Day 2: Tarte Tatin from Rue Mouffetarde

There is a small bakery and patisserie that I discovered when we went to Paris last year, at the corner of Rue Mouffetarde and Rue Arbalite. It became my regular boulangerie and I walked there every morning for a crisp baguette that we would have for breakfast.
Aside from different kinds of bread, they made terrific pastries - the best of which to my mind was their tarte tatin. Topped with thinly sliced apples, with a creamy delicious custard and a really flaky yet crisp crust -- it's to die for and the first
place I went to, after we finally landed in Paris, just 12 hours behind schedule, was to hie off to this bakery and buy a couple of tarte tatins and my second favorite, an apricot tarte.
The lady packed my pastries in a pretty and festive box which added to the pleasure of that very first bite of the best tarte tatin -- my very first taste of Paris.

What I Ate This Christmas ... in Paris: Day 1

Well technically I was not in Paris yet -- flew out of Manila on KLM 804 to connect to a cancelled flight to Paris. Thankfully the people at KLM Manila anticipated the monstrous chaos happening all over Europe and booked me on another flight -- that would leave the next day. But never mind, I was determined to make the most of this once in a lifetime Christmas vacation and if that included a few missed connections, as long as I got to Paris before Christmas, I knew I would be all right.
So the very first thing I ate was a hot meal on board KLM. Nice packaging hid a not so nice lunch, served soon after take off. Beef and noodles and a salad with feta cheese.
This being KLM, they didn't feed us much -- a small cold sandwich six hours later and another hot meal of shrimp noodles and a really sour mango salad a couple of hours before we landed.
If I had known that the next meal I would have would be a bottle of Coke Zero in the hotel where they put us up for the night, well, I would have eaten that salad, sour mangoes and all.

Guess Who Took Me to Lunch?

No it wasn't John Malkovich.
Or Willem Dafoe.
Or even Sting.
(Now you know who my heart beats for)
It was Tatsuyoshi Takashima.
And who is Tatsuyoshi Takashima?
He's the President of Dentsu -- THE president of the entire worldwide global Dentsu, where I am just a small cog in a huge wheel.
Now I don't know about you, if you regularly have lunches or dinners or even Starbucks coffee with your global worldwide CEO so maybe this is all ho-hum, been-there-done-that to you.
But this was a pretty big deal to me -- to be singled out for this one special honor.
This happy event took place in Tokyo, last month when I was there for my annual budget meeting.
I had met Mr. Takashima, actually did a presentation to him when he visited our regional office in Singapore last July. All of of us Asian country heads were there and during the official dinner, I got my 15 minutes of face time with him and we got to talking about Japanese food.
He seemed like a genuinely warm and engaged person and wanted to know what I liked about Japanese food.
So I said my all time favorite was tonkatsu or fried pork cutlet (think weiner schnitzel on steroids). He said that was his favorite too and promised that he would take me to this place that served the best tonkatsu in Tokyo.
After he moved on to talk to other people, I thought this was just part of the usual small talk so I was surprised to receive an e-mail from his executive assistant a few weeks later inviting me to a tonkatsu lunch in Tokyo, with a specific date and time.
To cut to the chase, I showed up at the appointed time, we walked to his favorite tonkatsu restaurant, 15 minutes away from the office.
And we had lunch together. It was an hour of personal time, with no talk about the office or work, but just good conversation about food, family, ideas -- it was lunch between two kindred human beings who just happened to both enjoy tonkatsu.
And yes, it was the best, the most delicious tonkatsu that I had ever had.

Shin Ton Yon ... OD'ing on Chinese Food in Greenhills

Aside from Le Ching, Won Ton, Beijing Hand Pulled Noodles -- which are all cheap AND great places to eat Chinese food, there is another one that I particularly like in the Greenhills shopping center area and that's SHIN TON YON Foods just outside the chapel.
A self service canteen style place, Shin Ton Yon sells and serves up mami, roast meats, freshly rolled amoy style lumpia and a medley of Pinoy and Chinese dishes sitting cheek-by-jowl beside each other in a stainless food counter.
So you can opt to have your adobo, pinoy or chinese style (with a hard boiled egg) or have adobong pusit, kikiam, or pork barbecue, mustard greens or stewed tofu, paksiw na pata or pata tim, kilawin tenga or lechon macau or pata hamon. A little confusing but it's all good. Round off the orders with yang chow rice or kiampong rice or have some machang.
For dessert, there's a chewy mango bar, black gulaman, soy drinks, sometimes a really good iced saging na saba.
And after your meal, browse among the shelves and what's on the counter and take home 3-in-one coffee from Malaysia, mulberry and acai berry drinks, peanuts, candies, hopia, pork floss, achara -- there's a veritable sari sari store right in front of you!
For a more authentic feel, drop by Shin Ton Yon in Binondo where they do take out orders of cooked food and roast meats.

Won Ton Desires

Lusting for a steaming bowl of won ton noodles? Fulfill your desire for this and more at this teeny hole-in-the-wall called (what else) WON TON tucked away in a side alley of Shoppesville in Greenhills.
A friend took me here for a late lunch -- he promised Won Ton was better than Le Ching, my all-time barometer for judging cheap dives with great food.
Won Ton is a hop and a skip away from Le Ching. For a minute, I hesitated before I pushed open the door -- Won Ton is a much smaller place, the leatherette seats and booths had definitely seen better days and it seemed quite poorly lit. But, the best places are sometimes the ones that look the worst so I was ready to be won(ton) over.
And yes, I was indeed.
The menu, all two pages of it, was more extensive than Le Ching's. Aside from the noodles and dimsum, there was a respectable list of pork, chicken and vegetable dishes. My friend recommended two must-trys for a first-timer like me: the fried pork chop with tofu and the fried chicken wings with sweet vinegar. I also wanted to try the spareribs rice, something that all good chinese dimsum places do well. And of course won ton noodles. And since we ordered pork chops, well -- we had to have the yang chow fried rice.
The food came quickly -- hot, freshly cooked and yummy. The fried chicken wings were tasty and crisp and had a sweetish vinegar dip with lots of chopped onions. The pork chop with tofu reminded me of Hainanese pork chops and were fried with green and red bell peppers, broccoli flowerets and some chili pieces, very tasty and quite tender. I found the yang chow rice a little too oily and slightly more salty than I would have wanted it -- and made a mental note to order plain steamed rice next time.
Looking for something else to order, we decided to have fried shrimp puffs which were quite good, the filling was made with real, recognizable shrimp and the small dish of mayonnaise that came with it made for a creamier bite.
Won Ton is a great little discovery -- It's good, it's reasonably priced (P140 to P270 for generous servings, good for 2 to 3 unabashed eaters) and has a lot of other items on the menu that look very promising!
From now on, when I'm in Greenhills, Le Ching will have to share my wallet with Won Ton!

Late Blooming Early Adopter

I have always been a laggard when it comes to technology.
I didn't have an air conditioner in my bedroom till the year 2000.
I fought kicking and screaming against the onslaught of the mobile phone ("Whaaaaaatttt???? Clients can call me ANYTIME????").
It took me some time to switch from a desktop computer to a laptop.
And I only got a flat screen t.v. set early this year.
So I think I must have been possessed by the wandering soul of an early adopter because just a week ago, I bought an iPad.
Yes, yes I know.
This from someone who had scoffed at the iPad as a glorified expensive plaything -- not really for serious business stuff, that's how people who bought it justified it to themselves and to their wallets.
But, something came over me -- a reckless spirit, a feeling of sheer abandonment of all reason, of throwing all principles and pre conceived notions to the winds....
Hello iPad, you lovely gorgeous thing! Come here and make me happy!

Refreshing pancit ... Schezuan Cold Noodles

Fresh, chewy noodles, made by hand, just before they're cooked and served. Uhhmm, yummi-ness.
For freshly made noodles, my go-to places are Mey Lin Pot and Noodle House (with branches in SM Megamall, SM Mall of Asia, SM Manila and Jupiter Street) and this small restaurant along J. Abad Santos St., off Wilson called Beijing Hand Pulled Noodles.
Both places make their noodles on the spot, just when you place your order -- you can see the chef through the glass windowed kitchen pulling, throwing and tossing the noodle dough until it separates into the right sized strands.
My favorite dish at Mey Lin is the cold schezuan noodles. It comes with chili, julienned pork, pickled vegetables, kutsay and cucumber slices on the side. Crushed peanuts are sprinkled on top. You mix everything up and all the flavors merge into a spicy but refreshingly light dish.
And when I go to Beijing Hand Pulled Noodles, I like their Ground Beef with Dry Noodles which is a lot like eating chinese spaghetti bolognese albeit with a spicier kick.
After you've tried fresh hand made noodles, packaged pancit canton or bihon will never be good enough anymore!