A road in Taipei.

I couldn't get it out of my head. The question I asked myself shortly after stepping onto the streets of downtown Taipei. What's that smell? Not a lip-curling, is-that-the-stench-of-decay-or-did-someone-fart smell, but a mild, omnipresent scent that says, "You're definitely in Taipei."

And thus I became unnaturally flush with excitement* when one night out of the blue Lee Anne said, "There's a distinct smell here." Oh, Lee Anne [clutches chest]—you totally get me. In addition to "BFF" you have earned the badge of "SMELL PARTNER 4 LYFE." And you're really smart, so I bet you know what the smell is.

* I mean, I'm easily excited, but it's usually at the hands of a voluminous ice cream sundae or a puppy acting helpless in a totally nonthreatening situation and thus looking immeasurably cute, not by smells.

"Oh my god, yes! The smell! There's a smell! You know the smell! ...What is this smell?"

"I think it's a mix of food and exhaust," Lee Anne started. "With some incense." Keep going. "And a bit of air freshener." Keeeep going. "And...toilet?" I nodded. It's not a scent I'd apply to my skin, but If I could bottle up Taipei street air and take it home for the occasional closed-eyed whiff, I would. It would transport me back to Taipei in a way nothing else can.

...Oh, it's been 2013 for about five months, you say? The year is already a third over? Mmmmk [leans back and flumps into bed, slowly rolls into center of bed, curls knees up to chest, smothers lumpy self with comforter, does not move for five hours]

Yup, I'm slow. But I'm not dead. Yet. And so I shall chug along at the speed of a broken slug, as you've grown accustomed to. (THANKS FOR STICKING WITH ME, GUYS!!!)

If you're wondering what I've been up to during this period of blog abandonment, here's a lil' recap of the last month:

• End of March: Visited Istanbul! It was awesome! You can see a few hundred photos on my Flickr page (I still have a few hundred more photos to edit). If I'm not a total failure, I might write about it in six months.
• Beginning of April: Got sick immediately after returning to NYC. I spent the first week not being able to taste much of anything. I spent the second week regaining my sense of taste, but losing my appetite. Then my digestive system stopped working at full capacity. "Ima go take long nap. Sorry about the funny poops. Ok bye." I think that's what it said to me.
• Mid-April: I entered "gross ball of sweat/phlegm/dizzyness" mode for a few days. At the end my poops upgraded from "nightmare" to "close enough to normal."
• Late-mid April: Everything pretty much returned to normal aside from my lungs hurling out the occasional phlegm bomb and my inability to shake off a weird dream involving a huge pink marble toilet—I mean, like a pool-sized thing—featuring raw slabs of meat resting and/or smeared on the seat and dead pigs and various flesh slabs danging on hooks overhead.

You didn't need to know all that, but it's too late now.

Here's my probably incomplete list of my favorite foods from 2012, mostly in New York City, categorized by restaurants, individual dishes, and sweet things.

Restaurants

Tacos and cemitas, give them to me.

El Tenampa: Thanks to El Tenampa, I rarely eat anywhere else in my neighborhood. I doubt any other place near me could beat El Tenampa's deliciousness-to-dollar ratio. For $6 I can have a two-taco dinner (plus as much guacamole, radishes, and cucumber as I want from their accompanying toppings bar), or if I'm in the mood for getting disgustingly full, I can get a meat-avocado-cheese-n-bean-laden cemita for $8. My favorite fillings are their lengua, cabeza, buche, and suadero, and the well toasted bread and blistered tortillas never disappoint. The only downside is that waits can get long for what's mostly a take-out spot. It's worth it the wait; just don't go if you're in a rush. (If you want someone to help you eat your tacos/cemitas, let me know. I'm like a three-minute walk away from there.) 706 4th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11232 (map); 718-369-7508; eltenampadeli.com‎

But before I go to bed and get five hours of sleep, I can write about this one thing I ate yesterday. Look at this sandwich:

Yeah.

And again:

Mmhm.

And how about again, because I turned the plate around:

Yeah.

And this! [points wildly]

Yeah.

Eddie's Sweet Shop, I love youuuu.

Ever since I first tried the marshmallow sundae at Eddie's Sweet Shop in Forest Hills, every other sundae I've tried just can't measure up. The appeal of Eddie's isn't their homemade ice cream—ice cream that's perfectly satisfying—but the sauce it's drowned in. I mean. Look at this disgustingly beautiful thing:

So much goo.

The thick, gooey, throat-gaggingly sweet (you know, in a good way) marshmallow sauce drips out of the cup like a lava flow. You repeatedly drag your spoon up the side of the cup to catch the excess goo, but it keeps spilling out from the top. The cup appears to be generating marshmallow goo out of nothing. WHAT SORCERY IS THI—nevermind, they just put a shitton of sauce on top. And by "shitton" I mean "just the right amount." Moderation, meet the mighty fist of American gluttony. A fist thrusted by jet packs running on fat and sugar.

(And if you're not familiar with Parks and Recreation, you should watch that, too. You've only got five seasons to catch up on. Piece of cake.)

"Treat yo' self" may be a once-a-year thing in the world of Parks and Recreation, but in my world it's "any time I'm in the Serious Eats office during off-hours by my lonesome, which is many of the times." And my favorite way to treat myself on the cheap without straying far from the office is to walk five minutes to Yaya Tea Garden and plop down $5 in return for one of these babies:

Chicken pile, come to me.

Tokyo Fried Chicken. It's a simple thing—chicken katsu topped with katsu sauce on top of too little cooked chopped cabbage and too much white rice—but I love it to the point that I've eaten it twice in the last week. The generous two-cutlet amount of chicken is mostly moist, except around the edges where it's most crisp; the rice is well cooked so that each fat, sticky grain is well defined and not too soft and I can easily shove satisfyingly big clumps of it in my mouth; the cabbage provides some vegetable content, allowing me to pretend I'm not totally destroying my health; and it only costs $4.95. That's a good happiness-to-dollar ratio right there.

Since I have trouble eating all the chicken without feeling disgustingly full (and I ignore the sensible option of not eating everything), I've gotten in the habit of asking for more cabbage and less chicken. The last time I asked this (which was, um, last night), the cashier told me, "People usually ask for it the other way around."

I don't know if I have many readers in Hong Kong (and by "many" I mean like, two people), but I would love to meet anyone who's free and interested in putting a face to this blog. (I know most of you have seen my face, but...have you seen it morphing and breathing and being all congested?! ...Oh yeah...no one wants to see that.) The only problem is that my itinerary is super packed—I'd only be free after 10 or 11 p.m. most days—and according to one of my friends in Hong Kong, most good food places are closed at the start of the lunar new year holiday. So....hm...

I don't really expect anything to emerge from this, but I figured I'd put the message out there. If you want to respond to this message, email me at roboppy@gmail.com (do not leave a comment). Thank you!

(Guys, I swear I have a substantial post that's...almost ready to go. It's 95% written. But that last 5% will probably take a few hours to finish, hours I won't have until I get back from my trip. Yeah, I should get an award for "SLOWEST.")

All right, time for me to get four hours of sleep before heading to the airport.

This does not end well, but that's ok! Photos of submerged kite taken by Melissa.

Me: Melissa...MELISSA [points out to the Hudson River], THE KITE THE KITE¹

Me: AHHH UHH UUGH BLUUUHHGGHRHR

Some annotations to clear things up:

1) Response to seeing my kite flying dangerously low to the Hudson River.

2) Response to seeing my kite flying dangerously lower to the Hudson River.

3) Response to seeing my kite gracefully touching the water's surface, then getting swallowed by the water.

You think flying a kite is all whimsical and fun, until your kite lands into a massive, swiftly moving body of water, and then it makes you realize, "So this is the pure horror a mother feels when she turns away from her only toddler for just a second, then turns back to see her toddler has disappeared. ...Maybe not into a river. That would be much worse. But yeah. It's just like that."

The site of the kite drowning: Pier I off of West 70th Street. I had made Melissa in charge of keeping my kite aloft while I called Diana to coordinate meeting up on the pier. Elsewhere on the pier, Diana had already given her brand new kite a go, but after something like 30 seconds of exhilarating kite flying action it too experienced death-by-river.

"Come over and join us; we've got a kite you can fly!" I assured Diana, turning right to give a nod of acknowledgement to Melissa—at which point I noticed the kite not majestically flying as much as lifelessly falling toward the river's surface, over a hundred feet away.

And then the frantic yelling commenced. Refer to the dialogue above.

But the kite wasn't dead yet. The string was taut; the kite was still attached to it. "We can reel it in!" Melissa suggested ever so optimistically. I like that about her—her beaming optimism in the face of probable doom.

"It'll probably break," I deadpanned.

Melissa helped me reel in the kite, gently pulling as I wrapped the string around the spool. The string held on despite the immense force of the water. Impressive. Maybe Melissa was on to something with that optimism of hers.

We managed to pull the kite all the way back to the pier. Looking over the pier's barrier, we could see the kite "flying" just under the surface of the water, intact and full of potential to ride the skies once more.

"I bet this is where it's going to break," I said. I'll admit that I felt a smidge of a smidge of hope, but I didn't want to show it.

"No, no, this will work! We just have to pull it up slowly."

"I don't know..."

Pulled slowly, we did. We pulled and pulled; the kite felt heavier with each tug.

Bab al Yemen forever.

Charred rounds of soft-crisp, pizza-sized flat bread. Tender chunks of spiced lamb cradled in a mound of hummus. Bubbling mini-cauldrons of spiced tomato, meat, and vegetable "omelettes" with deeply crusted edges. These are the top three reasons I love Bab al Yemen so very much and why I've eaten there five times since my first visit last September, easily making it my favorite restaurant of 2012.

I don't know anything about Yemeni cuisine besides what I've eaten at Bab al Yemen, so I can't comment on its authenticity. But if all Yemeni food tastes like what I've eaten so far—only a tiny bit of what constitutes Yemeni cuisine—then I've been missing out big time for the last 27 years.

Before you read the rest of my post, I recommend checking out Max's excellent review on Serious Eats first. I mean, that's what I'm doing to give myself a better idea of what to write.

Colin and Noah, TEAR INTO THE KHUBZ!

First off, that hearty fresh-from-the-oven bread of my dreams. Bab al Yemen's menu just calls it "clay oven bread." My friends and I call it "BREAD I COULD EAT FOREVER, OH GOD YES." Wikipedia and Max tell me it's called khubz. The beautifully charred bread is mostly soft and a bit chewy, thicker in some parts than others, cracker-like where the crust bubbles up and forms air pockets. These generously large rounds come with many of the dishes, such as...

THIS IS THE END OF THE SERIES! YOU ARE NOW RELEASED FROM THIS PRISON! [THROWS CONFETTI]

Bluh.

Remember that time when I warned you about the BVG messing with your well laid-out plans with service changes? Yeaaaah. Thankfully, the BVG sets out clear signs with directions in English so tourists like me don't curse them forever.

Konnopke's Imbiss

And so tourists like me can get currywurst at Konnopke's Imbiss.

As far as I can tell, Curry 36 and Konnopke's Imbiss share the title for "Berlin's Most Famous Currywurst Shop." That doesn't mean they're the best, but when you're a tourist with limited time, you do things like eat the most famous something-something.

An abbreviated menu in English and the full menu in German.

Currywurst and fries.

Since we had already eaten doner kebabs and desserts that day, Kåre and I shared a wee order of currywurst with fries and mayo (€3.20). While Konnopke's sausage was a bit different from Curry 36's, I couldn't tell you if one is better than the other in meat or sauce quality. They're both crazy cheap, satisfying, and probably health-sucking. I'd give the edge to Konnopke's for having more places to sit and stand, though—an indoor seating area in addition to the outdoor standing tables. Also, their line felt more orderly than Curry 36's mob-like line.

Thanks to Vi Hart, I now know what a turduckenailailenailailduckenailailenailail is: a turkey stuffed with two ducks, stuffed with four hens, stuffed with eight quail eggs. Yup, you want to watch this video.

Happy Thanksgiving! (Yeah, I know it's Friday for most people now, but it's still Thanksgiving...somewhere.) I hope y'all had some fantastic food comas. I got my food coma on mostly thanks to spatchcocked turkey, liver stuffing, and Robicelli's cupcakes. As I type this, my digestive system is turning that awesome food into poop.

...Anyway, as usual, I'm SO VERY THANKFUL that you guys still read my blog every now and then, considering the ever widening gap between substantial posts. Without you, my life would be far more meaningless. My mom doesn't even read my blog. WHY DOESN'T SHE CARE ABOUT ME. (JK, I know she loves the crap out of me. She does keep tabs on my Flickr photostream as some evidence of being interested in my life.)

My doodles are leaping off the Internet and onto your baby! Or your torso! Or your bag of whatever you put in bags!

Yes! It's called clothes and tote bags, everyone's first foray into the world of "printing your stuff on stuff that isn't paper." Thanks to Christine, my former Serious Eats coworker and current awesome friend (people love Christine so much that they cry when she's not around—truth) and newly christened owner of online shop-of-awesome-Japanese-ish-things Maigo, she's getting Gimme Pancake T-shirts and onesies (if you don't know what that bunny is, head here) and Round Things tote bags printed for the holidays!

Some snapshots from the day.

And on the seventh day, Robyn tried to do all the things, which ended up being impossible, but she made sure to eat doner kebap and some cake and some schnitzel.

The problem with not planning aggressively for a vacation is that on the night before your last full day you might realize, "Crap, I still haven't done these 20 other things I wanted to do." And thus you spend that night figuring out how to smush all of those things into one day, basically writing the plan you should've written before your vacation began. You figure out how many minutes it takes to get from one place to the other, and you write out the subway stations (along with termini and transfers) and addresses of every place you're going to, and you make a schedule that you'll inevitably be unable to stick to. But it's mostly successful.

First stop: KaDeWe.

KaDeWe

KaDeWe. You can't miss it. It's huge.

I'm not much of a shopper, but I love department stores—as long as the department store has a bitching food hall. What am I going to do with non-edible things? Eat them? What's the point? What has non-edible ever done for me? Case closed.

And that's why I, alone with most other people who like to eat food, put KaDeWe on my "must visit" list. The 105-year-old luxury department store KaDeWe—short for Kaufhaus des Westens, "Department Store of the West"—is Europe's second largest department store (after Harrod's in London) and boasts 645,000 square feet of stuff you can buy. Out of its eight floors, the top two floors are dedicated to food, although the seventh floor is really where it's at (the eight is a 1,000-seat wintergarden). Here's where you'll find grocery items from all over the world, fresh produce, meats, and fish, wine, cheese, tea, baked goods, baking mixes, candy, chocolate, snacks, jams, pastas, soups, prepared food stands, and more and more and more.

I wasn't planning to buy anything; I was mostly interested in seeing what a luxury department store stocks to represent food from around the world, like curating a museum of modern food. What products would make the cut?

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL.

Pop-Tarts! Swiss Miss! Fluff! Marshmallows! Jolly Time! Snapple! Peanut butter! THIS IS (THE UNITED STATES OF) AMERICA, FOLKS.

This looks sort of abandoned.

The outdoor train platform in Falkenberg featured an abandoned-looking food stand. This seemed worse than having nothing. "Nothing" could say, "This is a small, quiet town," while "abandoned something" could say, "This is a small, quiet town...where murders happen. And feeding people who were about to die felt unsettling, so we put an end to that. The feeding, not the murders."

But not long after I pondered this highly improbably situation, life appeared. And the life was friendly. And came bearing cameras.

A group of football fans approached Kåre (boyfriend), Diana (longtime friend), and me (me), asking if we could help them take their photo. They had stopped in Falkenberg on the way to their respective homes from a game between Energie Cottbus, their club of choice, and Hansa Rostock. ...A game we later found out Cottbus had lost, but we couldn't tell from the group's smiles and cheers.

Paul and his didn't-cost-a-buttload ticket. [Photograph: beatsinthebox]

After we got settled on the train to Berlin, we recognized one of the fans as he walked into our car. Rather than wave and keep on walking—which is probably what I would've done because I'm unreasonably afraid of most humans—Paul was too friendly to ignore us, and he sat across the aisle for a good chat. A chat that included being told about the metric buttload of euros we would've saved if we had bought unlimited train tickets instead of single use tickets. Oops.

Our lives would be pretty much the same if we hadn't become friends with Paul, but I can't help laying out the trail of "ifs" that helped make it happen. (I'm speaking as someone who almost never makes friends with random people I meet in real life. Because I am made of the aforementioned fear.) If we had decided to go to Dresden on another day, we wouldn't have met him. If we didn't leave Dresden when we did, we wouldn't have met him. If Paul's friend hadn't wanted to take a different route after the game, Paul wouldn't have ended up in Falkenberg. If more people had been on the train platform, we may not have ended up taking the group photo. If we had been sitting in a different car, Paul may not have passed us. And so on and so on and so on.

So while Falkenberg isn't where anyone would want to be at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night, I'm glad our four-hour train ride from Dresden to Berlin brought us through there.

Moritzburg

Come along and let me show you the sights of Moritzburg!

Schloss Moritzburg

...Ok, I'm done. [dusts off hands]

Well. There's more than that, but that's the most famous thing in this picturesque village of 8,300 people. And a baroque palace on a man-made island surrounded by a lake is quite a thing—hence why, at Diana's suggestion, we took a 30 minute bus ride from Dresden to get there.

My usual response to ice cream: "Yaaaay, ice cream!"

:D

My usual response to pudding: "Yaaaay, pudding!"

:D

My usual response to cake: "Yaaaay, cake!"

:D

My usual response to cookies: "Yaaaay, cookies!"

:D :D :D :D

My usual response to trifle: "AHHRRRGHR AGRHHFGHF FF [cue dribble of drool] AHHH LLLAAAHHHVE YOUUUUUUU THE WORLD IS SO AMAZING!!!"