Kelly Purkey: travel eats

August 17, 2016

Visiting Mexico City

This year has been full of a lot of fun trips and I'm all about getting away for just a weekend to experience somewhere new. I jumped on a great deal to visit Mexico City, which is a city that I've never been to before. My previous travels to Mexico have only been quick trips to beaches, so I was really looking forward to visiting this huge city. I've had a few friends who have been recently and they've all had great things to say about their trips. Not to mention, the New York Times ranked it the number one place to visit in 2016. Oh yes, let's go!

I only went for three nights but really wish I would have stayed for three more just to eat more food! The food was amazing. Amazing. Mexico City is gaining a reputation for having some of the best restaurants in the world and when you add that on top of cheap tacos + beer, incredible desserts, and avocado everything - it's a wonderful place to go for a perfect dining adventure.

I stayed at the St. Regis Mexico City which is home to J&G Grill and the most incredible avocado pizza. I'm not joking when I say this is one of the best things you will ever eat! I was lucky enough to get to sit and chat with the chef for a while and he told me that it's so simple that I could even make it at home. Some day I am going to try, because dreams of the avocado pizza now haunt me.

Mexico City is also home to three of the World's 50 Best Restaurants so I definitely had to do some eating research on these places. I chose Pujol and think that it was a great decision. The tasting menu was delicious and inventive, including the dried ants that were included in one of the dishes. Yes, ants! I love that it was Mexican food with a high end twist and low price tag.

I saw El Moro Churreria on the guide from DesignLoveFest and immediately knew that I had to go after seeing photos. Well, I went twice. And probably should have tried to stop one (or two or three!) more times. I went for the ice cream sandwiches made out of churros. Oh goodness, these were delicious. I have to say that I've always thought give me a donut over a churro any day but then when I had the ice cream sandwiches, it was one fabulous treat. And the branding was so on point - hard not to love a pretty place serving up tasty treats in style.

In between trying to eat everything that I could, I also took in a little art and some shopping. Mexico City has the most museums of any city in the whole wide world. Let me say that again - in the whole wide world! It's easy to pop in a take a look, but my favorite was the outside of the Museo Soumaya which made my heart skip a beat when I saw it. I also booked a ticket to Luis Barragan's studio, which is so beautiful it deserves a blog post all its own.

One last thing I want to say about visiting Mexico City is that it felt safe for me to explore even though in recent years there have been murmurs to the contrary. There are neighborhoods that you should avoid, but that is the case in a lot of metropolitan cities. I took Uber rides everywhere I wanted to go and even if the ride was way across town through heavy traffic, it never cost more than $3. Crazy. Everyone I met was very friendly, willing to help me out with my very poor Spanish, and allowed me to wander through their hometown. It is a wonderfully rich city that is so affordable to visit and I hope to see again soon. If only for that avocado pizza!

More places I recommend checking out:
Modern Mexican & #12 on the World's 50 Best - Quintonil
Bakery - Panaderia Rosetta
Food hall - Mercado Roma
Tacos - El Califa (multiple locations)
Breakfast - Restaurante Lardo
Seafood & oyster bar - La Docena
Lunch & good coffee - Eno
Cute boutique hotel - Carlota

Posted at 08:00 AM in adventures in eating, travel eats, travels | Permalink | Comments (5)

July 07, 2015

Fresh Crab Feast in Saigon

When I was sixteen, a friend and I would clip a coupon out of the newspaper each week for a buy one get one meal at an all-you-can-eat crab legs buffet. I can't tell you how much we enjoyed this luxury meal and I still have so many good memories of our weekly nights out to enjoy crab legs drowning in butter.

To this day I still love a good meal made up of crab meat (and have been known to spend hours at Las Vegas buffets eating crab legs with my bestie Sarah!) So it comes as no surprise that my favorite meal we had in Saigon was a feast of fresh crab.

And when I say fresh, I mean that right at the front doorway there's a case of crabs all lined up, with their little pinchers still dancing in the air. I'll spare you the photo of them still alive and move onto the meal. We started with crab rolls right out of the frying pan, still sizzling and incredible. Then comes the plate of crab. And you take a bite and hear angels singing.

One thing that I found endearing about the little places we ate at were at the end of the meal you get a toothpick (very helpful!) and also a wet nap with the wrapper acting as their business card. So there's the address of the place we ate at, which I highly highly recommend. It has multiple floors with different dining rooms and the shot above of the kitchen is the opening doorway to the restaurant.

We left blissfully stuffed, with the food plus two beers + a Coke only costing $12 and that's actually considered on the higher end for a meal like this. That price definitely beats my old splurge on the crab buffet and hey - no buy one get one coupon even needed!

Posted at 08:00 AM in 2015 Travels in Asia, asia, travel eats | Permalink | Comments (3)

June 30, 2015

Vietnamese Street Food: Pho in Saigon

After being on the road for three weeks straight, it's been a challenge to get back into the swing of a regular schedule. My stomach and internal time clock aren't quite sure what to think. I'm slowly catching up on things and have so many stories, photos, and mementos to unpack + organize. I hope to share quite a few bits from the trip on my blog, with a warning that there's going to be a heavy focus on food. Surprise!

I thought I'd start with something that is so quintessentially Vietnamese. A big steaming bowl of pho that we ate sitting on plastic stools right out on the sidewalk. The food in SE Asia is quite unbeatable and I was lucky to indulge in a handful of delicious dishes. While the place we went for pho wasn't a true street food cart, it's a quick meal that I'd consider fast food in Vietnam. You just drive your scooter up, hop off, eat a bowl, and in fifteen minutes you're back on the road.

My boyfriend is currently based in Saigon for work and has done some careful restaurant research to hunt down the gems in the city (and to also avoid sketchy places that could lead to food poisoning in a snap! Which I was not so lucky with, but that's another horrible story.) This was listed as one of the best bowls of pho and it was by far the best bowl I've ever had. You sit down, aren't offered a menu but instead a basket of greens is placed in front of you, and then in a matter of minutes your bowl appears. Help yourself and rip off which greens you'd like. Add squirt of lime. Eat up.

It's crazy how simple the dish is yet how flavorful it can be. We pay our $2 per bowl and we're hopping back on our scooter (jk, we're not that cool and had to flag down a cab) and on our way to seek out the next good bite.

Posted at 08:00 AM in 2015 Travels in Asia, asia, travel eats, Vietnam | Permalink | Comments (8)

November 11, 2014

Charleston: Butcher & Bee

One of my very favorite episodes of 30 Rock is Sandwich Day, where Liz looks forward to her special sandwich and goes a little crazy when she's prevented from getting it. The line "WHERE'S MY SANDWICH?!!!!" is one that tends to come out of my mouth when I can't find something I really want. The passion that Liz Lemon feels for that sandwich came out in full force when I tried the banh mi sandwich at Butcher & Bee in Charleston.

Butcher & Bee welcomed us with open arms and warm sunshine through the front windows. It's so pretty inside, with arrangements of flowers on tables to just light up your day with a pop of color. Cute and cozy.

We split a pork belly banh mi along with a grilled cheese sandwich. The banh mi was incredibly flavorful with the juiciest slice of pork belly. I fell in love. We wrapped it up with a tasty piece of upside down apple cake. After we sat down a group of Charleston firemen filed in through the door and if you can't trust a fireman to lead you to some good grub, who can you trust?

I have so many stories and great places and wonderful people to share from my trip to Charleston. This is just a taste. There's much more to come in a special package, I can't wait to present it all to you! Lemon, out.

Butcher & Bee
654 King Street
Website | Facebook (menu posted daily) | Twitter | Instagram

Posted at 07:00 AM in Charleston, travel eats, travels | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 27, 2014

Eating In Prague

I've already done a short overview of Prague along with a post on my binder album of photos + memorabilia, but I wanted to do a separate post on eating in Prague. Because it was amazing. Some of my favorite meals from my summer in Europe were here and everything was just delightful.

A couple notes before I get too far. The hospitality of the places I went was unmatched. People were incredibly friendly and I received incredibly warm + friendly service. Second, dining in Prague is incredibly inexpensive. I was really surprised and impressed with how affordable really great meals are. And I have to give a HUGE shout-out to the Taste of Prague blog. I hope I get to meet the couple who run the blog, they seem like my kind of people and I'm so grateful to them for all their posts and recommendations. My trip would definitely not have been as fantastic without finding their blog.

My first favorite meal was at Cestr, which is an amazing steakhouse. It's part of a restaurant group called Ambiente and once I ate at Cestr, I wanted to go to every single one of the places in the group. The branding of the restaurant is impressive. The menu is presented foleded into a sealed envelope with a cow image sticker. This cow is repeated throughout the restaurant, even on the dishes.

It's a huge, gorgeous open restaurant and the food was delicious. You can have an amazing filet for $13. Yes, $13! How inticing is that? Good design + good food = heaven.

That was just the beginning of my meat adventure in Prague. They are reknown for their meat and I enjoyed taking advantage of it. The next meal I had was at Cafe Savoy, which is another in the Ambiente group. Prague ham. Oh yes. The schniztel there is also popular but I couldn't pass up ham + potato puree. If you're looking for dessert, this is also the place to go.

I treated myself to Prague's Michelin star restaurant, La Degustation after reading the post on Taste of Prague. I was given the chef's table right by the open kitchen so I had a front row seat to all the action. The chefs there were fabulous, moving like a well oiled machine to handle the multiple courses for a full restaurant. Everything was creative + inventive, which is my kind of meal. At the end after I had eaten my mignardises, I mentioned to the server that cleared my plate how much I love the salted caramel piece and a minute later she presented me with a full plate of them. Those kind of little touches make me feel so appreciative of good hospitality.

The last Ambiente restaurant I tried was Nase Maso, which is really a butcher shop that will cook up any of the meats from the case for you to eat there. I ordered a sausage then asked if there was anything else I should try. The butcher (who seem absolutely beloved by everyone) got really excited and started describing something he wanted to give me that was "a bunch of pieces mashed together." Eventually we realized what he was saying translated into meatloaf and it was the best meatloaf of my life.

The last restaurant I want to mention is Home Kitchen. I learned from Taste of Prague that there are two locations and after eating lunch at the first, I had to go back for another meal at the second. Very rarely will I visit the same restaurant twice in one trip, but I did for Home Kitchen. They have homemade soup that was so delicious, my mouth just started salivating as I was typing the begining of this paragraph.

It's really gorgeous inside isn't it? Other places I hit and have to recommend to you are Angelato for the best ice cream in town, coffee at EMA Espresso Bar and also I Need Coffee - one of the best lattes I've ever had, and also the very top photo is a sausage from a street cart that was fantastic.

I said it before in my other posts and I want to say it again. I loved Prague. It was a top notch experience and full of amazing food for a small budget. I just know you will love it too.

Posted at 08:00 AM in 2014 Summer in Paris, Europe, Prague, travel eats | Permalink | Comments (12)

Kelly Purkey