The Kitchen
Everything here is a real recipe with real temperatures. Nothing needs a restaurant kitchen — a pan, an oven, and something to drink while you wait.
8 showing · 444 plates · 15 drinks
กล้วยทอด / กล้วยแขก (kluai thot / kluai khaek) · Bangkok
Bananas in a coconut and sesame batter, fried hard, sold hot in a paper bag. Not a bar-table dish. It is what the cart on the corner sells you on the walk home at two.
Where you'd actually eat it: Carts outside the bar strips of Banthat Thong and Ari, running until the drinkers thin out. Eaten standing up, waiting on a motorbike taxi.
From behind the bar: Traditional cart batter is rice flour and coconut milk, no egg and no butter. Some newer versions add egg for color, so ask before you assume.
ผลไม้จิ้มพริกเกลือ (phonlamai chim phrik kluea) · Bangkok
Hard sour fruit under a coarse red powder of chili, salt and sugar. It is the chaser at every ya dong cart and about the only sweet thing a Thai drinking table wants.
Where you'd actually eat it: Ya dong carts around Chinatown and Talat Phlu hand you a slice of pickled fruit after the shot. Lao khao, then fruit, then soda, in that order.
From behind the bar: The other cart dip is nam pla wan, palm sugar cooked down with fish sauce and shallots. Good, and not vegan. Dry phrik kluea is the version that is.
Kazandibi (Tavuk Göğsü) · Istanbul
Milk pudding built on threads of poached chicken breast, then deliberately burnt on the pan bottom and rolled up. Sweet, slightly chewy, faintly scorched. Nobody tastes the chicken.
Where you'd actually eat it: The muhallebici at the end of the night, Beyoğlu or Kadıköy, fluorescent light and plastic chairs at 3am. You have stopped drinking and you are not ready to go home.
From behind the bar: Rinse the chicken threads until they are odorless and squeak between your fingers. Any chicken flavor left in them is the whole failure mode.
Baba de camelo · Lisbon
Camel drool. Condensed milk cooked to caramel and whipped into eggs until it holds a spoon upright. Two ingredients, one of them air. It sits in a glass bowl in the tasca fridge and outlives everyone.
Where you'd actually eat it: The default tasca dessert, after the moelas and before the bica. A shot of bagaço with it, or a glass of moscatel de Setúbal.
From behind the bar: Cool the caramel to room temperature before the yolks go anywhere near it. Warm caramel scrambles them and no amount of whisking brings it back.
torrijas · Madrid
Stale bread soaked in cinnamon milk, egged, fried in olive oil, and dredged in sugar. Lent dessert that Madrid's tabernas sell by the tray with a glass of sweet wine.
Where you'd actually eat it: Sold from the counter in tabernas and pastelerías through Lent and Semana Santa, usually with a small glass of sweet wine. Some bars finish them in honey instead of sugar — still vegetarian, never vegan.
From behind the bar: Do not stack them hot or the crust softens and you have pudding. A rack, in one layer, ten minutes.
torta sbrisolona · Milan
Near-equal parts flour, cornmeal and sugar, bound with butter, yolk and almonds, baked into a shard you break with your hands. Mantuan. It exists to be dunked in grappa at the end of the night.
Where you'd actually eat it: The end of the meal at Lombard trattorie. It lands whole on the table, everyone breaks off a piece, and it goes into grappa or a glass of sweet wine.
From behind the bar: Keeps two weeks in a tin and gets better after three days. Cold butter, fingertips, no mixer.
고구마맛탕 (goguma-matang) · Seoul
Sweet potato fried hard, then rolled in caramel until each chunk sets glassy. Sweet enough to reset your mouth after a table of chili. Sesame seeds on top, no exceptions.
Where you'd actually eat it: Comes as a side plate with the fried chicken at old-school chicken shops, and turns up on pocha menus at the end of the night. Eaten hot with cold beer, which sounds wrong and is not.
From behind the bar: Move fast at the toss. The caramel goes from pourable to concrete in under a minute, and reheating it just burns the sugar.
고구마맛탕 (goguma-mattang) · Seoul
Sweet potato fried hard, then rolled in caramel until each chunk sets glassy. Sweet enough to reset your mouth after a table of chili. Sesame seeds on top, no exceptions.
Where you'd actually eat it: Comes as a side plate with the fried chicken at old-school chicken shops, and turns up on pocha menus at the end of the night. Eaten hot with cold beer, which sounds wrong and is not.
From behind the bar: Move fast at the toss. The caramel goes from pourable to concrete in under a minute, and reheating it just burns the sugar.