Or do the Germans come up with like totally awesome brand names? Exhibit A: Crusti Croc potato chips. Just a letter or two away from an old man's groin.
Exhibit B: SNACKY CRACKY!! All I will say about this one is that Ingo and I chortled, snorted, guffawed and then snorted some more at this brilliant brand. I think we freaked the kids out a little.
And Exhibit C: the popular, MCENNEDY AMERICAN WAY dried cranberries. Now that Bush is out of office, the AMERICAN WAY cranberries are back in good standing in Germany. Although MCENNEDY never went out of style.
Mexico has many charms, but once in a while a white person wants their dose of sand, sun and culture to be comfortably diluted by familiarity. They want to go to a place built by and for them. Sayulita is such a place.
A rambling of sun-soaked cobblestone and dirt streets tucked between the Pacific and tropical Sierra Madre Mountains are what make up the charming Mexican beach town of Sayulita. A magical hybrid of bohemian-gypsy-beach style welcomes its visitors. Sayulita attracts a “diverse” white crowd of surfers, backpackers, hippies and hipsters, Hollywood stars, families and bachelorettes.
Eight years ago, when Carter and I first visited Sayulita, we couldn't spend ten dollars. What I mean to say is, there was nothing there. No expat-owned MTV cribs-style mansions, no galleries stocked with Mexican handicrafts, no jewelry or silver shops, no restaurants selling time under umbrellas on the beach. Described as a super-chill Mexican fishing village, it was a perfect destination for us. We couldn’t wait to kick back on the then desolate beach.
Times have changed. A feature in Travel + Leisure, a mention in Food and Wine, cheap real estate and killer surf, plus the close proximity to Puerto Vallarta International Airport have turned this once quiet typical fishing village into a vacation vortex that satisfies the needs of traveling white people. Things you will not find anywhere else in Mexico have been woven into the local fabric of Sayulita in order to provide the comforts and demands of fantasy vacation-land. Here are a few luxuries you will find that make white people love Sayulita.
Burritos- Judging by the line of sunburnt gringos wrapping around the sidewalk bar of Revolution Burritos, white people love burritos! The owners of Revolution Burritos know their clientele well and are serving up what the flip-flopped masses are craving. These are American-style burritos: large and packed with more ingredients than a plato mixto at Chevy’s.
Margaritas- Toasting with a sweet-limey tequila slurpee is synonymous with vacation in Mexico. The first margarita was created by a white person, served in a round of funny shaped glasses, as a way to thank his white friends for the blender they gave him as a wedding present. If you want to mix with the gente, get hip with the people’s margarita.
Learning to surf –Surfing is just about the coolest extreme activity to most white people, and if they can’t afford to learn in Hawaii, there is always mainland Mexico. When we first visited, we had to rent our surfboards from who we believe was the missing member of the Dog-town and Z-boys crew-- the guy who escaped from prison and was thought to be somewhere in Mexico. Well, we found him sketchy as all hell and living in Sayulita. Back then, it was already a well known surf spot, but was still waiting to draw the surge of tourism that would sprout the large and lucrative surf board rental businesses that now dominate the beach. And dominate they do – there are about a dozen board sellers up and down the sandy bay. On a heavy day, tourists have their pick of gigantic sponge beginner boards. The waves are usually gentle, which allows most people to go out for a few hours and stand up and then say they “surfed” on vacation. Thankfully, most of the locals are used to the crowds and play “Frogger”, dodging their way through the brilliantly white masses.
“English Spoken Here”- There is no better place than the bars and restaurants of Sayulita to bust out your two years of high school Spanish. Faltering and stammering, or simply not even trying is welcomed with a smile, just like your American dollars.
Coffee- White people do not travel all the way to the passport stamp of their favorite dark-drip at Starbucks to have a mug of Nescafe put in front of them. Around the central plaza of Sayulita, organic Mexican brews are poured into disposable cups with lids and little burn-free belts—this you will not find outside of a Starbucks in Mexico. When served up with Wi-Fi the white thumbs-up is extra enthusiastic.
White people like to get back to their bohemian roots- They like let their inner boho-freak flag fly to the beat of the Mexican drum circles, drink and dance into the wee hours at a place called the Buddha Bar (every beach-side bohemian enclave has one), buy Indian imports (the connection here is unknown, but seems to be pervasive in such towns around the world) and they love to OM with the tides at the foreign owned yoga studios.
White people also like to feel rich – even if they are not. In Sayulita, tourists can rent gigantic haciendas built and owned by foreigners with infinity pools and views to match for the price of a windowless hotel room in New York City. With the pesos you've saved, you can let it rip, buying tequila shots (with lime and salt of course) for all your new friends at fire-sale prices, and tons of kitschy Mexican crafts to bring back home.
White people love Sayulita!
I just spent a perfect couple of days with friends from San Francisco in Sayulita. It really is a blessing to live in a place where people want to come visit, but the true blessing is friendships that span the decades and the globe. Hey, let's toast to that!
With all of these superlatives, you are probably thinking, 'does she ever have a meal that she isn't, like, toootally enthusiastic about?' Oui. At Au Pied de Cochon. I guess it was this article I had read in Saveur a while ago about this Parisian institution that peaked my curiosity.
"Before the so-called Forts des Halles – the strong men who worked nights lugging meat and produce at Paris’s famed Les Halles wholessale food market – decamped for the suburbs, Au Pied de Cochon at five in the morning was the wildest party in town," writes Jay Cheshes in his article "Nighthawks at the Brasserie" for Saveur (issue No. 107). "As Paris awoke and the market disgorged its blue-collar workers, the nearby brasseries’s dining room and bar heaved with with life; haulers and off-duty butchers took their seats alongside Paris’s nocturnal creatures, who were only just winding up their revelries, and slurped oysters and chilled beaujolais.“
Apparently the place doesn’t really get going until after midnight and back in it’s heyday, it was not uncommon to find revelers passed out on banks across the street as the sun rose and the 9-5 set made their way to work.
Cheshes also recalls a story, retold by French food critic Pierre Rival, author of a book titled "Au Pied de Cochon", about French icon Serge Gainsbourg, a regular back in the 70’s. He "walked in with a coterie of hangers-on just before dawn. The place was bustling and Gainsbourg ordered lavishly...When the bill arrived, Gainsbourg, in one of his moods, refused to pay. 'Come, Monsieur Gainsbourg,' beseeched the waiter. 'Be nice.' The singer pouted: 'I don’t feel like paying.' Though Gainsbourg was a regular, the management was hardly prepared to forgive the tab. When a few gendarmes walked through the door, he finally relented, but only on the condition that the police officers sit down and dine with him. 'Then the police drove him home in the back of their van,' Rival said."
And so it was for a bit of this revelry, history, nostalgia and simple curiosity that we headed to Au Pied de Couchon at the slightly early but still respectable hour of 11 pm for dinner.
The oysters were divine – salty, fresh, slippery, good. My pied de cochon farci périgourdine, a boneless pig’s foot stuffed with foie gras kind of reminded me of a giant tatter tot. It was not bad but it did not impress the way it could have. Ellen and Sylvain were very content with their cote de boeuf and Alessia’s tartar was one of the best she’s ever had. Nathan was less than pleased with the sole menueirre and Eva found the „vegetarian“ options lacking (though I suppose one shouldn’t expect much by way of vegetables at a place called the Pig’s Foot).
The deco - kitsch? Nostalgic? Too much? Just right? Morg seems to like it ...
The pied de cochon farci perigourdine i.e. the giant tatter tot..
Apparently, you do not come to Pied de Cochon for the food; rather the atmosphere, the history. And atmosphere was abundant. At around 1 am, a Swiss theatrical group came in and sat down across from us. A group of Czech women broke into song at a table around the corner and suddenly, the curtains went up and it was SHOWTIME. The Swiss group followed suit and we sat back and enjoyed the show.
Morgan and I have been known to put on a raucous yet heartfelt production of showtunes while out in Kabul and so we thought what better time, in this palace of nostalgia, for an encore performance in the company of fellow late night singers. What we didn’t take into account however was that the Swiss group was professional – i.e. they did this for a living and we did it for temporary loss of proper reasoning. Regardless, after a quick "rehearsal" outside, we marched back in and after a brief word of introduction from Sylvain, we hit the Von Trapp family with a heartfelt rendition of „Consider yourself at home“ from the musical 'Oliver'. They politely exploded into an overzealous bout of applause and we took a bow and made like oysters and slipped out of there.
After a slightly average meal, but way-above-average convivial atmosphere and fellow dinner commaraderie, we headed home, another evening of French food and cantankerous company ending in song.
So last week I was in Paris for 48 hours and wanted French food. GOOD French food. Without the pomp and circumstance of fine dining. I wanted to eat where the locals eat. A neighborhood joint where the neighbors KNOW GOOD French food. And merci a la front desk at the hotel, we found it in the Bastille at a local joint called Chez Paul. MON DIEU did we find it. Tonight we speak in superlatives because this meal was hands down one of the BEST I have ever had in Paris and I would venture to say that if you are looking for simple French food done BETTER THAN YOU’VE EVER TASTED IT IN YOUR LIFE, you might walk out singing... like we did. But we’ll get to that later.
You know when you walk into a place and there is a certain sense of deja vu, a feeling that you’ve worn these jeans before, that this isn’t the first time you’ve met him. It was like that – I’ve seen that guy behind the bar before, aren’t the tiles on the floor familiar? the hand writing on the menu is so much like – home. The service was just surly enough to be that very French combination of rudely charming, charmingly rude (my people! My people!).
The Cote du Rhone tasted better than it ever does in Germany – which is pretty much standard with every French dish, condiment, dessert or aperitif I have ever had. They all just taste better in France – the air? The soil? The attitude? My attitude?
Eva the vegetarian started out with her standard, „if there’s nothing else, I’m sure they’ll have a...“ salade au chevre chaud – warm goat cheese salad. Luckily for her carnivore dinner companions Nathan and I, one little boule of cheese was wrapped in delicious crispy bacon and we were more than happy to take that off her hands. Not that we needed it – we had enough going on with our escargot au beurre du l’ai (see the empty dish second from above) – this photo almost does these delicious buttery snails justice. We sopped up every last drop of butter with a crusty baguette. Not to be outdone was the paté de campagne a la maison (above) and the poivre vinagrette, also for the vegetarian but sampled by the carnivores.
The rather pleasant (for a vegetarian dish in a bistro) cabbage plate...
Awww, glad mine were home and tucked in instead!
It was all this good.
I love French macarons and this one was no exception and normally I would have waxed poetic here about the macaron but HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD the tart tatin was sent from heaven or the Bahamas or wherever it is you believe you will be hanging out for all of eternity. I usually err on the side of chocolate rather than fruit but this tart with a side of creme fraiche (only BETTER, the BEST creme fraiche YOU’VE EVER HAD) was otherworldly. The apples were caramelized to the point they could no longer be identified as apples. They were almost orange in color and glowing – a lovely nuclear orange. And slightly browned on the top like a creme brulé. I actually had to pause for a moment to hold back a few tears (yes, Eva and Nathan, that dramatic flourish in my chair was an attempt NOT TO CRY) because HALLELUJA I have just found a new religion and it is called TART TATIN.
Eva and Nathan insisted I post this photo as a summary of the meal sans parole.
Singing also helps digestion. Particularly colon cleansing chansons from Julie Andrews musicals – the streets of Paris were quiet as we walked home at 2am – at least, until we graced them with a free performance. „The hills are alive......“ and so were we. Merci Eva and Nathan for un soiré tres belle!
