Cairo

I made two big mistakes for this trip to Egypt. First, I underestimated the heat in May. Second, I didn't even think about Ramadan.... No food and water for the locals between sunrise and sunset.

This is not the first time I've traveled to Muslim countries, but I had never been in those countries during Ramadan. So, I didn't think about it when I booked the trip. This may be a big problem for my foodie trip... Let's see how much food I can experience.

After a typical pyramid tour in Giza in the scorching hot weather, I came back to the hotel to rest until sunset. After sunset, the real food adventure begins. The guide for the food tasting tour that I booked through Airbnb showed up at my hotel at 7:30. Initially it was scheduled at 6:00, but it was adjusted to a later time because the sunset is after 6:00 and things open later than usual during Ramadan.

The first stop is at El Ahrir. This restaurant specializes in koshary, the national dish of Egypt. This could not be a more appropriate start to my food exploration in Egypt. While there are many similarities among Arabic countries' cuisine, koshary is very unique to Egypt. It's very starchy, made with rice, noodles and short pasta along with different types of beans. It's topped with tomato sauce and fried onion. It's usually served with two condiments, such as garlic vinegar and hot sauce. This is a naturally vegan dish but it's very satisfying.

At the next stop we had kebda, which is fried liver. Liver is very popular in Alexandria. It's usually chopped into small pieces and fried with bell pepper. However, this particular kebda is thinly sliced, breaded and deep fried. Because of the preparation, the gaminess was mostly removed. I'm not a big fan of liver but I still enjoyed it.

We had come to this restaurant first. However, they were still prepping. Because of Ramadan, all the restaurants open later. Now, we are back here. It's called GAD. This is neither a very local hole in wall eatery nor a westernized fast food restaurant. It's somewhere in between. Although I would love to have local authentic foods, I'm not sure that my stomach can take it. But I don't want to eat at touristy restaurants either. I think this is a happy medium.

              Tameya - Egyptian falafel, made with fava beans. It's a bit too dry.....

 Ful - Fava bean dip

Baba ganoush - This is creamier (because of tahini) than other baba ganoush I've had

This is a fruit juice bar. Although there are many fruit juices, I tried the sugar cane juice that the guide recommended. I didn't know sugar cane could grow in Egypt. I thought that sugar cane needs lots of water... Nonetheless, it was the same sugar cane juice that I've had in other countries.

The dessert is from a patisserie, El Abd. They had a mixture of traditional and western sweets. It was very crowded.

Kunafa is a thin, noodle-like pastry. This is not at all a traditional preparation of kunafa. In a small cup, kunafa and whipped cream are placed in layers. It's topped with dry fruits. I would say this is a kunafa parfait. Unlike traditional kunafa, it's not soaked in syrup, so it's not very sweet. Very unique.

Like other food tasting tours I have joined we tried a lot of food. Despite Ramadan, the trip is off to a good start.

Kuala Lumpur Day 1

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from Malaysia. Unlike the neighboring countries, such as Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, Malaysian foods are not as distinctive. Malaysian cuisine consists mostly of Malay, Indian and Chinese foods. Malay foods are supposed to be indigenous to Malaysia and Indonesia, but it seems that the Indonesian versions of Malay foods have stronger flavor. Aside from food, much of the tourism in Malaysia depends upon beach resorts, which I am not into. So Malaysia has never been on the top of my list. But I decided to give it a shot because I found a good airfare.

Via Singapore, I arrived at Kuala Lumpur a little bit after noon. It's hot and humid... traveling between the airport and hotel, I'm already soaked in sweat. As soon as I arrived at the hotel, I took a shower and rested a bit. Then, I left the hotel for a street food tasting tour. It's early evening but still very hot...

The tour was just for me. From the meeting point, we headed to the famous street for street foods, called Alor Street. The street was getting packed. First I thought I smelled rotten veggies but I soon realized that's the smell of durian....

This is Malaysian bacon (left) and sheeted meat (right). Sweet and salty but more sweet. 

Fried jackfruit - It's somewhat like fried banana. But this is definitely jackfruit. 

Karipap - Curry Empanada

It looks identical to a South American empanada. The texture of the dough was exactly like an empanada. But the filling is made with curry powder based seasoning. It does taste more Asian.

Nasi Lemak - One of the national dishes in Malaysia

This is the simplest version of Nasi Lemak without any protein. Some of the lemaks come with chicken, dried fish, peanuts, etc. The rice is cooked with coconut milk and the sauce on top of the rice is sambal. I asked for spicy sambal but it wasn't that spicy compared to Thai and Indonesian hot sauces.




Almost every country in Southeast Asia has satay. Malaysian satay seems a little sweeter. The guide advised me that I should eat all the pieces of meat on the skewer in one bite (instead of eating piece by piece)

This is a Malaysian style lemonade. There are two types of lemon in Malaysia, key lime and calamansi. Calamansi is a lot less acidic than key lime and this juice is made with calamansi. I saw calamansi a lot in Vietnam. 

The last stop of the tour is at an Indian open air restaurant. This is roti served with dal and sambal. Most Indians living in Malaysia are Tamil from South India. However, the spice level is not even close to that of South India... The Sambal was more sweet than spicy.

Malaysia consists of different ethnicities, Malay, Indian and Chinese, and different religions, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian. It is amazing that such different people coexist in a country without any major conflicts. The guide told me that Malaysians respect people from different backgrounds and I did see that. People are very kind and polite. The foods represents their melting-pot culture. There's no distinctively unique flavor/style in Malaysian cuisine but a mixed culture created dishes to accommodate all the nations.

Bulgaria - Day 1 (Sofia)

Bulgaria is not particularly known as a foodie city, nor as a tourist destination. I had some Bulgarian foods when I visited Chicago and I loved them. Since then, I have always wanted to visit Bulgaria. The uniqueness of Bulgarian cuisine was the use of dairy ingredients, specifically yogurt.

I arrived at Sofia late last night. I have heard that Bulgarians are not known as the friendliest people. Although I was ready for some sort of grumpy people, I was still surprised by the very unfriendly staff at the currency exchange and taxi dispatcher. I was hoping that this would be the worst point of the trip....

The morning started with a breakfast tour. I was expecting to stop by at several places to try different breakfast items. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a city walking guide tour with just one stop for breakfast. The name of the tour is misleading..

Nonetheless, we stopped for banitsa, which is a savory pastry with layers of eggs and cheese between filo dough. The guide told me that Bulgaria's specialty is pastry. As he told me, I saw quite a few pastry shops. This banitsa is freshly prepared and very filling. It's about the size of a quarter of a medium size pizza.

The guide also brought two drinks. The first one is airan, which is a drink made with yogurt and a hint of salt. Not sweet at all. Very well known drink in Turkey.

This drink is called boza. It is fermented wheat drink, which contain small amount (less than 1%) of alcohol. It's salty, sweet and sour, which confuses my taste buds. Very much an acquired taste.... It tasted a little soy saucy, though.

Dinner is at the restaurant recommended by the guide. Even the guide found it difficult to say the name of the restaurant, Hadjidraganov's Izbi. It's just off the main shopping street, Vitosha Boulevard. Although this street is considered the most touristy area, the guide mentioned the food is great.

There are several appetizers that I wanted to try while I'm in Bulgaria. Luckily, I found a platter including most of them. The center is Shopska, which is "THE" salad in Bulgaria. Just tomato, cucumber and cheese. Three dips include Kyopulu (eggplant) and Snezhanka (yogurt & cucumber). Kyopulu is Bulgarian version of babaganoush without tahini. Snezhanka is pretty much like tzatziki. The only difference is the yogurt is much thicker than that of tzatziki.

The bread that came with the appetizer platter is a whole loaf... Very fluffy. Wish it had a bit more salt, though.

This is not a great picture. Pork platter for two, Kyufte on right (seasoned ground meat shaped around the stick) and Kebapche on left (pork kebab). Pork is the most consumed meat in Bulgaria. The platter came with sausages. The seasoning is on the light side. I had to sprinkle additional salt or "rainbow" salt on the table, which is a mixture of different spices and salt. I tasted cumin for sure. Later I found this is called Sharena sol. 

 Yogurt made from Buffalo milk, topped with walnut and drizzle of honey. Very thick.

Creme brulee. Compared to French creme brulee, it seems thickened by some sort of starch


I rarely saw smiling faces, even between locals. I never heard anyone laughing throughout the day. I've read in some articles that Bulgarians get grumpier as it gets colder. It was a pretty cold day. I'm going to Plovdiv, the second largest city in Bulgaria, tomorrow. Usually people in a smaller city are more laid back. I hope tomorrow is a bit more uplifting.

Ho Chi Minh - Street food tasting tour

I took the afternoon flight from Hue to Ho Chi Minh City and then cab into the city. I was expecting some traffic in Ho Chi Minh City but it's much worse than what I thought. I was a bit nervous that I wouldn't make it to the evening street food tasting tour, because of time.

I did make it but it took more than 1 hour for 7 km ride. I've seen crazy traffic with tremendous numbers of motorbikes on TV before, but now I see that, in Ho Chi Minh City at least, that it does actually exist - that's no exaggeration!  It seems that no regular traffic rules apply and it's unbelievable I don't see any accidents...

A little bit after I checked into the hotel, the street tour guides arrived at the hotel to pick me up. I booked this tour from Vietnamstreetfoods.com. They offer both motorbike and walking options. Although I wouldn't have to drive the motorbike myself, I felt uncomfortable to even sit on the back in such crazy traffic, so I chose the walking option. The two guides arranged a taxi and took us to district 4 (my hotel is in the district 1). It's only a few km but it took more than 30 min....

The food market/stands area in this district is huge We started from the fruit section. The guides told me that I can choose any fruits I'm interested in. Two fruits grabbed my attention.

The first is a custard apple.  It looks like a young pine cone. It does taste like cherimoya that I tasted in Peru. In fact this has more flavor than cherimoya and it was really good. The only problem is the custard apple is much smaller than cherimoya (slightly smaller than tennis balls). There are many seeds and the skin tastes bitter. It needs some experience to eat this.

The second fruit is milk fruit. It's called this way because the juice resembles to milk. The guide told me a story about this fruit but I didn't quite understand it completely. They are the third guides since I arrived in Vietnam. Unfortunately, the English level of the Vietnamese guides (also hotel staff) is not as high as other countries I've visited. They all have great personalities to make it up for, though.

This is the milk fruit after cutting into half, seeds stayed on the other half (like an avocado)

This is fresh sugar cane juice with kumquat. It's still pretty sweet but not syrupy. The added kumquat juice makes it refreshing.

This is the kumquat used in the sugar cane juice

After the fruit section, we moved to "cooked" foods vendors area. The first snack was fried dough with minced meat inside. This is the Vietnamese version of piroshki. The guide told me the name but unfortunately I don't remember it....

Suddenly, one of the guides asked "do you like snake wine?" Not really... But I said "why not," instead. So, it's the snake infused (?) wine. I don't know what exactly the liquor is. It tasted neutral, like vodka. In fact it was as strong as vodka in terms of alcohol. I don't know what snake is supposed to taste like. But I didn't taste anything unusual. Just a strong liquor flavor.

The next stop is bahn mi. This is the second bahn mi after the one I tasted in Hoi An (the one Anthony Bourdain visited). This one is made with various meat products. Very flavorful with spiciness and sweetness. But I liked the other bahn mi better.

Next, a short break with fresh coconut juice. I chose the chilled coconut since it's very hot and humid. When ordered, they cut the top off and stick a straw. It tasted very fresh. The guide told me that it takes a day to chill the juice completely because of the thick coconut flesh,

This is something I've never had. Minced meat is mixed with seasoning and wrapped in betel leaves. They are grilled at the front. Smells wonderful!

They are served with rice paper, rice noodles and a veggie/herb plate. The two unique veggies on the plate are starfruit and and young banana. Both are sliced thinly and give a hint of bitterness. The rice paper is very thin and I didn't have to soak it in water. After wrapping everything with the rice paper, the whole roll is dipped into the fish sauce based dipping sauce. Very good.

This is Pho!! It's a hot and humid day (although it was after 7:00pm by then) and inside the restaurant it was like a sauna because of the boiling pho broth. The girl in the photo below was drenched in sweat. Vietnam is a very hot country. I wonder how so many soup noodles dishes became popular in such an environment...

The beef was lightly cooked in the boiling broth, so it's not as rare as what I'm used to

The guide showed me how to make dipping sauce for the beef. You can directly add the condiments to the broth or dip the meat. But it seems more Vietnamese to eat Pho the second way (at least among the Vietnamese around me). It's hoisin sauce (the guide called it sweet soy), hot sauce, citrus juice (kumquat) and house made chili sauce (dried chili flakes in oil). These are mixed before dipping. So far, I haven't seen "World wide famous Sriracha" in Vietnam!! I saw something similar, though. Sriracha is manufactured in the US. So, I guess Sriracha is the US version of the Vietnamese hot sauce  made by Vietnamese immigrants in the US.

The last stop of the tour is seafood! The scallop below is grilled with shallot, scallion and peanuts. Served with sauce. Don't know what the ingredients for the sauce but I guess shrimp paste is included. Very savory sauce.

Grilled shrimp with chili. When I taste the shell, it's very spicy. But after being peeled, there's only a hint of spiciness. Very fresh shrimp. Also, it comes with a similar dipping sauce.

This seafood eatery had many different varieties of seafood. I saw some giant clams that I've never seen. If I was going to stay longer, I would like to come back here.

During the tour, we had quite a few things that came with ice, such as sugarcane juice, teas and even beer. I didn't feel completely comfortable with this (because of the unknown water source) but I gave up eventually because it was so hot and I needed something cool. Many of the ice "cubes" were big cylinders with a whole on one side. After I came back to the hotel, I Googled the ice in Vietnam in general. It seems this big cylindrical ice is safe to consume. Even other types of ice are usually ok in big cities. I should have checked this before I came to Vietnam....

Tomorrow is a full day cooking class!

Lima - last day

The last day! I signed up for a food and bike tour. This is the same tour company that I signed up with two days ago for a tour of the city center. This time we're going south of Lima, to a suburb called Barranco.

One of the same guides took us to a seaport, in the district of Chorillos, where freshly caught seafood is sold. The view was amazing and all the seafood could not look any fresher. The guide picked up some fish and took me to a nearby "mom & pop" seafood shop.

There, the fish was made into fresh cebiche!! Again, because the fish is so fresh, it didn't need much time to marinate. It came out within 10 minutes. It was as good as the one I made at the cooking class yesterday. The guide told me that locals eat cebiche between breakfast and lunch as a snack because many local restaurants don't have refrigerators, so they have to finish serving by early afternoon. Of course, big restaurants with good refrigeration can keep the seafood fresh and serve it at dinner.

The next stop was the oldest bar in Barranco, called Juanito Bar. Yes, it's a bar and we were supposed to have alcoholic drinks there, but not today.... Tomorrow is the presidential election day in Peru and any alcohol consumption the day before the election is prohibited.. But the causa trio below was excellent. These causa isn't the typical layered shape; instead, different toppings are served on top of balls of causa potato. This one had scallop, octopus and tuna (left to right). Still the best one is octopus. It was well seasoned and tender!

For dinner, I did some research because this is going to be the last meal in Peru. I found this restaurant, Panchita Sazon Criolla. It seems this is Gaston's restaurant. Some guidebooks and online comments mention Gaston's name but not the restaurant's website. So, I'm not totally sure... Gaston is probably the most famous chef in Peru and his restaurant, Astrid & Gaston, is ranked No. 14 of the world's 50 best restaurant in 2015. I had tried to book his restaurant in Cuzco, called Chicha, but couldn't make the reservation.

This restaurant specializes in grilled and stewed dishes. The first dish is anticucho. Compared to the anticucho I had the other day, this is definitely more sophisticated. The beef heart was cooked medium rare and the corn accompaniment was separated from the cob and lightly sauteed. The seasoning was as good as the other anticucho.

This is a pork stew, called adobo. Adobo can be totally different things depending on the culture. In the Philippines, adobo is normally a chicken stew involving vinegar. In Mexico, it refers to a chili-based pasty sauce. In Peru, adobo is stewed pork, which originated from the Arequipa region. I don't think that traditionally this is such a big chunk of pork but this restaurant offered a very generous portion, in a very complex flavored sauce. So yummy!

I don't know if this is a traditional or a fusion dish but it's so good! Stewed beef tongue that melts in your mouth. The sauce tasted a bit like Beef Bourguignon. I was expecting the puree underneath to be grits (corn), but it was a very creamy mashed potato.

In this trip, I would say the two most noteworthy dishes/foods were cebiche and fruits. I've had quite a few cebiche. But nothing can beat cebiche made with fish that was caught in the same day!! When marinated the minimal amount of time with fresh lime juice and fresh chilis, it cannot be any fresher. Also, the amazing fruits. My most favorite is granadilla, which is one of the sweeter passion fruits. It has a floral aroma that reminds me of some Pinot Noirs. It resembles lychee in flavor, which is also my favorite. In fact, the very last food I had in Peru was granadilla at the airport. I bought some at the supermarket and took it to the airport. I was enjoying it until I was ready to board the plane.

Another amazing trip!