TOP CULINARY DELIGHTS OF
WHITE HINTERLAND'S EUROPEAN TOUR
2008
1. Munich, DE: DREI OYSTERS MIT ZITRONFirst, the promoter from Rote Sonne made us the most amazing sandwich I had the whole tour (see photo), a simple crusty baguette with arugula, speck, and thinly sliced salty cheese. Then, once we had our fill of lebkuchen and afrikola, he sent us to La Bouche for dinner.
We settled in with a nice bottle of Syrah on the table, and it didn’t take long for me to notice a very special item on the menu: Three oysters, served as is, with a wedge of lemon. Oysters are my favorite, any shape or size or preparation will do—but it doesn’t take much to dress up an oyster. The best ones seem to benefit from a minimalist’s touch—something vinegary, something acidic, or better yet, nothing at all. Just brine. We each ordered a plate, and I can’t remember much after I finished the last fist-sized oyster on my plate, its gills still skirting about the edges of the shell. The rest of the meal was good, of course, but served mostly as an afterthought to those beautiful mollusks.
2. Fransiskovsky-Lazne, CZ: SAUERBRATEN MIT KNUDELI wouldn’t say that this is a choice based on food alone—but so much of the revelation of good eating has little to do with food. We spent two days off in the Czech Republic, in an old bath village built around a natural sulfuric spring. I believe I’m safe in assuming we were among all of twenty-some people in the entire town who were A) not German tourists, and B) under the age of 65.
One night, the guys dressed up in the track suits they purchased at one of the many roadside Asia Bazaars, and we went to the Kasino in the centre of town for a dinner. The place was a scene straight out of Ratatouille—a big white marble proscenium, a maitre d’hotel dressed as a penguin, a glass floor revealing hundreds of Japanese Koi swimming underfoot, a jazz pianist playing Burt Bacharach songs, and best of all, perfect medallions of sauerbraten and pillowy sliced knudel, unveiled before us from beneath those old-fashioned haute-cuisine sterling silver bell jars. You haven’t lived ‘till you’ve dined upon a koi pond while humming “Rain Drops Keep Falling On My Head.”
3. Brighton, England: MILK-BRAISED DUCK LEG WITH SPICED CABBAGE AND ROASTED PLUMS AT BILL’S GARAGEWe’d been duly warned about many things in the UK, but nothing quite so ominously as the food. I don’t really understand why, because aside from a limp slice of curry pizza one night, some of the best food we ate all tour was in the UK. There was a lot of places emphasizing the seasonal and locally farmed, and the quality and care put into food there was often more evident than in other countries we visited.
Brighton was the big surprise. We asked members of the band opening that evening if they had any suggestions, and they drew up a map to a “garage of glorious food.” Good enough. The place is called Bill’s, and serves as both chichi locavore grocery store and chichi locavore dining room. For all the precocity, its food obliterated all pretension. I had a milk-braised duck leg, with roasted plums and spicy aniseed red-cabbage. Davis was given a nice knuckle full of marrow with his lamb steak. It was beautiful.
4. Paris, France: MAGRET DE CANARD AU POIVRE AVEC POMMES SALARDISES Surprise, delicious food in France! But seriously…we got to Paris a day early, and we’d had sort of a hellish two-days drive from Ireland (complete with ferry rides, rain, stale gas station food, our gas tank running out and nearly marooning us in a shut-down town outside of Lille…) We arrived tired, stringy, dirty, and HUNGRY. Really hungry.
We were in the Bastille, crestfallen when the hostel we’d hoped to stay at was totally booked, and moped across the way to a nondescript bistro.
The menu was so simple, it might as well have said “I hope you like steak & potatoes!” The guys each got a giant steak, myself a nice magret breast, each served with some variation of potatoes and a consolatory flush of bitter greens. The only seasoning was pepper and salt, my potatoes were cooked in duck fat and studded with lardons of bacon. Everyone’s viandes were served
saignant, or rare—and that means VERY rare in France, which made me feel like a new woman after two days in the Sprinter.
5. Luzerne, Switzerland: ROASTED CHESTNUTSOne morning, I woke up around 7 AM before everyone else, and wandered down to the lakefront in Luzerne so I could scrounge up some breakfast. I don’t really do breakfast, typically. Usually a piece of fruit and some toast is the most I need. It was still pretty cool and crisp outside, and I stumbled on to the town market where above the heads of shoppers rose their breath like fog. My German’s terrible, but I managed to find my heart’s desire: roasted chestnuts. An old man and his wife run a marroni shack by the lake, and he turns the x-scored nuts in a giant cast-iron pot while she sourly packages them by the gram into wax-paper packages. What the couple lack in mirth, they make up for in the studied perfection of their trade. When I peeled open the first chestnut in my hands, still scorching hot from the coals and nearly burning my tongue on impact, it was clear that they had given me the best chestnut I’d ever tasted.
6. Somewhere outside of Cork, Ireland: FULL IRISH BREAKFASTIn Ireland, I came down with a bad cold. It was the worst timing. I’d been the most excited about Ireland. So while the guys did as Joyce, Dylan, and those before us (whisky, guinness, rinse, repeat), I usually got stuck drinking tea and sniffling.
I know I said above that I’m not really into big breakfasts—but in Ireland, we slept a lot of the time in the van, and it could get awfully cold at night, and in the morning, when you wake up looking like a soggy rumpled piece of paper, is there anything more restorative than a solid breakfast?
The British and the Irish are pretty serious about their breakfasts. I think this excited the guys more than it did me, but one morning, outside of Belfast we passed a restaurant with stone-façade, its menu painted on a big sign out front: Breakfast – 10 Euros, Lunch – 15 Euros. Bingo.
This is the typical Irish Breakfast, in full:
Irish Soda Bread, maybe a whole loaf, generously dressed with soft butter
Black tea, piping hot and strong1 Fried Egg
2 links of sausage
2 Rashers of Bacon
1 round of Black Pudding (a kind of blood sausage)
1 round of White Pudding (same thing, but more undesirable bits, less blood)
1 half of a grilled tomato
All of this grease comes accompanied by the ubiquitous Brown Sauce—sort of like A1 sauce, but thicker and more tamarind-y. The best part for me was the Black pudding, but afterwards, I had do take a nap. I think I need only one Full Irish Breakfast a year, if that.
7. Brussels, Belgium: PATE EN CROUTE AT ANCIENNE BELGIQUE
Ancienne Belgique has a large cafeteria for staff and talent, and you’re given free reign of the espresso machine upon arrival. This was our last meal, and a great way of going out. There was a smoked trout pate en croute, with yoghurt-dill sauce, pork loin stuffed with cepes and leeks, and a nice sort of rhubarb parfait for desert. I’m really obsessed with terrines and pates, and this was by far the best terrine we had on tour (even better than the headcheese in aspic I had in Berlin).
8. Zurich, Switzerland: FAMILY DINNER AT EL LOKAL
My favorite part of touring in Europe was getting to eat family-style meals at the venues. At almost every meal, the crew at the venue would often be seated with us, which lends itself a rare sense of community in the transient lifestyle of the touring musician. El Lokal outdid itself here. The staff is wonderful, friendly, and we had the good fortune of having Steven as our sound tech that night. He proved to be a good dining companion, truly jovial and chatty. All of the food at El Lokal is locally grown and raised, and the portions were quite dangerously gargantuan. Everything was family style: nice thick slices of brown bread, herb salad tossed with raw grated beets, and lamb ragout with pasta.
9. Dromore, Ireland: BARRETT LAHEY’S BROWN SAUCE AND TOAST
We stayed 20 minutes outside of Belfast with Barrett, a friend of Davis’ who once lived in Portland. He must have sensed our exhaustion, for once we got back to his beautiful house he prepared the perfect snack: thick brown toasted bread with melted slices of cheddar, strong black tea spiked with whisky, and a few hard-boiled eggs. The toasts were served with, what else, Brown Sauce—and something about it just hit the spot. I’d been skeptical of Brown Sauce until this very moment.
10. Dudingen, Switzerland: LAMPIONKIRSCHES AT BAD BONN
Sometimes, my stomach might be more influenced by my mood than my actual taste-buds. Something about Bad Bonn sticks in my mind—maybe it was because our first meal in Europe coming off a long flight, maybe because it was sitting on the edge of a field beneath two rainbows coaxed into view by a light and gentle rain. Sometimes, it’s not even about food. But we were given a bowl of lampionkirsches, which we call stone cherries or husk cherries. They’re delicious, and addictive—they taste exactly like Cap’n’Crunch Crunchberries.
11. Berlin, German: LAVISH BRUNCH ON THE RIVER SPREE
Berlin turned out to be a completely bacchanalian glut-fest. We stayed with new friends of ours one night—who took us first to a Lebanese restaurant where we ate ourselves silly with falafel, doner kebabs, yoghurt sauce, pickles. Then Nagel's friend Dennis treated us to his mother’s homemade pickles, bracingly sour and hot, and a kind of potato gratin that’s was bit like aligot, followed by thin pizzas and plenty of vodka.
Of course, the most hilariously decadent meal we had on the entire tour was aboard a boat on the River Spree in honor of our booking agency’s 20th anniversary. We got very used to platter-feeding on this tour. Generally we'd show up to the venue and there'd be so much food that you would have thought 20 people were due any minute to join you. It sometimes broached the point of ludicrousness. But the buffet aboard the boat was nothing but beautiful (though obviously, also quite extravagant). Immediately upon arrival to the boat party, guests were given dragonfruit juice or prosecco in slender flutes, and then, my friends, the deluge. A spread befitting Lucullus was put before us and the other Berlin sophisticates aboard, including, but not limited to:
Platters of seafood including prawns and sardines, candy-smoked salmon, dill-cured gravlax
Countless grilled vegetables (eggplants, slippery red peppers, lemon, onion, zucchini and summer squash)
Cheese plate
A platter of prosciutto, speck, sopressata, cotechino, etc.
Cumin-spiced Basmati Rice and Stewed Spinach
Grilled Halibut
Every kind of tropical fruit imaginable, arranged like birds of paradise in a comically large basket
Tiny trifles of chocolate mousse, strawberry parfaits, and tiramisu
I’m leaving out quite a lot—but it was so expansive and unbelievable that I can’t remember half of what there, except that it was probably the most food I could ever hope to see at once in my lifetime.
