Naadam in Mongolia: The National Festival of the Three Sports of Chingis Khanby Randi / July 24, 2017
Against all odds, Mongolia’s capital city is well-nigh a wonderland for vegans. Ulaan Baatar, despite being in a country that literally eats mutton at every meal and in every dish and frowns upon vegetables, has more all-vegan restaurants than London, and some better ones too (or at least some that I would love to have in London…or at least I’ve been traveling so long that I thought they were better than what we have in London). From Buddhist temple centers to veggie-friendly chains to nearly a dozen outposts of our beloved cult Loving Hut, UB (as everyone calls it) will let you eat extremely well – as long as the restaurants decide to be open when you go.
We arrived via (awful, smoky) overnight train to Ulaan Baatar (train here; UB city here) super early in the morning, and we were hungry. Armed with a long list of HappyCow and other finds, I was excited to get out into the city and find some amazing vegan food that wasn’t cabbage or kasha (I love cabbage and kasha but a month of it was enough).
Turns out we would have to wait.
Remember we arrived at like 7am, and spent just a few hours at the hostel before setting out? Despite researching what would be open early for us, everything was closed! We walked the 20 minutes or so in the pollutiony heat to an area that had one of the six or so Loving Huts and the famous Luna Blanca, the buddhist temple restaurant that is all vegan and yet is in all the not-so-veg-aware guide books. Luna Blanca didn’t open until noon, which we knew, but the Loving Hut was supposed to open at 8am. It said so on their own site. But there was a huge chain across the door! Ughh! So we trekked to another Loving Hut, and another, and they were all closed. Then we tried to find other HappyCow places – first, a place called Love Each Other, which was closed! Then a place called Agnista, which NO LONGER EXISTS. We learned this after walking around a neighborhood forever trying to find it by the very helpful (eyeroll) HappyCow directions that it was ‘near a primary school’. A shopkeeper on its supposed block pointed to a big ramen place and communicated that it was now that place. COOL. What were you doing to me, universe?! By now, we’d gone through my whole list (and on foot no less). We even chanced upon another vegan-friendly cafe (green juice posters in the window!) that was ALSO closed. I was crushed! Ulaan Baatar was my beacon of hope during the first part of this trip, my surprising vegan city on a hill. But, we soon learned, restaurants and shops are often closed during and around Naadam – which seems SUPER stupid considering that’s when the city is flooded with tourists and people from the countryside! Why would you close during the busiest time of the year?! People need to eat! But I guess all the waitstaff and cooks are also going to Naadam and learning about ankle-bone beer pong, so they have to close. There are only so many Mongolians.
Remember we arrived at like 7am, and spent just a few hours at the hostel before setting out? Despite researching what would be open early for us, everything was closed! We walked the 20 minutes or so in the pollutiony heat to an area that had one of the six or so Loving Huts and the famous Luna Blanca, the buddhist temple restaurant that is all vegan and yet is in all the not-so-veg-aware guide books. Luna Blanca didn’t open until noon, which we knew, but the Loving Hut was supposed to open at 8am. It said so on their own site. But there was a huge chain across the door! Ughh! So we trekked to another Loving Hut, and another, and they were all closed. Then we tried to find other HappyCow places – first, a place called Love Each Other, which was closed! Then a place called Agnista, which NO LONGER EXISTS. We learned this after walking around a neighborhood forever trying to find it by the very helpful (eyeroll) HappyCow directions that it was ‘near a primary school’. A shopkeeper on its supposed block pointed to a big ramen place and communicated that it was now that place. COOL. What were you doing to me, universe?! By now, we’d gone through my whole list (and on foot no less). We even chanced upon another vegan-friendly cafe (green juice posters in the window!) that was ALSO closed. I was crushed! Ulaan Baatar was my beacon of hope during the first part of this trip, my surprising vegan city on a hill. But, we soon learned, restaurants and shops are often closed during and around Naadam – which seems SUPER stupid considering that’s when the city is flooded with tourists and people from the countryside! Why would you close during the busiest time of the year?! People need to eat! But I guess all the waitstaff and cooks are also going to Naadam and learning about ankle-bone beer pong, so they have to close. There are only so many Mongolians.
So guess what. We trekked around the city, famished, for so long that by the time we checked all the above stupid closed stupid places, Luna Blanca was open.
I mean.
What a day.
Luckily, Luna Blanca was fantastic! We loved it so much we went back twice for food and another time just for dessert – and we were always two of many, many tourists – soo many white people in there. It made me happy that so many tourists were clearly sick of mutton and wanted to enjoy good vegan food even if they weren’t vegan. Luna Blanca has a simple menu of salads (yay), soups (yay), and hot entrees of traditional Mongolian foods made vegan. It would have been perfect if they had a fun menu of sides instead of just bread, rice, and other kinds of bread and rice, but as it is it’s a great find. Even though they didn’t have ice cream any time I was there (and the menu says they have vegan ice cream I’m cursed to never find ice cream this whole summer), I still loved it.
yes I DO love spinach!
I needed some greens so I started with the sesame spinach under the salad section. I was slightly disappointed to learn that it was cooked spinach and not raw, but hey it’s still spinach, and that probably means I got 10x the amount of actual spinach because when it cooks it shrinks to nothingness. It was really good but mostly perfunctory, and purposefully so. A real star was the Mongolian sampler platter of traditional foods like khuushuur, the fried mutton-filled empanada looking thing, and buuzy (I think that’s what it’s called), the softer mutton-filled dumpling. Getting to try these traditional dishes in vegan form was a must-do, and I think Luna Blanca is the only place that does it. You only need to try them once – I still can’t get over how much khuushuur Mongolians eat during Naadam (like 10 patties per meal every day; trust me you only need or want one). But they were yummy and fun. And, the platter is so big and you can only eat so much of it that we took some of each kind home for the next day! Yay leftovers!
sorry I couldn’t wait to take a picture before trying some 😛
We also tried two fantastic salads at a later visit – my favorite which was just a plain green lettuce salad with a great dressing (I love lettuce), and Z’s favorite, a pasta salad with tofu. I don’t count pasta salads as salad (helloooo it’s just cold pasta) but since it had tofu I’ll let it slide. And it was really good!
yes I see that there’s tomato and cucumber in there because OF COURSE THERE IS but at least it’s mostly lettuce
you’re not salad but you’re yummy
We also tried a shittonne of mains during our visits. We had to get another vegan version of a Mongolian classic, the stir-fried noodle dish called ‘tsuivan’, while we could, and it was pretty good! So much better than the traditional mutton-filled dish, Luna Blanca’s version had soy protein (hooray for you!), cabbage, carrot, and pepper. I mean it’s a big heap of noodles and they tasted good.
dayyum that’s a lot of noodles
this is the ariun zoog (zoog means food! I don’t think ariun means what it sounds like). also here’s our guide book! we used almost every page!
We also tried the Ariun Zoog, which was like a soft meatball of mushrooms and soy nugget in a sauce of tamarind, tomato, and chili, served with two enormous scoops of white rice and – you know it! – cucumber and tomato and pickled cabbage. This was very good, although lacking in other vegetable matter for me. Equally as good, if not better actually, and equally lacking in vegetable matter was the balaton, which was Hungarian porkolt and goulash, the latter of which we saw a surprising amount of in Mongolia and Russia.
it’s like a Hungarian muppet happy face!
But my favorite dish at Luna Blanca was this soup, simply called the Luna Blanca Special. I know, it’s soup. And it was so simple and I guess boring. But it was just perfect. I needed a good, big bowl of soup (despite the heat) after being without for so long – remember that most of what I cook at home is soup. (Z asked early on in cohabitation if one day we could graduate to solid food.) This soup was in a mild vegetable broth and was full of tofu dumplings and some spinach. PERFECT, sort-of-bland-but-bland-how-I-love-it-not-in-a-bad-way soup.
mmm soup
The only low points of Luna Blanca (besides how they never had ice cream) were the desserts. Well, just the cakes. We got the chocolate mud cake and the chocolate cream pie over our visits. The mud cake, though it sounds amazing, was the driest, most tasteless cake I’ve ever tasted, bested only by the time early in my baking experience when I forgot to add all manner of sugar to a cake. It was bread, and gross, and this was pretty close sadly. The cream cake was better, because at least the cream made it moist (SORRY I KNOW BUT WHAT OTHER WORD CAN I USE), but it was still in serious need of a sufficient amount of sugar. And I don’t like when desserts are too sweet! But these were like, sugarless.
GO DRINK SOME WATER YOU ARE SO DRY
meh cake
You might be thinking ‘wait, didn’t you say you returned to Luna Blanca JUST for dessert one time? um, why?’ Why?? BECAUSE THEIR HOT CHOCOLATE WAS THE BEST I’VE HAD IN MY LIFE. Guys, I’m serious. We both were silent and then said, f-ing hell this is incredible. I cannot even deal with the fact that Mongolia is home to the best hot chocolate you can imagine. It wasn’t just chocolatey and it wasn’t just sweet; it was like…also vanilla-y? and caramelly? I DON’T KNOW.
YOU’RE AMAZING
I also got a little oatmeal cookie bag to go one night, and they were great, so just don’t get the cakes, and you’ll have a wonderful meal at Luna Blanca.
When the various Loving Huts finally decided to be open when they were supposed to, we went there multiple times too. I can’t stay mad at you, LH. If you aren’t familiar with the pervasive vegan restaurant chain, it’s a usually-small restaurant with a big menu of sandwiches, salads, and fun but always recognizable entrees that vary a little by region. They are all over Asia, all over Europe, and all over the USA too. Oh, and the best/most notable part? They are run by the veritable religious cult of the Supreme Master a Vietnamese lady who bills herself as an entrepreneur and not a cult leader, and every location plays videos from their cult thingies on TVs. I don’t care if you are trying to indoctrinate me as long as you are giving me good food. Oh, and the UB location we went to? The first time we went, it was playing a video of a concert they gave in honor of the Supreme Master, FEATURING BETTY BUCKLEY. GUYS. I was FREAKING OUT and all these Mongolian people were looking at me.
As usual, we ordered way too much and got to try a whole lot of stuff over a few visits. One of my favorite things was a huge surprise – the Victory salad, a cute molded (not moldy, molded like into the cylinder shape) mix of chickpeas, celery, seaweed, pickles, red onions, vegan mayo, and topped with a tomato mix. I don’t usually like mayonnaise-y things, but this was delicious, like a scoop of a perfect chickpea-based version of chicken salad, or tuna salad, whatever people keep going for with their recipes using exactly these ingredients.
As usual, we ordered way too much and got to try a whole lot of stuff over a few visits. One of my favorite things was a huge surprise – the Victory salad, a cute molded (not moldy, molded like into the cylinder shape) mix of chickpeas, celery, seaweed, pickles, red onions, vegan mayo, and topped with a tomato mix. I don’t usually like mayonnaise-y things, but this was delicious, like a scoop of a perfect chickpea-based version of chicken salad, or tuna salad, whatever people keep going for with their recipes using exactly these ingredients.
chickpea salad wins
We also of course got another perfunctory hot spinach salad, which was good as spinach usually is. I don’t remember much to distinguish this from the Luna Blanca version, but I enjoyed it. We needed to stock up on vegetables (is that how it works?) before our week in the countryside.
this was probably like 500 kilos of raw spinach first, right
I loved the dumpling plate we got, filled with an indeterminate but delicious mix of the usual dumpling veg and tofu. I was so eager to get to China for dumplings that I jumped the gun and got them in Mongolia! Dumplings are just so good!
As for mains, we tried this soy nugget platter (it came with green salad! amazing!), which we loved (probably because I mean it was chicken nuggets and french fries and it had been a month since we had such truly Western food). I liked the soy protein club sandwich (pickle, lettuce, onion) which I packed up and had the next day at Naadam, which was a genius idea and it kept beautifully in the tiny hostel fridge (didn’t get stolen!!!).
the pickle-y mayo with the nugget platter was so good I put it on my sandwich
all sandwiches should be pressed in a little grill pan
We went back to Loving Hut after our week in the Mongolian countryside and desert (next post I promise!) when we had one final night in UB before catching a sleeper train to Beijing. We were so eager for fun foods after a week of mutton (for Z) and rice, peas, and carrots (me). We got the Romanian salad, which was spinach and arugula supposedly but looked like mostly spinach (that’s ok) with orange pieces and a lovely orange and mint dressing. Perfect return to sort-of civilization! We also got a plate of tortilla chips and salsa, which said they came with hummus (HUMMUS!!) but that was a lot to expect in these parts and it was like a hummus-inspired runny sauce (I don’t even care).
We also got a Mexican burrito wrap that was very decent, and a hot mix of like pumpkin-based vegetable patties in a tomato sauce that I’m not really sure about but I liked it! And we got a side of fries. We needed them.
|
|
Loving Hut, as usual, had a very nice smoothie menu, and we tried a green smoothie with spinach and orange and pear and stuff, plus a chocolate date drink. The chocolate one was delicious, and the green one was fine, but they come with the SMALLEST STRAWS IN THE WORLD. It was about 3.5 inches long, so after a few sips you had to give up and drink straight from the cup strawless. Hilarious and inexplicable.
|
|
The only bad thing about the Loving Hut experience, besides how inconsistent and unreliable their hours were, is that the menu says they have ice cream AND ice cream cake. I think you’ve already guessed that they had neither, any time we were there. To tempt me with ice cream cake and not deliver is an unforgivable offense. But I still love you LH.
One night, when Naadam had claimed the lives/opening hours of vegan places, we decided to go to a Mongolian BBQ place called BD’s. I didn’t care, I figured I’d be able to find SOMETHING here, right? And I was being a good wife and letting Z go to a kind of must-go place here. It was expensive though – it was an all-you-can-eat buffet – so we looked at the setup before committing.
GUYS.
It was the best for vegans, to my absolute amazement.
They had a salad bar! With more vegetables than I’d seen in weeks! They had a make-your-own stir fry station with tofu and soy protein balls! They had a huge array of hot dishes including braised cabbage and carrots and stuff! And rice and kasha! It was so much food for me when I expected literally a potato.
my first enormous salad plate
I know that picture of my stir-fry after it was stir-fried is not pretty but I don’t care. I stuffed my bowl with bean sprouts, lots of tofu, and literally ALL the soy protein balls in the container (#sorrynotsorry). Then you put your bowl down on a numbered spot by the giant cooking station (wok?) and two guys put on a show with their sword-like cooking utensils (like Hibachi lol) while cooking like 10 people’s bowls at a time. Because they are more concerned with catching their sword-spatulas after tossing them in the air than they are with keeping the diners’ food strictly separated, a few pieces of #3’s shrimp got into my mix (spot #2). Luckily that’s easy to pick out, but if you have an allergy, note that there is some commingling of assets. Aside from the messy cooking of the showmen, BD’s was such a surprisingly treat! They even had good wifi and I did one of my Siberia blogs from there! For dessert, the only vegan thing was tiny spoons of watermelon pieces. And I mean tiny, like one cube of watermelon per spoon. I took 19 spoons.
Lastly, I think my favorite restaurant in UB was the all-vegan Italian restaurant Bosco Verde. I know – UB has an all-vegan Italian restaurant! Where even is there another one of those besides NYC! (Is there one in NYC or just ones with separate vegan menus?) Bosco Verde had decent food, and I’m not sure if the actual food was better than Luna Blanca’s, but the menu was my perfect menu – sooo many leafy salads, delicious veggie-packed soups, fun cutlet-y things as usual, pizza, pasta, and BEANS! SO MANY BEANS! Beans are hard to find so far on this trip, so I’m obsessed with Bosco Verde and I would have loved to have returned but they fell victim to the curse of Naadam closures.
so pretty inside!
We started with bruschetta, which we were super excited about, but we would have skipped it despite its deliciousness if we knew that every dish would come with almost of LOAF of bread, each! It was so funny but such a waste! Our guide in the country/desert gave us sooo much bread every meal, too – is it because we are westerners and they think we need bread or do Mongolians just eat a shittonne of bread?
I had a just perfect vegetable bean soup (mm soup!!) and a giant white bean, tomato, and fresh herb salad (the white beans were giant, not the salad, it was perfect sized). The salad dressing was so delicious it made me love the tomatoes even! I know you are like wait you just said the menu was long and incredible, but you got soup and salad? Guys soup and salad are my favorite foods. and beans. The soup came with good garlic bread and the salad came with lots of toast. Lol.
SO GOOD
ALSO SO GOOD
Z got a delicious cutlet thing (so many random cutlet things at vegan restaurants!) that came with fries and weirdly cooked veggie slices.
As for dessert, you guessed it – the menu said they had ice cream, and – you guessed it! – they didn’t. Instead, we got a chocolate cream cake – the same exact cake we would end up trying at Luna Blanca later on in our visit. This meh, sugar-lacking cake is clearly baked by the same outsourced company, one that needs to work on their craft. If any of my amazing vegan baker friends feel like living in Ulaan Baatar (bitch you crazy), there’s a job waiting.
I got this cake to-go hence the top icing layer got stuck to the plastic
As for UB food finds, there was an INCREDIBLE grocery store close to the Naadam stadium, super fancy in a sort-of mall and it had amazing random vegan finds. I just got super deja vu – did I already write about this? I don’t care I’ll share again. This shop had clearly marked vegan tofu and seitan mixes in the fridge! And the first good produce section we saw! And Bob’s Red Mill products! We stocked up on the vacuum-packed tofu and seitan, and I will be carting them around until Kyrgyzstan, where I imagine I will really need them. We also found these strawberry Oreos. They were gross. We still ate them all.
we see this flavor everywhere why does no one have the peanut butter? or mint?
IWe also spent a lot of time chilling at our favorite Mongolian coffee shop chain, Tom & Toms’ Coffee. We liked them too much to tell them that just using “Toms'” is sufficient. The wifi here was strong so we went frequently since the wifi at Modern Mongol hostel was pretty much nonexistent. I don’t drink coffee but they had this amaaaazing grapefruit ‘ade’ made with fresh grapefruit and soda water. It had pulp in it! It was sooo good. I would share a picture of it but trying to upload one literally crashed the computer twice so use your imagination.
So, as you can see, eating in Ulaan Baatar was better than doing pretty much anything else in Ulaan Baatar. I don’t know how it became such a hotspot for all-vegan restaurants – I guess Buddhism? But I’m a fan of it being one! Hooray for Buddha! Or whatever the reason is!
Related Posts
The Food of Bilbao: Set Menus & Bread Will Destroy You
Basque country is the land of pintxos, little bar food snacks which are kind of like tapas but are mostly on pieces of baguette with toothpicks sticking out of them. All the coolest places in Bilbao have bar tops covered in pintxos and rooms packed with people drinking and socializing and helping themselves to the various pieces of decorated bread. But you cannot be one of those people if you are vegan. No sir, you will miss out.
Okay, it’s not entirely true. If you can speak medium level Spanish and/or you did your HappyCow research more thoroughly than I did, you can probably find a place serving vegan pintxos. And hey, I tried. I really did. But unfortunate turns kept turning: bartenders and servers couldn’t understand my Spanish (or pretended not to understand, maybe trying to be more like the French?), or they didn’t know what I was talking about with my dietary restrictions (Sacre bleu! What do you mean no cheese!), or the places with supposedly vegan options were closed when I went while the sun was still sort of visible because ain’t nobody in Spain working while the sun is out! So, point is, I didn’t get pintxos.
That doesn’t mean you won’t. I’m sure you will have better luck and/or do better research and/or speak more coherent Spanish. But you know, I’m not even upset. I eat a lot of bread in my normal life so missing out on bread topped with this or that while pushing through people drinking alcohol isn’t that big a deal to me. The only thing is, if you aren’t eating pintxos in Bilbao, you are eating a set menu. Even for lunch! Even if you just wanted a light lunch somewhere, you will be greeted with a three course set menu. Sure you could probably order a la carte but who knows what that would bring you. Whereas, with a set menu in Bilbao, you know you are getting green salad (lettuce and onions, oh my!), grilled vegetables, and fruit. Now, I’m not knocking salad, veggies, and fruit. That’s pretty much my favorite stuff. It’s just that for the most part, their efforts to serve a vegan resulted in very uninspired food, and at various restaurants I was given nearly identical meals. Oh, and there will always be a basket of bread on the table, and you will eat too much of it because it’s bread on the table.
When we first set out in Bilbao, it was super late at night, like past normal bedtime, which means that all the restaurants were just starting to open. We struggled to pass through the streets overflowing with drunk yoots and went into several bars and restaurants trying to find a menu to decipher. But most of the places we entered were serving pintxos, not regular menus, and all of their little breads were topped with meat and cheese. After a few blocks of this, I started to get really anxious and nervous. And hungry. (There was a Subway, though, as there always is, so I found comfort knowing that if all else failed I would be able to get shredded lettuce and green peppers on their stanky bread.)
Finally, one bar serving pintxos said that they were serving their regular menu in the dining room, and that they could accommodate a vegetarian. (Advice: Always start by saying vegetarian. Most people don’t know the word vegan (even in English speaking countries, don’t assume that’s a household word) so figure out with the front of house staff if they can serve vegetarians and then make sure with your waitron that stuff doesn’t contain dairy and hipsters’ souls. That’s been the route to success for me.) This oasis of a restaurant, called Busterri, had a pretty fancy white tablecloth dining room that was empty when we entered but pretty full by the time we left (like after midnight, oh Europeans).
That doesn’t mean you won’t. I’m sure you will have better luck and/or do better research and/or speak more coherent Spanish. But you know, I’m not even upset. I eat a lot of bread in my normal life so missing out on bread topped with this or that while pushing through people drinking alcohol isn’t that big a deal to me. The only thing is, if you aren’t eating pintxos in Bilbao, you are eating a set menu. Even for lunch! Even if you just wanted a light lunch somewhere, you will be greeted with a three course set menu. Sure you could probably order a la carte but who knows what that would bring you. Whereas, with a set menu in Bilbao, you know you are getting green salad (lettuce and onions, oh my!), grilled vegetables, and fruit. Now, I’m not knocking salad, veggies, and fruit. That’s pretty much my favorite stuff. It’s just that for the most part, their efforts to serve a vegan resulted in very uninspired food, and at various restaurants I was given nearly identical meals. Oh, and there will always be a basket of bread on the table, and you will eat too much of it because it’s bread on the table.
When we first set out in Bilbao, it was super late at night, like past normal bedtime, which means that all the restaurants were just starting to open. We struggled to pass through the streets overflowing with drunk yoots and went into several bars and restaurants trying to find a menu to decipher. But most of the places we entered were serving pintxos, not regular menus, and all of their little breads were topped with meat and cheese. After a few blocks of this, I started to get really anxious and nervous. And hungry. (There was a Subway, though, as there always is, so I found comfort knowing that if all else failed I would be able to get shredded lettuce and green peppers on their stanky bread.)
Finally, one bar serving pintxos said that they were serving their regular menu in the dining room, and that they could accommodate a vegetarian. (Advice: Always start by saying vegetarian. Most people don’t know the word vegan (even in English speaking countries, don’t assume that’s a household word) so figure out with the front of house staff if they can serve vegetarians and then make sure with your waitron that stuff doesn’t contain dairy and hipsters’ souls. That’s been the route to success for me.) This oasis of a restaurant, called Busterri, had a pretty fancy white tablecloth dining room that was empty when we entered but pretty full by the time we left (like after midnight, oh Europeans).
|
|
First of all, how hilarious is that image on the water bottle? Oh, that’s another thing we encountered here – lots of bringing you bottled water even if you ask for tap. Blergh. I hate paying for water but I guess it doesn’t hurt to sometimes give my body a break from all the fracking chemicals. Also, I tried a Basque specialty white wine called Txakoli. It was one of the only alcohols I’ve ever had that I didn’t despise. I don’t know whether it was the tiredness or the Spanish air or whether Busterri actually had the greatest house wine ever, but it was very nice.
The food isn’t very pretty, but hot damn it was yummy. This was my first of the ‘hot oily veggies’ meals, so I really enjoyed it. These sauteed mushrooms were possibly the most delicious mushrooms I’ve ever eaten! No joke! Even better than at the fancy pants Michelin restaurant this whole trip was based around (separate post on that wondrousness tomorrow).
The food isn’t very pretty, but hot damn it was yummy. This was my first of the ‘hot oily veggies’ meals, so I really enjoyed it. These sauteed mushrooms were possibly the most delicious mushrooms I’ve ever eaten! No joke! Even better than at the fancy pants Michelin restaurant this whole trip was based around (separate post on that wondrousness tomorrow).
Mushrooms swimming in oil from Busterri
Seriously delicious, these mushrooms. They were positively swimming in salty olive oil and were just perfect. I could have returned to Busterri and had these a few more times. My next course was similarly oily, similarly warm and comforting, but featuring some fry!
More hot oily veg mashups
Although nothing could top those hot oily mushrooms, the next plate of hot vegetables was still quite delicious. Along with more mushrooms, carrots, peas, green beans? potatoes? what’s in there?, came unbelievably perfect fried cauliflower AND fried artichokes. The fried artichokes definitely would convert anyone who ever said they didn’t like fried food, not that those people exist. They melted apart and were amazing. Nice mash of mush here I say!
The wait staff was really nice and helpful, and the food was good, if on the expensive side. Also, there was bread. Always bread.
The next day (a Saturday), we tried to hit up some HappyCow recs for lunch, but they were closed! Whaaat are these schedules?! We ended up at a cider hall (or sidreria) in the casco viejo (old town!) called Arriaga, which was full of big parties of Spanish families having their weekend meal together as well as an assumed stag do (bachelor party) full of superlatively wasted young men (of course seated at the table next to us). Being a sidreria, the set menu on offer was called a cider menu, meaning you got your meat, other meat, and cheese for dessert along with unlimited cider that you pour yourself from the enormous barrels in the walls. That was pretty cool. I didn’t take pictures but I had a decent green salad (lettuce and onion only, naturally) that was quite enormous (I think I was supposed to share with Husband but I love lettuce) and a grilled vegetable plate with really good asparagus, artichokes, leeks, and more. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but nothing to sneeze at. Also, when the risk of not finding any vegetables while traveling is so high, I’d take veggie overload any day. Oh and of course there was never-ending table bread.
The wait staff was really nice and helpful, and the food was good, if on the expensive side. Also, there was bread. Always bread.
The next day (a Saturday), we tried to hit up some HappyCow recs for lunch, but they were closed! Whaaat are these schedules?! We ended up at a cider hall (or sidreria) in the casco viejo (old town!) called Arriaga, which was full of big parties of Spanish families having their weekend meal together as well as an assumed stag do (bachelor party) full of superlatively wasted young men (of course seated at the table next to us). Being a sidreria, the set menu on offer was called a cider menu, meaning you got your meat, other meat, and cheese for dessert along with unlimited cider that you pour yourself from the enormous barrels in the walls. That was pretty cool. I didn’t take pictures but I had a decent green salad (lettuce and onion only, naturally) that was quite enormous (I think I was supposed to share with Husband but I love lettuce) and a grilled vegetable plate with really good asparagus, artichokes, leeks, and more. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but nothing to sneeze at. Also, when the risk of not finding any vegetables while traveling is so high, I’d take veggie overload any day. Oh and of course there was never-ending table bread.
|
|
In the picture above right, you can see how one is supposed to get cider from the wall barrel. It’s pretty cool! The buckets are perfectly placed to catch what you can’t, but even so the staff had to regularly mop the floors because of all the spillage and drippage. It was really fun! I even tried it a few times just for the collection fun. Above left, you can see a picture of the restaurant exterior. Why am I including this? Well do you notice the graffiti at the bottom? Like…what?!?! Strong statement, sir!
So Arriaga was a pretty nice restaurant, but again it was crazy expensive for the set menu and convinced us that Bilbao is just on the pricey side. Oh the best part was what came with dessert (fruit for me):
So Arriaga was a pretty nice restaurant, but again it was crazy expensive for the set menu and convinced us that Bilbao is just on the pricey side. Oh the best part was what came with dessert (fruit for me):
A bowl of walnuts and a nutcracker!!!! Ahhh! My oh my, I had way too much fun with this. Have you ever actually cracked your own nuts? It is difficult! I failed a few times before getting the hang of it. It mostly took me 4 cracks to fully demolish one, but there were a few times I was able to open it right on the seam. So proud! But not as proud as when I full on pulled a “Pretty Woman” with the escargot and let a walnut slip right out of the cracker and across the restaurant. Ohhhmigod, sorry people. One also went under our neighboring table. It was amazing. Seriously, this was so entertaining.
One of the vegetarian-friendly places we couldn’t get into on Saturday we went back to on Sunday, and it was kind of disappointing. It’s probably my own fault for ordering the wrong thing, though. The super hip, super popular restaurant in the casco viejo called Kasko is a restaurant recommendation in several mainstream guides. We had to make a reservation because it’s always really busy. Everything I read said they were vegan friendly, but several staff members had to come talk to me to figure out what I was after. Finally someone came over and told me, in Spanish, what their 4-5 vegan options were and that I was to pick two. I didn’t really understand most of what was said or that the first two weren’t necessarily appetizers and the second two weren’t necessarily entrees and that I could pick any two, so I kind of failed. I did pick a fantastic first course, the stuffed peppers with corn, beans, lettuce, and pine nuts in a wonderful red sauce that felt like a true Italian gravy.
One of the vegetarian-friendly places we couldn’t get into on Saturday we went back to on Sunday, and it was kind of disappointing. It’s probably my own fault for ordering the wrong thing, though. The super hip, super popular restaurant in the casco viejo called Kasko is a restaurant recommendation in several mainstream guides. We had to make a reservation because it’s always really busy. Everything I read said they were vegan friendly, but several staff members had to come talk to me to figure out what I was after. Finally someone came over and told me, in Spanish, what their 4-5 vegan options were and that I was to pick two. I didn’t really understand most of what was said or that the first two weren’t necessarily appetizers and the second two weren’t necessarily entrees and that I could pick any two, so I kind of failed. I did pick a fantastic first course, the stuffed peppers with corn, beans, lettuce, and pine nuts in a wonderful red sauce that felt like a true Italian gravy.
But my second course was a shambles. The lady had said something like green salad, asparagus, or pasta for the other options and I stupidly thought well, I’ve had a lot of green salad, and I’ve had a lot of asparagus, so why not pasta. Why not pasta? Because this isn’t Italy or a vegan restaurant so you aren’t going to be happy because:
Right, because it was just pasta. In oil. With no salt. (I got some from the bar but yeesh.) It was first brought to me covered in parmesan, and when I told the waitress who knew I was vegan she looked horrified and brought me a different plate. But still, that made me question whether these were egg noodles. And still, I’m not a fan of just a bowl of tasteless noodle. I chose POORLY, MAN.
My dessert was pretty hilarious.
My dessert was pretty hilarious.
Yes, sirree, that is a hunk of pineapple, uncut. I can’t really complain because it was good pineapple. I just find it kind of funny. I also do find it kind of sad.
So, if you are heading to Bilbao and you aren’t going to be eating the many, many hunks of meat served all over the city (it’s pretty jarring and gross), be prepared for a lot of grilled oily veggies. Try to figure out what the heck kind of schedule the (supposedly existing) vegan pintxos places have. Prepare some Spanish in advance, but if you get tripped up, don’t get so nervous that you rush into bad decisions like I did. Just take a deep breath and remember, no, I will probably not be happy with a big bowl of noodle to go alongside my table bread. Relax and be grateful that there are so many vegetables, even if they aren’t served in super interesting ways. And, most importantly, if you can swing it, plan a meal at Asador Extebarri, the fancypants restaurant that will be the subject of tomorrow’s Very Important Post.
So, if you are heading to Bilbao and you aren’t going to be eating the many, many hunks of meat served all over the city (it’s pretty jarring and gross), be prepared for a lot of grilled oily veggies. Try to figure out what the heck kind of schedule the (supposedly existing) vegan pintxos places have. Prepare some Spanish in advance, but if you get tripped up, don’t get so nervous that you rush into bad decisions like I did. Just take a deep breath and remember, no, I will probably not be happy with a big bowl of noodle to go alongside my table bread. Relax and be grateful that there are so many vegetables, even if they aren’t served in super interesting ways. And, most importantly, if you can swing it, plan a meal at Asador Extebarri, the fancypants restaurant that will be the subject of tomorrow’s Very Important Post.
Beijing, China: Adventures in Health and Electronics
We’ve been together on this journey for a while, right? So it’s okay to get a little personal. Today we’re going to talk about what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. The Real World: China. No we are going to talk about health issues we faced in Beijing, and then be rewarded with a look at our hilarious attempt to fix the little baby laptop in a huuuge Chinese computer parts superstore center where no one spoke English. It’s like an interlude. La la la la…
Just to clear up any potential confusion, no, that lead picture has nothing to do with anything. We just saw it on the street.
So, first of all, you think Beijing, you probably think air pollution. Luckily, the air pollution levels when we were there never reached high enough levels for an Unhealthy warning alert – according to @BeijingAir on twitter, the best provider for hourly updates and pollution levels. It’s incredibly useful and apparently trustworthy (run by the embassy, not by Chinese government, which has doctored the reports before, apparently). But even in the just ‘Moderate’ and ‘Unsafe for Sensitive Groups’ ranges, we were still uneasy about breathing in so much dangerous particulate matter. I mean, we were outside the whole time, walking around the super busy streets. So we did some research and found a shop in one of the business districts that sells masks. Not surgical masks, which do absolutely nothing, but legitimate face masks that actually filter out many of the dangerous particles. Doctor’s masks and scarves do zilch, p.s. Doctor’s masks, the ones they wear in surgery or at the dentist, and the most prevalent type you will see on people in China and other polluted countries, are only for protecting others (i.e. a patient) from any germs in the doctor’s mucus. They don’t do anything in the other direction, when the wearer is inhaling. It’s just a waste. Scarves, I imagine, are just as useless if not more so.
So, first of all, you think Beijing, you probably think air pollution. Luckily, the air pollution levels when we were there never reached high enough levels for an Unhealthy warning alert – according to @BeijingAir on twitter, the best provider for hourly updates and pollution levels. It’s incredibly useful and apparently trustworthy (run by the embassy, not by Chinese government, which has doctored the reports before, apparently). But even in the just ‘Moderate’ and ‘Unsafe for Sensitive Groups’ ranges, we were still uneasy about breathing in so much dangerous particulate matter. I mean, we were outside the whole time, walking around the super busy streets. So we did some research and found a shop in one of the business districts that sells masks. Not surgical masks, which do absolutely nothing, but legitimate face masks that actually filter out many of the dangerous particles. Doctor’s masks and scarves do zilch, p.s. Doctor’s masks, the ones they wear in surgery or at the dentist, and the most prevalent type you will see on people in China and other polluted countries, are only for protecting others (i.e. a patient) from any germs in the doctor’s mucus. They don’t do anything in the other direction, when the wearer is inhaling. It’s just a waste. Scarves, I imagine, are just as useless if not more so.
this is what I look like outside in China hahahahahahahahah #bankrobber
We made our way on our first afternoon to Torana Clean Air, a smaller store than we expected with a small range of face masks and room air purifiers. They did have the masks we wanted in the sizes we needed, just not a big range of colors, so we were stuck with this weird octagon color pattern. Whatever, I don’t care what I look like if it’s keeping my lungs safer. The mask is called the Vogmask, and it helps protect from airborne particulate matter and “non-oil airborne particles” like dust, pollen, and, best of all, SECONDHAND SMOKE! I’m gonna wear this baby on the trains so hard! I know that obviously this sort of mask isn’t perfect, but it is good at filtering big and tiny particles, according to studies, and decent at the dangerous sort-of-small particles, so as long as it’s better than nothing and better than a doctor’s mask, I’m happy. I would like to get one of those total face covers with the mouth hole that you blow out of but like I’m already stared at enough here I don’t think I would be able to handle more.
They were a bit expensive at about $30 USD, but that’s super worth it for something that is helping you not get asthma and lung cancer and all kinds of shit. I do feel like I can’t catch my breath sometimes here, so I will have to see a doctor when we get back about whether China-induced asthma is a thing, but overall it’s okay. Hooray for us looking like fools but acting like smarties! I like being healthy!
So, about that…
After we left Mongolia (hip hip hoorayyy!), I had some abdominal discomfort, like, in and around the kidneys. I was peeing a helluva lot more than usual, which by now you know is a lot anyway, and it wasn’t because of drinking much more fluid, so I was concerned. We decided to go to an international health clinic we had on our emergency list (we have a list of all the hospitals and clinics where we are going where mostly expats go, so they speak English), called Parkway Health. They made a same-day appointment for me and were so nice and professional and I love them.
It was a hilarious experience, if you forget the part about me not feeling great. With my symptoms, they pretty much just needed to do a urine test. So one of the many nice nurses led me to the bathroom upstairs, but it was locked. She got another nurse, and they both tried lots of random keys to unlock it, but nothing worked. I was just standing around for like 20 minutes. Finally one of them said, “Can you just hold it?” I did my best to communicate, “Um, I don’t just need to pee, you need to test my urine, like that’s the whole point of why I’m here??” Finally they got it open and took my sample off to the lab. Meanwhile, I met the doctor. She was a lady doctor so in your face, riddles. Her English was slightly less wonderful than all the main nurses’, but still good and I felt comfortable with her. She asked if we had been traveling hard for a while, and I explained that yes, we don’t sleep we just take trains to random places for like months now. I said I had just gotten to China from Mongolia AND SHE SHUDDERED. She gets it. I said how we were pretty much in a car for 7 days there where I had to hold my pee all day and I was also dehydrated. She was like no no no this is all bad! Are you sleeping? No I’m not sleeping as much as I should be or usually need to. She was SO CONCERNED. She kept putting her hand on my shoulder like for moral support, that’s how upset she was with like, these very minor complaints. It was like if I became a doctor. I would SO be the doctor telling everyone to sleep more and drink more water and getting so upset if they weren’t doing enough of either. She was like, listen, you need to sleep more, you need to drink more water, you need to eat berries, especially red ones (amazing medicine). Then she hit a language snag and said, “You need…it’s in Chinese pingwan (or pingyan I don’t know)…just….lying down on the bed is good.” I THINK SHE WAS TRYING TO TELL ME TO TAKE NAPS. I love this doctor! The results came back and showed signs of infection, and given the symptoms was 99% a UTI. Which, given how many jokes I made about getting UTIs in my recent posts, shows that the universe looooves messing with me.
if anyone knows why I’m sharing this picture we should be best friends
We went over the things that can cause a UTI and kind of just laughed:
Dehydration – CHECK
Holding urine – CHECK
Long car rides/travel – CHECK
Squatting instead of sitting when urinating – CHECK CHECK (all that business about how it’s better anatomically to squat is just for #2; for #1 for women it leads to incomplete emptying which leads to infection in the urinary tract which issss UTI)
Poor hygiene – CHECK did you READ the Mongolian outback post?
THANK YOU PARKVIEW I WUV YOU |
They brought me a paper cup of water in a plastic holder lolol |
I mean, every single thing! Man alive! She put me on a cycle of antibiotics (and I’m all better, p.s., this blog is on a 2-week tape delay). I went to the waiting room and told Z the good news (not sarcasm; it’s a simple easily treatable thing, that’s good news). Then I said, “The doctor said I need to sleep more, drink more water, and eat berries.” Z responded, “Oh SURE she did. Did she also order you to pet more small dogs??” I almost passed out laughing so hard and had a very hard time convincing him that doing more of my favorite things was indeed doctor’s orders.
I’m relieved that we went to a real doctor who believes in medicine and fixed me up. And mostly, I’m super grateful for our UK health insurance, which covers us worldwide and immediately gave the clear when the receptionists contacted them so we didn’t even have to pay out of pocket first. We area so lucky to have such good insurance that covers us everywhere we go – well, except in the USA. It covers us in freaking China and will continue to cover us in Kazakhstan and everywhere else, but it can’t cover the USA because their healthcare system is too much of a mess. Every other country is fine though! Jesus America.
Okay that’s enough about my insides! Here’s the treat I promised you (plus one more hilarious treat at the bottom) about our adventures in Beijing’s super intense electronics scene. One whole section of the city seems to be electronic parts superstores, selling all types of gadgets but most of all doing repairs and crazy customization of gadgets. Little baby laptop’s fan stopped working, so we took it to this section of the city and just dove in headfirst. We entered one of the giant buildings, and were greeted with four floors of indistinguishable counters with Chinese guys gadgeting huge messes of gadgets. We went over to one counter that we chose randomly and showed the guy the computer and mimed a fan turning with our hands and then did a NO gesture. He got it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the part. We tried the next counter, and a guy was just not into trying to figure anything we were miming out (not as many English speakers as you might expect in such a city!). Onward! The guy at the next counter was in, and he rebooted the computer a few times and determined that the fan wasn’t actually broken, but that something was stopping it, so he needed to just go in there and clean the parts instead of replacing them. How we communicated this is a feat of human interaction and behavior because it did not happen with actual language.
So we watched as he took apart the entire little netbook, because since it’s so small everything is under the keyboard, and he really had to take every last piece out. Like, we went down to the motherboard. Little baby was in 30 pieces! And to check if what he did worked, he had to put it all together again, all the tiny little barely visible screws that each have a very specific part they go with so you have to keep all these tiny screws straight and it’s a mess! Of course, the first go-round didn’t jive well with the computer, because it refused to work! So back apart it all went, a little more fixing, and then back together. Oh it was EXCRUCIATING to watch. How can people watch actual surgeries?! Finally he did a few more rounds of fiddling and it was back! It took over an hour of stress and just sitting in the super hot warehouse with people staring at us like whaaat are these tourists doing here. We also increased the computer’s RAM (I think that means it has horns now!) and we got a Chinese power cord so we don’t have to keep plugging it in with an adaptor, and it all came to I think 230 RMB, which is less than $35. Not bad! It was kind of fun to have the kind of electronics experience usually reserved to locals who have a clue what they are doing with electronics. It was definitely out of the ordinary and cool to see.
ahhh GUTS
Okay, one more random thing, I guess relating to health? At the checkout at most grocery stores we went to, they have tons and tons of condoms where in the USA there would be, like, gum and candy bars. It’s a little disconcerting but hey, China is serious about birth control which is good! But one brand jumped out at us and we were CRACKING up.
UH HUH, that’s a condom brand called JISSBON. So shocking and hilarious! But it gets better, if you can believe it. Our Chinese friend said that jissbon is ACTUALLY WHAT CHINESE PEOPLE CALL JAMES BOND. So this condom line is named after James Bond! And it JUST HAPPENS TO SOUND HYSTERICALLY PERFECT FOR A CONDOM. Omg I can’t even believe. The writing underneath says something like “you can’t even see it”, something very 007 spy-like. Ahh it’s so funny!
Okay that’s all the random thoughts I have for today. And don’t worry Mom I’m all better and it was like nothing!
