Offbeat Eats

My brother has a bit of an odd hobby, but with a good cause. London is quite multi-ethnic, and unfortunately, various right-wing sources claim that large stretches of London are now “Islamic No-Go zones” where police don’t tread and roving bands of religious police enforce Sharia law. The concept is laughably incorrect, and is what I believe most journalists would call “bull”. But my brother’s hobby is visiting these alleged zones and checking them out, often while enjoying an alcoholic beverage and perhaps some pork while at it. So when I was visiting, he decided to take a walk to one such falsely-identify no-go zone, Elephant and Castle. It’s long been a London crossroads, and it’s basically a large bus hub, a major Tube stop, and the site of a rather sad and forlorn late 1960s shopping centre that supposedly is going to be demolished any year now, but some how hangs on. What it definitely isn’t is a no-go zone. And, after a walking trip involving the Imperial War Museum, some light shopping at the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre (which is practically a 1975 time capsule), we were going to head to the nearby “box park” (London thing: pop-up shopping centre made out of shipping containers) to visit Marcel and Sons to try out some Mauritian food (and compare it to the related food over on Réunion). There was just one little problem: the box park, and Marcel and Sons with it, closed in December 2018, two weeks earlier. So, after a quick shopping trip to the nearby Asian grocery, we instead picked another well-reviewed local restaurant: Leños & Carbón

During my recent visit to Minneapolis, I needed to take my hosts Bob and Kath out for breakfast. Our long-time standard for a weekend breakfast (Big Olaf’s) closed a few years back, so I asked them where we should go. They suggested Maria’s Cafe on East Franklin, which features Colombian and Venezualan food, as well as some more typical American favorites. While it was strongly recommended that I try the corn pancakes, I left those for Carol while I tried the daily special breakfast platter (shown), which included beans, sausage, fried yucca, scrambled eggs, and an arepa (basically a small masa pancake). This was an excellent breakfast on all levels: the beans were nicely seasoned with cumin, the yucca was crisp on the outside and tender inside, and the eggs nicely scrambled. The arepa was nicely done as well, but it paled compared to Carol’s corn pancake (which isn’t cornmeal, it’s a regular pancake with corn in it, topped with a dry cheese), which was also very delicious…