Offbeat Eats

As I’ve mentioned a few posts ago, this was our 6th year attending and volunteering at Ohana Luau at the Lake, and that gives us quite a few opportunities to explore some of the dining options around Lake George, especially when we need to grab a quick bite. The immediate answer for this is the A&W Root Beer next door (yes, Lake George is a time capsule, including a still-functioning A&W, albeit one without car hops). But usually we’re craving something a bit more exotic, and just a short distance down the road from the A&W is one of the area’s hidden gems: the Spice Gyro & Kabab, tacked onto the end of the Sunoco station.

One of the enjoyable aspects of my London trips is that, in addition to all the great British and Commonwealth cuisines that get good representation, the London metro area has quite a good collection of Turkish restaurants. Previously, I’ve gotten to enjoy Tad in Hackney, and Likya in Golders Green, and particularly Kazan right down the street from my brother’s flat. Kazan isn’t the only Turkish option in Pimlico, either, just around the corner lies Cyprus Mangal. We’ve been there a few times before, when the food was excellent but I would have called the dining room ambiance “cozy”. But sometime in the last few years Cyprus Mangal had a rather major renovation and we decided it was a good opportunity to drop in and give them another try.

One of the cuisines I rather enjoy when I’m in London is Turkish food, since the London area has more than a few really delicious Turkish places. Previously, I’ve rather enjoyed outing to Tad in Hackney, and Likya in Golders Green, and there are literally dozens of other good Turkish restaurants around London. One of these, Kazan, is literally just down the road from my brother’s flat, and it’s been on our to-do list for a while (at least 2009, when we actually had breakfast at their sister restaurant Kazan Kitchen across the street). But various complications seem to always happen when we attempt to go there; three times our visit fell during a period when Kazan was closed for the holidays. Another time, we were unable to secure reservations. Yet another time, a power outage caused us to have to re-plan. But this visit, we made finally visiting Kazan a priority, and were finally able to visit.

One of the things I enjoy about going to large international cities is that they tend to have immigrant communities, which gives them plenty of good ethnic restaurants in addition to the native foods. For Frankfurt, one of the larger immigrant communities is Turkish, with several parts of town having notable concentrations of Turkish businesses. In particular, the directly east of the Hauptbahnhof has several large and well-regarded Turkish halal restaurants places. One of these, Central Grill, was my choice for lunch on my last day in Frankfurt.

(Closed) Like Austin to the Northeast, San Antonio has a growing food truck scene. While nothing like Austin at present, it has a few up and coming areas, like the Boardwalk on Bulverde food court, a rather substantial cluster of food trucks, for some food truck action… (located adjacent to, and run by, a company that makes food trucks, btw). The Boardwalk is a Thursday-Sunday operation, with about a dozen food trucks all located at this one spot in Northern San Antonio. It’s a rather nice little outside area, with the obligatory random selection of seating, a mechanical bulls, and a few other oddments. And, as I mentioned in my review of Erick’s Tacos, it’s only open Thursday-Sunday, so we had to make a separate trip back here to try it out. But on Friday, we finally made it to the Boardwalk, where Stop #1 was Rickshaw Stop, a well-known San Antonio Food Truck serving up delicious Pakistani kebab.

After we returned from Gloucestershire, my brother was craving Persian food, so we went to Mohsen, which is walking distance from the Earls Court tube station. Mohsen (I had to look at the reviews on the wall to find the name of the place, since the sign outside only has Persian writing and the words “Persian Restaurant” on it) is your typical Middle-Eastern place, a nice cozy little restaurant with a bunch of tables crammed into a fairly narrow storefront, Persian decorations, and some travel posters that look like they date from the Shah’s era.