Embedded below is a 48-second YouTube video of my brother C describing our lunch at Duke’s BBQ. Duke’s serves the best Southern food I’ve ever eaten.
C wrote about the place in his Top 5 restaurants in Beaufort, SC post.
The audio is a bit low here, so you might want to turn up the volume. (RSS readers can click here to see the video if it isn’t displayed below.)
Okay, first things first: Let’s talk about the food in America. If, as the saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder, then let me say that after spending just one year in the US since 2002, I have a renewed passion for American foodstuffs.
Here are a few notes and cell phone pics ((I snapped these images with my trusty Nokia E71, which I’ve blogged about before.)) of various items we consumed during our three-week visit to the US.
In retrospect, I must say that our culinary conquests seem rather…calorically dense. Beer, burgers, chocolate, cheese grits, pecan pie — and large portions of it all.
Let the games begin…
In Thailand, our beer options are restricted to a few unremarkable Thai brews and some standard imports. I’d forgotten how much high-quality beer is available in the US. Here’s but one segment of one aisle of the beer section at a Wegmans supermarket in central Pennsylvania. Amazing. ((For an in-depth look at the vibrant microbrew industry in America, check out this New Yorker story from November 2008 by Burkhard Bilger. My takeaway, among others: I’m justified in liking Budweiser! Just ask the Belgian brewmaster…))
Two snaps from one of two trips we took to Five Guys, purveyors of some of my favorite burgers in the world. Enough said. ((Related post: The best burger in Bangkok.))
Yes, we visited this monument to American confectionary innovation. It was…fantastic. Don’t miss the Kit Kat Cafe. Here’s a snap of the factory’s daily production of Hershey’s bars, Kisses, KitKats, and York Peppermint Patties:
I am a large man with a healthy appetite, but if American restaurants offered children’s portions to adults, I’m quite certain they’d be enough for me to subsist on — and have some left over to take home. I’m not sure that I finished a single restaurant entree portion that I ordered during the entire three weeks.
Check out the size of this soup-and-salad lunch combo from the otherwise reasonable Panera Bread:
Or this cobb salad, which I ordered at a restaurant in PA:
Wow.
I was treated to some top-notch Indian food, thanks to the incredible Mrs. S. Here’s a memorable home-cooked breakfast of samosas, an aloo gobi-like dish, and dahl puri:
And here’s Mrs. S at work in the kitchen:
We ate some incredible food in my latter-day hometown of Beaufort, South Carolina. Namely, my Aunt Cece’s ((Hugs and kisses to you, Aunt Cece! I’ll do my best to replicate your recipe…)) pecan pie, which I’ve mentioned before:
We also did some Southern cooking of our own at home. Here’s an unabashedly artery-clogging breakfast we whipped up one day: sausages with gravy, cheese grits, fried eggs, and toast. Believe it!
Up next: a Newley.com exclusive video of a visit to Duke’s BBQ in Beaufort, SC, an establishment my brother C has raved about before. Stay tuned…
A and I are back in Bangkok. Our trip to the US was excellent. Congrats to J and A ((That would be the other A, naturally.))! We witnessed their nuptials in PA, and it was a grand affair.
I’ll have some posts about our visit in the days to come.
For now, I’m off to eat Thai street food, battle my jet lag, and re-acclimate myself to the humidity here in the tropics.
Stay tuned…
I’m currently traveling in the US, so activity here at newley.com will likely be sporadic for the next few weeks.
I’ll be posting some dispatches on Twitter from time to time, though, so you can look for me over there.
Back in January, as you might recall, my little brother C penned a guest post here at newley.com called “Top five restaurants in Beaufort, South Carolina.”
C is a serious foodie, and unlike his older brother, he’s spent a lot of time in SC over the past several years.
Though it didn’t make his list, I wanted to point out that our sleepy seaside town (pop. in 2000: 12,950) now boasts…a Thai restaurant. ((Side note: The globalization of sushi is well documented. But what about the globalization of Thai food?))
The curiously named Yes! Thai Indeed restaurant has been earning some positive reviews of late. (Not only does the restaurant have a Web site, but they even have their menu (PDF link) and guest book online.)
Will Yes! Thai Indeed make C’s 2010 round-up of Top 5 Beaufort restaurants? Only time will tell.
Here’s a cell phone pic of today’s Bangkok Post front page, which features two train stories. Glancing at the paper might give you the impression that the articles are related, but they’re not.
The headline, “Train services return to normal,” refers to the recent strike by Thailand’s train workers. As the headline says, service is scheduled to resume today.
The image, caption, and second article, however, refer to Monday’s Metro crash in Washington, DC that killed nine people and injured many more. Two trains collided on the city’s red line.
(As it happens, Thai trains may be running again. But service along DC’s red line is, understandably, still “severely impacted.“)
A story in the current Economist sums up the political landscape in Thailand.
Discussed here are PM Abhisit, the red shirts, the yellow shirts (and the PAD’s new political party), and the insurgency in Thailand’s south. Worth a read.
H1N1 infections in Thailand have increased markedly over the past few days. Confirmed cases are now at 310, up from just 16 last week.
Here are three recent stories:
The confirmed case of Type-A (H1N1) influenza cases in Thailand has risen to 310, Deputy Public Health Minister Manit Nopamornbodi announced Tuesday.
He said the Public Health Ministry will Tuesday hold a meeting of doctors nationwide to make preparations to cope with the more outbreaks.
Despite the increase of the cases, Manit pleaded the public not to panic.
The number of A(H1N1) influenza cases in Thailand had risen to 310 after 109 new cases were reported on Tuesday, Public Health permanent secretary Prat Boonyavongvirot said.
Dr Prat said the Ministry of Public Health will now hold a press conference on the H1N1 outbreak everday at around 11am to prevent any misleading information.
He said the number of H1N1 flu cases would likely increase, but it was not unusual since other countries also encountered the same problem.
The Public Health Ministry is asking provincial health and hospital chiefs not to speak to the media about influenza A (H1N1) cases in an effort to calm disquiet over the extent of the spread of the virus.
Ministry spokesman Suphan Sithamma said a letter was being sent to senior health figures warning them not to say anything about the number of flu cases and details about the patients. All information was to be filtered through health authorities in Bangkok.
The ministry’s hush-hush order came as the number of flu cases passed the 200 mark and experts expected it to rise further.
A few thoughts about David Carradine’s death and the subsequent media coverage:
Thai tabloid newspaper Thai Rath published the image two days after Carradine was found dead, and many assume the photo is authentic. (I will not link to it here.) Others, however, aren’t so sure about the image’s provenance. As Andrew at the Thai media blog Bangkok Bugle points out:
The upmarket Nai Lert Park hotel where Carradine’s body was found is refusing to confirm or deny if the image depicts one of their suites. Thai Rath remains equally silent about its sources, as does the Royal Thai Police about whether this image is genuine.
Thailand’s most popular newspaper has been branded “sick” and “sensationalist” for its decision to publish the pictures on Saturday, however to those in Thailand their coverage is nothing out of the ordinary. Yesterday’s front page, for example, showed blood-spattered bodies from the latest terror attack in the south of the Kingdom.
Regardless of this particular photo’s authenticity, there’s a bigger issue here: Thai Rath and other newspapers in Thailand are known for their graphic coverage. As Patrick Winn noted last month in GlobalPost:
Each morning, Thailand’s newspaper racks offer a gallery of gore.
Few days pass without a corpse, face-down and blood-soaked, appearing on Thai newspapers’ front pages. Equally common are accident scenes, with unlucky drivers spilling lifelessly from their totaled cars.
Thai Rath, a newspaper in Thailand, has published a front-page photo of what it says is David Carradine’s body hanging by ropes in a hotel closet. The actor was found dead in a Bangkok hotel last week.
No doubt, the grisly photo, as well as an autopsy photo that’s been surfacing across the Web, will generate lots of traffic.
But they’re not news.
It’s right to wonder whether they’re authentic, but even if they are, I can’t imagine a legitimate reason to publish them.