Wish You Were Here

Au Petit Bonheur La Chance: For addicts of vintage French everything

editors@wishyouwerehere.us (Elizabeth Bougerol) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500

If you're addicted to all things old, domestic and French, this shop on narrow rue St. Paul is the equivalent of mainlining your entire stash.

Au Petit Bonheur La Chance specializes in the kinds of vintage (and vintage-inspired) finds that you'd squee over if you uncovered just one or two at a countryside flea market; here, there are thousands of them in a jumble. Stacks of 1930s cahiers, wartime parlor games, enamel street numbers, pochoir-decorated cafÃ© au lait bowls, deadstock Christmas cards, those matching kitchen canister sets into which you decant your farine and your sucre, hardy dish linens and more literally cram this joint to the rafters. In the middle of it all, Au Petit Bonheur's expert curator Maria-Pia Varnier sits, recording inventory in long ledgers and packaging some new bauble that's just come in.

Pick up a couple of perfect pieces (we scored some antique kiddie masks), or just spend an easy hour or two browsing. This is the kind of stumble-upon loveliness that makes the Marais such a delight for the aimless wanderer.

Stollen at the Weihnachtsmarkt: What's 8,000 lbs. and never goes bad?

editors@wishyouwerehere.us (Elizabeth Bougerol) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0600

Consider, if you will, the fruitcake.

There are many reasons to visit Dresden's Weihnachtsmarkt, the oldest continuously running Christmas market in Germany (it's been going on since 1434), but we'd like to draw your attention to the fruitcake.

Never mind that we've yet to meet anyone (German or otherwise) who actually enjoys fruitcake. Or that it's somewhat indistinct in flavor (this is why "hard sauce" was invented) and eerily unperishable (when the world ends, all that'll be left is cockroaches and fruitcake, because even they don't want to eat it).

The fact is, fruitcake is still around because it screams "Christmas"—perhaps nowhere more loudly than here, in Dresden's Manzgasse, every December, when an 8,000-lb. stollen is proudly paraded through the town until it wends its way to the center of the market, where the StollenmÃ�Â¤dchen ("the fruitcake maiden") presides over the ceremonial slicing of the cake, slivers of which are passed out to everybody in sight.

Bravo, fruitcake. Sometimes, staying power is its own reward.

Celebration for the Turkeys: Stuffing turkeys, in a good way

editors@wishyouwerehere.us (Elizabeth Bougerol) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0600

In 1986, Farm Sanctuary—a 175-acre patch of rolling hills and woods in New York State's Finger Lakes region that provides a home for animals rescued and rehabilitated from farms and stockyards—kicked off its Adopt-a-Turkey Project, finding donors to sponsor "adopt" the birds or placing them into loving homes.

Each year before Thanksgiving, in what's become the Sanctuary's biggest event on both coasts (there's a 300-acre Northern California counterpart), you can attend the day-long Celebration For the Turkeys, where the sensitive creatures are the guests of honor, not the main dish.

In one of the most winning petting-zoo-style experiences you'll ever encounter, humans and gobblers alike gather round for a feast of pumpkin pie, cranberries, squash, you name it (as long as it's vegan).

This year's Celebration For the Turkeys takes place on November 19 and 20.

Mütter Museum: Medical oddities on heart-stopping, skin-crawling display

editors@wishyouwerehere.us (Elizabeth Bougerol) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Step right up, ladies and gents, for a look at delights including (but in no way limited to):

1. The attached livers of famed Siamese twins Chang and Eng

2. Upwards of 2,000 objects swallowed, removed and neatly categorized in drawers

3. A nine-foot colon that once belonged to a sideshow personality known as the Human Balloon (we'll let you use your imagination on that one)

4. The 100-head-strong Hyrtl Skull Collection (pictured) and the tallest skeleton on record in North America, at just shy of 8 feet

5. A corpse turned to soap

6. Baby deformities galore

Part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the museum was born when Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter turned over his private collection, in 1858, for purposes of medical research and education.

Not for the faint (or even the somewhat sturdy) of heart.

Washoe House: A 19th-century roadhouse in Sonoma. With pie!

editors@wishyouwerehere.us (Elizabeth Bougerol) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0500

When's the last time you happened upon an actual roadhouse in California wine country?

Built in 1859, the Washoe House was built as a stagecoach station between Petaluma, Santa Rosa and Bodega. Passengers could stop for some restorative food and drink en route to their final destination. (You could even get a little extra something with your lunch when Washoe House operated briefly as a brothel.)

These days it's mostly a character-filled relic of a colorful past (albeit one that serves homemade pie). Order something from the diner-fare menu and look up: Patrons have been stapling dollar bills to the ceiling for almost as long as the joint's been jumping.

Pok Pok: White rocker perfects Thai street food in a shack

editors@wishyouwerehere.us (Elizabeth Bougerol) — Thu, 6 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Andy Ricker—rock bassist, housepainter, white guy from Vermont—backpacked through Thailand in the '80s and had an epiphany about the perfection of a certain kind of street food.

Twenty years later, Andy Ricker—Portland resto-scene bigwig, James Beard Award finalist—serves the flavors he unearthed there in many guises, and some of the best Thai food outside of Thailand. Our favorites are on the menu at Pok Pok, his pioneering effort.

It started in '05 as a shack-trailer outside his house, and expanded to a divey-feeling (in a good way) bar/dining room in the basement.

Musts: Kai yaang, game hen rubbed with lemongrass, garlic, cilantro and pepper and roasted over charcoal (charcoal is a big thing at Pok Pok—Ricker uses about 500 lbs. a week). Khao soi kai, a mild curry broth with fresh-pressed coconut milk and chili paste, roasted chicken, and a mess of crispy yellow noodles. Papaya Pok Pok, the signature green papaya salad which may ruin you for all others outside of Thailand. Ike's Vietnamese fish sauce wings, which are so popular, you can also get them across the street at Ricker's new Whiskey Soda Lounge (home of "the drinking food of Thailand").

And drinking vinegars, which are like a sour-patch version of an Italian soda (get the plum).

Dessert: Pok Pok affogato, condensed-milk ice cream with a shot of Vietnamese coffee, served with a Chinese fried donut.

Weather permitting, sit shack-side under the trees. It feels like you're at the best backyard barbecue ever.

Le Clos Montmartre: Harvest time at Paris' semi-secret vineyard

editors@wishyouwerehere.us (Elizabeth Bougerol) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

When mornings turn crisp in Paris, it's the first bite of autumn. Time to harvest the grapes.

You may have walked by the city's oldest working vineyard without realizing it; plenty of people do. It just looks like a verdant community garden of sorts on a street corner, borded by the Lapin Agile, beneath the Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre.

But you can't miss it during the annual Fête des Vendanges—the harvest festival—taking place October 5 through 9 this year. (It's the one time of the year when the vineyard is open to visitors without a group visit pre-arranged through the Montmartre tourist office.)

Montmartre's history as a hub of viniculture stretches all the way back to the Romans, who built a temple to Bacchus (god of—what else?—wine). The vineyard on this patch was nearly lost until a group of citizens secured its protection from the city between the world wars, and in 1933, the Clos as it is now was born.

And the wine? Grapes from the Clos are marched down into the cellar of the 18th arrondissement town hall, where they're fermented and turned into just over 1500 bottles of pinot noir and gamay.

Refined palates say the polluted terroir makes for wine that's little more than a romantic souvenir. We say there's nothing wrong with that.

Fore Street's Mussels: The dish that makes grown men weep

editors@wishyouwerehere.us (Elizabeth Bougerol) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Because much of the menu at this bustling, open-plan restaurant in the Old Port District changes daily, every meal there can feel like a farewell: Goodbye, caramelized rabbit livers. You're delicious, but we can never meet again.

The wood-roasted mussels, however, are always on the menu. Possibly because there'd be riots if Fore Street owner-chef (and James Beard Award winner) Sam Hayward ever decided to remove them.

In a busy week, the restaurant cooks up more than 800 pounds of mussels from Casco Bay, roasting them in a garlicky butter sauce spiked with chiles and almonds—a little bit of Spain by way of Downeast—in the wood-fired oven.

It's a good idea to order the mussels as soon as you're seated, before you even look at the menu, lest you get distracted. (You'll need extra bread for dunking.)

Queens County Fair: Small-town harvest fun in the Big Apple

editors@wishyouwerehere.us (Elizabeth Bougerol) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Some New Yorkers like to talk about how everything you could ever want, you can find right here in the city.

Think you have to drive off to Maine or Kansas for a good old-fashioned county fair with pig races? Nope. We got that. Right here in Queens.

First of all, the Queens County Fair is held at the oldest working farm in New York City—the Queens County Farm Museum dates to 1697.

From this cluster of barns on a parcel of land in Floral Park, you can buy eggs laid by NYC chickens and fleece shorn from NYC sheep, try wine made from the on-site vineyard and apples from the orchard. You can even attend dinners in the field where everything on your plate was grown or raised right here on the farm.

And at the annual Fair, held this year on September 17 and 18, you can have the distinctly odd experience of petting a Gloucester hog or watching a Costwold sheep being shorn with the tip of the Empire State Building rising in the distance.

Yuen Po Street Bird Garden: Of a feather

editors@wishyouwerehere.us (Elizabeth Bougerol) — Tue, 6 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Just as you can't walk down a Paris street without seeing dozens of doggies out for a promenade, a stroll in Hong Kong will make you aware of the Chinese fondness for keeping birds, said to bring good luck: You'll see cages hanging and hear their tweets trilling out of windows.

The feathered pets are prized more for their singing than their looks—there's a thriving demand for songbirds, and that market has its HQ in the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden.

This market, in Prince Edward Road West, is a feast for the senses: Tucked in alleys and courtyards are more than 70 stalls hawking birds and everything the birdlover might require, from the aesthetic and collectable (pricey handcrafted teak cages, wee porcelain feeders) to the practical (live crickets, grasshoppers and mealworms (all that singing makes a body hungry).

Keep your hands to yourself (avian flu is a concern, and there are signs reminding you thereof), but your eyes and ears wide open.