Picture a mass of pork—marinated in a combination of dried chiles, achiote, spices and pineapple—cooking slowly before a gas flame, all on a vertical rotisserie set-up called a trompo (a “spinning top”). Picture a man with a large knife shaving thin strips of meat off that … [Read more...]
WORLD FARE: A taste of the Middle East in the College Area
Maybe I should have known or at least suspected. Middle Eastern restaurants in lightly retrofitted chain spots are hardly unusual, sure. And the light-box pole-top sign depicting a vaguely Arabic castle inside a walled city added little to the equation. But it was the other sign … [Read more...]
WORLD FARE: Ishtar Restaurant: fighting ISIS one falafel at a time
There was once an old Vietnam-era slogan on posters, buttons, bumper stickers and T-shirts. Today it would, no doubt, be a ubiquitous Facebook meme: Join the Army; travel to exotic, distant lands; meet exciting, unusual people and kill them. It had resonance because it … [Read more...]