Live from the Revolution: Barcelona's Cuisine

If what's happening in Barcelona was ever a secret, the proverbial cat is certainly out of the bag.  The consensus among chefs and food critics of late is that something big is happening in Spain, and that it tastes good...really good. 

Not knowing any other way to organize the sensory explosion that is dining in Barcelona, I'm simply going to sum up my favorite experiences:

1. La Boqueria:

La Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria is the official name for Barcelona's central market, nestled just back from the bustling crowds and pickpockets of La Rambla.  That rule about not shopping while you're hungry probably started here, as the market has been around in some form since the 1200s.  In the United States, we've become accustomed to a trade off between quantity and quality when it comes to grocery shopping.  We can shop at the supermarket where we find vast quantities of acceptable produce, fish, or meat; alternatively, we can visit a boutique grocer offering smaller amounts of high quality food, at higher prices.  No such trade off exists in Barcelona.  The displays of legions of hanging pork legs, great walls of fruits and vegetables, and towers of spices are dazzling not just for their quantity and beauty, but also for their easily apparent quality. 

2. Tapas and Pintxos: 

The great thing about so many tapas is their simplicity; finely sliced, fatty ham (pernil) on bread, or oil-soaked mussels that melt in your mouth.  These aren't complicated dishes, just simple morsels of goodness.  Some of my favorite Barcelona food wasn't Catalan, but Basque.  Pintxos, which are basically like tapas on bread, were perfect for someone who loves bread as much as I do, and they end up being much more filling.  A couple of solid places are Euskal Etxea (pintxos), and El Xampanyet (a cava bar), both near the Picasso Museum.

3. Molecular Cuisine:

The meal I enjoyed at Cinc Sentits (Five Senses) was one of the most memorable of my life, not only because of how good the food tasted, but because of how it was arranged.  Molecular cuisine is the pioneering field of superstar chef Ferran Adria, whose restaurant in Roses (just over the mountain from Cadaqués) is regarded by many as the best in the world.  The idea is that taste and texture don't necessarily have to be tied together by their natural occurrences.  Perhaps instead of grilling onions, a chef might construct a foam that tastes like grilled onions, and top his dish with that.  Cinc Sentits offers both a traditional and an "adventurous" menu, which is mildly molecular.  It mostly focuses on modern interpretations of old Catalan classics.  Dinner started out with a shot of a sweet, honey-tasting concoction with a salty layer of foam on top that, when taken, mixed into a salty sweet elixir all at once.  The glaze for the tenderloin was layered on in a gelatin-like substance and none of the side dishes looked like one would expect.  I'm kicking myself for not keeping a copy of the menu, because I have no idea what I ate even from looking at the pictures.

4. Dessert:

The most surprising thing about Barcelona is that there aren't half-ton people walking around like there are in the good 'ole U.S. of A.  Barcelona's desserts and sweets are ridiculously decadent.  The staple dessert/meal replacement is churros and chocolate, basically fried dough that you dip into a vat of melted chocolate.  On the healthier side, there's the simple choice of yogurt and honey.  Finally, there are an endless number of shops serving up all kinds of pastry concoctions, including merengues, which are formed sugary spires, kind of like hardened mounds of cupcake frosting. 


5. Cal Pep:

Cal Pep is a tapas restaurant, albeit an expensive one.  But it was worth every penny, as my stomach is moaning in remembrance of my meal there as I write this.  It has all the great elements of a Spanish eatery; a loud, noisy bar where people eat shoulder-to-shoulder, fresh ingredients sitting right before your eyes, and an eccentric, but brilliant chef.  Josep "Pep" Manubens is a character so cartoon-like that he actually has caricatures of himself hanging on the walls, and on his business cards.  His graying hair is slicked back, and his purple wire glasses accentuate his slightly pudgy face.  He also wears a massive watch so ridiculous one would only expect to find it on the wrist of 50-cent or Kanye West.  He barks orders in a raspy, smoked way-too-many cigarettes kind of voice.  The food is prepared right in front of the customers, who get to watch the chaos as they inhale the works of art that come off the grill.  This place is truly special, and it makes a trip to Barcelona worth it all on its own. 

6. Paying "la cuenta":  Finally, a note on the exemplary business practices of Spanish restaurants.  Instead of doing the awkward dance with the waiter at the end of the meal where they whisk your credit card away to some unknown place, doing God knows what with it, Spanish servers ring up your bill right at your table.  Almost all of them are armed with a hand-held ServiRed card swipe terminal so they can swipe your card and get you to sign the receipt in one fell swoop.  They wait until you've asked for the bill, check you out, and there's no frustrating period of waiting for your card when you have somewhere to be.  I can't wait until this practice hops the pond and becomes more common here.  Also, at the end of every meal guests are usually given a nice business card to keep the restaurant in their thoughts.  For all the stereotypes about lazy Europeans and inefficient business practices, the restaurant industry in Spain seems to be doing well for itself. 

Mad Figueres

Inland and westward from Cadaqués, across the protective mountains of the Cap de Creuce, lies Figueres, the hometown of Salvador Dalí.  In the short trip across the mountains, the simplicity and beauty of the Costa Brava are replaced by a bored, tired, and cranky city of roughly 45,000 people.  Perhaps the gloomy weather is responsible.  Or, perhaps it is the lingering political discontent.  In Figueres I witnessed the (in)famous Catalonian political discontent and separatist sentiment for the first time (see picture).  Aside from this, nothing remarkable is happening in Figueres.  The town looks almost identical to the ones I pass by on the train ride from Barcelona, with one notable exception.  Roughly in the center of the city lies a giant, egg-adorned palace celebrating one man's zaniness.

The Teatre-Museu Dalí is housed in what used to be a municipal theater, before it was destroyed in the Spanish Civil War.  The museum claims to be the "largest surrealistic object in the world," and its location next to the church where Dalí was baptized make it the perfect place to house the artist's collection.  Furthermore, it is here that Dalí held his first exhibition of paintings.  I expected to find the museum largely empty on our Thursday visit, but found just the opposite.  Aside from the expected throngs of tourists, the museum was packed with young people, many high school-aged students.  More shocking was the fact that they seemed genuinely interested in Dalí's works; his technique, form and structure (or lack thereof).  This was only the first time I had witnessed what I would come to recognize as the Catalonian respect for the artist (more on this later).

Much of the art in Dalí's house of wonders makes the place feel like an amusement park more than a museum.  It isn't the kind of place to make one pause and reflect on the dignity of man, but rather to ask how in the world he thought of, or created some of his most eccentric works.  Some, like the portrait of Abraham Lincoln (composed of several smaller images, including a naked woman's backside) are truly impressive.  It wasn't until I viewed the painting through my camera that I could make out Lincoln's portrait.  Others made me scratch my head in confusion.  For example, the courtyard with an old 1920's car parked in the center with a bronze statue of a big-breasted woman, all surrounded by life-sized Oscar statues looking down from the windows of the floors above.  Another was the Mae West room, complete with the lips-shaped couch.  The animatronic crucifixes and moving jewels were similarly puzzling.  Perhaps the most impressive item in the whole museum was housed in the Dalí Jewels collection adjacent to the main theater building.  A gold heart pendant is cutaway to reveal a core of ruby's that pulses like a beating heart. 

Whatever one might think about Dalí's state of mind, his skills as a painter, jewelery craftsman, film maker, and architect are undeniable.  Another interesting thing that I learned was that Dalí was in collaboration with Walt Disney to produce a surrealist cartoon titled Destino.  Production was never completed, but Disney released a short version in 2003 based on work uncovered during the production of Fantasia 2000.  While the Dalí Museum simultaneously impressed and confused me, I was also disappointed to learn that many of Dalí's most famous works, such as The Persistence of Memory and Swans Reflecting Elephants, are not housed in the museum but are scattered across other museums.

Figueres became even more strange over dinner.  Our hotel, the Hotel Empordà, is a curious mix of new age modernism and old world class consciousness that make for an interesting stay.  The spartan room looked like one of the modern showrooms at Ikea, but was quiet and surprisingly comfortable.  Downstairs, however, in the Restaurant Empordà, one walks into an aura of stuffiness that seems stuck in 1929.  White coated waiters attend to their guests every need, and it seems to be the kind of place where protocol governs everything from where you place your silverware to how you drink from your glass.  Curiously enough, the restaurant was Dalí's favorite, which is surprising because the museum leaves the impression that Dalí wasn't a fan of anything formal or conventional.  The dining room was empty when we arrived at 8, and only received a couple more tables of guests throughout our meal. The food was very good (reputed to be some of the best in Catalonia), but very expensive, and very different than the warm-hearted meal we enjoyed in Cadaqués.  

The paradox between the socialist and separatist past of the region and the stuffy atmosphere of the restaurant are curious, to say the least.  As we prepared to leave Figueres the next day, I was sad that we could neither afford a meal, nor procure a reservation, at the famed El Bullí in nearby Roses.  Alas, there was plenty of food waiting for us in Barcelona.

Quaint and Calm Cadaqués

Good wine.  Olives.  Fresh fish, grilled whole. Pa amb tomàquet.  An ocean breeze.  After a couple of days in Cadaqués,  I'm not sure what more we humans need to be completely and utterly content than these simple ingredients .  The final town before the French border on Spain's Mediterranean coast, Cadaqués has been called the most painted village in the world due to its appearance on the canvases of Dalí and Picasso.  The white-washed buildings of the town are nestled haphazardly in the small space between the mountains and the sea.  The terrain makes for harrowing transportation, as the hilly and winding narrow streets will be completely quiet and empty one second, and fraught with speeding mopeds or cars the next.  Sometimes one's only option is to dash for an empty doorway.  The town's population of less than 2,000 inhabitants swells in the spring and summer when tourists from all over Europe flock to the Costa Brava.  In February, however, the town is empty, as business owners lazily renovate and prepare for the crowds still several months away.  The absence of sandy beaches has helped to insulate the town from over-development and thus preserved its historical charm better than some of its neighbors.  People don't go to Cadaqués looking for a good time; most of the action on any given night seemed to be the lively coffee conversation between old men at the "Societat l' Amistat." 

The Cadaqués I stumble upon in mid-February is a ghost town.  Venturing out from my hotel at night (it only takes about 15 minutes to walk from one side of the horseshoe-shaped bay to the other), I find it nearly empty.  The brightly-lit tapas bar in the town square is vacant except for the staff.  There are a handful of people in the town square, and a couple of people walking their well-behaved dogs.  A chilly ocean wind blows unrelentingly, and I begin to wonder why I have drug my wife all the way from the excitement of Barcelona to see this cold and empty town.  But behind an unassuming door in the dark alley of Calle Miguel Roset, lies all the warmth and charm Cadaqués could ever need.

 A meal at Casa Anita is not a meal at a restaurant; it is a meal at a friend's kitchen.  That friend is Joan Marti, known as "Juanito" or "Jefe" to his family and guests.  The 40-something owner/waiter/chef/entertainer/travel agent waltzes about Casa Anita's two small cave-like rooms with his protruding chest seemingly dragging his feet behind him.  He occasionally bursts into song, signing with gusto until some little detail has caught his eye and distracted him.  His wife, son, and another woman (either his sister or mother) work interchangeably in the kitchen and attending to guests, and he often bursts from the kitchen amidst a flurry of shouting.  There is no menu at Casa Anita; there are only questions.  "Tinto o blanco?"  "Carnes o pescados?" "Veduras?" These are the important questions.  My wife and I tell Juanito that we trust him, and thus begins one of the best processions of food and wine of our lives.

Our first course is an ensalada of grilled red peppers and onions, navy beans, and grilled eggplant (or aubergine, which created much confusion between us and Juanito's wife).  Next up is grilled asparagus with romesco sauce.  The romesco sauce is an instant favorite, and after some inquiry we learn that it's the same sauce served in the traditional calçots cookouts we saw in an episode of Anthony Bourdain.  The next appetizer, pa amb tomàquet, is a Catalan staple.  Kind of like bruschetta, it is usually just bread with finely chopped tomato on top, but this pa amb tomàquet has manchego cheese and anchovies on top, which makes it extra tasty.  The main course is dorado, a freshly caught (same-day) fish, grilled whole, along with the best papas fritas I've eaten outside of France.  While very simple, the meal is one of the best tasting I've ever enjoyed.  The fish, dressed with freshly squeezed lemon juice, tastes of the sweet smell that fills the air in Cadaqués.

I had read online that Juanito likes to advertise his brother's winery to his restaurant guests, so I inquire as to what we're drinking.  As it turns out, the bottle of red that I've almost completely consumed, along with my wife's bottle of white, is not from his brother's winery.  In an instant he produces a bottle of Perafita red.  It is, naturally, delicious, and upon finding our approval he asks if we'd like to visit the winery tomorrow.  Having nothing planned besides lounging around town, we agree.  Next we try ordering only two desserts, but true to form, Juanito's family brings out four.  First is crema catalana (much like crème brulée), followed by nougat ice cream with chocolate sauce, ice cream with jellied figs (my favorite), and a mojito flavored ice cream.  All are delicious.  Fearing the cost of these last 3 hours of indulgence, I ask Juanito for the bill.  Instead he brings us a bottle of cava from Perafita.  The bill eventually comes, and it is a mere €68.  He charged us for only 1 bottle of wine, and 1 dessert.  Not a bad price for one of the best meals of my life.

The next day, we depart from Hotel Rocamar, perched upon a hill on the south side of the horseshoe bay, to meet Juanito at the prearranged spot for our trip to the winery.  He introduces us to the manager/sales director of the winery, a woman whose name I cannot remember.  She drives us back along the harrowing road through the mountains to Perafita.  The winery is perched atop a hill, with views of Girona province, the Pyrenees, and the sea.  There we meet the vintner, also named Joan, who speaks French and Catalan.  Swapping between our four languages, they are able to give us a tour of the winery and its accompanying bed and breakfast.  We learn that the Empordà region, in particular the area around Cadaques, has an especially rich soil that produces a very strong grape.  Joan shows us where the wine is distilled and the French Oak barrels where they age the wine before bottling it.  The winery is small, producing only a couple thousand bottles a year. 

After returning to Cadaqués and exploring the rest of the town, we decide that we would rather have another night at Casa Anita than risk being disappointed with another restaurant.  Our night starts out much the same as the one before, but something is different.  Juanito is distracted.  The reason, we soon learn, is the Barcelona football game vs Arsenal.  Seeing that Juanito's attention is focused next door in the more bar-like "Anita Nit," we ask Juanito if we can have our dinner there and watch the game.  He eagerly obliges, and we enjoy our dinner while watching the game with him, his brother, and a couple of their friends.  As I said, Casa Anita is not a restaurant; it is dinner at your friend's place.  The dinner is just as good as the night before, only we have ensalada with tuna, and steak instead of fish.  Juanito's wife and the other lady do most of the serving since Juanito is distracted, and they seem proud that we want to watch the Barca game.  As we get ready to leave, Juanito tells us that if we find any trouble in Barcelona, or anywhere in Spain, that we can feel free to contact him.  "You have family here in Cadaqués," he tells us.

Cadaqués may not be as flashy or fashionable as some of its Mediterranean neighbors, but what it lacks in sandy beaches it makes up for with charm, class, and a focus on the essentials.  Good wine. Olives. Fresh fish, grilled whole. Pa amb tomàquet.  An ocean breeze.  Family watching football together.  As the people of the town have figured out, these truly are the important things in life.

5 Things I Learned About Islam at the Grand Sheikh Zayed Mosque

My first trip to the Arabian Peninsula wouldn't be complete without visiting a mosque for the first time.  The Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, constructed at a cost of several hundred million dollars, almost seems designed as an introduction to Islam for non-believers.  At first glance it looks like the sultan's palace from the Aladdin cartoon I watched as a kid.  Tour guides highlight the notable features, such as the world's largest carpet and chandelier, while mixing in some basic lessons about how Islam works.  Our female tour guide was very knowledgeable and willing to answer our questions, and she even endured a goading Frenchman wanting to know the fate of her soul if she missed any of her daily prayers.  Our guide confessed that she prefers sleeping in and so rarely makes morning prayer, but it didn't seem to trouble her much.  One of the things that most impressed me about the mosque was its large central courtyard made of white tile so that it will stay cool under the unforgiving Arabian sun.  This is especially important as guests must remove their shoes before entering the main structure. 

To supplement everything I learned on my visit, I picked up Karen Armstrong's Islam: A Short History, which covers over four centuries of Islamic history in under 200 pages.  Between the book and the tour, here are 5 things that I learned that changed my perspective a bit:

1) Like most religions, social justice is at the heart of Islam: The word "Islam" means, "to surrender," not in a military or political sense, but to the idea that Allah demands that people, "behave to one another with justice, equity and compassion" (Armstrong 5).  Everything that Muslims do; daily prayers (salat), the Ramadan fast, the giving of alms (zakat - supposed to be 2.5% of one's income) - all of it supports the idea of a community (ummah) committed to this end.  Islam arose as a rebellion against the corruption, wealth disparity, and constant tribal warfare that characterized pre- Muhammadian Arabia.  So, while Christians are more comfortable with a separation between church and state (Christianity existed in rebellion against a more powerful state for its first 300 years), it is much harder for a Muslim to separate the ummah from politics. 

2) Islam doesn't inherently denigrate or demote women:  Karen Armstrong explains, "The emancipation of women was a project near and dear to the Prophet's heart.  The Quran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce centuries before Western women were accorded such status" (16).  The practice of veiling all women didn't emerge until a few hundred years after Muhammad's death.  As some of the quirks of tribal Arabia were codified in the Quran fundamentalists seized on them and corrupted Muhammad's original vision.  Take polygamy, for example; in the formative period of Islam the fighting left many men dead, and so the Quran allowed for men to take up to 4 wives, provided they treated each of them equally.  Most of the controversy that gets played up in the Western media highlights fundamentalist perspectives and ignores the progressive equality present from the religion's founding. 

3) The Sunni-Shia split is about a lot more than some guy named Ali: Nominally, the Sunni-Shi'a division which oft finds its way into the news is about succession.  After Muhammad's death in 632, the ummah was divided over whether the Caliph should be elected, or whether he should be divinely ordained.  Sunnis see Muhammad as solely divine, whereas Shi'a view Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, Ali, as one of a handful of divinely inspired Imams.  Armstrong explains that Shi'a Muslims interpreted Ali's murder, as well as subsequent tragedies, as "a symbol of the inherent injustice of life," and as a summoning to "higher Islamic standards" for a corrupt ummah.  Whereas Sunnis became more tolerant of political divisions for the sake of continued unity, Shi'a focused on the need for purity.  While each sect has its spectrum of believers ranging from fundamentalists to mystics, Shi'a generally afford more hierarchical power to Imams and have a less tolerant relationship with the state. 

4) The Crusades weren't as big of a deal as we in the West think they were: A popular misconception these days is that the medieval Crusades to the Holy Land are the root cause for the animosity between the Muslim Middle East and the modern West.  Armstrong debunks this myth, explaining, "Most of the inhabitants of Islamdon were entirely unaffected by the Crusades and remained uninterested in Western Europe, which, despite its dramatic cultural advance during the crusading period, still lagged behind the Muslim world" (179).  Instead, lingering difficulties resulting from European colonialism and forced modernization are responsible for the discord between contemporary Middle Eastern Muslim societies and the globalizing world economy. 

5) There is hope for moderate Islam to reconcile faith with modernity: Islam is not the source of conflict between Middle Eastern fundamentalists and the West; rather, it is a tool.  Fundamentalist reactions almost always emerge in times of great change, and economic globalization is certainly forcing speedy change in every corner of the world.  Grand Sheikh Zayed Mosque is an example of the opportunity for Islam to help bridge the cultural divide.  As Abu Dhabi and Dubai modernize and receive vacationers and businesspeople from Europe, the mosque offers a different perspective from the one so prevalent in the news.

Dubai Appetizer

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The first thing I have to say about Dubai is nothing at all.  I can barely lift my jaw up off the ground long enough to form coherent sentences.  I've just had a brief and oh so shallow introduction to one of the most mesmerizing places I've ever laid eyes upon.  One minute I was speeding along an empty desert highway, and the next the sun was blotted out by a cloud of fascinating brand new buildings, each with a unique artistic flair.  Before I know it I'm gazing out the window of a Starbucks at a couple of camels strolling down a beautiful beach next to the palm tree-shaped island (known as The Palm).  The distinctive salmon pink Atlantis resort looms in the distance along with the sailboat shaped Burj al Arab.  Replete with a helipad extending from the side of the building, the Burj is purported to be the best hotel in the world.  A Lamborghini is parked on the street, and a completely burqa clad woman (five feet behind her husband) walks by a blonde woman seated outside who could easily pass for a Swedish supermodel.  Where the hell am I?

The area I find myself in is known as The Walk, a roughly mile-and-a-half long stretch of apartments, hotels, and condos that line the beach near the Dubai Marina.  There are 6 Starbucks located in the immediate area, so that none of the residents departing from one of their many towers has to travel too far for their morning hit.  If there are any residents, that is.  It might be Monday, but I don't get the impression that the applications to live here are piling up.  The street that parallels the beach is lined with cafes and boutique shops, some of them western and some not.  They range from Starbucks, Boots pharmacy, and Subway to upscale Japanese and Lebanese restaurants.  To my surprise, I found a Tiffinbites, one of my favorite places to get Indian food in London.  The staff is, I think, Filipino, as are many of the food service industry personnel here.  The fresh naan and Karahi chicken make for the best meal I've had in months.  As the day progresses, I realize that The Walk is the epitome of "New Dubai," the area west of the more historic creek area.  It's as if Manhattan we know it was being built all at once.  People live here, but the whole place has an "under construction" feel to it, not just physically, but also in terms of its economic and social development.  I can't help but wonder how many of the expensive stores here are managing to tread water.  Furthermore, its hard to imagine the tiny army of multinational residents here harboring any civic pride or belonging to many local groups.  Before I can think on these things for too long, I'm whisked away to a place even more superficial, unreal, and yet altogether intoxicating.

The Dubai Mall sits several miles east of the marina, closer to the historic center of Dubai, but still in another world altogether.  En route, we pass by and endless sea of construction.  South Asian immigrants are hard at work trimming hedges and operating cranes.  Some dangle from the sides of the monstrous towers, rushing at their work.  One moment, we pass by a large building bearing a propagandized poster of the Prime Minister of the U.A.E. and Emir of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.  The next moment, we pass by brand new Microsoft and Cysco Systems office buildings.  Where the hell am I?  

 The 44,000 square foot mall is colossal and feels like its own 4 floored city.  It houses four hotels, a cinema, and a cutting edge arcade.  Stores are grouped together, with all of the furniture stores next to each other, the women's fashion stores co-located, etc.  The Gold Souk, a mall within the mall, tries to add a back-alley middle eastern feel to a mall defined by its luxury western attractions (Louis Vuitton, Prada, Cartier and the like).  A multi-story aquarium, complete with a shark tunnel, graces an entire wall inside the mall.  As I walked by, enjoying my Italian gelato, scuba diving vacationers explored the aquarium's reefs as schools of exotic fish dashed by.  Further along, a group of people whisk by on the professional size ice skating rink.  After exploring the lower level and eating at a high quality Italian restaurant I head outside where I'm greeted by the Burj Khalifah, the world's tallest building by far at 2,717 ft tall.  It dominates a mini-lake that is also enclosed by the mall and and Arabesque market selling Pashminas, rugs, and other touristy trinkets.  At sundown the fountains come alive, and columns of water dance to Arab music in a style similar to that of the famous Bellagio fountain. Incense and perfume permeate the air, adding to the city's intoxicating effect.  Before I know it I'm whisked away, and my nascent love affair with this dream world is cut short.

I know my introduction to Dubai is just that; a superficial, shallow, and unrepresentative encounter with a tiny slice of the reality.  But what a potent encounter it has been.  The experience is tempered by the knowledge that only a small fraction of the population actually enjoys the fruits of the development carried out on the backs of what is essentially the modern equivalent of a slave labor force.  But moral considerations aside, it is refreshing to see what focused human imagination and creativity are capable of when given access to unrestricted methods and unlimited wealth.  Coming from a Western world sometimes characterized by stagnation, atrophy, and decay, the spirit of Dubai is reminiscent of the can-do attitude of the romanticized American West.  Only time will tell if Dubai's development can continue; if people will ever move into those empty condos.  Until then, I'll be looking forward to my next (hopefully more substantive) encounter with this new Babylon.

Black Friday in the Richest City in the World

This Black Friday I did my American duty; I went shopping.  I may have only purchased a mouse pad made to look like a Persian rug, but what's a poor boy to do in the richest city in the world?

Abu Dhabi, the eponymous capital city and emirate of the United Arab Emirates, is a city of fabulous wealth considering its mere 900,000 inhabitants (half of whom have gotten here within the last decade).  Thanks to the emirate's bountiful oil and natural gas supplies (which are slated to last through the better part of the century), it has been called the richest city in the world by Forbes magazine and CNN.  The crane-filled horizon indicates as much, though the city hasn't yet lost its sense of self in the way that Dubai has.  Abu Dhabi is still a plainly Middle Eastern city, with a quarter of its population being native Arabs, and the rest being made up of foreign workers, largely from South Asia, East Africa, and the Pacific.  While most of the town feels as such, it has several examples of the grand opulence that only the Emirates can afford.

One such example is the Marina Mall, home to dozens of the highest-end retailers in the world.  Black Friday isn't a national birthright in the U.A.E., and many of the shops were closed until later in the day (as Friday is the Muslim holy day).  As the afternoon rolled on, the Emirates began to show up in force.  You'd be forgiven for thinking that Maseratis and Lamborghinis were a minimum entrance requirement.  Even a trip to the local Carrefour, the Wal-Mart like superstore in the basement of the mall, is done in full style.  In Emirate culture, the mall appears nearly as central to life as the mosque.  Boutique shops, restaurants, and a food court aren't enough.  Emirates come to the mall to bowl, to buy a Mercedes-Benz, or to ice skate (and ski in the case of Dubai's Mall of the Emirates, opening soon at the Marina Mall as well).  Perhaps the oppressive desert heat encourages people to stay under one, air conditioned roof while meeting all of their needs.

The Marina Mall is just one of many high profile developments in the city.  All around it are other shining examples of the monarchy-led investment strategy that has come to characterize the U.A.E.  Next door, the Emirates Palace is a massive, European style hotel reputed to be of unparalleled quality.  Off the coast, the Emirate is investing in several man-made islands, surely future homes of high-end development projects.  On Yaz Island, the recently completed Ferrari World is home to the worlds fastest roller coaster; its so fast it requires goggles.  On the outskirts of the city, entire planned communities of apartments and condos are springing up from the sand, though most appear vacant for now.  While Abu Dhabi is clearly laying the foundation for the days when its oil and natural gas have run dry, the emirate seems determined to play the tortoise to neighboring Dubai's dizzying hare.

Consuming Cowboy Culture: The 20th Annual Chuck Wagon Gathering at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

A fiddle sings a merry tune in the distance as a cauldron of peaches bubbles over a fire.  The clink-clank of a blacksmith's hammer keeps the beat for the pair of horses who trot by, pulling a loaded wagon behind them.  The air weighs heavily under the odious concoction of stew, cobbler, campfire smoke and animal dung.  Under the shade of the trees, a wild eyed "doctor," H.P. Hedgethicket III, Esquire, raves about the medicinal wonders of lizard oil to anyone who will listen.

This isn't a scene from the past or from a Hollywood set; its an annual event to celebrate the culture of the West and those who won it.  Every May at the bottom of Persimmon Hill in Oklahoma City, the Chuck Wagon Gathering provides visitors a chance to sample cowboy cooking, immerse themselves in cowboy culture, and try their hand at cowboy crafts like rope-making and leather stamping.  While much of the event is geared toward the little buckaroos, the limitless free samples of stew, beans, sourdough biscuits, cornbread (which cowboys did NOT eat, as one rancher informed me), peach cobbler, and bread pudding are enough to entice even the slickest of city slickers.  All of the food is authentically prepared in large dutch ovens and cauldrons.  There's even a cooking demonstration, complete with a couple of plump, microphone-wearing frontier women to show you how to get your cabbage patch stew just right and how to properly clean your dutch oven.  And, in case you were wondering, yes, they do have a cookbook for sale (the latest in their three part series on cowboy cooking).

The food alone is worth the trip, but the entire event, while not terribly large or extravagant, stirs more than just the stomach.  I was treated to a flood of memories from the Westerns that I so loved as a kid, the way most American males experience cowboy culture in their youth.  I was reminded of scenes from Young Guns, Tombstone, and Wyatt Earp - those were my favorites (sorry John Wayne).  I remembered playing fort with my cap gun pistols, pretending my bike was really my trusted horse, and visiting the ghost town in Calico, CA.  Perhaps I liked cowboys just because I grew up around horses until I was 8 years old, or because my father still thinks that he's a cowboy, but its hard to imagine the life of an American male child without cowboys.  The western genre may be losing ground to the likes of Pokemon and Star Wars (which has been described as a space western), but the Hollywood image of the cowboy has undoubtedly left an indelible mark on American culture.

Up the hill, surrounded by a colorful garden sits the gargantuan National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  If the National Mall in Washington, D.C. was in a pinch and needed a new Smithsonian Museum, they could probably plop this one down and it'd do the trick.  Dramatic and over-sized sculptures abound and local square dancing groups perform in the lobby.  There are several art galleries filled with romantic images of American frontier life, including paintings by Albert Bierstadt and sculptures by Frederick Remington.  There's a mini frontier town, called Prosperity Junction, that aims to recreate the ambiance of a turn-of-the-century railroad town just after dusk.  There are excellently constructed galleries of cowboys in film, the history and development of the American cowboy, and the importance of the rodeo.  One can also peruse an impressive collection of guns from the late 19th century, a Native American showcase, and a frontier hunting exhibit.    If cowboy culture were a religion, this would most certainly be its Vatican.

While the museum certainly indulges in romanticized images of cowboy life, it also depicts much of the grueling and monotonous work from both the past and the present.  Cowboys were and continue to be hired help, a kind of specialized shepherd.  They have to castrate calves and chase down stray cattle in freezing blizzards.  They have to spray the herd with special medical solutions to prevent parasite infestations and spend long hours under the unforgiving sun.  As one quote from the museum put it, "this ain't inside work."  Which leads me to wonder, why all the glamor?  Why has the cowboy become the iconic symbol of masculine American identity, much like the Medieval knight is to Europe, and the Samurai is to Japan?  The image is so powerful that several Presidents (Roosevelt, Reagan, and Bush II, off the top of my head) have tried to incorporate the image of the cowboy into their own political identity.  Much as in stories of knights and samurai, cowboy stories from Hollywood and literature are morality tales at their core.

Every culture has its myths that communicate and preserve its values, usually through a tale that follows the arc of the "Hero's Journey," as described by the late Dr. Joseph Campbell.  Great myths are almost always stories of an individual's journey and the personal growth that occurs along the way.  While in reality cowboys rarely got into scuffles with Native Americans or had to chase down evil bandits to rescue honorable ladies, their lonely lives on a dangerous frontier had the makings of an archetypal adventure onto which a young and growing nation could project its ideals of individual morality.  Other defining national events such as the Civil War were fraught with divisive sentiments, and the West had always been a kind of release valve for the nation's tensions (Frederick Jackson Turner's classic thesis).  For a society so focused on westward expansion, the long cattle drives of the late 19th century formed the perfect setting for a national myth (as opposed to the environment of continual political struggle which defined feudal Europe and Japan).

While the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum cherishes the substance and spirit of the old West, the enduring and idealized image of the cowboy is not preserved in authentically prepared peach cobbler or in highly decorative leather saddles.  The cowboy life isn't so much the embodiment of our national culture as it is a vessel for us to communicate our social values.  Some ardent aficionados of cowboy culture might want to believe otherwise, but as the Outlaw Josey Wales put it, "That's just the way it is."

Christmas on the Frontier

Just north of Oklahoma City lies the capital of Oklahoma; or at least what was supposed to be the capital of Oklahoma.  The town of Guthrie, settled in a matter of hours on April 22, 1889, boasted a population of 10,000 people and was dubbed, "The Queen of the Prairie."  Buildings sprouted up overnight as people poured in looking for a new beginning to their thus unfilled lives.  Soon the wooden buildings were replaced with those of brick and stone, along with water, electricity, and all the municipal amenities that made a modern town.  The railroad station provided the flood of timber, stone, and supplies needed to construct a modern city in a land that provided few resources for such endeavors.  A Belgian architect, Joseph Pierre Foucart, designed and built many of the town's important structures in the prevailing Victorian style, giving Guthrie an appearance of modernity equal to many more established towns along the east coast.

By 1907, when Oklahoma became the 46th state to enter the Union, Guthrie was a burgeoning capital city boasting a Carnegie library, an opera house, marble baths, and a Masonic center.  The city carried the hopes of the thousands of settlers trying to make their stand on the lonely, wind-swept plains.  Unfortunately for all those who had staked their livelihood's on Guthrie's future, petty political conflict cost Guthrie its livelihood (or at least hastened the inevitable).  The owner and editor of the Daily State Capitol (Guthrie's Republican paper), Frank Greer, ran a continuing series of blistering editorials scathing Governor Charles Haskell (a Democrat).  Guthrie was supposed to remain the state capital until at least 1913, but in 1910 Haskell pushed forward the popular referendum to decide the location of the capital.  Due to geography and the location of railroad hubs, other cities were outpacing Guthrie's growth.   When the votes were tallied Guthrie lost to Oklahoma City by a large margin.  The state seal was unceremoniously removed by men loyal to the governor, giving rise to an urban legend in Guthrie that their status as the capital was stolen from them.

While Guthrie seemed cursed following its loss of capital status, history is much the better for it.  Following the vote, Guthrie became a ghost town.  Property values plunged 80%.  No one wanted to invest in Guthrie, and as a result, the Victorian buildings were left standing.  In other fast growing areas, especially in Oklahoma City, buildings were constantly torn down and rebuilt as the land became more valuable.  The Masons acquired the capitol site in Guthrie and they constructed a $2.6 million Scottish Rite Temple that looks as though it belongs in Washington, D.C..  In the 1980s, a preservation movement gained momentum and Guthrie is now one of the largest areas on the National Register of Historic Places.

I visited Guthrie the weekend before Christmas 2009 to see the beloved production of A Territorial Christmas Carol, a frontier twist on Dickens' Christmas classic (and my favorite Christmas story).  The play was put on by the Pollard Theatre, the oldest continuously running production house in Oklahoma.  In this version, Scrooge is not a financier, but a land owner, and most of the London-centric elements of the story have been replaced with the characteristics of the frontier.  Next door is the Pollard Inn, housed in what used to be a bank.  The family-run bed and breakfast has spacious  rooms, and the downstairs restaurant, Megan's, has excellent food at decent prices.  The Pollard is an interesting study in contradictions, with its Victorian style and elegant, six-course dinner menu offset by the breakfast servers in their pajamas.  

The blocks surrounding the Pollard Inn and Pollard Theatre are filled with antique shops, each with their own distinct style of hand-me-down junk.  There are also a couple of independent art galleries, mostly selling western art.  Unfortunately, either because of my timing or the weather, Guthrie had the feeling of being abandoned during most of my two day stay, almost as if it were 1910 all over again.  The Blue Bell Saloon (with Miss Lizzie's Bordello museum upstairs) has been shut down and the owner foreclosed upon.  The National Four-String Banjo Hall of Fame Museum was still closed for renovations that were due to be completed in August.  Some remaining bright spots were the Oklahoma Territorial Museum, housed in the Carnegie Library, and the Frontier Drugstore Museum & Apothecary Garden, where one can gander at the insane concoctions that passed as legitimate remedies in turn-of-the-century America.  Beyond the small city center are a number of impressive Victorian homes, most notably the Dominion House, which I visited for a wedding in October.


While Guthrie is no longer the "Queen of the Prairie," or even "Oklahoma's Magic City," as it currently bills itself, it does offer a brief retreat into another time where we can imagine ourselves trying to make a new life in an unforgiving land.  As I am currently in the process of building a new home in Oklahoma, the lore of forging a new life on the frontier resonates strongly.  I only hope that I do not repeat the mistake of Guthrie by building too much upon a false premise.  In the months and years ahead I may revisit Guthrie for a tour of the Masonic Temple, or for the Guthrie Jazz Banjo Festival.  Hopefully the mood in the town will be more vibrant and less like that of 1910.

Huckleberry Hunger: Finding Nourishment in Spokane, WA

Until recently, the only thing I knew about Huckleberries was that there was one with a last name of Finn, that he had a friend named Tom Sawyer, and they lived famously along the Mississippi River in Mark Twain's novels.  However, on a recent trek through the mountains north of Spokane I had the pleasure of being introduced to a new kind of huckleberry.... the edible kind.

Huckleberries grow rather plentifully among the mountains north of Spokane and east of Colville.  During the course of my 5 day trek along rugged ridges, valleys, and peaks, I was lucky enough to supplement my meager allotment of food with wild huckleberries.  They taste a lot like blueberries, only sweeter perhaps (and much better than the Oregon grape, which looks like a blueberry but tastes like crap).

Much as wild huckleberries helped to sate my wild hunger in the woods, the city of Spokane has refreshingly provided a bounty of good eating after a period of extended malnourishment in Northwest Florida.  For being a city of only 200,000 people, Spokane's residents are eating well above their weight (not saying they're fat; they just eat well).  Food options in Northwest Florida are essentially this: McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell, Church's Chicken, Applebee's, Waffle House, etc.  Want locally owned?  Coram's is a quaint breakfast diner, but really only a small step above the Waffle House.  There's an assortment of "#1 Chinese Food" kind of places, as well as the stereotypical Americanized Mexican restaurants where the burritos taste like they just came out of the freezer.  Want a nice place for a special dinner date?  You've got "Captain's Spend Your Whole Paycheck on Standard Bland Seafood"-type places, each more boring than the last.  If there's one thing I miss about my Southern California/West Coast upbringing, it's the bedrock principal that people should be able to eat well at all price ranges.  For being such a small city, Spokane adheres to this principle better than most places I've seen.  It's abundance of independent eateries and bars give it a character that celebrates food and nourishment, rather than treating it like an necessary inconvenience.

I suppose food isn't the only thing happening here.  Most modern American cities will try to sell visitors on their tourist attractions, overplaying the importance and appeal of what are really just mindless wastes of time and money.  Spokane is no exception.  The downtown has a classy modern mall.  There are several historic buildings in the area.  At one point along the river, there's a "bowl and pitcher" rock formation.  The Riverfront Park hosted the 1974 World's Fair and features a huge Red Wagon.  Travel brochures try to sell visitors on the abundance of golf courses and local outdoor opportunities.  All very cool, but not very compelling. 

None of these "attractions" really stand out in a way that defines Spokane or provides its appeal.  The essence of Spokane is found in its hole in the wall dive bars serving unheard of microbrews on tap.   It's found in its natural foods markets that put Whole Foods to shame (and they sell Huckleberries!).  It's found at the mini-donut tent in the park where a guy sells freshly made mini-donuts to drunkards and families alike.  Spokane is the urban center of the agricultural "inland Northwest," and it shows.  It is a mostly "red state" kind of area, but still places the kind of emphasis on "independently owned" and "locally grown" that we only expect from blue states.  Other cities (*coughPanamaCity*cough) should look to Spokane as a model of good, cheap, local, and independent nourishment.  As I discovered while picking huckleberries to quell my rumbling hunger, what we eat is one of the biggest factors in how we live, work, sleep, play, interact, and function.  If everyone in a city eats nothing but Burger King and KFC, they probably shouldn't be surprised when the whole town is fat and miserable.  Not so in Spokane... the city feeds you well and charms you with it's turn of the century industrial style (twentieth century, that is).

Some of the places to eat and drink at:

O'Doherty's: A cool Irish pub near Riverfront park.  It has the typical Irish atmosphere of dollar bills on the walls and ceilings and a decent selection of beers.  Their sandwiches are great!

Mini-Donuts: It's next to the fountain in Riverfront park.  A guy basically makes mini-donuts on a mini assembly line right in his tent.  Then you get the option of, I think, cinnamon or sugar.  You can buy them in a variety of quantities for a few bucks.

The Steam Plant Grill: An amazing restaurant!  Certainly not cheap, but the atmosphere provided by the exposed steam pipes and machinery of this former steam plant is classic.  Not to mention that the food is amazingly good (they have huckleberry chicken!).  The real draw though, is the $13 beer sampler, with 55 ounces of beer in 11 or 12 different samples.  The Vanilla Bourbon Stout was like nectar from the gods. 

Dick's Burgers: Okay, so Dick's isn't exactly good nourishment.  But if you're hung over or just plain broke, they deliver really plain hamburgers and fries, along with pizza and some other stuff, for REALLY REALLY CHEAP.  It sure beats the McDonald's value menu. 

Frank's Diner: A cool place housed in an old railway car downtown.  I got huckleberries on my award-winning French Toast breakfast. 

The Viking Tavern: A great dive bar just north of downtown.  I had Huckleberry Cream Ale and Irish Death, just two of their many beers on tap (and they have like a hundred bottled beers to choose from).  They also had a great steak dinner special for only $6.95. 

The Rocket Bakery: An independent bakery downtown, serving typical hippie cafe type stuff.  Very good, reasonably priced, and great atmosphere.  Sure beats Starbucks. 

Pig Out in the Park Festival:  As if to prove my point, during my last few days in town there's a festival devoted to stuffing people's faces with everything from Texas BBQ to Indian to Soba noodles.

An Ode to Mexico Beach and the Lost Art of Relaxation

I'm no poet, but I thought I'd pay tribute to my town of residence for the past year or so, which I'll soon be leaving. I'm sure that I have butchered the meter of the poem, but I think I at least got the rhyme sequence correct for an ode. Here it goes:


Oh Mexico Beach, thy essence is a lost art,
A feat long vanished in this age of appearance,
No corporation can conquer you, not even Wal-Mart,
Against the tide of conformity you display perseverance,
While beaches further west brim with toned bronze bodies
Oiled and liquored and anxiously hunting,
Their beach is but a stage, not a treasure to be enjoyed,
But not your plump vacationers, not afraid to appear shoddy!
Sleeping and reading and lazily fishing,
Their beach offers free respite for all, even the unemployed

Some naysayers will decry your sometimes-foul smell,
While others will protest your oppressive humidity
Combined with the tawdriness of El Governor Motel
And dead sea creatures lying amidst your weak waves’ turbidity,
But none of these detractors can overcome your charm,
Not the mosquitoes or cockroaches, though they come in legions,
For yours is a brand not designed for the crowd,
Besides, I hear that black mold doesn’t cause any harm,
And Toucan’s can cure it, no matter the season,
Mexico Beach you would make Hemingway quite proud