Field Trip! Belgium: Chocolate, Frites, Waffles and...Blackface

So, I was away on a short holiday across the sea.  I visited with some friends in London, rode a Death Coaster in Brighton (it was, erm, my first time riding a roller coaster than goes upside down, and I was disconcerted by the obvious signs of rust on the track) and took the Eurostar to Belgium, where the streets are paved with chocolate.  I'm not kidding, there were chocolate shops everywhere.  And oh what chocolate it was, ranging from the small and jewel like...

...to the abundantly gushing.

Forget the marshmallow.  If you don't want to stick your mouth right under the faucet you're no friend of mine.

Whereas the designs ranged from the classy...

...to the Klassy.

Well...at least it's multi-cultural.

The Belgians - and actually Europeans in general - take their chocolate very seriously.  The EU stipulates that in order for a product to be labelled as "chocolate" it has to contain at least 35% pure cocoa, and Belgian chocolates must be made with 100% cocoa butter, instead of the cheaper palm oil found in many lesser chocolates.

Frites are also much beloved - did you know that French fries are actually Belgian?  The story goes that during WWI some Belgian soldiers - currently 40% of Belgians speak French - offered fries to some of the Americans, who probably just assumed they were French.  The frites are thicker cut and double fried - first for about 8-10 minutes, allowed to sit and sweat, then fried again for a couple minutes just before serving.  Believe me when I say that they are happiness in potato form.  You can buy them on the street served in a white paper cone with mayo for dipping, which I never got around to doing seeing as I was eating fries with every meal.  I did hit up the Frite museum in Bruges, and was deeply despondent over their lack of frites to try.  Avoid it if you're ever in the area, as it contained absolutely nothing that you couldn't also see, read and learn by googling "frites" and "history of the potato" on the internet.

The waffles were equally lovely:

This was light and melt in my mouth, and needed nothing more than a bit of powdered sugar.  There were waffle trucks galore (I heard there's one here in Ottawa at Bank and Fifth, must go check it out), but I found that they weren't as good as the restaurant one above, probably because they tended to have been pre-made then re-toasted.  They went for two euros each topped with your choice of caramel or chocolate sauce.

The day I arrived in Bruges was Ascension Day, which is a national holiday in Belgium and, to my intense annoyance, this meant that most shops would be closed.  I did arrive in time for their Procession of the Holy Blood parade, which they've been doing every year since at least 1350.  When I walked by at around 2:00 people were waiting around for it, so I joined them, figuring that since it starts every year at 2:30, it would be only about half an hour of standing.  What I didn't realize was that we weren't near the starting point, so it took a while for the parade to get down to us.  I was standing with this very sweet elderly German couple, so I thought, well, if they can stand here for hours, I can too.  The man looked at me and asked:

Man:  Where are you from?
Me:  Canada!
Man:  Are you Japanese?
Me:  No.  I'm Chinese; my parents were born in Hong Kong.
Man:  My daughter studied in San Francisco.  There are lots of Japanese people there!  But they don't have faces like yours.
Me:  ....that's probably because I'm not Japanese.
Man:  The town where I live, in Germany, has lots of Japanese people!!
Me:  ....that's great.

Anyhow, the parade finally made its way to us, and it was awesomely, randomly bizarre.  It began with a band, horses, and girls in white dresses:

And proceeded on to Adam and Eve, if they had decided to forgo fig leaves in favour of cave man style fur tunics:

And also included sheep...

...camels...

...donkeys...

...random dude in a soft serve ice cream hat (awesome)...

...bagpipes??!!!!....

Call me crazy, but did they have bagpipes in the Bible?

...and blackface.

Sorry, was too frozen in shock to get a head-on photo.

This was from a different parade, on the Saturday in Brussels.  I still reeled.

Why why why why why??!!!!  Is it because I'm approaching this from a North American viewpoint?  Seriously, if this had happened in the States, there would have been violent rioting.  Something else I discovered this trip, from a Dutch friend living in Brussels: apparently the Dutch Santa, called Sinter Klaus, has a helper named Black Piet.  Who is a dude in blackface, wearing an Afro wig and big painted pink lips.  He throws candy to the children, so they love him, and the Dutch are very defensive, saying that it's just a harmless children's tradition.  A harmless, racist, children's tradition, rooted in Dutch colonialism.  And something which Flemish culture has at least partially embraced.

I need some pretty pictures of Bruges to calm me down.

Bruges really was gorgeous, and not as relentlessly touristy as Venice - at dusk you can walk the deserted streets alone, and watch the lights shimmering in the dark waters of the canals.

Will hopefully hit up some more burger places this weekend, and be back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Cage Match #2: Absinthe vs. Chez Lucien

Absinthe (1208 Wellington St. W) is one of those upscale, environmentally conscious restaurants using locally-sourced ingredients.  The server informed us that they send all their kitchen scraps to the farm to feed the pigs, and then they receive the pigs back in a tastier form.  We ordered their Benevolent Burger ($14), so named because a dollar from every burger sold is donated to Cornerstone Housing for women.  It consists of 8 ounces of hanger steak from Mariposa Farm, topped with sharp cheddar and double smoked bacon on a house made brioche bun.

The service was really good - the server didn't emanate any barely concealed scorn when we told him we'd be sharing the burger (and when I told him I'd just have water, ha!) and the kitchen actually divided the meal for us:

Together as one portion, the serving size would have been substantial, and really good value for $14, considering the quality of the ingredients used.  The fries were good - crispy and dusted with sea salt, as was the salad, which consisted of arugula with shaved Parmesan and lightly dressed in a tangy vinaigrette.  As for the burger itself, the first thing I noticed was that it was so big I'd have to dislocate my jaw to get a good bite in.  The patty was nice and juicy; Jon liked that it was charred on the outside.  I personally thought it was a little too salty, but I'm also not a huge fan of bacon, don't own a salt shaker and rarely add salt to anything. So, take that with a grain of...salt.

Jon's big thing was that they weren't more creative with their toppings, compared to, say, the Works and their myriad of choices.  He wanted something more unusual.  He conceded that Absinthe's burger overall is better than that at The Works, but because the toppings are so conventional it brought his score down.

Jon:  The Works is like a movie that doesn't have much of a plot but the cinematography is gorgeous.  Like Lost in Translation!
Me:  That movie was so slow I swear it started going backwards.  Or maybe that was Kingdom of Heaven? Anyhow, I'm not feeling your analogy.
Jon:   Whereas the Absinthe burger is like a movie with a great plot, but has less style.  Like....the Matrix trilogy.
Me:   The second movie was so bad I never bothered watching the third.  Like I read somewhere once, what was so great about Zion?  It was dark, and depressing, and full of sharp things that snag the one sweater you're allowed to wear.
Jon:   What got me was, the humans weren't able to save any colorful shirts?  The computers destroyed everything that wasn't oatmeal?

Final scores:

Jon:  (patty could have been still juicier, toppings not creative enough):  9/10
Me:  (too salty): 9/10

On to Chez Lucien (137 Murray St.), which I have always loved for its ambience.  Isn't it gorgeous?

We got their Bourgeois burger ($12) which was topped with pear, caramelized onions and brie.

Honestly, I thought the taste and texture were on par with the Works - a bit dry, a bit bland.  Jon liked that it was charred on the outside, but also didn't think the flavours were punchy enough.  Value wise, you get more bang for your buck here than at The Works - fries AND salad, for a $1.50 less, though I think the Absinthe burger, while $2 more than that at Chez Lucien, is a better value due to the higher quality of its ingredients (plus $1 goes to charity, so you can feel all smug and altruistic).

Final scores:

Jon:  7.5/10
Me:  7.5/10

Field Trip! Free food tours around the world

One of the drawbacks of living in Ottawa, other than the dearth of great shopping (where art thou, O Anthropologie?) is the dearth of free food opportunities.  Other than the cookies at Loblaws (labelled "for children only", but whatev) and the samples at Costco, where does one get free food here?  The Rocky Mountain Chocolate store in the Market usually has samples of their caramel apples (little pieces on toothpicks) but they tend, oddly, not to look too kindly on me standing there, scarfing them down, blocking their actual customers, then leaving.

Thankfully, there are other cities in the world catering to my free food needs.  First up, the Miller Brewery tour in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was hilarious.  I know, Wisconsin is such a random state to visit - why would anyone go there, frankly, unless you have family there?  Which I don't.  To this day I cannot tell you how I ended up there.  Anyhow, they opened by herding us into a theatre to watch a short film on the glorious history of the Miller Brewing Company.  We were then met by our tour guide, a young woman probably in her early twenties who said, in a voice completely devoid of intonation, much like in Napolean Dynamite, "That was great.  Wasn't that great?"  With this contagious display of enthusiasm, she led us off to the distribution centre:

This is...self-explanatory.  It's labelled on top, you see.

This was followed by the brew house, where they add the hops:

The guide ended the tour with, "I don't have a watch.  Does anyone have the time?" to which two guys yelled, "It's Miller time!!"  Which was....the answer she was looking for.  "That's right," the guide said, listlessly, and led us off to the beer garden, where we could have three good-sized samples of whatever beer we liked, plus pretzels, and postcards we could send anywhere in the world, for free.

About an hour away from Milwaukee is Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, home of the free Jelly Belly factory tour.

Unfortunately, this is just the distribution centre - the actual jelly beans are fabricated elsewhere - but you get on this little train and they take you around the warehouse, watching videos of how Jelly Bellys are made:

It's rather frightening, actually. 

I had no idea that it takes a good week to make those jelly beans - no wonder they're so expensive - because they generally have to sit and dry for several days between steps.  And, apparently, Butter Popcorn is the most popular Jelly Belly flavour.  Really?  Because...ew.

They took us to see some dancing animatronic jelly beans, which were every bit as terrifying as you'd think, and some jelly bean art:

I....there are no words.

The tour ended with a bag of Jelly Bellys each, and we were set free in the store, where the highlight was the tasting bar, which was manned by a guy stingily doling out a couple jelly beans of whatever flavour you wanted.  This is likely because, unchecked, people would just dump the whole box straight down their throat.  Just me?

And now, for the crown jewel of free food tours: the Cailler chocolate factory in Broc, Switzerland.  As someone who went to the Hershey factory multiple times as an adult, the chocolate coming from most of the world cannot compare to the chocolate of the efficient, precise, xenophobic Swiss.  It was a self-guided tour, culminating in the most glorious sight I have ever seen:

An all you can eat, chocolate tasting bar.  And once I had inhaled a whole tray, they immediately brought out more.  If I had died the next day, I would have led a full life.

The transcendence of Swiss chocolate was more than enough to supercede the unfriendliness of the people.  They weren't particularly warm, but they weren't awful either; even this one guy who served us at the sandwich counter at a train station in Zurich, whom my sister and I dubbed "Angry Sandwich Man", or ASM for short, because, well, the exchange went something like this:

Me: (pointing at the sandwich labelled "Schicken") What kind of sandwich is this?
ASM: Sandwich!

Me: Yes, but what kind?

ASM: Schicken! (and I swear, the meat did not look like chicken, otherwise I wouldn't be asking)

Me: What is Schicken?

ASM: SANDWICH!!!!!

Me: (whimpers) OK, I'll take it.

Jon and I are hitting up some burger places on Monday, and I'll try to get the posts up before I go out of town on Friday.