Come join the flavour revolution

I’ve never been one of those crazy chocolate-lovers — the kind of person who breaks through walls to gain access to a square of Dairy Milk or  sniffs out a Green & Black’s from 90 paces, like a cacao-sensitised truffle pig.

Chocolate is yummy…sometimes, was my measured opinion. That was, until our recent trip to New York City during which our guide from Levys’ Unique New York led us over hill and dale to the most outrageously good chocolate I have ever set tongue on. In truth, it wasn’t over hill and dale but across shattered-glass-strewn streets and past the Boar’s Head meat processing plant, because this chocolate source was in the emergingly hip neighbourhood of Bushwick.

I’ll be writing more about Bushwick soon, but suffice it to say here that it truly blew my mind. I lived 10 years in New York City and you get pretty used to people telling you that this gritty enclave or that is the latest cool place. Sometimes it’s true and you find that the mouse-infested railroad apartment you rented just a few years ago is now so expensive they’ve practically erected a velvet rope outside. Sometimes you visit these neighbourhoods and see the young people with interesting facial hair amid the urban bombscape and think, “Good luck with that!”

But Bushwick is one of those places with that weird evolving combination of art scene, creative types, restaurants that cater to the new hipsters and old-school bodegas that just works. One of the reasons is Fine & Raw.

At Fine & Raw with owner, former financial analyst Daniel

My cache of chocolates. Note: Some purchases may have already been eaten

The founder of Fine & Raw, Daniel, has a chocolate mission statement (-sigh- these days who doesn’t?). In his case it’s completely justified. We walked into this storefront warehouse-like space (actually a former open-air garage between two buildings, now enclosed) which had a small glass counter at the front. On it, a few minuscule shards of Seasalt chocolate sat on a plate. I took a morsel, popped it in my mouth and my knees practically buckled. One of the guys wearing an “interesting” hat came over and cut up a Truffle Chunky bar for us to sample — reader, I married it.

Fine & Raw uses raw chocolate without refined sugars, diary or additives. It’s sweetened with blue agave nectar and palm sugar, and avoids the bitterness of many dark chocolates, so much so that even the young children in our group — 9 and 7 — mmmm‘ed over the different versions. Eight of us shared one of the super-rich hot chocolates, made from a thick syrup and steamed milk like a latte. My daughter picked out a Seasalt bar to take home.

A spray-painted sign inside the factory echoes the street art theme in the neighbourhood

Our guide Matt Levy had brought us on our last stop of our tour admiring street art (again, more on that soon). They call this big industrial space a chocolate factory, which sounds a little too much like Spaghetti Warehouse to me. But I couldn’t recommend it more. The guy behind the counter (facial hair, trilby) gave the children cocoa beans to hold and talked to them about where chocolate came from as we picked out which varieties we wanted to take home.

In the end I spent $60 — more than $8 per bar — on chocolate to bring home. What can I say? It costs a lot to have taste this good.

We took a tour with Levys’ Unique New York as part of a larger group at a reduced blogger rate. All opinions in the article are my own.

Fine & Raw
288 Seigel St
Brooklyn, NY 11206
718-366-3633
Check website for cafe hours
www.fineandraw.com

Walk through the front doors and you’re immediately in a lounge area with practically regular-home proportions: sofas, flowers, coffee table. You’re in a space where the person, not the echoing space, is central. Around the corner is the big “wow” moment: a registration desk with dandelion sculptures floating overhead and screens that soar upwards. The dandelions are part of a motif throughout the hotel. There are also 1,700 works by Canadian artists are featured — a touch I really like.

We stayed in room 1614, a suite that could easily house a family of four (including our growing teenager), with us in the ample bedroom and the kids on the sofabed. This room also connects to the one next door. That meant instead of sharing the sitting area, we could actually throw them in a separate room, where we could occasionally hear them rushing from room to room and cackling between themselves. Upon arrival they promptly made coffee for daddy with the in-room Nespresso machine (sadly, no George Clooney provided), clambered into their round bathtub (ours was a regular rectangle), tried out the in-room iPads and started devouring their edible welcome message from the hotel with their names spelled out on a dish along with candies and goodies.

Throughout our stay, the staff really engaged with the kids. While we had a couples’ massage, the hotel had booked the kids in for a mocktail lesson with the bartender. When we met up afterwards for a swim they were full of advice on how to properly shake a cocktail, what’s a good garnish and their favourite drinks — virgin versions of classics like strawberry daiquiris with names they made up themselves. Start ‘em young, I say. They love mixing fruit juice drinks at home and so were chuffed to have professional knowledge. A bonus for us: they wanted to visit the Daniel Boulud dBar lounge as frequently as we did.

Shaking a mocktail

Straining like a champ

Cheers!

Down the hatch

Three of their concoctions

The spa, usually an amenity cast down into the basement, presumably to make way for revenue-generating rooms, here is on the 9th floor. It features a pool edged by windows over the city, skylights and an outdoor terrace. The mani-pedi salon is similarly swamped with light. It serves as a spa and gym for the guests who live in the attached 26-floor residential tower and is the largest Four Seasons spa in the group. I had one of the best massages I’ve ever experienced during our couples’ treatment (and believe me I’ve researched the matter. Arduously).  “She’s strong,” my husband said of his therapist and her technique — what he could remember before dozing off, while their thumbs and elbows turned our knotted muscles into taffy.

Orchids poolside

A shallow wading pool in the spa

Seating poolside

That night we ate a casual dinner in dBar, lounge type restaurant from Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud. I had the Firehouse #312 burger. The story goes that chef Daniel Boulud visited the heritage Yorkville fire station next door and asked the firefighters what they wanted in their ideal burger. The result is a beef patty topped with pulled pork, jalapeno mayonnaise and Boston lettuce, served on a cheddar bun with fries — perfect in advance of rushing into a burning building. I tried it and while I couldn’t finish it, I would like to say thank you to Toronto’s firefighters for thinking it up.

The kids ordered regular burgers and mocktails and loved them. We ate early, around 6pm, when dBar was buzzing with an after-work crowd. At the next table a Louise Brooks ringer in an assymetrical dress had cocktails with a man in a sharp suit. Laughter occasionally burst through the room. I would have liked to linger but we were off to see a local production of Wizard of Oz, which included impressive pyrotechnics and an elaborate stage.

In-room treats presented on a bent-wood riser: biscuits, fudge in the glass apple on top and sugar lollipops

The next night we ate at Cafe Boulud upstairs. It’s decorated by Rosalie Wise Sharp, wife of Four Seasons founder Isadore Sharp, in a style distinctly different from the creams and greys in the rest of the hotel. Here it’s bright colours and Mr Brainwash artwork, street art that has an entire backstory related to Banksy. (There are two other Cafe Bouluds, one in New York City, one in Palm Beach.) The menu here focuses on seasonal and regional ingredients, organised around the Boulud’s inspirations of classic French cooking (La Tradition), seasonality (La Saison), the vegetable garden (Le Potager) and flavours from around the world (Le Voyage).

Here’s the place to indulge and order the terrine of foie gras, the crispy duck egg, the Ontario venision. Even though it is the fancier restaurant, we weren’t the only ones there dining with children. The staff rustled up an adapted version of the risotto for our daughter and our son tried the steak au poivre and declared himself a fan of the dish forever more.

Cafe Boulud with Mr Brainwash art

Perfectly poached eggs

The breakfasts served here are also to die for. My husband pronounced the scrambled eggs and smoked salmon as the “best he’s ever had”, perhaps even including his own. I know – shocker. I had a decadent eggs benedict (with Canadian bacon, natch) one morning and luscious lemon ricotta hotcakes the other. The kids ordered pancakes for all 3 breakfasts — and are now regularly requesting them at home (thanks, Daniel!).

All of this was fantastic, but most of all we like the attitude of all the staff — not just toward us but toward the children as well. They seemed interested in why we were visiting Toronto. They gave advice for our outings (we would have cynically missed out the impressive dinosaur exhibits at the Royal Ontario Museum and the delightful side trip to Niagara on the Lake if not for their tips). They treated the children like valued guests, not just short, nuisance hangers-on. Despite its status at the hotel of the prestigious chain, it exuded friendliness. No attitude. No snootiness.

It was humble yet impressive in ways that caught us by surprise. It doesn’t shout about itself. All that low-key confidence makes sense, in a way. It seems  like a perfectly a Canadian trait.

We flew to Toronto as guests of Porter Air and stayed at the hotel as guests of Four Seasons Toronto but were otherwise not paid. The opinions in this review are mine and my families’.

More family travel reviews

My video review of Four Seasons Park Lane, London, England, UK

Visiting Toronto with kids: sights and highlights

Whole fruit margaritas

I love to throw TexMex dinner parties in London. Everyone raves about the food, which tends to be cheese, smothered in cheese and topped with sour cream. It also helps if you force a margarita into their hand the minute they walk through the door.

That was (kinda) the premise to the margarita party I held today with my BritMums co-founder Susanna, our BritMums Live ladies Maddy and George and a group bloggers. The other was to try out the Vitamix machine we’d been sent.

We had my famous guacamole (ahem — check out the video of how to make it here), quesadillas with roasted peppers and sweetcorn, crispy-shell tacos, and 7 layer dip (this is an uber-American staple of TexMex parties and, um, university keggers).

Then it was to the machine! The Vitamix blends, grinds, mills, pulses and, most importantly for our party, mixes. Usually for margaritas I spend an hour before a party hand squeezing limes to get enough juice. This time I used the Vitamix Whole Fruit Margarita recipe, which I can say with authority contains at least 1 of your five a day at least, as well as a minimum RDA of booze.

I took a half orange, half lemon and half lime (all peeled), 60ml tequila and 30ml Triple Sec, 3 tablespoons of sugar, maybe a couple of tablespoons of water and 21 ice cubes. Do count them out. Then you whiz it up in the Vitamix, starting at the 1 setting and turning it up to 10 before flipping the “high” switch that means the Vitamix really does go to 11. These were delicious, tangy, fruity and had a nice kick.

Some of the ladies who came along however were driving or picking up kids later and requested a virgin version. (Wait, you can make them without alcohol?) In Texas this is easy by substituting store-bought frozen limeade for the alcohol, but we don’t have that here.

We did have a bottle of Pom pomegranate juice, half a carton of orange juice and loads of limes though, so here’s a virgin version I came up with. Now I only need a name. Any suggestions? Recipe below.

• Half an orange, peeled
• Half a lemon, peeled
• Half a lime, peeled
• The juice of half a lime
• Liberal splash of orange juice
• 40ml of pomegranate juice
• 4 Tablespoons of sugar
• About 5 Tablespoons of water
• 21 ice cubes

(These instructions here are drawn from Vitamix’s instructions, with only slight tweaks.)

1. Put all ingredients into Vitamix container in the order listed and put on the lid.
2. Select Variable 1.
3. Turn machine on and slowly increase speed to Variable 10, then to High (oh yes, 11!).
4. Blend for 45 seconds, using the tamper to press the ingredients into the blades.
5. Pour drink into a glass and garnish with a slice of lime and a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds on top.

Depending on how assiduously you’ve peeled away all the pith and how long you’ve blitzed the drink, you might pour the drink through the a coarse sieve to strain out any pieces of pith. I don’t like to blend drinks too long so I’d rather take this quick step than keep it on high too long.

Pssst. You can still add tequila and Triple Sec, if you want.

Disclosure: The BritMums team received the Vitamix machine as part of a project we’re doing with Vitamix and BritMums foodie bloggers.

We will walk across this: Brooklyn Bridge

One of the perils of visiting someplace you used to live is a certain cockiness. You think, “Yeah, I know this town. I used to own this town. I don’t need no stinking guidebook.”

Of course, that attitude doesn’t take into account — at least in this case — that I last lived in New York as a young, single and ready-to-mingle gal back at the turn of the century. This time, I’m arriving with kids in tow who have their own ideas of fun and the city has moved on.

I’ve just come to terms with this and thus have hurriedly spent the past few days putting together some kind of plan so we don’t end up dragging exhausted children all around the island. Here are some of the highlights we’re planning:

• Going to the top of the Empire State Building — Truly iconic, and we’ve found what looks like a good little hotel 2 blocks away, Hotel Grand Union. We’ve booked a family room with a double and two twins, and it’s easy walking distance to the building itself, the 6 train, Penn Station and Koreatown, in case we fancy Korean barbecue.
• Eating food you can’t get in London — Pizza by the slice, honest-to-god bagels (boiled, people, they must be boiled) with cream cheese, American burgers. Milkshakes. Maybe even some vegetables. Maybe.
• Taking a Levy’s Unique New York graffiti tour of Brooklyn — This was recommended by a friend of a friend as a family-friendly tour outfit. It’s no wonder: the operation is run by the Levy family, who take visitors around the city personally (along with a few helpers). We’ll be taking the Brooklyn Represent tour, seeing graffiti, street art, gentrifying areas of the borough, ending at an artisanal pizza joint. Levy brother Matt is showing us round and I have a feeling my 14-year-old is going to love it. (Note: The Levy’s have kindly comp’ed our tour. I’ll let you know how it is.)
• Fighting the crowds in Chinatown — Crowded, busy, and distinctly different from the rest of Manhattan. We’ll be eating noodles (one of my daughter’s favourites) and duck pancakes.

• Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge — Traversing the iconic bridge to Brooklyn Heights is one of the best experiences in the city. I’m crossing my fingers for a clear day. We may stop at Jane’s Carousel in DUMBO for a quick go-round. We’ll do this end of the week to hit the Thursday – Sunday winter opening hours for the carousel.
• Messing around at Sony Wonder Technology Lab – My friend Stephanie Dolgoff (her book My Formerly Hot Life perfectly captures that feeling of moving from single hottie to married mommy) raves about this place. It’s one of the destinations that would never had made the list of the old me. From what I can tell, it’s a cross between the Apple Store and a science museum and looks mind-boggling. I’ll let you know.
• Hitting the MOMA, American Museum of Natural History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim Museum — Yes, yes, everyone goes there. But there’s a reason. No trip to NYC is complete without them.

I’ll be blogging about the trip more on Jenography and on the BritMums site, so keep your eyes peeled.

Got suggestions for places to eat that kids will like? I’d love your suggestions.

I’ve created a trip guide on Gogobot. Check it out to see more of the things we’re planning and what other people say about them.

Travel Reviews, Tips & Ideas

After moving a stack of postcards around my desk for the 10th time, I decided to buy a proper organiser box (I got a stack of them from Paperchase) and at least keep them all together.

Looking at them like this, a few themes emerge:

• I love postcards whose imagery has obviously been kicking around for a decade or two, with special appreciation for those that include pictures of people in markedly dated clothing.
• What about those postcards — conceived from misplaced boosterism — that feature drab buildings, underwhelming attractions and ugly vistas? Is anyone tempted to visit because of them? No. But I will take one home as evidence.
• Retro typography. Really, I just can’t get enough.

To celebrate these postcards, every Wednesday I’ll be posting one from my collection. I hope you’ll enjoy it. If you blog, please join in and post your own Wish Your Were Here postcard from someplace you’ve been and a postcard you’ve brought back.

This week’s is this fab Times Square postcard. I’m going with my children for the first time to my old hometown.

Obviously this was taken in 1988 — the year that the film Big came out, as evidenced by the billboard. The colours so have that big-shoulder pad, Bonfire of the Vanities feel. The typeface screams Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. I don’t think they even make this shade of pink anymore.

New York’s a lot different now. I love how it’s changed. But it’s good to remember that it once was a place where the dream didn’t have anything to do with cool Williamsburg neighbourhoods or pop-up restaurants. It was all about getting a job in Manhattan where you got to wear a suit and have your own secretary because personal assistants hadn’t been invented yet.

A view of lower Manhattan from the Brooklyn Promenade

I spent 10 of my most formative years in New York City — those in my 20s and early 30s, drinking, dining, dating, working and generally becoming what passes for an adult.

Then I left for London and a British life with my husband. I love London, but New York is still my spiritual home. That just makes it all the stranger that my kids have never been there.

My daughter did make a brief appearance at 4 months old, doing the rounds to meet my close friends. I remember virtually nothing of that trip except that we stayed in a corporate apartment in midtown that my husband had organised through his job. I anxiously warmed formula and baby rice and put her to bed in a pop-up travel cot I’d borrowed from a friend.

Since then I’ve been back to visit friends on my own, doing the drinking and dining thing (dating is on hold per my husband’s instructions), and generally acting like a long lost New Yorker.

“Grown-up” fun in a New York bar

This Easter however, I will be returning with my husband, my 9-year-old and my 14-year-old — a family. I will be experiencing the city for the first time as a mother.

Visiting New York with kids

That means for the first time I’m researching things kids do in the city (funny enough, hitting my favourite cafes before shoe shopping isn’t anywhere on the list). I’m debating the merits of the Guggenheim versus the Moma versus the Natural History Museum for the under-21s and wondering just how many we can cram in. I’m getting advice from friends of friends of places I didn’t even know existed, like the M&M store where you can get your face put on one of the candies and the Sony Wonder Technology Lab.

It’s literally a whole new world. The city has gotten a lot more kid-friendly and kid-cooler than when I lived there. I’ll get to visit sights I haven’t been to since my mother and father came to visit while I living in a Brooklyn apartment next to Prospect Park, like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. (Everybody knows the *real* New Yorkers only see those things when family comes to town.)

Jane’s Carousel next to the Brooklyn Bridge, in an area that used to be sketchy, now a favourite with families

Will they fall in love, like I did?

My own love affair with New York began during a cross-country trip with my parents and brother and sister in our yellow station wagon. Back then, Times Square was still a scary place to walk late at night. When we arrived at the first hotel my parents had booked, they went upstairs and came straight back down again, determined we wouldn’t spend a single night there.

The city was gritty and thrilling and unnerving and I made a decision right then — walking to Grand Central Station with the brand new blue-and-red umbrella my parents had bought me from one of the vendors who blossom on the street corners with every thunderstorm — that I would live there one day.

I did and it lived up to its reputation, both good and bad. The city my children will see is vastly different. It’s the first time I’ll see it through their eyes.

I still love it with a passion. Will they see what I did and become lifelong devotees too?

Stay tuned…

I love the musicians who perform in the official spaces in the official busking spaces of Underground stations. But here was a man on a train, travelling along the line, making beautiful music as we journeyed home.

He was obviously homeless or at least had fallen on hard times. His gray hair was messy and looked unwashed. His fingernails had dirt not just underneath them but all around the base of the nailbed. When he spoke you could see a gap where we was missing at least one tooth. Even the violin had seen better days. The finish looked oily. The open violin case on the floor revealed a purple lining that had wholly worn away and ripped in places, exposing the styrofoam underneath.

But as he started to play, his fingers moved swiftly — properly trained. His bow — with fluffly tangles of broken horsehairs at each end — coaxed flawless tunes from the instrument. He closed his eyes in concentration. His face was a man in love with music.

In the short journey between Kennington and Oval he transformed the coach into a small recital hall. All the passengers turned their faces toward him; some gave up their seats on the crowded carriage to put a pound or a scattering of silver coins into the case, with a loud thunk each time.

Between numbers he had a smooth patter with a gracious manner, describing the song and the composer before playing it. At the end people applauded, not in that meek embarrassed way I’ve seen people do for other performers in public spaces, but assertively, saying thanks as they stepped down onto the platform.

Several people positioned themselves to take pictures or video. As the musician was getting off the train, his violin safely stowed in that tattered case, an older well-dressed man in a camel-coloured coat said, “That was excellent. Expect to see it on YouTube tomorrow.”

The musician rejoined with a smile, “Again?”

A sign on a shop door in the old town square in Brenham, Texas

The news of beef burgers in several big supermarkets around the UK and in Ireland being contaminated with horse meat is all over the headlines today. It reminded me of this picture that I took in Brenham, Texas, last summer.

At the time, I was surprised to see it — I’d never heard of horsemeat being an issue in Texas. I knew from living in France and visiting other countries that people do eat horse but always thought of it as an issue of personal taste and social custom. When I researched the issue after returning to London, I found out that slaughtering horses had become a heated debate.

Slaughterhouses in Texas exported the meat to Asia and Europe and many Texans were against it, based either on the belief that the animals suffered unduly or that these creatures — because of our attachment to them as pets and companions — aren’t the kind of animal you should eat. It’s strongly tied to identity, as my picture shows: We aren’t the kind of people to eat horse.

In 2007, Texas slaughterhouses were shut down, and some activitists kept fighting the sale and transport of Texas horses to slaughterhouses in Mexico. But there are also some America politicians promoting horsemeat, as detailed in this Houston Post blog.

Of course, the issue for the beef burgers here is slightly different: something was in the burgers that shouldn’t have been and that wasn’t divulged to consumers. That has to be rectified.

But the stories highlight our discomfort both in the US and the UK about eating horses. We think of them as beautiful animals to ride, race and own. We still have the problem of a few unscrupulous owners who mistreat their animals. But whatever you do, the consensus seems, don’t put them on our plate.