Travel

The woman at the desk has never heard of that bus station before. It's on East 7th and Shady Lane, in the shady part of town.

I arrive at ten o'clock. The woman at the counter tells me the 10:15 ticket I bought online doesn't take me where I'm trying to get.

So she puts me on the 9:30. Which doesn't show up until 10:45.

This was the second leg of a mythic bus ride. I'd scheduled this route in January 2007. I was going to fly from New York to Austin. Bus from Austin to Monterrey. Monterrey to Central Mexico. My flight was canceled because Austin was frozen.

I gave myself a high-five for following through, three years later. I took a sip of water.

Earlier, hotel security accused me of shoplifting. I had elaborately stolen a bottle of water, M&M cookies, and a package of Fig Newtons. Then the mook realized the hotel didn't sell those products.

To understand the food in Richmond you must have a quick lesson on demographics and history. Don’t worry, it’s quick. Richmond began to see many immigrants from Hong Kong and throughout Asia after World War II, with a great number flowing in during the 1990s. Currently, Richmond is 65% Asian, 49% of those are Chinese. You’ll find other Asian cultures as well, particularly Southeast Asian as well as a mix of other cultures from all over the world. But this predominately Chinese makeup means restaurants, stores, shops and markets all cater to an Asian population, and visiting and eating is pure heaven for a guy like me.

What you won’t find in Richmond is a central Asian neighborhood, a place that announces itself with a banner or red arches as a gateway to a Chinatown. Here Chinese culture here is woven into every aspect of living, reflected not only in its citizens but also through signage and everyday life. I have never felt more like a visitor in Asia than I did in Richmond, and considering I was still standing in North America my mind was blown away.

Then there’s the food. Oh my goodness, the food. The New York Times said Richmond has “the best Chinese food outside China” and I’m not going to disagree. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my trips to Asia it’s this: food must be of a certain quality, taste good, be made and served properly…there are definitely standards. Richmond was no different. Each restaurant I visited seemed to outdo the last as I sampled Hong Kong-style comfort foods, Malaysian noodles, a Shanghainese dim sum as well as glorious food courts within 2 distinct Asian malls.

Alas it was time for my vacation in France to end with the new year in full bloom and my duties back in New York City calling. I had a farewell dinner with my father at a little bistro run by a very young chef. My father is a voracious reader of all the Parisian publications and came upon a review of the burgeoning restaurant Jadis. Various newspapers have lauded it as the best of its kind in the fifteenth and possibly the city. The meal was very good in a classic bistro fare sort of way though I feel it is a stretch to call it one of the best in Paris let alone the very best. The food offered was mostly updated classics and reinvented French conventions. The cuisine could be called new wave French I suppose, archetypal though innovative.

The food was mostly game oriented and incorporated every part of the animal from kidneys and entrails, to feet and brain. My father ended up being the bolder of the two of us, ordering two dishes that I loved tasting but would rarely order myself. He began with the pied d’agneau or lamb trotter. The round white bowl that appeared contained a strange looking soupy ragout with chunks of lamb foot meat, snails, button mushrooms, and sliced cardoons. It sounds more like a bizarre sorcerer’s potion but those were in fact the ingredients and they worked surprisingly well. The lamb trotter tasted like fatty pieces of roast leg of lamb and the saltiness of the sautéed snails matched well with the texture of the mushrooms. My father was overjoyed with the dish; naturally a big fan of organ meats given his French heritage. I tried two or three bites and would have gladly accepted my own serving.

New York’s Café Buloud is a divine restaurant, and it is nearly impossible to order an ordinary meal. We were there the other night – our feast before the simpler joys of summer in Martha’s Vineyard. Saltimbocca Alla Romana was on the menu. Oh Boy! I haven’t seen that on a menu in years! What we received was delicious - stew sized chunks of veal in a thick, dark brown sauce with sweetbread tidbits and a small piece of prosciutto off to the side as an afterthought.

A few tiny green specks, which I fantasized to be sage, were stirred in the gravy… Delicious but disappointing! Time to go back to the 1960’s and a summer spent in Roma living in my painter’s studio just off the Piazza del Popolo, where Marcello Mastroianni would come for his espresso and we all lived La Dolce Vita! “Living” meant buying groceries in the Italian style – Every morning, going from shop to shop fingering the produce, chatting up the butcher, and bargaining in Italian.