The Girl Who Ate Everything

Happy May, guys! Oh hey, did I only write one post last month? I think that's a new record of non-productivity. Yeeeaah. [sticks head in a chum bucket] [Spongebob reference not intentional] As always, thanks for sticking around! Let's hope I can do better this month. Once I get my 600-and-something vacation photos from Berlin up, I'll feel more prepared to actually write about it.

Mei Li Wah

UPDATE (5/5/12): Just days after writing this post, I must dock Mei Li Wah a few points. :C Last night I went there around 8:30 p.m. only to find that they don't make rice noodles that late—thus no rice noodle roll-wrapped crullers for my friend and me. Make sure to go earlier for rice noodle action. We also tried their "Big Bun" stuffed with pork, chicken, mushroom, hard boiled egg, and sausage, but it tasted like one of the ingredients had died and infused everything else with the mild scent of decay.

In my mind, there's only one appropriate reaction to reading the words "Fried Salad (3 Pcs.)" on a menu:

"Holy shit what is a fried salad what what what oh my I AM DEFINITELY ORDERING THAT."

If you though the same thing, great! We are obviously very mature adults with progressive curiosities, like a modern-day Archimedes. Before I take you on a magical journey to reveal the mysteries of the salad, let us indulge in a celebratory fist bump. [bump]

As for the rest of you who didn't think the same thing...well. I guess you can come too. TAKE MY HAND I WASHED IT AND EVERYTHING, JUST FOR YOU...

All I knew about Mei Li Wah's fried salad before I ordered it was that it could be measured in pieces and each piece was worth $1.316. Otherwise, it was a mystery. A fried, oily mystery. I assumed it also involved fried vegetables. Or fried toppings. Or perhaps a variety of fried crust bits, tossed with dressing.

I love that sign.

When you live in New York City, it's easy to overlook popular, tourist destination restaurants that are actually good. Take Katz's, the over century-year-old home to hefty meatpiles featuring pastrami, corned beef, brisket, and other sliced or ground up animal parts. It's one of the city's most famous restaurants; you don't need me to tell you to go there.

But every now and then, I need people to remind me to go there. Because two years went by between my most recent Katz's visit in March and the one before that. And thus I was reminded of what I'm missing when I don't eat at Katz's:

Reuben. I love you.

That's half of their Reuben sandwich: a floppily stacked mound of hand sliced, meltingly fatty, tender pastrami (by request; the default is corned beef) topped with sauerkraut, a few slices of Swiss, and a slathering of Russian dressing for $16.55. Sure, the pastrami doesn't need extras, but they don't hurt. It's a different kind of awesome from eating a plain pastrami or corned beef sandwich. Also, messier.

Although $16.55 may sound like a lot for a sandwich, consider that half a sandwich should overly satisfy most normal-sized stomachs—and the sandwich comes with a generous plate of pickles to further pad your belly—making it an awesome dinner-for-two for about $8 per person. I say that's a steal. Why the hell don't I eat here more often?

I first started writing this post in January, when my brain was still fresh with tortilla chip-induced rage. After I lashed out at Whole Foods with the almighty power of the written word—which isn't that powerful when it's sitting as a draft in Gmail for four months—I realized how dumb it was to care that much about tortilla chips. ...Well. Maybe "dumb" isn't the right word. But my first impression was something like, "Man, that's dumb." And I definitely spent too long drawing the doodle below. That was probably a bad use of my time. I've been told I need to sleep more to stave off death. On the other hand, I thought, "Well, I already spent too much time drawing that doodle; I don't want that to go to waste. All that hard work. I even shaded the thing. I am rarely compelled to shade." The real reason I decided to finish this post, though, was because I found a brand of tortilla chips I really liked and I thought it was worth blogging about, even though I rarely blog about snack products. Aaaand the end. You probably didn't need all that explanation.

Sometimes, this is how I feel.

"THOSE ARE THE CHIPS I WANT. RIGHT THERE. RIGHTTHEEEERRRRE."

I don't usually think that loudly while shopping at Whole Foods, but my bag of chips was right there, and I wasn't expecting to find it. What I wanted was, quite specifically, a small-ish bag of tortilla chips fit for one woman and a bowl of guacamole (as opposed to the more typical one-pound bags fit for a Super Bowl party-for-20), filled with chips of the thick and freshly fried variety. My shopping basket was chip-less as I reached the store's final frontier of prepared foods and steam tables. I was ready to give into subpar tortilla chips.

But on top of the salad bar was a row of small, lunch-sized paper bags filled with freshly fried tortilla chips—"Our Own Homemade Tortilla Chips," according to the Whole Foods-branded sticker on the bag. The chips looked appropriately golden and thick. Could...could it be? Could I be this close to filling my mouth with the painfully sharp shards of crunchy, corny awesomeness I so madly craved? I could see my future in those chips, the grand night of tortilla-chip-and-homemade-guacamole that would ensue, aka "EPIC ROBYN PARTY FOR ONE."

And then, as soon as I got home and dumped all my stuff on the ground because that's where stuff goes (my mom didn't teach me that; I learned it on my own, after many years of honing my dumping technique), I hastily shoved a chip in my mouth. And that high I was riding—the high that comes when you get something you really wanted but didn't expect—suddenly stopped. And, following the laws of physics, even though this is metaphorical, I was flung off into a wall of disappoint (which is a bit different from disappoinment, but I don't feel like explaining that now). After one bite, the chips crumbled like my dreams-of-one-second-ago. The chips looked hearty, but it was a lie; their texture was brittle. They looked corn-alicious, but their flavor was wan and marginally salted. And then the ingredient list gave away their substandard origins: They were made of flour tortillas.

View Germany Trip, April 2012 in a larger map.

Thanks to your suggestions, I had a great time during my recent trip to Berlin! And now you'll get to see just how many of your suggestions I didn't use because I fail at planning. [flashes a thumbs up]

...Well, you're supposed to relax on a vacation, so I've heard. Aside from do stuff. And that necessary step of planning the "stuff" stresses me out, a skill I haven't developed well due to a spoiled life of, well, not having to plan much. I usually rely on the friends I'm traveling with to figure out our activities, or cling to locals like they're my seeing-eye dog—both of which happened in Berlin. But out of all the vacations I've ever taken, I think this is the one I've done the most planning for. And this is what I learned: I need to learn how to plan better.

Since I never know if a series of posts about a vacation will take a few weeks or a few months (...nah, I'm lying; it'll definitely be the latter), I'm starting this series of Berlin posts with a Table of Contents of sorts, a list of my major activities in handy, not photo-laden (but really long) bulleted-list form. Hopefully this can help someone plan a trip to Berlin.

To clarify a few things, I flew to Berlin with my friend Diana (travel buddy to Norway and Iceland), where we met up with my boyfriend Kåre, who flew in from Norway. Kåre and I stayed in a different hotel from Diana, and we spent about half the days apart, meeting up at nights for dinner.

Aaaaand here we go:

Day 1 (Thursday, April 5th)

Haus Schwarzenberg

• First shopping destination after Diana and I arrive too freakin' early to Berlin: Kaiser's, a major supermarket chain.
• While roaming aimlessly near Diana's home for the next week, Hotel-Pension Bregenz, we end up on the Kurfürstendamm, not knowing it's Berlin's fancy-pants shopping street. AIN'T NOTHING FOR US HERE. Moving on...
• Hang out/collapse for a bit at Diana's pension before meeting up with Kåre; his flight arrived a few hours after ours. Not walking around feels sooo gooood.
• Meet up with Kåre at our hotel, Hotel Berlin near Nollendorfplatz. Diana leaves to meet up with a friend. Take a nap until mid-afternoon.
• Kåre and I meet up with Berlin friend/TGWAE reader Annette in Prenzlauer Berg at bakery Werkstatt der Süße for first real food of the day (HOORAY!), which happens to be dessert (...HOORAY!). Follow Annette as she leisurely guides us around the neighborhood.
• Eat post-dessert snack sandwich at Cafe Fleury, a cute French cafe.
• Visit Haus Schwarzenberg, a backyard/courtyard of cafes, shops, museums, awesome street art, and other stuff that I'm only reading about now because we don't get to spend much time there. Many thanks to Annette for leading us there. Very neat; I recommend it.
• Head back to Prenzlauer Berg to eat dinner at Weinstein, a lovely wine bar (not that my teetotaling self imbibes) with a cozy, rustic feel and a menu of refined German-inspired dishes. Reasonably priced for the quality. Recommended, especially if you like wine.