By Johnny Lopes

Being in Paris for the first time, I wanted to see the city life — the real hustle and bustle. So what better place to witness this chaos than Les Halles? It was jammed with bars for your aperitifs and tabacs for your nicotine fix. But aside from this typical parisian fare, I noticed a recurring food theme. A food theme which caught me off-guard, quite frankly.

Apparently, the French have a mighty appetite for baguette sandwiches. The baguette itself wasn’t the strange part to me so much as what they called it: a panini. Being raised in the States, I’ve grown accustom to the standard “panini” you’d find at a cafe — pressed and oily. This is not the case in Paris where you’d get a variety of buns (ranging from doughy, to flakey awesomeness) stuffed with some damn fine ingredients (meats galore and gourmet cheeses). You could tell there was a difference in quality from each vendor depending where you were in the city.

When you do shell out your hard-earned euros for one of these prizes, they do something unorthodox: they stick the paninis into the microwave for 40 seconds to reheat it. I suppose you can’t expect some new-fangled reheating method when you’re chowing down on street food.

Duck panini! Aside from the bread, it was pretty damn good 

Parisian weiner + cheese

*Johnny Lopes is a professional cyclist critic (aka biking curmudgeon) living in San Francisco. He commutes to Oakland to see his girlfriend via the ferry, never the BART.

After a painfully long day of marching shop to shop near Opera, we needed to eat something. Anything. Shopping with CH and Angela was exhausting normally, but this was sale week in the fashion capital of the world, and it was intense. The hustle of sale week mixed with the extremely friendly Parisians bumping elbows and fighting over who stepped on whose foot was burning me out (man).

Luckily we found Cojean, where I wanted to slip into bed with their quality sandwiches, depite the negativity of the Parisian staff (excuse moi, no photos please) and the atrocious gas station-like toilets. Their sandwiches are made daily ready to order, and are toasted and flattened a bit.

Herb blended tomato, arugula, pesto sauce, prosciutto goodness brought me to my knees

The toasting compliments the sesame seeded bread, bringing the mix of flavors that fall somewhere between damn good and oh my god, get me another one now! The combinations could have only been created from lots of trial and error to get something so unique and full of flavor, making them very different to the more traditional, simple meaty sandwiches, like the Mortadella or misto quente (ham and cheese), that I have grown accustomed to here in Brazil.

Meal polished off with some pomegranate and raspberry juice. Oooh-la-la.

Aside from the toasted sandwiches were decent sides of lasagna, pasta salad, and a strawberry cream desert strangely packed in a tub (ready for take-away). The tubs could be done without, as their trashcan was literally overflowing with them. But, the awkwardness of eating out of a tub at a cafe soon dissipated once licked clean. I needed the toasted prosciutto sando again in a very bad way–again a day later on my birthday.

So the next day we headed to the River Seine for a Cojean picnic on the river with our Brazilian crew and Angela in tow. After that quick bite at Cojean earlier , I fell deeply in love with their toasted sandwiches and could not imagine my birthday without one (or three)! We loaded up a bag of ready to eat Cojean conveniently located on the way, and the day turned out perfectly. Lovely weather, friends, and food and the sandwich I am still dreaming about now a month later.

The toasted sandwich returns in vegetarian form: mozarella, tomato, pesto, pine nuts

Casarecce pasta salad: goat cheese, zucchini, tomato, black olives, pine nuts, with mint and basil pesto

Organic smoked salmon,  chives, with dill pesto sauce

Pasta salad: Melon with prosciutto, oreciette pasta, arugala pesto, basil, and lemon

Getting leafy

Vegetarian lasagna done right

Citrusy Bella Lula with bio pulp!

The crew

You either hate them or you love them–the open-faced sandwich. Most Danes love them, it’s what they’ve eaten since they stopped being breastfed.

But of all the foreign friends I have enjoyed a traditional Danish lunch with, around  50% have left most of the food on the table.

Perhaps it was too different in taste and texture–far from subtle Japanese flavours or American cheeseburger grease… But when my guests leave the restaurant full and happy, I feel very proud of actually having something interesting to offer them (Copenhagen is not exactly New York or Tokyo in the culinary or cultural department).

Last week my food & design reparting journalist friend SW joined me at Aamanns for some open-faced sandwiches, aka smørrebrød or plainly put among normal Danes, rugbrødsmadder, which translates to “rye bread foods.”

Normally when you go out for a nice traditional Danish lunch, you go to old places which decorate the dining rooms with flags, old medals and historical pictures. But Aamanns has taken the old world and made it into something more fresh, modern and less touristy which is really nice for a change.

The exterior is subtle with classic black painted wooden frames and a green sign with some Danish paper cut decor a la Hans Christian Andersen.

Interior continues the green theme, very airy and light:

Usually, Danish lunch places feature dark rooms with low ceilings. This is quite the opposite.

The wall decor consists of mirrored silhouettes of Danish images like farm animals, local produce and garden herbs. Simple and unpretentious.

We are given the printed menu – nice quality paper on a wooden slate.

The prices are a bit steep for a lunch place.

My friend and I each pick the three-piece open sandwich choice at 165 DKK($32) and a bottle of water at 45 DKK ($9). Normally you want “snaps” (traditional Danish heath wine) with your lunch, but we weren’t offered any by the waiter and since my friend was in for a wet weekend in Copenhagen already, we stayed with water and ginger ale.

Our lunch arrived conveniently fast.

I love the wooden cutting board feeling of the serving dish. Eating off wood is so much nicer than the squeeky noises from white porcelain. All sandwiches are built on a base of house-baked sourdough ryebread with malt.

First open sandwich is marinated mackerel with sliced raw onions and a tomato based spicy mixture:

I wonder what the cute green fern on top is… The sandwich is fresh, spicy and crunchy.

Next up is the chicken salad with spring onions, baby peas, chives and a thin slice of baked bacon:

Both my friend and I agreed, this was the best sandwich of the three. It was so mouthwateringly full of flavours and texture–very unexpected for chicken salad. I would almost return just for this one dish.

Finally we had a sandwich with thinly sliced pork, a salty salsa, baby salad leaves, slices of apple, raw onion and walnuts.

This was really good too. Plain and simple but well executed and with some unexpected details.

After three bread heavy servings your stomach is quite full, and we had no room for dessert.

Even the bill is neatly placed in a printed paper cover.

I like when it all comes together, culinary and visually to make a visit a full experience. And I love how this place experiments with the classic smørrebrød incarnations but without going overboard. It was still traditional but in a new way.

Next time I have friends coming to visit my city, I might take them here instead of the old places–it’s less of a “cultural” experience, but the food is definitely better and that’s all that matters in the end, at least for us peeps here on Umamimart.

Paris is packed with things like bad service, people who don’t wear color, restaurants with funky bathrooms, people who embody blasé, park benches older than both of my countries, and street food that will screw your brains out, call you lover, and often never call you back.

For these reasons, I decided to go there for my birthday and eat like a king; a short conqueror with a pointy hat; a paratrooper on D-day. This week would be the start of our Brazilifornian invasion of Europe to eat, splurge, and celebrate being young and badass. Me being young, and CH (aka my partner-in-crime) being badass.

Paris has had its fair share of immigrants from Northern Africa and the Middle East ever since the first World War. Many won their citizenship as colonial soldiers or as cheap laborers rebuilding after the wars. Thank god they decided to stick around, as time has forced these competitive neighborhoods to keep improving their recipes–making Paris the city for kebab and falafel.

Just off the plane, William, our favorite blonde Parisian, took us to his favorite kebab place near St. Michel/Odeon:

That’s right: sliced kebab topped with fries. Cin-Cin!

Shaved meat stick

Me and the blonde.

The Jewish hood in the Marais district is perfect to run after some falafel. Lines and lines of people poured out of half of the shops! I was told we didn’t eat at the best falafel place, but the best I had ever eaten sufficed. The streets are lined with people waiting a city block to get their hands on lunch. Full of tourists, locals, Orthodox Jews, and many guys standing and shouting to follow them to the Most Famous!, Best!, or Original! joint. We opted for the Most Authentic! on Rue des Rosiers.

L’authetique Falafel.

At 5 euros we weren’t messing around. This was some goodness.

Fresh vegetables and geometric patterns.

Falafel specially prepared with… boxcutters wtf?

The sandwich: falafel and lightly fried eggplant filled with their fresh veggies and sauce.

Our hostess Angela has an amazing Parisian apartment, the kind that’s quaint and perfectly located just above a local vendor. But her particular vendor happens to be a stinky, meaty, loud, late night kebab joint that permeates the air and your entire being, with a sign just outside the kitchen window reminding you they are still open at 2am. Due to this proximity, Angela has rightly sworn them off, but I snuck down just before our flight to get into one.

Orange Drink, fries, meat in bread, creamy sauce, mayo, and spice: adequately meeting all the food groups.

Next up: Fashionable lunching at Merci Shop!

Last night there was a big snow storm here in Copenhagen. At some point I looked out the window and saw huge lightning flashes across the horizon. Never experienced this combination before, it was beautiful and intense.

And so due to all the sudden snow everything is moving in a snow-slow pace. Most planes out of the airport are canceled and my apartment is freezing- so I decide to escape and cozy up somewhere warm for lunch. I visited a new cafe last Sunday during a flea market outing with a friend and I liked it so much that I decided to take the Metro train all the way out there today for lunch and coffee. Also, writing about a place here on Umamimart requires you to visit it twice – that’s just how we roll in the food nerd blogosphere.

The place is called Foodshop No. 55 and is the first of its kind in a new urban area in CPH called Ørestad. It’s populated with young families, power couples and fab single gay men with a monthly salary the size of their hunger for young flesh and new disco compilations (so no, I don’t live here). It’s a place of modern, tall, award-winning cement & glass architecture, and therefore also the habitat of the strongest winds as the skyscrapers push the air downwards. Not very cozy or intimate. But points to the Foodshop for taking a chance on a neighborhood like this. God knows it’s needed.

I really dig the logo – the motif is cleverly based on a doily. It has a significant clean and Scandinavian feel to it– signaling food in a traditional but also modern way with the typeface.

The cafe is divided into a store area and a relaxation area with a long, long table, NYC style where you are forced to eat with other guests next to you. Some may find it slightly intimidating, but I actually like it.

The Tom Dixon lamps are well put to use here, but alas they are everywhere in Copenhagen at the moment so I’d like to see something new soon.

I don’t know why, but I kinda dig their Christmas table decor…

The desk front and tall fridges containing freshly made dishes and soups ready for the busy take away crowd.

All sorts of organic and regular sodas and beer. Mostly Danish and locally produced.

Readymade cookie dough which you can just take home, slice in small circles and throw into the oven. Lazy cooking!

Freshly baked bread and cakes in the window.

I like the abundant piling of bread sporting a rustic crust- rough and sturdy. An old school red bread slicing machine sits in the background.

The shelves go all the way down the cafe space presenting a vast amount of pickles, jams, vinegars, oils, biscuits, chocolate etc. On the picture you see the store’s own organic raspberry jam and below, organic rhubarb-strawberry jam.

Organic licorice and gummi bears.

On to the food: We order a latte which arrives in a big glass.

And organic brown sugar in a cute little paper triangle:

My friend and I ordered sandwiches for lunch last Sunday. Salmon sandwich with red onion, cucumber, ruccola/baby spinach leaf salad and wasabi mustard creme on home baked malt bread:

Fresh and crisp- simple and logical food. Really delicious.

Big juicy slices of salmon!

Tuna salad sandwich with capers, mayo, red onion, cucumber and mixed spinach salad on home baked malt bread:

My friend loves it.

On my next visit I picked the vegetarian sandwich. Mixed baby spinach leaf/ruccola salad, tomato, red onion, Italian mozzarella and spicy avocado slices on home baked rye bread with lots of grains.

It’s superb, sturdy, pure and wholesome.

Rye bread sandwich porn!

I finish off with a home baked giant chocolate & walnut cookie.

It’s crunchy and soggy in that cookie-sorta-way. Really good.

Foodshop No.55 is a very nice place in a strange deserted land of suburban, trendy high-rises. The food is great and the atmosphere is excellent – even the local postmen hang out and take a break on their daily route. The prices are kinda high though. I paid 134 DKK ( $23.5) for a latte, a sandwich and a cookie which is borderline steep. But I’m actually happy to pay it. To me, supporting small, local businesses to keep them staying afloat instead of another Starbucks/7-Eleven/chain horror is key to maintaining a soul in this city.

So I walk back home through the urban snowscape towards the metro station with a full stomach and a good feeling of having put my monies on the right spot.

My daily dilemma as soon as I step through my office door is this: what to have for lunch? I work in the slap bang centre of London surrounded by loads of restaurants, cafés, pubs and delis. Chinatown is just down the road. But everyday my mind goes blank and I end up shoveling down the same old boring thing: onigiri, sushi, instant noodles, soup and occasionally eat out. I used to eat a sandwich from Paul once a week but I’ve gone off sandwiches. Maybe because it’s approaching winter and I’m craving some heat. But lucky Londoners have finally got what the Indians have had all along. Roti stalls! No more sandwiches for me, no sirree.

There seems to be two competing roti stalls in the Soho area and I’ve only eaten at The Kati Roll Company because it’s closest to me. Yeah, I’m a lazy ass. If I start exercising and get a little fitter, I might actually make it to its rival, Mooli’s, an extra eight minutes away which seems to have more of an internet presence amongst London eaters. Unlike Mooli’s which I plan to check out at some point because they do goat, The Kati Roll Company originated in the States (NY) and only opened here this year. Have any of you in NY been there? If not, WHY NOT? I love Indian street food and I’m sure you do too.

What’s amazing is that I get to The Kati Roll Company blaring with Indian pop music and decorated with kitsch Bollywood posters and it’s filled with Indians. All waiting patiently to get served. Warms the heart. As I’ve thought all along, sandwiches are a little boring for the Asian palate and we need a little spicy kick to it.

Kati roll is basically an Asian wrap, a freshly made roti/paratha filled with your choice of spicy marinated paneer (type of home-made cheese), egg, potato, minced lamb patty, chicken or beef. What? I can hear you cry. Did you say beef? I did a double take myself because I’ve NEVER seen beef on the menu of ANY Indian food joint in London. But yes, it’s there (and I suppose they eat beef in non-Hindu areas), and it’s what I always order because it’s THAT GOOD. As well as the filling of your choice, the roti is also filled with pickled onions and fresh green chilli and coriander chutney and has a real kick to it. Just how I like it. I mean, can you honestly resist such a nicely charred bit of roti?

The Hocca Bar first opened its doors in 1952, and serves up thousands of sandwiches, beers, and pastéis de bacalhau (pastries packed with cod) everyday. The mixed crowd of kids, families, polo wearers, old gentlemen, and nuns stand or sit on stools, consuming their sandwiches. Everyone loud, talking, numbers are shouted, people laugh; talk one-handed.

The line wrapped around the place. A man asked the line to make room for those walking by. This was crowd control at a sandwich stand.

I place my order. I wait for the numbers: 451, 452, 453, 461, 463. Where is 454? The wait hurts. Worries of being forgotten, and working out how to say, “Please feed me,” in Portuguese, finally come to fruition. The man at the grill is working with mixed meats and breads; methodically slicing and tossing; then carefully folding and dropping the meat inside the buns. This vet has done this for at least a decade, probably more. His muscle memory finally delivers 454. I’m up. I claim my prize.

This is the sandwich not featured in Anthony Bordain’s epic No Reservations trip to São Paulo. Hocca Bar is the sandwich stand nearby– the one that he didn’t have time to wait for.

The Hocca Bar lives up to their slogan, “O famoso é aqui” Which means: THE FAMOUS IS HERE. “The famous” references The Mortadella Sandwich aptly named “Belíssima”; stacked four inches thick with multiple layers of cheese. Savory mortadella meat, similar to bologna with pockets of fat to capture flavor, is balanced with a dried tomato sauce preserved in olive oil and topped with oregano. This blend is then shoved into an Italian loaf and cut in half.

The sandwich has to be held with a napkin.

It kills me. This artery-clogger might have taken a few minutes of my life but I could give a careful shit. It’s a miracle heart-stopper that took me straight to heaven. The balance of the sandwich is just right, where most sandwiches this packed with meat run the risk of drying out; the sauce and availability of molho do pimenta, a yellow hot sauce, complete it.

I deserve this sandwich and apparently so do the 50 or so still in line waiting for their time to come.

Pastéis de bacalhau.

I will be back next month.

Made it to the Hapa Ramen pop-up yesterday for lunch at the Ferry Building. Let’s forget about the ramen for a hot second, and talk about their “random celebrity specials.” HELL YAH! How could you resist? The special of the day was…

FREE LINDSAY aka The Lindsay Lohan Sandwich! RAD! Says it’s so trashy, we’ll love it. Hope it tastes better than Lilo looks right now. Sigh. Oh, Lindsey. Tough life.

Tonkatsu, watercress, mayo, pickles on a gorgeous roll. I didn’t taste the fish sauce?

Pork was excellently fried, and the bread sorta puffed down in your hands. This was a delicious sandwich– not trashy at all! It was actually quite refined, I thought. Borderline classy, even. I would have given it trashy points had it been doused in tonkatsu sauce, which it was not.

I was obsessed with their housemade pickles, especially the jalapaños. I stacked them into my sandwich, producing a sweet heat.

Place was poppin’ by noon.

Hope they keep this sandwich on as a special for the next 90 days. FREE LILO!

HAPA RAMEN
Ferry Building Farmer’s Market every Thursday, 10am to 2pm.
Coffee Bar every Saturday night at 6pm-10pm. (1890 Bryant)
Follow @haparamen

I know a lot of folks who love to hate on Guy Fieri for reasons that include his overt enthusiasm and hair do, but I’ll be the first to admit, I think the dude is completely lovable and has the best damn job in the world. I mean, really… he won a reality TV show competition and now travels around in a red ’67 Camaro convertible shoving piping hot deliciousness into his mouth from greasy spoons across the country. Genius. How can you not be a little enviable, regardless of the fact that based solely on appearance, he looks like a total douchenozzle?

Thanks to Mr. Fieri I was introduced to The Oinkster via an episode of Diner’s, Drive-In’s and Drives and given its LA locale, it was going down. So on a gorgeous Sunday morning, two friends and I arrived.

We got there just a little after the 11am opening and it was already starting to bustle. The Oinkster is kitschy cute with a nice outdoor seating area and the staff was super nice and accommodating to us Oinkster newbies.

I started off the morning with an Arrogant Bastard Ale.  This beer is ridiculously good, you should drink it. Enough said.

Their Belgian fries are twice fried in beef fat and once in rice oil so vegetarians beware.

They were super good, had just the right amount of crisp to them and were aided in flavor by a nice selection of housemade condiments:

God, I love sauce.  I had to stay clear of their sweet hot mustard, it was way too strong, but the chipotle ketchup was awesome.  The real winner however was their garlic aioli. I could slather that stuff all over my body, lay out in the sun and call it a day.

The Oinkster Pastrami: two-week cured pastrami, Gruyere cheese, caramelized onion and a red cabbage slaw. I only had a couple of bites of this, as I opted for the pulled pork, but it was amazing. The meat was super tender and the combo of the cheese, slaw and onion was on point. The friend who chose this, chose wisely.

When I asked how he would describe it, he likened it to a “magical food wizard ready to put an enchantment spell on your flavor-buds.”

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot of magical food wizardry going on with my BBQ pulled pork selection.  Don’t get me wrong, I went to town on that sandwich, but I thought the pork was a little dry and I had to help bites out with more of their Carolina BBQ Sauce and the garlic aioli.

A little underwhelming, but I’ll give it another shot as there will definitely be another trip to the Oinkster for me to try their Ube milkshake and have my own pastrami.

As I’m still reeling from the garlic aioli, I’ll leave you with one of the best “would you rather” questions ever posed to me: Would you rather live in a world without boobs or without sauce?

Think about it.  It’s a tough one.

THE OINKSTER
2005 Colorado Boulevard
Eagle Rock, CA
T: 323.255.OINK

*Chiara lives in LA with her cat Pinky, who does tricks for food. Similarly, Chiara will also do tricks for food and thinks about eating a lot.

Seems as though I’m only interested in sandwiches, but it’s not true. But I am rather fussy when it comes to my sarnies. No soggy sandwich for me. Ideally, I would have either fresh bread, just toasted, with some ham, tomatoes and cucumbers with chilli mayonnaise, or grilled bacon and chilli mayo (has to be Japanese Kewpie mayo with my favourite chilli sauce). Or Japanese sandwiches, egg mayo or katsu, mmm. However, no toasters allowed in the office and it’s just not meant to be.

Luckily for me, these past few years there’s been a mushrooming of incredibly good sandwich shops (mainly French) in London where you can get an almost perfect baguette (well, we aren’t in France). And so I treat myself to a weekly mixte baguette filled with jambon and emmental, smeared with some wonderfully creamy unsalted buerre, and happily sit at my desk with a book.

And where do I get this picture of loveliness? Where else but my favourite French boulangerie, Paul. My local one is on Regent Street, just north of Oxford Circus with its spanking new scramble zebra crossing.

They also do some gorgeous canelé, proper coffee éclairs, plum tarts and the best black forest gateau in London. Britain seems to have a love affair with this cake made of chocolate, cream, cherries and kirsch (schwarzwälder kirschtorte) originating from southern Germany, but most I’ve tried in England have been truly vile until I came across Paul’s. But if you really want to wow your friends, you can try Heston Blumenthal’s recipe, although I drew the line at vacuuming bubbles into the chocolate and decided to just buy one.

And I always come away with a loaf of olive bread, sliced. Toasted, they are light, crunchy, buttery and perfect for breakfast (…or lunch… or dinner).

PAUL
277 Regent Street
London W1
T: 020.7491.8957

*Sakura is mixed Sri Lankan/Japanese, lives in London and blogs about books at chasing bawa. Her column Slightly Peckish will post every other Tuesday.