By Pam Kent

Inside the Frieze at Rob Pruitt’’s installation

This is a great week to be in London if you are interested in contemporary art. The fifth Frieze Art Fair, which is held in a vast temporary, purpose-designed structure in Regents Park, opened Thursday and runs until Sunday. Visitors can see the work of leading contemporary artists from around the world – 151 galleries representing 28 countries are presenting work from over 1,000 artists. (article)

At the opening party this week it was difficult to see much of the art through the crowds, but this will give you a taste of what’s there: A friend who accompanied me, who has a passion for pandas, noticed a pile of brown paper bags adorned with panda drawings alongside a seated man who was drawing the creatures on currency notes for anyone who presented one. The man was the artist Rob Pruitt, whose installation for New York gallery, Gavin Brown’s enterprise, was a curious and creative flea market.

the panda bag

Mr Pruitt had asked a group of artist friends to set up stalls and everything was for sale. If you bought an item, you got one of the brown paper bags with a panda on it. We tried to buy a large panda-head mask but it turned out not to be for sale. We were told that Mr. Pruitt was planning to wear it on the stall/installation tomorrow – pandemonium!.

Can you buy the installation? With the artists? What price? Who knows!

The Frieze Art Fair
www.frieze.com
Friday-Saturday: 11 am to 7 pm
Sunday 11 am-6 pm
Tel: +44 (0) 870-890-0514

I’m often irked by reports in the Western media that trot out examples of new Chinese restaurants opening in Hong Kong to demonstrate a “trend” that post-Chinese handover food has become “more Chinese.”

For as long as edible creatures have existed in the South China Sea, Hong Kongers have fished them out and made them into Chinese food. And as long as there have been migrants and refugees from the rest of greater China — which is about as long as fish have swum in the sea — this city has been a meeting place for the cuisine’s regional variations, from Shanghai dumplings to Yunnan ham and Taiwan street-food.

What’s new is the elevation of old-fashioned, home-grown regional dishes into a higher cuisine that is paired with fine wines, polite service, elegant dining rooms and other comforts usually associated with pricey Western food. Even the decor has changed. In the past, traditional Chinese food could be had either in holes-in-the-wall, or gaudy restaurants with red fabric walls and faux gold dragons. Now, what’s new is the very old — antique wooden doors, screens and rickshaws make you feel like you’re being served beggar’s chicken in the Shanghai Tang foyer. And everything from Cantonese to Hunan, Sichuan to Manchurian, is available even in chic quarters like Soho.

One local company that got the formula right is Aqua. They are like the indie-label of restaurant groups — their offerings are nicer than street-side joints, but they are not an enormous commercial enterprise like Maxim’s either. They have four Chinese eateries matching traditional dishes with pretty interiors, each with its own character: Water Margin in Causeway Bay (Beijing, Shanghai and Sichuan dishes), Yun Fu in Central (Manchurian), Hutong in Tsim Sha Tsui (Northern Chinese) and Shui Hu Ju in Soho (Sichuan and other southwestern Chinese cuisines).

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Buying a loaf of round Ramazan pide in Cihangir.

When it’s 4 a.m. and I’m wide awake in Istanbul, it usually means the end of a long, fun night of dancing at a friend’s reggae bar in Taksim, but this is the Muslim holy month and I’m wide awake because of the Ramazan drummers.

Drummers?

Yup. In my neighborhood, Cukurcuma, a pleasant mix of foreign and local hipsters and traditional Turkish families, groups of young men roam the streets in the wee hours, pounding on large drums and singing made-up songs, waking even those deep into their REM cycles.

And that’s exactly the point.

Long before the invention of alarm clocks and cellphones, the drummers were depended upon by households that needed to rise and shine in time to prepare and eat a hearty breakfast before dawn so they could make it through the daylong fast.

These days, the drummers, who collect tips for their wakeup service, are officially banned and considered an annoyance by many cityfolk who have to actually get to work in the morning. But the tradition survives in some conservative pockets of town.

Another way Turks celebrate Ramazan is with special bread. Ramazan pide is baked in large round loaves, tufted like a sofa’s accent pillow, and decorated with sesame seeds. In the hour before sundown, you’ll see people lining up at neighborhood bakeries to buy loaves of the Ramazan pide, still steaming hot from the ovens.

As a tourist, you are not expected to fast during Ramazan, but you might find that the restaurant where you plan to eat is only serving a special Ramazan menu. So at sunset, tear off a chunk of pide and dip it into a bowl of hot red lentil soup and join in the fast-breaking meal known as iftar.

Ramazan ends Thursday and is followed by the three-day Seker Bayram, during which people buy sweets (seker means sugar in Turkish) and hand them out to local children.

Here’s a Globespotter’s tip: If you are moving on from Istanbul this weekend, plan NOW. Lots of people head out of town for Bayram, so a bus, plane or hotel might be especially crowded, or even fully booked.

By Stephen Castle

A friend’s significant birthday is approaching and you’re stuck for a present?

Ryst-Dupeyron has the answer (at least for lovers of armagnac): a bottle dating from the year of their birth. While other stores can sometimes oblige with a bottle from 1967 or ten or twenty years earlier, Ryst-Dupeyron is a more reliable supplier because it specializes in vintage armagnac, as well as Bordeaux grands cru, port and malt whiskies.

The armagnac comes in seven sizes, from a tiny 5cl to a generous 250cl with prizes to suit. They depend on the age but, for example, a 1957 vintage will range from about 14 euros in the smallest size to more than 500 euros for the biggest. Not only will the staff provide an emballage cadeau but the label can be personalized with the name of the birthday boy or girl below the date of their birth and the vintage.

Unlike fine table wines, armagnac is aged in oak barrels and therefore can be bottled according to demand for a particular vintage. So while the bottle will not be covered in cobwebs, the armagnac will date from the year in question. No need to worry if the birthday celebrant is turning 100 years old. Ryst-Dupeyron can supply some armagnacs dating back to 1868 and has most years since the 1920s.

And while you’re poring over the armagnacs, savor the atmosphere of the Ryst-Dupeyron boutique, which is lined with racks of dusty bottles produced by four generations of the Dupeyron family. The firm was founded in 1905 and now is run by the founder’s grandson, Jacques-Francois Ryst who buys from local growers mostly in the Bas Armagnac.

And finally, one more piece of birthday advice: store the bottle vertically to prevent the Armagnac from coming in contact with the cork.

This week, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni re-opened after a 5 year rennovation, with a somewhat incongruous duo of exhibits: one on the artist Mark Rothko and the other on the director Stanley Kubrick. Hmmm. The best piece of advice I got when I first came to Rome is that you never ask “why?” Rothko and Kubrick? Don’t try to explain it, just enjoy.

the palazzo

The first piece of good news is that the rennovation of this 19th century exhibition hall has produced the finest place I know of to see art in Rome, a city given to drab disorderly exhibits. The soaring well-lit display areas of the Palazzo rank with the great museum halls of the world. Like the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, the building is a pleasure even without the art. In the basement there is a fabulous book shop/gift shop as well as a self service cafe.

The well organized Rothko exhibit includes 5 rooms of the artists paintings, beginning with his early realistic pieces that resemble frescos and ending with the bold experiments in color that marked Rothko’s later years. The canvases are accompanied by discussions of the artist’s philosophy of art (and life), in both English and Italian, that are concise and always interesting. This is a great initiation of the new exhibition space.

In comparison to the clean cut Rothko exhibit, the Kubrick display seems chaotic and disorganized — like stumbling in to the messy room of a teenaged film buff. There are screens running film clips from each of Kubrick’s classics, surrounded by a cascade of memorabilia from each film which covers the adjacent walls and floor. This includes letters from the director, screenplays with his notes, camera lenses, movie posters and more. You can see Nicole Kidman’s creepy mask from Eyes Wide Shut, furniture from the set of Clockwork Orange, uniforms worn by Tony Curtis in Sparticus, as well as a backdrop used in 2001: A Space Odyssey — on which your picture is projected as you walk by.

Kubrick with Malcolm McDowell, Clockwork Orange

There is much of interest here, but also much that seems terminally trivial and dull. Still, you do get a sense of how meticulous and passionate Stanley Kubrick was about his art, and the enormous effort that went into making each film. One important piece of advice: The displays about some of Kubrick’s signature films — Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, the Shining — are in a side gallery that is poorly marked, if it is marked at all. It would be easy to take in the main gallery, think you’ve seen everything and wonder, as I did, “How odd to do a Kubrick exhibit and not mention Clockwork Orange?!” But now you’ve been warned.

Also somewhat hidden is a wonderful installation by Italian artist Mario Ceroli. (It’s behind the Rothko exhibit on the main floor.)

Palazzo Delle Esposizioni
www.palazzoesposizioni.it
Via Nazionale 194
Hours: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday, Tuesday-Thursday; 10 a.m.-10:30 pm Friday and Saturday.
Closed Monday.

In late September, on the same weekend that the International Herald Tribune ran a column headlined “It’s cepe time in la belle France,” we, too, had our taste of the first cepes of the season, in Hong Kong.

Our apologies for leaving a global footprint far larger than that small dish of exquisite, full-bodied mushrooms. They had been specially flown in from France, then fried in garlic butter and parsley until the outsides achieved that perfect, satisfying crispiness. We were having our anniversary dinner at Caprice — one French restaurant we return to in the city, and a choice for special occasions — and the chef brought it out on the house.

Our meal made me think of the old adage that, if you want fine French food in London, you might as well to hop on a plane to Paris, since it would cost the same. Now, I’m not advocating that travelers pop over from Western Europe to Hong Kong for a mushroom. But the fact that top chefs like Joel Robuchon, Pierre Gagnaire and Alain Ducasse have opened outlets here in the past few years, combined with the Hong Kong dollar’s link to the quickly dropping greenback, conspire to make authentic French cuisine in Hong Kong more affordable.

At Caprice, two of us had a three-course meal of classic French dishes — escargot soup, foie gras mille-feuille, veal sweetbreads, roast pigeon, and a cute sliver of sable breton with strawberries, sorbet and ice cream. (I had the soup and pigeon, and he the foie gras and sweetbreads, since I don’t eat those things). The food bill for two came to about H.K. $1,400, or less than 130 Euros, or less than 90 pounds sterling. I am deliberately leaving out the price of wine, as it varies so much at fine restaurants, but let’s say that — with water, coffee, service and a decent bottle of French red — the total bill came to about twice that. It’s not cheap, but it was less than what that same meal, in the same five-star environment, might cost in Paris or London.

Courtesy of Caprice

The nice thing about Caprice is that, despite the giant chandeliers and prime harbor-viewing position at the Four Seasons, it doesn’t feel stuffy. The dress code is not overly strict, and an open kitchen with chefs chopping, whisking and sauteeing give it a warm bustle.

Still, it’s about as authentic as you’re going to get anywhere in Asia, meaning it is equal to some of the top French restaurants in Tokyo. Most of the staff are from Hong Kong and speak English and Chinese; but if you wish, you can order your food in French, and your wine from a French sommelier. This is because the core talent here were all harvested and flown over from Le Cinq at George V in Paris: The chef Vincent Thierry, the pastry chef Ludovic Douteau, the maitre d’ Jeremy Evrard and the sommelier Cedric Billen.

It shows in the details. M. Evrard warned me, in French, that wild pigeon was bloodier than the farmed variety, and did I really want it done medium rare when “a point” would do? What could I do but listen to his expert advice? It came perfectly, with a dark browned exterior and that dense, butter-soft, pink meat that can only be achieved with real game fowl.

If you’re bored with the gauzy postcard view of Paris, take a reality check and visit the city’s living landmarks: real live (friendly) Parisians. Too often, diplomatic relations between foreign visitors and the French are based on brisk encounters with waiters over a bowl of onion soup or a looming firewall between hotel guest and clerk.

Now it’s possible to cross invisible boundaries to meet people from all walks of “vie” from the butcher and the baker to the saxophone maker. Laurence Monclard has created a whimsical and unlikely list of snap, 45-minute tours, called Meeting the French, that opens the doors of pastry shops and furriers wide to foreign visitors and, frankly, the French themselves.

“It was easy for me to organize it,” Monclard said. “There’s a demand from visitors to get to know who the French are, to have contact and to get tips on how to see Paris.” Many of the shopkeepers were startled at first that anyone would consider them a tourist landmark, she said, but they were pleased with the reaction. Tours, which are available in English and French, can be booked online.

My next trip is to visit Légeron, an artificial flower workshop that makes haute couture designs for France’s top designers. But a particularly popular choice is Gérard Mulot, a well known pastry chef in the St-Germain-des-Près district, who offers his factory in the 13th arrondissement for a glimpse of how to make macarons. Visitors can also enter the atelier of Henri Selmer Paris where artisans repair and make saxophones, clarinets and bassoons. And there’s always a chance of a free concert following the tour.

Not bad for the price of a 6 euro ticket.

Hong Kong more than earns its reputation as one of the world’s busiest, most congested cities. But what most visitors don’t realize is that about 40 percent of the territory is protected, and that there are more than 260 outlying islands.
The easiest, cheapest way to see this side of Hong Kong is to take a public ferry to one of the islands for a day trip. (More on this later.) But if you’re traveling in a good-sized group and want to do as the natives do, consider a junk trip. With a private boat, you will be able to spend a full day sailing anywhere in the territory.
Traditionally, a junk referred to a wooden Chinese boat, usually outfitted with the iconic red sail. Today, the term “junk trip” applies to any private boating outing, whether on a renovated antique teak vessel or a modern yacht, complete with iPod speakers, cocktails and jet skis.

Photographs by Joyce Hor-Chung Lau
The Chinese red-sailed junk: An icon-turned-leisure craft

Local companies like Jaspas and Saffron have packages that include the boat, fuel, a captain and skipper, plus food and drink.
Once you set sail, you’ll realized that the best view — and the only one that shows both Hong Kong’s incredible spread and the marine traffic that made this port city what it is — is not from The Peak or the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, but from the deck of a junk. The whole city is spread in front of you as you navigate past luxury cruises and dingy tugboats, tiny fisherman’s punts and enormous cargo ships, out of Victoria Harbor into open sea.

Modern “junks” docked in Victoria Harbor, near the former Queen’’s Pier

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welcome to the fair

There are days when you just have to get out of town. They seem to be more plentiful in the Washington area when the glories of autumn arrive: the crystal-clear, eye-blinkingly-bright days and the cool, bracing, quietly expectant evenings.

It is about this time of year when fall colors begin to grace the Shenandoah hillsides in Virginia, or the Catoctin Mountains in Maryland – both easy day trips from Washington – and when every town, burg or hamlet seems to have its own fall festival.

Some of the festivals revolve around wine (an increasingly important product of rural Virginia), some around apples or cider, some around the changing leaves.

And then there are the more unusual ones, like the Garlic Festival in Lovingston, Virginia, the waterfowl festivals on the Chesapeake Bay, or even the “Ugly Truck” festivals you will occasionally find (I saw one “winner,” a rusted out old Ford pickup truck with plants growing in the back and, suspended from the mirror, a set of “hillbilly wind chimes” – empty Budweiser beer cans strung together).

The unusual category would also include the Steam Engine and Craft Show in quaint Smithsburg, Maryland.

milk truck

Smithsburg is nestled in the Catoctin Mountains, just a few miles from a gorgeous state park whose inhabitants occasionally include the U.S. president (his Camp David retreat is within its borders).

Its steam engine festival has grown over the years to attract a range of old-fashioned steam-powered tractors and engines, which fill the air with their acrid, hissing steam or the screeching sound of a steam-driven buzzsaw being used by a skilled crew of sawyers to reduce 3-foot-thick logs into inch-thick boards. Another steam-powered engine transforms loose stacks of hay into neat little bales.

making bean soup

And there are rows and rows of antique tractors, though not all steam-driven, painted in bright reds, yellows and greens. Like most such festivals, Smithsburg’s featured delicious local foods. I enjoyed one of the best bowls of bean soup I’ve had – a peppery concoction cooked over a woodfire in an enormous black cauldron – and my wife was just as happy with her chicken-based “Leopard stew,” named after the local high school sports team. Home-made chocolate chip ice cream was the tasty follow-up. We also left with a large jug of local cider in hand.

Craft shows are another important part of the fall festival circuit. While this festival had, I suspect, a high percentage of pseudo-crafty products made in China, there are always bargains and genuinely charming products to be found. We scored an antique meat tenderizer (50 cents) and a fine old flower vase (50 cents). We also picked up a never-used Krups coffee grinder ($5, originally $25). I tried it this morning and it worked like a dream.

To find a festival in Virginia, this is a good source; for festival and foliage information in Maryland, go here .

As a Californian born in Europe to European parents, I pride myself on the distinctly Old World ability to scoff at the symbols of American boorishness. Baseball caps, white-socked tourists in hooded sweatshirts, the loud twangs of my native tongue – all are liable to receive heavy sighs and eye-rolling from me at a level that rivals the best Frenchmen. But my Euro-trashiness stops at my craving for a good hamburger. And, until recently, that desire has too often gone unrequited in my hometown of Berlin. What passes for burgers here, Bouletten, are good and tasty, but as far from a real burger as the city is from being a real capital.

But hope has arrived. Whether you’re a tourist looking for a break from currywurst and doener, a suffering expat, or a secret fan, the following is a modest list of the best places to eat burgers in Berlin.

Hazelwood – The attempt to recreate a 1930s era American diner, Hazelwood supplements its lampshade and dark wood look with decent American fare.

Hazelwood burger

They offer lemonade and ice tea (both of which could use a bit more sugar), decent fries and a burger that, though taking a while to make, tastes like the real thing. Possibly because of the lack of good hamburger buns in Germany, Hazelwood burgers are made with Ciabatta, a nice touch, but one that makes for a sloppy sandwich after the first bite. Ask for extra napkins. Choriner Strasse 72, Prenzlauer Berg (map).

The Bird – High-quality patties that are apparently what happens when you put high-quality cuts of steak through a grinder. Bird Burgers come in many varieties, each with their own clever name. The most famous is the Big Bird Burger, 750 grams (or 26.4 ounces), of meat that, if finished within 45 minutes, is free. Downsides are Continue reading »