Cappuccino with a View

After hiking through the Guggenheim's current exhibit "Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936—a scattered collection of artworks from Europe's weirdly mysterious, fascist-bent, post-WWI era—I retreated to the third floor cafe, aka Cafe 3. It's an invigorating white space that follows the actual spiral of the building's design with white tables, chairs and stools, a short drink ledge and curved glass windows, illuminated by a sparkling sunlit view of the tree-lined city streets below, at least on this particular day it was sunlit. Being in such a visually absorbing setting, I never expected to be startled by the cappuccino, which to the utter surprise of my unsuspecting taste buds, was extremely creamy and delicious. What a great find: so secret, so stark, so sublime.

Vegan Chocolate Is Delicious!

On this rather august October day, I had an urge to visit Central Park and so I took the A train uptown. Upon reaching the 59th street entrance, near the giant marble fountain statue, I found myself in the middle of some kind of rally. It was an event called the 2010 Walk for Farm Animals held by Farm Sanctuary, a rescue group for farm animals. The organization holds annual walks throughout the country, and Canada, to raise awareness of the atrocious treatment of farm animals and to support rescue efforts.

"Factory farming" is the latest term to describe the transmutation of the livestock industry from wide, open meadows to filthy, cramped cages. What amazes me is how these systems get put into place. It takes a lot of engineers, builders and workers to give life to such a fundamentally inhumane idea. Then there are the meat-happy consumers, whose insufferable apathy toward how the food they eat is raised and slaughtered, fuels this monstrosity of an industry.

Thankfully, as this Farm Sanctuary event proves, not everyone is a meat-eating zombie. At the event, as you would expect, there were books and t-shirts for sale at various tables set up near the park's entrance, but what caught my epicurious eye were chocolate bars.

The cost for a 2.2oz bar was $5—pricey, but considering that the entire sum would be donated to animal rescue groups, technically, the bar itself was a freebie.

Chocolate bar in hand, I scampered off to find an empty bench where I could sample this exciting treat. Would it be bland and sugary? Or bitter and funky— like some of the high cocoa-level, organic chocolate bars I've tried from Whole Foods? I was hoping for something that would at least taste as good as those World's Finest chocolate bars that high-school kids sell for charity.

I carefully opened the cardboard box, and here's what was inside:

As you can see from the left pic, it's an attractive bar of chocolate divided into neat squares. It's nicely wrapped in well-sealed plastic that is of a thick and exceptionally clear quality. Someone obviously put some thought into keeping this chocolate attractive and fresh.

No signs of the figs and nuts noted on the label, so I flipped the bar over.

WOW—Lo and behold, fruits and nuts aplenty!

There was a refined texture and vibrant flavor to this vegan chocolate—no bitterness to wrestle with, no excessive sweetness to get passed, no heavy dairy to cling to your palate. It tasted as if all the heavenly connotations of a fresh box or tin of Dutch cocoa were perfectly distilled into bar form. The fruits and nuts made it all the better.

Truth be told, I happen to be a huge fan of milk and heavy cream. Typically, I like European chocolates that are so full of milk, they almost taste like cheese. But this vegan chocolate bar actually convinced me that milk isn't a necessary ingredient for delicious chocolate.

As it turns out, this dazzling, scrumptious chocolate is made by Jean-François Bonnet, former pastry chef of Daniel, in NYC. Aha, well that makes sense, no wonder it's so good. Bonnet is now the brilliant chocolatier behind a company called Tumbador Chocolate based in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, Tumbadour doesn't have a storefront, it only sells its chocolate online.

Botequim? Boteco? Choperia or Cervejaria? Who cares? The food's delicious!

A glass of the house 'chopp', a basket of bite-sized cheese pasteis and seasoned fries served in white ceramic cups at Maria de Lourdes boutequem in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Year after year, I find that my mother's home city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, has developed into something more exciting than it was before. This time around, my cousins introduced me to a lively social scene in the district of Lourdes, a stylish neighborhood with many enticing restaurants, designer stores and million-dollar properties.

It was a cool September evening—a Wednesday, I think—and the sidewalks pulsated with pedestrian traffic and animated patrons at crowded corner restaurants, though none so packed as Maria de Lourdes. Maria de Lourdes is just one of many local choices of cafes, barzinhos, botecos, botequins, choperias and cervejarias—think sidewalk taverns of varying levels of rusticity and glamour—specializing in beer, salgadinhos (sahl-gah-jeen-yooz) which are snack-sized meat patties and croquettes, and caipirinhas (kai-pi-reen-yahz). With that many names for bars with food, clearly this is a city that appreciates the art of hanging out.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long for us to be seated at what looked like the last available outdoor table. The waiter brought us menus along with the house chope. Chope or chopp (shoh-pee) is draft beer. In Brazil, bottled beer, is called cerveja (sair-veh-zhah). I decided to go with the chope, but I probably should have ordered a caiprinha. In truth, I don’t enjoy beer as a beverage as much as I appreciate it as a cooking ingredient. But the beer was fine, and anyway, what I was most excited about was the basket of pasteis (pah-steh-eez).

A pastel (pah-stel), is a very thin fried dough stuffed with various fillings—typically beef. It’s very similar to the Spanish pastele or pastelito or Jamaican meat patty, but typically made with a lighter dough. For those who prefer a non-meat filling option, many places also offer cheese and cheese and palmito (hearts of palm) pasteis, which is what we ordered at Maria de Lourdes. Like hotdogs and pretzels in NYC, pasteis are everywhere in Belo Horizonte, along with chicken croquettes known as coxinhas (koh-sheen-yahs). The pasteis at Maria de Lourdes come in little ravioli-sized squares, giving this typically fist-sized street food a bite-sized neatness. As we plunged into our basket, so we plunged into the night. We chatted and munched under a handful of stars, while alongside us, the crazy traffic of Belo buzzed with mopeds and motorcycles and passing cars discharging sporadic shouts and howls for Cruzeiro, one of Belo Horizonte's two soccer clubs, who had apparently won a match that evening against Ceará, a team from Fortaleza in Ceará.