Posts from the ‘International Intrigue’ Category

Jan 3

New York State of Mind

Despite
not trying a beef bacon burger at Dubai's Shake Shack, I was a little obsessed
with the possibility of doing so next to a faux ski slope in 110 degree
weather. The new Lupa in Hong Kong stymied
me more than anything (is a lunch buffet true to form?)

Both of
those examples were included in a New York Times article this weekend about the
power of New York restaurant brands abroad (and I thought it was Brooklyn
getting all the attention, from Paris to Texas and even Bangkok). BLT restaurants, upcoming
Fatty Crabs, Michael White's Al Molo, and the fake Craftsteak (the company,
Dining Concepts, which is responsible for the Tourondel, Batali and White
restaurants in Hong Kong, also has a Nahm in its portfolio, which has nothing to do with David
Thompson, a non-Keller Bouchon, and a Blue Smoke that may be Danny
Meyer-approved but isn't explicit anywhere) also get mentions.

And yet
there are even more NYC brands, some big, some small, that have crept beyond
our borders:

In Dubai Magnolia
Bakery is in a Bloomingdale's in a mall. I would've loved to hear if women in
black abayas claimed to be "Carries" or "Samanthas," but
cupcakes were not making a daytime appearance during Ramadan.

I have no
idea what the Park Slope of Kuwait might be, but it's doubtful that breast-feeders
and Mother's Milk Stout drinkers will
comingle at the Tea Lounge's new Middle Eastern franchise.

Sarabeth's can be found in Manhattan and area
Lord & Taylors, and now too in Tokyo.

I don't
know that I would call The Brooklyn Diner (with its only two NYC locations in
Manhattan, it already sounds foreign-ized and innacurate)an institution. In fact, I'd
never heard of it before seeing the name plastered on the wall at Dubai's
Festival Walk mall, just above a Jamie Oliver restaurant.

I must admit my favorite New York transplant is McSorley's
in Macau because the layers of international intrigue are nearly unimaginable:
an Irish bar in the East Village transported to a casino mimicking Venice from
Las Vegas and re-imagined and scaled larger for a Chinese Special
Administrative Region. The world should give up because Macau McSorley's has
won.

While drinking a beer at dark wood booth, I watched
a video slide slow on the wall-mounted TV showing a bag of rolls, brand name
Jussipussy, and a small child with the caption, "Fuck milk and cookies,
give me titties and beer." The B 52s and Jermaine Stewart played in the
background. There were no frat boys, just a few Chinese couples not drinking beer. Drinking is not a big part of Macanese casino culture. Perhaps what happens in Macau, does not stay in Macau.

Nathan's Famous has spread from Coney Island to Japan,
Kuwait, UAE and the Dominican Republic.

And while
not typically associated with New York, at least in its contemporary form, T.G.I.
Friday's, is the original local kid makes good. The singles bar turned flair
popularizer has penetrated every continent on earth.

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Dec 26

The Hoax of the Seven Fishes

Not exactly a shocking expose (it's touched on here) but if I took away
one thing (in disgusting business speak,
"a learning") this Christmas, it is that The Feast of the Seven
Fishes is an American, or more specifically NYC Italian-American invention. Oh,
and that Home Alone is a popular Christmas movie in Italy with a title that
translates as Mama, I've Lost the Plane.

Facebook planning for a Christmas Eve get together
involving a bunch of Italian under-35s (what do you call millennials in Italian?)
just ended up stumping them when the hostess mentioned the party would be
"BYOF" since she was only serving three kinds of fish. Representing geographies from the top to bottom of
the boot, no one had ever heard of having to eat fish on Christmas Eve, let
alone seven of them.

Then again, anyone abroad could just as easily
assume Americans all crack open peppermint pigs for Christmas.

I do love that there is a Feast of the Seven Fishes comic book.

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Dec 23

Localized: Pizza Hut Singapore

It's hard to say whether wacky chain restaurant
pizzas were on the increase in 2012 or if the amount of online coverage just
made it seem so. Had blogs not heard of foreign Pizza Huts in 2011? Then again Yelpy PR-driven dining events (Um, "I'm not complaining, I'm just saying" tells you all you need to know) which seem more rampant outside the US, or at least NYC, are probably a factor, as well.

The Singaporean "Double Sensation," is the latest attention-grabber. And yes, the two crusts, alfredo sauce and
maraschino cherry are hard to ignore. So too, is much of the tropical
city-state's Pizza Hut menu.

Five things you're not likely to ever see at a US
Pizza Hut:

I love how so many Asian countries are fearless about combining cheese and seafood. I'm all for it, and the pairing reaches its pinnacle with this bold fusion that would be the first thing I'd order. Classically Singaporean chili crab is presented in soft shell form and mixed with fake crab, pineapple, tomato, buttered rice and melted mozzarella.

I draw the line at warm mayonnaise, though. We all have our personal boundaries. The Ocean Catch also relies on crab sticks, pineapple and tomatoes, along with tuna, squid and shrimp–all atop lime mayo.

While American Pizza Huts still feature salad bars, in Singapore the roughage is more composed–and willy-nilly. The Fruitty Prawn Salad takes obvious favorites like shrimp, mayonnaise and pineapple and puts in mangoes, strawberries, rasins and almonds just because they can.

A roasted chicken leg isn't so odd, in and of itself, but touting the "garlic cheese fondue sauce" and its positioning on the Western Favorites part of the menu with overtly British fish and chips just makes one wonder which Western country claims garlic-cheese sauce a favorite? They lose all credibility with Americans with the glaring omission of ranch.

On the other hand, Munchie Mouse seems aggressively American with its Oreo ears and mini M&M eyes. We have Hershey's Dunkers and Cinnamon Sticks, which I'm pretty sure are just dough scrap desserts.

Photos: Pizza Hut Singapore

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Dec 21

Now That’s the Holiday Spirit

BurgerBusiness declared black buns one of the worst trends of 2012, citing offenders in China, Japan and France. Thailand
also has two specimens that I’m aware of (and I'm hardly an on-the-ground Thailand expert so it’s possible there are more): gastropub, The Smith, and
Casper Burger, a fast food joint that used to be in Bangkok's goth mall and is now at
Plearnwan, a made-to-look old-timey tourist attraction in Hua Hin.

It’s as if Casper knew spooky squid ink was already
passé. For Christmas, the restaurant has concocted red and green buns made from
spinach and beets (I refuse to type or say beetroot). I’m also fairly certain
that the patties aren’t beef, but battered pork cutlets. Who needs tradition?

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Oct 20

The Sweet By and By

Bangkok has more than a few strange businesses-naming trends (I’ll save Something Story, as in Fat Story, the bluntly ESL plus-size shop in the now-gone Suan Lum Night Bazaar, for another time). The most prominent is Something by Someone (Caffe Nero by Black Canyon Coffee, as pictured here in the background of The Pizza Company). I’m not sure if this has to do with the way the Thai language is translated to English or a desire to sound
upscale.

If you spend enough time trolling Sukhumvit’s endless malls (a touristy strip that’s starting to rival Singapore’s Orchard Road) instead of doing whatever it is you’re supposed to do in Bangkok you may learn an interesting thing or two. (Like if you want to see The Dark Knight Rises, you’ll first have to stand and watch a video about the king’s life while the royal–not the national!– anthem plays. Also, the US may be the only country without assigned movie seating.)

Food-wise, Siam Paragon has Amici by Pomodoro, Another Hound by Greyhound Cafe, Coffee Beans by Dao, Ice Glace by Mr. Shake and L’Espace by Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok.

Terminal 21, the airport-themed shopping center that’s probably bigger than some actual airports (with a harrowingly long escalator that I blame for making me anxious and caused me to put a sample frosty taupe nail polish on my lips, thinking it was gloss) has an astonishing array of Something by Somebodies, though only two, the ones I’ve linked to, are food establishments.

Hers by Sopida
Stella by Jolie Robe
Yourburry By Aew
PAUSE BY 30 SEP
Jikkaroo by Hara
Chichi By One Bed Room
Squeeze By Tipco
Krit By VolumeX
Yamato By Yu-Raku-Cho
21 by aoom
OPA by Apinya
PETA BY BELDA
ZEMI-OH-TICK BY BON_BELLE
New Sky By Medicos
SUSRI CC BY SUSRI
Three Design By Prayong
Yentafo Krueng Songe By A.Mallika
BB Center By Zirtel
Bar Phone by Duet

And the crowning glory: Fat by Fat!

Just around the corner from LadyPhat (which doesn’t fit the By theme but is glorious, nonetheless).

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Sep 7

A Member of the 88%

Today I learned that 88% of residents of the UAE
dine in mall food courts, which was no surprise whatsoever. (And that the waits for a table at the Cheesecake
Factory, which I'm still sore over missing by a few weeks, are as rough, if not
worse, than at any American location. Also, Cheesecake Factory is surprisingly
high on the wish list of a number of New York Times commenters.)

This empty warren of seats at the Mall of the
Emirates during Ramadan isn't technically a food court (there were two of those
elsewhere) but where you could dine "al fresco" if eating at the waiter
service restaurants just to the left of the frame like California Pizza Kitchen
and Chili's, as well as Iranian Pars, Lebanese Al Hallab and South African The
Butcher Shop & Grill.

In the real food court, late night for a second
dinner, I nearly took a chance on the Zinger Shrimpo dishes at KFC (Singapore
isn't the only country with weirdo shrimp on the menu) but decided that with
limited time it would be better to go homegrown. We hit the food court at Mall
of the Emirates late night for a second dinner.

Al Farooj is the UAE's popular fried chicken
franchise. I don't even know if I can call it fast food since it took close to
twenty minutes to get one spicy chicken sandwich, a.k.a. Xtra Fire.

Fried chicken, chicken
sandwiches and wraps that wouldn't be completely out of place in the US are its
main thing, but the sides are where it gets interesting. American jalapeno
poppers and mozzarella sticks mingle with more local tabbouleh, hummus and
stuffed grape leaves. We just got fries.

If I had one more sit-down meal at my disposal it
definitely would've been Persian food since that's scarce in NYC. Instead, I
settled for a mixed lamb and chicken kabobs at Hatam, an Iranian fast food
joint. The butter, that comes in a little plastic packet to drizzle over the (large
for me) serving of rice wasn't solid but liquefied like popcorn butter.

I regret
not getting to sample sangak, this giant Iranian bread, or fesenjan, the
renowned chicken, pomegranate and walnut stew, but this wasn't half bad for a
food court meal.

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Aug 20

Buns For the Palette

While not as obvious as Taco Bell's adoption of a Doritos shell, Cinnabon's Pizzabon isn't that illogical of a progression. (And as concluded by Slice commenters, not all that different from an NYC pepperoni roll.)

It made me think, though, how I know I saw a cheese-sauce-drenched roll at a Cinnabon in Kuala Lumpur in 2005 and can find absolutely no online evidence of this creature. The photo I took of the menu at the time was blurry and I deleted it.

Thank goodness for camera phones. Now nothing is too mundane to be snapped and saved for posterity. While taking a snack-free break at a Cinnabon during Ramadan's "takeway" (I'm still not clear why Dubai is so British-y) only hours–wouldn't that sweet smell drive you insane if you were fasting?–I couldn't help but notice that the palate/palette problem isn't restricted to the US.

And speaking of buns, my favorite of the gazillion Asian self-serve bakeries, BreadTalk, is always topical. The last time I was in Singapore, they were advertising the Obunma. This time, in Bangkok, they were all about Olympicks, sadly free of bun puns.

They're also really big on fluffy, dried meat floss, or rather, Flosss (there is a troubling mayonnaise layer that adheres the floss to bun, by the way) which like bakkwa, a.k.a. soft, chewy Chinese jerky, is a foodstuff I don't fully understand the history of but is inescapable, particularly in Macau.

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Aug 18

Ramadan For Mall Rats

Ramadan, which ends today, (time passes so fast) is something I’ve always been vaguely aware of (though not so aware that I booked travel to Dubai before realizing I’d be in the thick of it) but never so much as this year. I'm sure that annually the holy month gets covered by the media, but this year it felt like was seeping everywhere.

Without actively seeking out any articles, recently Ramadan has been the subject of a first-person account of first-time fasting in the The New Yorker, in NPR about cheaters, and amusingly to a glutton like myself, mentioned in hand-wringing stories over perversion of its true meaning due to all the pigging-out at decadent iftars (hundreds ate themselves sick and right into the emergency room in Qatar). How restrained can a region that welcomes the first Cheesecake Factory outside the US be?

And malls–The Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates are the biggies, and I do mean that literally even if I'm too lazy to look up their square footage for comparison to their US counterparts–are the places that one (ok, me) might argue are the cultural hubs to best witness the collision of the modern and ancient, or at the very least how the West meets (Middle) East and adapts.

The man-made ski slope would be the obvious start. And it is nearly the first thing you see when rising up the escalator into the entrance of the Mall of the Emirates where taxis let off passengers scrambling for air conditioned relief.

You can have fondue and cocktails overlooking Ski Dubai. I'm surprised they didn't go all New Orleans and use real fireplaces despite the ridiculous temperatures (though Dubai was twenty degrees hotter than the hottest weather I've ever experienced in Louisiana).

Shake Shack holds prime real estate across from the slopes. And while no burgers could be consumed until after sundown, you're able to get your (halal, bacon-free) fix until 3am during Ramadan.

The IHOP directly next door has already opened, and I do hope a chicken veal sausage, turkey beef bacon version of the Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity is on the menu.

The Magnolia Bakery was deserted. No lines, no cupcakes.

The concentration of American chains (ok, Tim Hortons is Canadian) was astonishing. Dubai has doubles and triples of restaurants with zero presence in NYC (though, oddly, Olive Garden was absent). And if you think they are filled with tourists (Americans definitely don't make-up any significant proportion of visitors, who seemed to be very British with a sprinkling of Russian) you would be mistaken.

High-end imports like The Ivy also have doppelgangers in Dubai. As do confectioners like Laduree and Barcelona's Cacao Sampaka. Maison Kayser, recently exciting New Yorkers, is old news in the Dubai mall world.

Covertly sneaking a sip of water or handful of Marks & Spencer trail mix in the bathroom can get old for a non-Muslim mall rat. I quickly figured out that mall hotels were safe havens. (Bizarrely, in Bangkok, a week later in my itinerary, I butted up against so-called Buddhist Lent, where no alcohol was sold anywhere for two days, except in hotel bars. If one must suffer Santana cover bands and iced Manhattans to get a fix, so be it.) The Kempinski, attached to Mall of the Emirates, had a bar full of secret smokers and eaters (no daytime drinking for anyone). We headed in for mini burgers and a dessert sampler, both far larger than the snack we originally were looking for. The Ember Grill at The Address Dubai Mall is where to do the same at the other big mall in town. There, we pit-stopped for a coffee and a smoke just because it felt forbidden and we could.

Even before 7pm, restaurants began filling up with those anxious to eat. As soon as the prayers sounded–around 7:15 during my visit–masses started trickling into the walkways (from where?) and by 7:30 some restaurants already had lines for seats. Texas Roadhouse was the surprise hit–a number of parties were waiting out front, beepers in hand. What I really wanted to know was if the servers in Dubai also periodically perform country line dances.

I returned to the Shake Shack close to midnight, mostly to see if Dubai's version attracted NYC-length lines. That did not seem to be the case–at least not at that hour. It took restraint to not order a burger, but we had vowed to try local fast food brands instead (more on that later).

My biggest two Dubai regrets were being unable to explore more ethnic eats like those chronicled in I Live in a Frying Pan (normally, I balance the modern and franchise-y with local restaurants and street food) because none were open during the day, and my brief four nights in the city meaning only having time for as many dinners, too short a stop to justify a curiosity-satisfying visit to California Pizza Kitchen or P.F. Chang's.

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Aug 8

Summer Not Slow for Sneaky Foreign Imports

I'm only out of the country two weeks, obsessing over Americana in far-flung places. (I expected Shake Shack and Tony Roma's–all big cities on that side of the globe seem to have our failed rib chain–in Dubai, but Cheesecake Factory and Texas Roadhouse too? Many, many photos to come.) And yet I return to a slew of interlopers putting the moves on NYC.

Mohti Mahal Delux: fancy Indian from India, now on the Upper East Side.

Maison Kayser: I totally saw this Parisian bakery-cafe in a Dubai mall, which is no surprise. We finally got our first branch last week.

Big Smoke Burger: Toronto burgers and poutine coming to Manhattan (and Chicago).

Wasabi: Sushi, individually wrapped for some reason, from London will arrive in NYC next spring.

Bibigo: Healthy Korean chain that's already in LA, will be here next year. London and Tokyo will receive outposts sooner.

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Jul 20

Not Having My Cake and Not Eating It Too

I will be birthday-traveling (Dubai, Macau, Hong Kong, Bangkok!) for the next two weeks, so it's doubtful there will many, if any posts here for a while. I'm not a blog-on-the-go type, though assuming I sort out prepaid SIM card issues in all those countries (I was never able to get my phone to work in Berlin) there will tweets and instagrams galore (I apologize in advance).

Because I wasn't thinking, I scheduled this vacation during Ramadan, which means no eating or drinking outside of hotels in Dubai until sundown. How can I fully experience a Middle Eastern Magnolia Bakery when no one can eat cupcakes?

The upside? All these crazy chain restaurant Iftars (I know this blog is from Kuwait, not Dubai, but both share Ruby Tuesday, Subway, and the like).

Also, there is a McSorley's Ale House in a Macau casino. This is going to be good.

See you in August.

Photo via B&D Kuwait

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Posts from the ‘International Intrigue’ Category

New York State of Mind

The Hoax of the Seven Fishes

Localized: Pizza Hut Singapore

Now That’s the Holiday Spirit

The Sweet By and By

A Member of the 88%

Buns For the Palette

Ramadan For Mall Rats

Summer Not Slow for Sneaky Foreign Imports

Not Having My Cake and Not Eating It Too

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