Category: food and drink

To the Arctic, part 2: The ship, its amenities, and its food

August 16, 2025 • 9:30 am

I really should describe trips as they happen, but this wasn’t possible on my trip to the Arctic as there was no Internet most of the time. Also, for me the impetus to post wanes after the trip is over. So I apologize for not being able to post in real time, but I’ll put up at least one post a week, and promise to cover the whole trip.

I’ve already posted part 1, recounting our arrival in Svalbard  and a tour of the rather anodyne town of Longyearbyen, the capital of the archipelago, here.  Today I’ll talk about about life aboard the ship, and then onto the landings, glaciers, iceberg, birds, walruses (walrii?), polar bears, and so on. The routine was to get up, eat breakfast at about 7:30 or 8, have a landing or a Zodiac cruise immediately thereafter, go back to the ship to shower and rest a bit, eat lunch, and then have another landing or Zodiac (rubber inflatable boat) cruise thereafter.  There were then a few hours before dinner. After dinner you could stay up as late as you wanted, but, given my insomnia (which largely disappears on trips), I read until about 9:30 pm or so before retiring. I thus missed much of the evening frivolity, which included quizzes, competition, and non-frivolous lectures about the Arctic.  Most lectures were in the breaks during the day, and I attended about half of them.

So on to the ship, the Quark vessel Ultramarine, designed specifically for polar voyages. The preceding link gives you plenty of photos of the ship and its features, and here are the specs:

Although it holds 199 passengers, I think there were about 140 on this trip, matching the number of staff and crew, including crew you never see—those dealing with the engines and other technical stuff.

Here’s the Ultramarine. It’s a lovely ship and I had no complaints about the voyage. I had a spiffy cabin (half price, which is why I took this trip), the food was great, and the staff and crew were uber-friendly.

The first thing one has to do after boarding is find one’s cabin. Mine is below. It was not fancy compared to other cabins, but it was plenty fine for me.  After that I explored the ship before people got settled.

Below: my cabin—spacious, comfortable, and with the essential porthole to see outside. It was light nearly 24 hours a day, and I checked that by waking up around 2 a.m. and looking outside. It wasn’t much different from how it looked at noon.

This cabin is meant for two people sharing a queen-sized bed, and on cruises each person sharing the cabin pays the same (substantial) fare, but I got this to myself for the price of a single person. What a deal!

Looking toward the other end with the essential porthole. There was also a t.v., but I turned it on only once and watched a bit of Cleopatra, which I’d recently read about (Burton and Taylor version).

The bathroom was compact but had all the essentials, including that nice hot shower—essential for washing off the cold and grime after a landing. I am visible, too. The shower is not visible, but to the right:

One of the great pleasures of such a trip is waking up and seeing what the view is outside. (The curtains are tightly drawn at night because it’s light outside.)

Two views as we approached Jan Mayen Island, part of Norway. As I said, it’s usually off limits to tourists but our head naturalist, Sarah, knew one of the military guys who, with meteorologists, are the sole occupants of the island, so we got to have a two-hour landing. More on that later:

The island is dominated by the world’s northernmost active volcano, the Beerenberg, which you can see here. It last erupted (a fissure eruption) in 1985.

The peak of the volcano, to the right (again through my porthole) has a snow plume blowing from it. (More pictures of the island in a later post.)

Iceberg Day! I was excited to see this one morning, and later that morning we got in Zodiacs anc cruised for an hour among a number of weird bergs carved off a nearby glacier.

There are four lifeboats, two on each side, and each is huge, provisioned with clothing, food, and other requisites. Lifeboat drill and issuing of lifejackets is one of the first things you do after you settle in. Note the crane used to lower the boats, which are on deck 4.

The bridge, with the captain in the front. It’s not like you’d expect; there is no wheel to steer the ship, but a knob. And when the ship is at sea, it’s often on autopilot. On this ship, unlike others I’ve traveled and lectured on, you are encouraged to visit the bridge at nearly all times.

Things get busy when there’s manual steering, as when we’re going through sea ice. Sarah, the head naturalist/guide, is at the right, with the captain to her left:

And the knobs that steer the ship. I believe they are duplicates for redundancy.  THERE IS NO WHEEL, MATEY!

The bridge is full of electronics that display course, depth, surroundings, and so on. Here’s the course display (click all photos to enlarge them).

And here’s the captain, who seemed very young! But I’m sure they wouldn’t put him in charge if he hadn’t proved his mettle. This is taken on the last night of the trip when they have the “Captain’s Farewell”, and all the ship’s personnel parade across the auditorium.  No staff are allowed to drink on the ship, at least not that I saw, so the Captain toasted us with a flute of water.

Part of the parade: the people who make the food: very important people!

The two photos above are in the auditorium, where there are several lectures per day (none by me this time; I was a passenger), as well as the nightly recap and the highly-awaited plans for the next day, which depend on ice, weather, wind, and other factors. Sarah, in charge of the planning, would always have two or three alternatives if we couldn’t do what we wanted. Fortunately, no plans were canceled on this trip: the weather cooperated greatly.

Besides the auditorium, there’s a lovely lounge on Deck 7, with a coffee machine, goodies like cookies and cinnamon rolls set out 24 hours per day, and, when the bar is open, free drinks. I find that i lose my appetite for alcohol when I travel, so I didn’t take full advantage of the booze. I think I had two beers the whole 11-day trip!  There is also a cozy library nook with tons of books about the Arctic and Antarctic (the ship goes south during our winter, when it’s summer in the Antarctic and not much ice to impede traveling). Having been to both areas now, I suppose you could consider me bipolar.

There are screens in the lounge in the front so you can see where we are and the ice and weather conditions.  In slack times, I’d often make my way here, have a cup of hot cocoa and a couple of cookies, and dig into one of the books about the Arctic. And I’d often go on deck to marvel at the scenery or take photos.

Again, you can see many of the ship’s amenities at the Ultramarine link at the top. They also include a sauna, spa, and gym, which I assiduously avoided.

Now on to the feature second in importance only to the scenery and landings, the FOOD.  There are three meals a day, all served in two places: the fancy “Balena” restaurant upstairs, which has buffet service for breakfast and lunch and individual-course service at dinner. There’s also the “Bistro 487,” a few floors up, which serves almost exactly what the Balena serves, but it’s laid out buffet style, three meals a day. I found the Bistro cozier and with better views (fewer tables, all by windows), and a place that was easier to meet people.

So, the menus.  First the Balena’s breakfast menu, displayed outside the restaurant:

Lunch (one menu, two pages):

Lunch, page 2. You can always get a burger if you want

And dinner (two pages):

Desserts are always of great interest to me, and this ship excelled in their quality and variety (see below):

And the Bistro. As I said, the food is pretty much the same as served upstairs, which is expected, but you can serve yourself at all meals. The guy at the end is the Omelet Man who will make you an omelet of your choice at breakfast. One day I asked for my version of a Barney Greenglass special: omelet with eggs, onions, and lox (yes! they had lox!)

Breakfast at the Bistro. Omelet man:

And his wares. In a failed attempt to eat healthy, I had a spinach omelet with vegetables. But there are always freshly scrambled eggs on tap as well. And since there are many Brits, Aussies, and Kiwis aboard, there are sausages, baked beans, blood pudding, and grilled tomatoes, as well as everything else you’d expect for breakfast. I fancied the plain rolls with local butter, which I’d slather with delicious strawberry or lingonberry preserves, which I think were homemade.

Another iteration of my breakfast with fruit, grapefruit juice, a chocolate croissant, a roll, scrambled eggs, and hash browns. So much for eating healthy! But I emphasize that I don’t eat like this at home, where I usually have one meal a day (dinner), along with a latte for breakfast and a light lunch like a grapefruit.

The all-important coffee machine, which grinds the beans on top. I always had two cappuccinos for breakfast. You can see there are eight hot drinks to be had, including cocoa. A waiter was constantly circulating with American-style coffee, but I eschewed it.

LUNCH!  My attempt to create lox and bagel with a schmear:

Most of this is in the Balena restaurant, where I’d often have lunch since it was buffet style. I don’t think I have any photos of dinner, but you can see the Balena’s layout at the Ultramarine link.

Cheese, and lots of it (with crackers). My theory, which is mine, is that Scandinavians like cheese:

The salad bar (only a part of it). There must have been about 20 items you could put on your salad, and always three dressings:

I always started lunch with a salad in my futile attempt to eat healthy. Note the CARBS at the top and some lox that found its way onto my plate:

Salad was followed by another plate, usually light to allow me room for dessert. Here we have some chicken, an unknown food (cottage pie?) at 3 o’clock, a few fries, and spanakopita to the left.

They also offered these luscious stuffed peppers, but I saw them too late—after I’d loaded my plate:

Finally, the crown jewel of the comestibles: desserts. There was always a tray of different fancy desserts, as well as three kinds of ice cream. You need that sugar after a spell among the icebergs! Photos are from both restaurants and from different days.

There is fruit for the timid, but I had my fruit at breakfast:

Bread-and-butter pudding with vanilla sauce. I could not resist!

And the requisite three ice creams, one of them vegan (sorbet, I guess). Here you get a choice of chocolate, pistachio, and apple (vegan) frozen desserts:

I always had at least two desserts, but more often three. Hey, they were small!

Now I didn’t spend all my time eating, nor did I expect this much food, and of such high quality. But it’s vacation, and that means it’s a Free Zone for Gluttony.  In the next photos, I’ll show our landings, glacier cruises on the Zodiac, and animals.

I do recommend the ship highly, and perhaps may take it again. I have a big hankering to go to South Georgia Island, where Shackleton and a few mates went to rescue their crew. But it’s a long haul at sea with nothing in between.  But it has the largest colony of king penguins in the world: 450,000 breeding pairs, or half the world’s population. I need to see that!  They also have many seals and birds, and there Shackleton is laid to rest as well. It’s traditional to have a tot of whiskey by his grave.

Changes in orange juice and other foods coming from the FDA, and not for the better

August 11, 2025 • 11:00 am

Here’s an article from Food and Wine that simply gives more of the bad news that I thought I was avoiding by reading “regular stuff.” Click on the screenshot to read it. The upshot is that foods—and not just OJ—are going to be diluted and their quality reduced, all supposedly in the name of consumer welfare. Yes, I know that government agencies are doing a ;pt worse stuff, but anybody who beefs that this post is trivial compared to that other stuff risks dire punishment, for I post what I want.

As you probably know if you’re American, the Food and Drug administration sets standards for how food is constituted if it’s going to be labeled one way or another.  For example, the standards of “ice cream” specify that it has to have a certain percentage of milk solids and milk fat. That’s why, before I buy ice cream in a store, I inspect the carton to be sure that it’s labeled “ice cream” rather than “ice milk” or, Ceiling Cat help me, “frozen dairy dessert”. (This is, of course, independent of the ever-shrinking volume of containers, like the half gallons of ice cream that have morphed into 1.5 quarts.) So check what’s written on your carton of Breyer’s to ensure that you’re buying ice cream.

Now the FDA is changing the standards for other foods, and of course not for the better. Quotes from the article (indented):

As Food & Wine previously explained, the FDA began setting standards of identity in 1939 to promote “honesty and fair dealing” and ensure the “characteristics, ingredients, and production processes of specific foods were consistent with what consumers expect.”

Back then, the FDA added, companies often sold products “that were represented as jams containing fruit, but the products contained little fruit,” so it established baseline rules for certain foods to be labeled as such. For example, the Oregon Growers explained that “preserves” and “jams” must contain at least “55% sugar and 45% fruit. If a product does not meet these requirements, it must be called by another name.”

With this new update, jam makers may no longer be required to adhere to these percentages if their standard of identity were to go away, meaning your next jar could be more sugar, water, or some other ingredient entirely than mostly fruit.

Be sure to start inspecting your jams. However, looking at a few of mine, they don’t list the percentage of fruit versus sugar: they just give the ingredients in order of predominance, and sugar is first, even in good jams. But how much sugar are you spreading on your toast? The FDA will ensure that it can increase without your knowing. You’d have to write to the manufacturer to find out.

As for orange juice, well, that’s gonna be diluted:

On Aug. 5, the FDA announced that it’s proposing to amend the standard of identity for pasteurized orange juice, which has been in place for six decades, in an effort “to promote honesty and fair dealing for consumers.” It added that the proposed rule change will “provide flexibility to the food industry.”

Why the change now? As the FDA explained, it’s in response to a petition by the Florida Citrus Processors Association and Florida Citrus Mutual, which is asking for the change, as the current standard of identity has a minimum Brix requirement, “a measurement that indicates the sugar content of a liquid,” at 10.5%. It wants to reduce this requirement to a flat 10%. That’s because the state of Florida has been ravaged by citrus greening disease, which has caused a lower crop production as well as fruit that has less sugar than before.

“The FDA’s pasteurized orange juice standard of identity, when originally promulgated in 1963, was carefully constructed to reflect the qualities of U.S. oranges,” the petition by the two organizations states. “It should now be updated to align with the properties of the modern U.S. crop. Without these changes, manufacturers of finished pasteurized orange juice products must increasingly rely on higher Brix imported juice to meet or exceed the U.S. minimum Brix for pasteurized orange juice.”

The FDA further explained that the change shouldn’t affect the taste of orange juice and will have “a minimal impact on the nutrients found in orange juice.”

What a load of bull! The way you reduce sugar, of course, is to add more water.  “The qualities of U.S. oranges” have changed because of the disease and lower crop production. Granted, perhaps a half percent of lower sugar may even be better for some people, but those standards were there in the first place. And you can bet your tuchas that when the disease goes away and they can once again make OJ to the specificiations, they’re not going to go back to the old standards. But wait! There’s more!

Other foods that may have their standards of identity change soon include several types of canned fruits and vegetables, including artificially sweetened canned fruits (apricots, cherries, pears, peaches, pineapples) and select canned vegetables, such as field corn and dry peas. More than a dozen dairy products are included in the list, including low‑sodium cheddar and colby cheeses, along with cream cheese blends, and frozen desserts like goat milk ice cream and mellorine. Milk breads, rolls, and buns are also on the list, as are enriched macaroni and frozen juice concentrates.

Now I don’t know what the changes are, but you can be sure that they are not going to increase the quality of the product. What are they going to do to breads and macaroni? The mind boggles.  The only worse thing that this reduction of food quality is the way they justify it. There’s a quote in the article that apparently comes from the FDA:

“The FDA’s Standards of Identity efforts have helped ensure uniformity, boost consumer confidence, and prevent food fraud. But many of these standards have outlived their usefulness and may even stifle innovation in making food easier to produce or providing consumers healthier choices,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary added in the July press release. “Antiquated food standards are no longer serving to protect consumers. It is common sense to revoke them and move to a more judicious use of food standards and agency resources.”

Stifling innovation? Giving consumers healthier choices? “Antiquated standards”? Excuse me, but I’d rather have more fruit in my preserves.  This paragraph is a prime example of duplicity masquerading as good intentions.

You can find the new FDA standards here and here, which, I suppose, are driven not by consumer demand but by corporations, and if you want to go through them, see if the changes conform to the explanation above.

Oy! My kishkes!

Out and about Reykjavik

July 20, 2025 • 10:30 am

I have been here only a bit more than two days, so I can’t claim to know Reykjavik, but I have seen a lot of the downtown after two several-hour walks. l It is not a big town: Wikipedia claims that Reykjavik (the world’s northernmost capital of any sovereign state) has a population of just 139,000 as of 2025, and “the surrounding Capital Region has a population of around 249,000, constituting around 64% of the country’s population.”

Summer is tourist season, and so the streets are crawling with visitors like me, and you hear English spoken everywhere.  The fluency of every Icelander I’ve met in English is of course a boon to the visiting Anglophone. All you need is a credit card to survive here, as I haven’t found a place yet, including taxis and coffee shops, that doesn’t take cards, even for tiny purchases. I have $100 in Icelandic krona that I still haven’t spent.

Tomorrow I leave town to go on a bus tour of some of the famous sights of SW Iceland, though I doubt the Blue Lagoon, a famous geothermal spa, will be open because of the recent fissure eruption of a nearby volcano. So it goes.

I’m not yet sure if I’ll make it to the famous Iceland Phallological Museum, devoted to displays of penises, which several readers have suggested I visit. If I go, the highlight will be the plaster cast of Jimi Hendrix’s member as produced by the late Cynthia Plaster Caster (there’s a photo of the junk on her Wikipedia page). But there are also preserved penises and baculums from many animal species. There are no vaginas, and I suspect it would be hard to construct a female equivalent of this museum. I’m told that most of the visitors to this museum are in fact women, though I would have thought that men would predominate, eager to compare their size with that of other species. (There is only one genuine human penis in the museum, a preserved member of a 95-year-old man who swore he employed it sexually until the end.)

In the meantime, here are some random photos I took on my meanderings this morning and early afternoon, with one or two from the day before yesterday.

First, where I am staying: a “guest house” (more like a hostel, which is what it’s called on the sign) north of downtown.  The rooms are small and spartan, but believe me, I’ve seen much worse (viz., India and Turkey). But, like all things Icelandic, they are pricey, even compared to the U.S.  The price (ca. 750 Euro for my five nights) at least includes a breakfast (croissant, roll, jam, butter, orange juice, cheese, and a tangerine) placed in a bag outside my door each morning. To supplement the brekkie, I went grocery shopping at “Bonus,” supposedly the cheapest supermarket in Iceland,

Photos of a more touristic nature (e.g., the cathedral) will follow when I have time to put them up.

My hostel/guesthouse:

My cozy room. There are no amenities like t.v., but I never watch it anyway (even on the ship), and I’m happy with my book and the Internet:

There is a coffee room where you can cook your own food (this makes it more hostel-like than guesthouse-like), but as for getting a decent cup of coffee, it’s well nigh impossible. There is coffee and a complicated machine, but no milk and no spoons that I could find. My first goal, then, was to find coffee on my morning walk.

When I strolled into town, the first thing I saw was a Starbucks, and I was drawn into it as if by Jupiter’s gravity to quaff a large latte. Behold a $10 Icelandic latte below. In contrast to American lattes at Starbucks (which I rarely patronize), it had a design on top. It also seemed larger.

Judging by the prices of burgers, beer, fish and chips, and other items whose prices I’m familiar with, the Icelandic price is usually between two- and three-fold higher than the American.  Now most goods have to be imported here, so that’s understandable, but I’m told that the salaries of locals are not commensurately higher. Perhaps it’s because the country has an extensive social safety net, so people don’t get saddled with stuff like high medical bills, but I’m not qualified to pronounce on economics.

Below: voilà—a $7.66 box of Cheerios in the cheapest supermarket in Iceland. I have no idea what Cheerios cost in America, but I’m sure it’s less than this. If you understand Icelandic, give us the translation below.

Below: an “Icelandic menu” at one restaurant featuring a SMOKED PUFFIN APPETIZER (Fratercula arctica) and an MINKE WHALE STEAK (Balaenoptera acutorostrata).  Iceland is the only country in the world where it’s legal to hunt puffins, and the species is classified as “vulnerable.” Iceland also allows restricted hunting of whales, with 209 fin whales and 217 minke whales permitted to be killed each year for the next five years. Along with Norway and Japan, Iceland is one of only three countries in the world that allow whaling.

Our ship’s naturalists warned us about menus like this, and of course I’ll stay a mile away from them (n.b.: anyone who tells me that avoiding whale and puffin but eating cow makes me a hypocrite better tread very lightly!)

“Skyr” is a smooth Icelandic dairy product described as somewhere between yogurt and curd cheese. I bought a large container of mango skyr to have as dessert.

Two animals I saw on the streets today. First, a lovely gull resting on a cafe table. I don’t know the species, but am sure at least one reader will (identify it in the comments, please):

And a semi-friendly gray tuxedo cat which let me pet it, though it wandered off after a minute or so. It is the first live cat I’ve seen since I left the U.S. Notice that it has the same tough Viking-esque expression as the Reykjavik cat sent in by a reader yesterday.

One of the first things you notice wandering about is the presence of both murals and artistic graffiti.  The former are commissioned, while the latter appear on isolated and hidden walls, but are still more artistic than graffiti murals I’ve seen in the U.S. and Europe.

First, some graffiti, which includes a fearsome felid. This was on an abandoned building:

And the entire side of the building (click to enlarge):

Murals are everywhere, expressing political sentiments or advertising businesses. The artists are given due credit at the lower right of each mural. Here’s one of the former painted by two Ukrainian artists and an artist from Iceland, all honoring Icelandic/Ukrainian friendship and Icelandic hospitality towards displaced Ukrainians:

And the explanation:

. . . and murals decorating businesses:

Two views of a store:

Is this a female Viking? Wings seem to be a leitmotif in these murals.

A vampire mural:

And a lovely bird mural. Again, someone will have to identify it for me:

A rainbow-decorated cafe:

And a nearby brasserie advertising its wares:

Finally, as far as I can see, Reykjavik is not a town of gaudy and expensive houses, though there may be a section for such homes.  Most streets, however, are fairly bare and spartan, though some of the houses are painted bright colors. Since these streets are around the downtown area (and these are typical streets in that area), it supports the view that Icelanders don’t have salaries commensurate with the high cost of living:

Remember, this is a superficial tourist’s take on what I saw as I wandered about. More photos as I take ’em, and the natural history will come after I return to Chicago.

Lunch!

July 16, 2025 • 10:45 am

Readers have clamored for photos of the food aboard, so I made a special trip to the Bistro, the fancy “real” restaurant aboard, instead of the bistro, which is smaller, has almost all the same stuff, and has better views.  (I almost always eat at the bistro.) So here is the selection from the “Balena” restaurant on Deck 5. I haven’t cropped the photos, so they’re a bit rough—not to mention that I was holding a plate in one hand and my Panasonic Lumix in the other.

First, the two menus you can peruse before you enter (click to enlarge). Note that there are two pages. And yes, they have everything that’s mentioned, and the menu changes with every meal (though breakfast varies little).

Note that burgers and hotdogs are always available, presumably for the Yanks, though we do have 28 nationalities on board if one includes the crew.

One difference between the Balena and the informal bistro is that the former always has a special “exotic food” station. Below is today’s, making shawarma to your taste. I avoid these as the food isn’t as good as the regular stuff, and the lines are long:

The first station is for salads; the bowl of lettuce is out of sight to the right, but you can see all the things you can put on top. There are always three kinds of dressings as well, and you can see trays of cold cuts, which often include lox.

Croque-monsieurs (toasted ham and cheese sandwiches) and chicken picatta. I don’t know what the latter is, but I got both of these, as well as a dollop of mashed potatoes (upper right).

Stuffed peppers. I probably should have gotten one of these instead of the chicken and sandwich, but it was too late; there was no more room on my plate.  If you are reading this (especially Alice Dreger), note that I LOVE stuffed peppers.  My mom used to make them, as well as stuffed cabbage.

What you’ve been waiting for: the first part of the dessert table, with superfluous fruits flanking the good stuff. There are always three small pastries, and they are always good.

More of the dessert table. There are always three flavors of ice cream in the Balena. The choices today were (l to r) strawberry, mango, and melon vegan ice cream, the latter properly known as “melon sorbet”. Naturally, I got mango, my favorite fruit:

And how could I resist hot cherry cobbler with a custard sauce?

I wasn’t that hungry at lunch (mirabile dictu, I skipped it yesterday), so I had the items noted above as well as salad.  I almost never drink when I’m traveling; for some reason I lose all desire for alcohol on trips. I had a diet Coke.

. . . and only two desserts: the mango ice cream, which was great, and the cherry cobbler with custard sauce, also great.

All three daily meals on offer are equally copious, so you have to be careful, especially if you’re landing and hiking after breakfast or lunch.  But I have seen people of size with plates loaded to the ceiling.

If you have questions, please put them in the comments.

Sunday lunch

June 22, 2025 • 1:16 pm

There is no conference yet (registration is tomorrow), I cannot brain, and so ye shall have food photos.  People do seem to want to know what I eat on the road.

Googling the restaurants around my hotel, I found there was a surfeit of ones that sounded good and got high ratings, ranging all the way from the upscale and famous Gage & Tollner, where I will likely splurge on lunch in the next few days, to Dave’s Hot Chicken, only a 2-minute walk from the hotel. (Confession: I’ve never had “hot chicken”, a spicy subspecies of fried chicken that is a specialty of Nashville.)

One of the ethnic restaurants that got good good reviews was the Cuban Shack, only a 12-minute walk from where I’m staying (menu here and also pictured below).  Since I adore Cuban food (in truth, the only ethnic cuisine that I find blah is Jewish!), I decided to make my way there. And I had a lovely and authentic lunch.

Well, I don’t know if the famous “Cuban sandwich” that I had is really eaten in Cuba, but it’s ubiquitous in Cuban areas of Florida, and Wikipedia says this:

A Cuban sandwich (Spanish: Sándwich cubano) is a variation of a ham and cheese sandwich that likely originated before the turn of the 20th century in cafes catering to Cuban workers in Tampa or Key West, two early Cuban immigrant communities in Florida centered on the cigar industry. Later on, Cuban exiles and expatriates brought it to Miami, where it is also very popular. The sandwich is made with ham, mojo, roasted pork, Swiss cheese, pickles, mustard, and sometimes salami on Cuban bread

Mine had all the ingredients above (the pork was chopped) save salami, which is superfluous.  It came with plantain chips and garlic sauce for dipping, but I decided to order a side dish of fried plantains (they come sweet or green, but they had only sweet), a dish I love, and is usually on tap only in Cuban places.

Here is the inside of the Cuban Shack, which is unprepossessing, but that means nothing when it comes to food.

And my lunch. The portion of fried plantains was huge, and I had to bring half of them back to my room (in fact, I’m snacking on them now).

A close-up of the layered sandwich, with chopped, roasted pork, ham, Swiss cheese, very thinly sliced pickle, and mustard. One might think this a weird combination, but the flavors meld wonderfully, which is why the sandwich is so popular. The only off-note was that the cheese could have been melted a bit more. Still, I loved it:

The menu (click to enlarge):

Here’s the part of Brooklyn where I am, and of course since I rarely ventured outside of Manhattan when I lived in NYC, I don’t recognize anything. Perhaps some readers do. There is a sign right outside that says “Last left turn before the Brooklyn Bridge,” so I must be close to the East River and The World’s Most Beautiful Bridge. But I am ignorant, and only the dead know Brooklyn.

What every American President liked to eat

May 26, 2025 • 11:00 am

More video today!  This one, of course, was suggested to me by YouTube, since I watch a lot of food videos as well as history videos. And it’s exactly the kind of video that I would have to click on, as it lists the favorite foods of every American President.

Here are the Presidents who, in my view, had the best taste (you’ll have to watch to see their favorites):

Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Monroe
John Tyler
James K. Polk
Abraham Lincoln
Ulysses S. Grant
Teddy Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
Woodrow Wilson
Lyndon Johnson***
Jimmy Carter

LBJ gets the kudos for liking the best dish, and, looking over the list, I see that it’s weighted with Presidents who liked Southern food. No surprise, as it’s America’s best regional cuisine.  They do mention a McDonald’s Filet O’ Fish as Trump’s favorite, but I thought he liked Big Macs better. Either way, he doesn’t make the list.

Ich bin in Frankfurt und esse eine Brezel

December 10, 2024 • 6:45 am

Happy Tuesday; it’s December 10, 2024, and Coynezaa is just around the corner. There’s another holiday, too, but it celebrates a myth, whereas I am real.

It has been a hectic three days, but also fun: giving two talks (I fell off the stage during the first one), touring around Katowice, and eating large quantities of hearty Silesian food. I have a gazillion photos, but, as I’m cooling my heels in the airport in Frankfurt, I have no time to post them—save one. And that is the picture below, showing yours truly eating a classic German comestible in the airport.

If I look a wreck, I am. My plane left Katowice for Frankfurt at 6 a.m., which meant boarding at 5:30, which meant getting up at 2:00 a.m. and leaving my hotel, some distance from the planes, at 3 a.m.

I went to bed at 9, hoping for five hours of sleep, but woke up at 12:15, soon after midnight, and what with the excitement of impending travel it was clear that I wasn’t going back to sleep. So I watched CNN instead (the only English t.v. channel) to discover, via Anderson Cooper, that the police had actually caught the man accused of shooting health executive Brian Thompson. When the law caught up to him, the suspect, one Luigi Mangioni of New Jersey, was chowing down at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.  And it doesn’t look good for him:

The Altoona officers who took Mr. Mangione into custody found that he had several telltale items that might tie him to Mr. Thompson’s killing, a crime that has riveted the nation while exposing Americans’ deep-seated anger toward the U.S. health insurance industry.

Mr. Mangione, officials said, had a gun and a silencer similar to the ones used in the Dec. 4 shooting, and a fake driver’s license that matched one used by the man suspected in the killing.

He also carried with him a three-page handwritten manifesto condemning the health care industry for putting profits over patients.

“These parasites had it coming,” it said, according to a senior law enforcement official who saw the document. It added: “I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.”

The document specifically mentioned UnitedHealthcare, the insurance giant where Mr. Thompson was chief executive, noting its size and the amount of revenue it takes in, the official said.

Yes, he’s presumed innocent until found guilty, but I’m here to tell you that the probability of any other verdict seems nil. He’s 26 and will surely, if convicted, spend the rest of his natural life behind bars.

Read more about the pinch at the archived link here. It was a nifty bit of police work, made easier by Mangione pulling his mask down just one time, when he was flirting with a woman at a hostel.  But once was enough: look at the hostel picture and compare it to the many circulating pictures of Mangione. I’m glad he’s caught, for nobody deserves vigilante execution, which is capital punishment without a trial. In fact, I don’t believe anybody deserves execution at all. Life without parole is more than enough, and remember that some people can reform.

But they’re very sad about the arrest over at P********a, where the fulminating miscreants are not only delighted, but have been egged on in their hatred by the Chief Miscreant himself, who urges his baying hounds before pulling the trigger to first find out who heads healthcare corporations that deny claims.  Then, as the capo says, “After you’ve followed the chain of decisions, then you can consider terminating some rich a-hole. It’s the polite thing to do.”

Indeed, nothing makes you look better to “progressives” than urging your readers to murder rich people, preferably CEOs of healthcare corporations.

In other news, where is Bashar al-Assad? Is he dead, as some suspect? Or has he fled to his pals in Russia?

Paul Krugman has written his last column for the NYT, and, over in France, the right-wing Marine Le Pen is plotting to topple the French government and replace it with one far more to the right. Sound familiar?

There are reports of continuing peace talks between Israel and Hamas, but I don’t think they’ll amount to much. If they result in releasing thousands of convicted Palestinian terrorists from jail, while not letting all the hostages go—indeed, if a settlement leaves anything of Hamas to govern Gaza, Israel will have lost.

And that’s the nooz till I get home and take a day to recover.