utterly opinionated

Its my third coffee shop of the day and I’ve overdosed on coffee so this time I ordered tea.  Tea and a palmier.   I sat down around 4:30 and by 4;45 the coffee shop was packed.  Teatime, coffee time, snack time.  There is no other time as busy as this.  This is when the stores shut for a few hours and everyone takes a break before the evening rush.  Very civilized.

Unlike coffee shops in Pittsburgh, mine is the only computer in sight.  Parisians take their breaks seriously.   And unlike coffee shops in Pittsburgh this one caters to everyone.  The youngest person I see is 1 and the oldest is probably pushing 80.

Often, when I’m traveling that horrendous thirty hours from Pittsburgh to Australia, I day dream about laksa.  This Malaysian soup is worth the trip and I eat it whenever I can.

Ingredients

Richard Florida ranks it as a  city “where the kids are heading”.  Melbourne, the second most populous city in Australia, with 4,000,000 residents, has also been ranked one of the top three most livable cities in the world by the Economist Group’s Intelligence unit, since 2002.

The most Important criteria for ranking cities on this list are safety, education, hygiene, recreation, political-economic stability and public transportation.  I’m not sure I’d choose to live in a city based on these rankings.  My criteria might look a little different, and certainly, right at the top, would be cuisine.

More than any other metric, the fact that 34.8% of Melbourne’s population was born overseas has the biggest impact on this city.  This is the reason I’d choose it as a place to live.  This percentage far exceeds the national average, already high at 23.1%.  It’s easy to guess this.  The by-product of this percentage is the large number of ethnic restaurants, clustered in every neighborhood and flavoring every street corner.

Flavoring my trips home.

Visits with family members are interspersed here with visits to restaurants and food markets.  Lebanese, malaysian,  vietnamese, turkish and greek food, each meal better than the last.  Fresh food readily available in abundance from every corner of the world.  A melting pot of food and people that is hard to imagine. With the diversity of people comes a diversity of talent.  Once you have lived it, it is difficult to live without.

This week I fly back to my adopted home, Pittsburgh.  Only 5% of our population was born overseas.  We are missing out, big time.

Yesterday I blew my diet, big time, at Big Mama’s House of Soul.   

For several years the bright yellow House of Soul in Pittsburgh’s Strip District has screamed BBQ at me.  Shame on me for not stopping sooner.  On Tuesday I finally did.   Big Mama was there, but “Oh honey” she said “ I need a rest on Monday and Tuesday.  The ribs will be cooking again tomorrow morning”.  

And so yesterday I went back for Big Mama’s ribs all cooked from scratch.   The dining table is a big picnic table outside, tented to protect you from rain.  Street noise fills in for background music.  Ronel, Big Mama’s grandson, helps her out in the kitchen and says she is the sweetest woman alive.  No amount of coaxing would get him to divulge his grandma’s secret twenty-seven spice jerk chicken recipe.  He tells me that Big Mama’s recipes have been handed down in his family for one hundred years.    One hundred years in Pittsburgh.

One hundred delicious years.

I overate.   My hands were sticky with BBQ sauce.   I’m sure I weigh five pounds more today.   Damn, it was worth it.

I worked at my favorite coffee shop, Big Dog, on the South Side today.

It’s Sunday.  I shouldn’t have been working.   I didn’t want to be working.   I coaxed myself over there with a ride along the luscious south side trail and rewarded myself with one of their fabulous cappuccinos.   Big Dog’s cappuccino is the best in town.

I wasn’t alone.  Over here was Mark DeSantis, former mayoral candidate, working hard and laughing loud.   And over there was Franco Dok Harris, current mayoral candidate, cramming for his MPRE exam.

Big Dog must be where the big dogs hang.

I’m on vacation.  The scales won’t be happy when I get back.