and Meghalaya in
bouts of terrible violence. And in yet another twist of history,
shaken Indian Nepalis demanded a separate Nepali state,
Gorkhaland. For years, through the 1980’s, the mountains
were engulfed by a separatist movement called Gorkha
National Liberation Front. Perhaps it was an inevitable occur-
rence in a nation cobbled together in this fashion, with shift-
ing populations and borders, with so many competing loyal-
ties. Ownership will always be contested—it is just perspec-
tive, after all.
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, my family had a house in
Kalimpong, across the Tista River from Darjeeling.
The hills of Sikkim were blue in the distance. Some
20 years ago now, and I still remember how the air was thick
with the threat of what was to come. People here refer to
what occurred as “the Agitation.” What exactly happened
will always be debated. Bridges and police stations were
bombed, roads destroyed, government buildings went up in
fl ames, police brutality was sanctioned by politicians. Business
came to a standstill. Tea plantations were shut down, the
tourism industry vanished, schools and colleges closed. No
water, no phones, no electricity, no food. In the end, the front
was granted a political platform and greater autonomy, which
stopped, however, short of statehood. In the air today is the
stink of something not quite over.
The ghost of the Raj lingers on not merely in the politics,
but in once-grand buildings. I have an aunt who still lives in
Kalimpong, in an stone house that she discovered as a ruin,
roof loaded with ferns, seemingly deserted, but with a blind
Englishwoman, abandoned by her servants. Eventually the
woman died, and the house was sold by relatives. My aunt
bought it, she says, because this place offers something that
life elsewhere never could. She loves it for its beauty, fi erce
beyond the reach of civilization. Above her home, the moun-
tains soar in twisted, hornlike peaks and convolutions that
seem to mirror the region’s history and politics.
We spend a rainy-season dusk on her veranda. Below, the
army is eating dinner in the mess.
Above, in forests of bamboo, the monks are chanting their
last prayer of the day. It is so peaceful now, but it is impossible
not to refl ect on the fact that life here is a complicated endeav-
or. As a doctor working in a clinic in the bazaar, my aunt has
seen the darker side of life here, the worst effects of poverty
and political upheaval.
I ponder, then, the particular form of tantric Buddhism
that is nurtured in the Himalayan monasteries, their refl ec-
tion of the complex human soul that seems related to this
landscape, this history. I think of the monks housed in dark
swampy rooms, living so remotely, so simply, so as to pour all
they have into keeping this faith fervently burning, this form
of Buddhism even more ancient than the one practiced in »
140
The Himalayan Hotel in Kalimpong, West Bengal, bordering Sikkim.
141
GUIDE TO SIKKIM
WHEN TO GOMost travelers will want to avoid the torrents of monsoon season (June to mid-September) in favor of shoulder season: orchids bloom in March and April, and from late September through October, the nights are cool and clear.
GETTING THEREMost of Asia’s major airlines fl y to Delhi. From Delhi, connect to Bagdogra via Indian Airlines (Indian-airlines.nic.in) or Jet Airways (jetairways.com). From Bagdogra it is a 48-kilometer drive to Kalimpong and a 80-kilometer drive to Gangtok, Sikkim’s capital. Arrange ground transportation ahead of time through your travel agent. An “inner line” permit is
Tibet, close to Bon and the spirit worship of the Lepchas. I
think of those phantasmagoric murals, the dragons that we
have scoffed at, condemning ourselves to savor them only in
meager ways, illustrations in a children’s book or a cartoon
fi lm. Here they are free and freeing, and something precious
to the human spirit, lost elsewhere, is yet vibrant.
We sit as people do most evenings, in the wavering light of
uneven voltage, grand moths with the wingspans of birds fl y-
ing by. We eat mutton, stuffed momo dumplings with red-chili
chutney on the side, and drink chang through bamboo straws
in mugs, topping and retopping the fermented grains of millet
with warm water from a big copper kettle. We wait for the
evening’s usual episode of rain. When it arrives the storm
blocks everything out, drowns out all meditations, ruins all
conversations. The dragons the monk at Tashiding assured me
were alive are writhing and gnashing. They are far too com-
pelling to balance against any human consideration. In these
hours, there is immense relief.
We sit and watch, lighting the lanterns when the electricity
fails entirely. �
needed to enter Sikkim, and can be obtained from an embassy or consulate, or a tourist offi ce once you’re in India.
WHERE TO STAYThere are no true luxury hotels in Sikkim, but these two options are clean, comfortable, and safe.
Himalayan Hotel Upper Cart Rd., Kalimpong, West Bengal; 91-3552/255-248; himalayanhotel.biz; doubles from US$59.
Netuk House Tibet Rd., Gangtok, Sikkim; 91-3592/202-374; doubles from US$102.
WHAT TO DOThe best time to visit Sikkim’s Buddhist monasteries is in the morning, when monks gather to recite prayers. For customized guided eco-tours through Sikkim — including rhododendron treks, bird watching tours and visits to important Buddhist sites — try Potala Tours & Treks (91-3592/202-041; sikkimhimalayas.com) or Sikkim Tours and Travels (91-3592/202-188; sikkim-tours.com), two well-regarded tour outfi ts based in Gangtok.
Kiran Desai won the Man Booker Prize in 2006 for her second novel,
The Inheritance of Loss. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
(My Favorite Place)
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142 M A R C H 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M
Celebrated chef and avid angler Tetsuya Wakuda tells JENNIFER CHEN about the joys of boating in Sydney Harbour
IT’S VERY SIMPLE where my favorite
place is: Sydney Harbour. I love boats,
and when you go out onto the harbor
and look back at the city—the high-rise
buildings, the parks—it’s an entirely different
perspective that you gain. You realize how
beautiful Sydney is.
There are so many places to discover from
the harbor—small bays, islands, beaches that
you can only reach by boat. Two of my
favorites are Sugarloaf Bay and Quarantine
Bay. But really, being on the water anywhere
in the harbor is a joy. You can see dolphins
swimming, and the water is so clean that you
can pretty much swim anywhere.
I have a small boat, and I would love to be
able to go out onto the water every weekend,
though in reality, I make it out there once a
month. But it’s easy for anyone to enjoy the
harbor. It’s really accessible, calm and not
rough at all. I love to fi sh—I caught a 12-kilo
kingfi sh right before Christmas. Because there
are no more commercial fi sheries and the
water is so clean, a lot of fi sh have been
coming back. It’s really easy to catch
something. You might not get a big fi sh all the
time, but you’ll defi nitely catch something.
There is just something about being out in
the harbor, and you’re fi shing and then the
sun comes up that is so astonishingly beautiful.
Friends of mine who come from overseas,
when they see this sight, it’s almost a shock.
They can’t believe what they’re seeing. You
don’t even need to hire a boat—take a ferry at
sunrise or sunset, and you’ll see the most
beautiful sight. It will leave you speechless. ✚
AUSTRALIA
TETSUYA’S FAVORITE
HARBORSIDE RESTAURANTS
The Pier594 New South Head
Rd., Rose Bay; 61-2/9327-6561; pierrestaurant.com.au; dinner for
two A$195.
CatalinaLyne Park, Rose Bay;
61-2/9371-0555; catalinarosebay.com.au; dinner for two A$178.
