Ok that’s why I asked. They both have gyro-like meat on spits, pita, kebabs, right? What are the big differences?
I love it. Always had great food there and the pisco sours are insane. We started going in like 2015 so I don’t know what it was like before that.
Greek has dishes like stiffado and kleftiko. To characterise it as all kebabs is wrong.
Yeah it’s great. It was better when it was a hole in the wall.
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They both have baklava right?
Anyway if I have to split out Greek and Middle Eastern they kind of drop and I didn’t want to do that. Also Middle Eastern is of course fragmented all over the place.
The best chicken I’ve ever had is the rotisserie chicken place by my house run by a Jordanian family (Poulet Du Jour). So I guess that counts as middle eastern. They have humous sides and pita and stuff.
And humus. Kebabs are just fast food like pizza is in Italy, albeit sometimes very high quality. People don’t usually order kebabs in proper Greek restaurants.
When you were in London you should have gone to the edgware rd Middle Eastern part that has the best, freshest kebabs and juices ive ever had. Then along to the nearby Victoria casino for some poker. Your tourist guide book sucks.
Bread, stew/soup/porridge/pottage, and ale.
I’ve been to London twice, once for the queen’s golden jubilee anniversary in 2002 (wasn’t aiming for that but it made it very hard to find a hotel room) and once for work in 2004 or 2005. I didn’t have any guide books, just wandered.
It was fun but holy cow on that first trip I had just come from Italy where I had dozens of conversations with random people on the street. England was the first country I’d ever been where I speak the native language, other than a brief visit to some strip clubs in Vancouver Canada.
I was so excited to speak my native tongue. I figured I’d meet all kinds of people. Nope. Try talking to a random Londoner you might as well talk to a wall. I actually had one friend there who hung out a little bit and we went to the British Museum which was amazing. He said for fun he likes to stare at people on the subway to see how long they’ll look at their shoes. I connected with more locals in Paris than in London. But I still loved exploring London.
Later I went to Ireland and it was just like Italy - random conversations with strangers all over the place. Crazy how two adjacent islands can be so different.
There’s no need to be shy about it. It’s only right and proper that you should come to pay your respects to your colonial masters at a time of great national celebration.
Actually it passed me by completely.
In England I think the national obsession with Indian food has died down somewhat in recent years since the advent of south East Asian food here. I’m not even sure that chicken tikka masala could be said to be the national dish any more, but this could be me being London centric.
Chinese food is widely represented here but only really by HKs bland fare that doesn’t do much for me. Everyone loves Peking duck, though obviously thats not from HK. There are a few restaurants serving food from other parts of China that are fabulous but not widely known about, often catering for young Chinese people studying at central London universities. As you’d expect the food is very good value and excellent.
Yeah the US has had Chinese food forever. But as I’ve come to find out it’s a pale comparison to the real thing, I went to college in Kirksville, Mo. We had a McDs, a Taco Bell, and a KFC but no other fast food places I can recall. Maybe 10 stoplights in the whole town - just to give you an idea of the size. But we had two Chinese restaurants that were both really good. One was by far the best restaurant in town.
That’s how pervasive Chinese food is in the US. But again, now that I’ve experienced bits and pieces of real Chinese food (and extrapolating my experience with American Mexican food vs. real Mexican food) I can see that there’s probably a lifetime worth of food to explore in China.
My awakening with Indian food came on my second day of my previous job. Probably half of my coworkers were from somewhere in India, but mostly from South India. We had a potluck where there was probably one covered dish for every 2 people in the office.
I discovered so many new dishes that day - including biryani - which is now one of my favorites. How in the hell do they get that rice so moist? It’s a miracle - just like US BBQ brisket and Jewish Deli brisket.
But India sweets - pass. I don’t get it. They’re either way too sweet or taste like cardboard. I think it’s like fruitcake in America where the whole country is just waiting for one comedian to make fun of Indian deserts, and then they call all breathe a huge sigh of relief and erupt with cathartic laughter.
Mexican restaurants here have always disappointed me, but some impressed me with the strength of their margueritas. It’s only to be expected without a Mexican community here. I’d like to try some proper Mexican food that’s not the same old burritos and refried fucking beans lol.
The idea of Mexican food in England makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. You have to be close to the source, or at least have a very vibrant immigrant community to keep the cuisine up to par, and drive enough demand to import the right ingredients in a high quality state.
I always relate it to the one cuisine I grew up with and know well - BBQ. You get too far away from the source and it starts sucking. BBQ in LA is 95% a joke. But there are a couple of ok places.
South Indian food is quite different isn’t it? It’s almost a staple food here for veggies, and there’s a whole London street with very little apart from vegetarian Indian restaurants near where I once worked.
Masala Dosai is possibly my favourite ever starter.
Yeah that’s another big marker for me. In India what’s on the menu is all determined by what region you’re in. Mexico is similar. It shows they’re very serious about their food.
My work sent me to Chennai for two weeks, then I spent another two weeks exploring S. India. I was looking for chicken tikka and it was nowhere to be found. But the fish curries were mind-blowing - especially in Pondicherry and Kerala. And the dosas.
So after reading that David Shor piece, I clicked on the Andrew Sullivan farewell letter at the top of their most viewed stories. I used to read Sullivan on his Dish like three centuries ago, but have barely heard from him since then. I remember him being pro-Iraqi invasion, and then I also remember him acknowledging he was wrong and criticizing Trump.
About himself, he writes:
And maybe it’s worth pointing out that “conservative” in my case means that I have passionately opposed Donald J. Trump and pioneered marriage equality, that I support legalized drugs, criminal-justice reform, more redistribution of wealth, aggressive action against climate change, police reform, a realist foreign policy, and laws to protect transgender people from discrimination. I was one of the first journalists in established media to come out. I was a major and early supporter of Barack Obama. I intend to vote for Biden in November.
So, what is he actually conservative about? Does anyone here know? Not asking anyone to Google for me, but I figure maybe someone here still follows him to some degree.
That sounds like a right-winger calling themselves a “classic liberal” to me.
I think he’s just playing with the word.
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NAILED IT!
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They didn’t get the money up front?
The whole idea that donating a building gets your kid into a college should be seriously looked at. But even then I assumed the kid’s grades were legit. I guess they’re fudging that too?
Reading now:
Qatar laid out for a small army of servants to attend to him, including one man who made his tea and another who prepared his hookah.
Amazing.