Luscious Lyon

A rapid dessert tour of Lyon's old district

My trip to France's second-largest city was a business trip, so I didn't exactly have time to delve into all of its culinary offerings. And the trip really snuck up on me as far as scheduling goes, so I didn't have time to be a good reporter and do the research on where to find the most authentic morsels to chow down on.

Good thing our press handlers had both lived in Lyon for awhile.

Shortly after our first few meetings and interviews, we killed some time by stopping at an authentic French ice cream shop called Nardone Rene on Quai de Bondy on the west bank of the Saone River. I opted for two scoops (one each of blackberry and praline) in a cone, but there were numerous other tubs my taste buds were begging me to dive into. And besides ice cream, there were waffles smothered in powdered sugar, crepes and other sweet delights. If we had more time, I would've gained at least five pounds.

The next day, knowing that we had two hours in the morning to walk around, I deliberately skipped breakfast at the hotel. That way, I'd have all the more reason to stuff myself with offerings from local pastry shops. With so many pastries, tarts, artisan chocolates and baked goods to choose from, our guide helped me narrow it down to an eclaire (authentic French) and a tarte de praline (authentically Lyon).

Watch me try to force down my eclaire here:

Forbidden Fruit

I've solved the mystery. The forbidden fruit that caused the fall of man was not an apple. It was definitely a pomegranate.

The sinfully sweet and sour sphere is amazingly tart and delicious. I had my first one today. After Katy chopped in half and picked out a few seeds, she turned it over to me, warning me that my shirt would suffer its splatter of red wrath if I wasn't careful.

I wasn't. My shirt paid dearly. It's now tossing and turning in the washing machine, and I hope the detergent can destroy the splotchy evidence of my carelessness.

Despite the way it mercilessly marred my shirt, I couldn't stop eating the pomegranate. I kept going until I ruined an undershirt as well.

As I was digging out seeds with a paring knife, deep crimson juice running over my fingertips, I couldn't help but sympathize with Adam. How could he have resisted when Eve was holding this in her hands?

How ridiculous they must have looked when the Lord found them walking in the garden, mouths stained with red, fingertips looking as if they'd stabbed someone.

No wonder they hid. Pomegranates take commitment, and there is always collateral damage. There is no playing it off with a pomegranate. If they stayed in view, they'd be caught red-handed.

Panama Wrap-up

I just have to get it out of my system. I've been procrastinating long enough, and now it's time to wrap up the Panama II narrative with a few last thoughts and pieces of travel advice. To make this quick and painless, food will be mixed in with sights and sounds.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I stayed at the Country Inn & Suites Amador, a nice little hotel that sits on the Panama Canal. Location is the main attraction. I paid $125 a night for a suite with a view of the canal. As I said before, the rooms were far from glamorous, but watching the sun set behind the iconic Bridge of the Americas was memorable, and the pool was a great respite from the humidity that had me sweating all day.

A TGI Friday's is attached to the hotel. I've never been that tourist who eats at the hotel restaurant, but fried calamari and Balboa beer hit the spot when we arrived late our first night. At least the dish was a little exotic; we don't normally do squid at the Friday's in Atlanta.

The next day, we headed down to Casco Viejo, or Casco Antiguo, depending on which specific part of the old city you're talking about. For me, one of the highlights of the colorful UNESCO World Heritage site is the Plaza de la Independencia, dominated by the 300-year-old Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción.

The church is a rustic brown and has two blistering white towers flanking its entrance. You can see them all the way across the bay from Punta Paitilla, a developed section of the new city. Across the plaza sits the classic Hotel Central, a dilapidated yellow building on the verge of restoration. Leading away from the plaza to the north is Avenida Central, a bustling market street. On one side of the square is the Panama Interoceanic Canal Museum ($7 for adults), where we saw Spanish exhibitions about the history of the canal. On the top floor, we were led to a dark room and treated with a wonderful surprise: etchings by Rembrandt.

We asked the curator how she was able to get such high-profile pieces on a loan from Europe. "I can be a pain," she said.

Casco Viejo, as its name suggests, is old, but that's its charm. The government as well as private investors have long recognized that "old" doesn't need to equal "tired." Real estate signs were up everywhere. Workmen gutted old buildings, leaving their historic facades while providing a new steel skeleton on which to build new studios, offices and condos. The warm breeze coming off the bay carried the odor of wet paint and the sound of jackhammers. As was the case last time I visited, tourist police patrolled the area, and steely-eyed soldiers guarded diplomatic buildings to keep ignorant tourists from wandering down the wrong brick streets.

We stopped for lunch at a polished red building in Plaza de Simon Bolivar with "Hotel Colombia" written on its facade. Casablanca, the restaurant on the bottom floor, seemed attractive enough. The inside was stuffy - the waitress explained that the A/C didn't reach the back room where we sat. But its decor was cheery and refreshing: lime, almost neon, green pillars and rafters, orange pillows and deep brown wood furniture. A fish tank filled with oscars separated us from the rest of the dining room. My hamburger turned out to be extremely delicious and filling.

Next stop was Granclement, an gelato shop we stumbled upon before lunch. The flavor selection would've made Mr. Baskin and Mr. Robbins jealous, especially considering all were homemade according to the "traditional methods of the best French artesans." I opted for a $2.50 single scoop of the vanilla, a pretty good price. I've paid more in Atlanta. And the beans speckled throughout the ivory cream told me that this glop of goodness was worth the money.

Lastly, I visited two restaurants on the Amador Causeway, a narrow strip of land connecting the mainland with two small islands in the Amador area. The furthest one out serves as a landing pad for huge yachts. With those in view and the Panama City skyline in the background, we ate at Alberto's, a tasty Italian place. Earlier in the week, my boss and I had a simple dinner at La Parillada, a steakhouse back toward the city.

Here's a summary of GlobalAtlanta articles I've written for the work side of the trip:

-On a pending Panama free trade agreement
-On the Colon Free Zone
-Our interview with Ambassador William Eaton - Story - VIDEO
-On Georgia Tech's interest in starting logistics programs there. Another Tech story here.

Panama: The Return

It's been two years since my feet touched Panamanian soil, and as far as I could tell from the drive from the airport to the hotel, not much has changed.   COMPARE the narrative from two years ago. 

In fact, it was quite a flashback for me to disembark from the Delta 757 that brought me here on today's only flight from Atlanta to a country that prides itself on being a crossroads for international commerce and the last bridge between Central and South America. 

As I made the short walk up a small ramp into the customs area, the smell of grilled food still hung in the air, left over from an earlier, busier time in the terminal.  Blue and yellow signs of Tocumen International Airport welcomed us to a new land, which is closer by plane from my Georgia home than some parts of the American West and definitely much more convenient than the 14-hour marathon I took to Shanghai, China, last month.

In 2006, I snapped photos of the welcome sign.  I wonder if the fact that I didn't this time means I'm maturing as a traveler or just that I'm less enamored because I've already been here before.  Maybe a trip to a less-familiar place would have rendered me trigger happy.

The customs counter was a breeze compared to America.   The people were actually nice, and they've widened and brightened the light blue and white walls of what used to be a dungeony area the last time I was here.  They've even installed a DMV-style digital numbering system that directs you to the next available attendant.  After so many uneasy trips to China, it was comforting to see foreigners all around me and to hear the familiar thud of the approval stamp thumping the counters, signaling their official access into the country. 

After baggage claim, this trip began to differ a little from the fiasco that was my last Panama arrival.  Long story short:  This time, instead of a creepy, lurking taxi driver chosen as a last resort after being jilted at the airport by a friend, we were carted away in a Mercedes Benz.  All told it was $32.50 for a half-hour trip.  Extortion?  I don't know, but the convenience was nice and the air-conditioned ride was smooth.  

As in America, billboards are prevalent here.  It's ironic that I noticed this on the cab ride, because I just overheard some people talking at the post office today about how great Europe is because it doesn't have billboards, or at least in Germany; they couldn't really agree.  I couldn't tell you a thing about Europe, but I know the the Koreans (Samsung, LG) are happy that advertising isn't passe in Latin America. 

The Multicentro is still here, as is Super 99, a popular grocery store, and the Hard Rock Cafe and Dunkin Donuts, two very important institutions.  I don't particularly like being the American who clings to recognizable brands while soaking in a different culture, but I have to admit that it's comforting to see things that remind me of the previous trip.  It gives me a sense that I know where I am, even if I couldn't get there by memory if you set me loose with a car.

I'm also reliving another Panama experience: the Country Inn and Suites near the Amador Causeway.  Last time we stayed here for a night of relative luxury before heading off into the wonderful worlds of budget lodges and outdoor camping.  This time I'll have four nights.  Speaking of cultural clinginess, I ate fried calamari and drank Panamanian beer at a TGI Friday's attached to the hotel.  

Tomorrow, work begins.  I might switch my chronicles to a GlobalAtlanta blog once the work information piles up.  If you're interested in the Panama Canal and its interplay with trade flowing through the ports in Georgia and the Southeast, stay tuned.  

COMPARE the narrative from two years ago. 

Goin' Ghetto for a Burger

I had heard the rumors about Ann's Snack Shop, an unassuming little joint on Atlanta's Memorial Drive next to a liquor store and two doors down from a Checkers, a burger competitor whose fast-food fare literally doesn't stack up next to Ann's towering concoctions.

Word on the street was that Ann had been serving up America's best burger by herself for more than 30 years from her little stand, which can only seat nine customers simultaneously at the barstools in her small restaurant. And woe unto those who break Ann's strict rules about intrusion (or any of those posted on the wall above her kitchen). Ann's place is sitting room only, and she quickly shoos out anyone left standing up or milling about.

It wasn't until last year that Ann gained national recognition in a Wall Street Journal article for her culinary specialties, but plaques on her dingy walls proclaimed that she'd been at the top of the city of Atlanta's food chain in the burger category just about every year since AOL Citysearch and other sites began rating shops like hers.

But it wasn't the critical acclaim that drew me to Ann's. It was hunger, for adventure and for ground beef. I'd never heard of Ann's place until I drove by one day and saw a wooden sign out front painted with cursive letters that read, "Home of the World Famous Ghetto Burger." The picture on the sign, I found out, is pretty close to life-size. The Ghetto Burger is a veritable mountain of food: two handfuls of ground beef from a smashed onto a commercial grill, coated with melted cheese, laced with bacon and topped with lettuce, tomato, onions, chili, ketchup and mustard. For coleslaw aficionados, Ann offers the Hood Burger, which is basically a Ghetto Burger with some slaw on top. The Hood is actually a bit more expensive, and I guess the extra cost coupled with slaw's polarizing nature as a fixin' has kept the Hood from reaching the Ghetto's level of worldwide fame.

A co-worker and I traveled to Ann's twice. The first time we were left out in a sort of lean-to lobby area for awhile, waiting behind other eager customers who warned us not to try to enter before a seat came open. They also told us that Ann's old-school shop doesn't fool around with credit cards. Sadly, we settled for Checkers.

Our second try was marked with determination, which we would need along with a little dab of patience. We came armed with cash and blocked out an hour for lunch. We wound up needing two.

Nowhere in Ann's rules does it say, "Provide good or even adequate customer service." Maybe it's the product of being the lone ranger of burgers in her neighborhood, but Ann was too busy to worry about being courteous. Although we sat down immediately this time, we were at the bar for a half-hour before Ann acknowledged our presence. Another hour later, after enduring two soap operas on the blaring TV inside, we had two bags of steaming goodness to take back to the office.

The long wait was trying, especially since my breakfast had been small that morning. But I found that the long period of "burgatory" between entry and exit fostered conversation that produced bonds between the customers. The guy next to us had traveled from across town. Every time he came this way for work, he stopped at Ann's. With the long wait, I hoped he didn't get paid by the hour.

Hip hop mogul P. Diddy, Puff Daddy or Diddy, whatever his name is now, had come to Ann's while he was in Atlanta, this guy told us. Our new friend didn't get to see Puffy, but he heard that the star liked his Ghetto Burger.

I don't know of any more appropriate endorsement for something called with "ghetto" in its name, but another guy in the store offered his as well. He came all the way from the United Kingdom to sink his teeth into Ann's specialty, he said. As he thanked her, Ann nonchalantly took his cash and I think - just maybe - managed a small curl of the lips that bordered on a smile.

She took our payment in much the same way, with little outward expression of gratitude. Ann seems to think that seven-plus bucks is an appropriate price for a burger.

After downing the whole thing in one sitting, I'd have to agree.

For more information on the Ghetto Burger and some good photos of the actual burgers, check out The Blissful Glutton's thorough blog post or check out the YouTube video below from Atlanta's ABC affiliate. Sadly, my one-track focus on the burgers caused me to forget my camera that day.

The Kurds

This is the second in a series of profiles of international residents in Decatur. The first installment tracked the story of a Colombian now working at an apartment complex here.

Mustafa can’t read Arabic. A Kurdish Turk from Ankara, the capital of Turkey, where more than 90 percent of citizens call themselves Muslim, it’s almost a given that he considers himself the same. But the nine-year resident of the U.S. and co-owner of Café Istanbul in Decatur is far from fanatical about his religion. He abstains from pork, mostly because disdain for it is so ingrained in his culture, not because he really thinks it unclean. He says all the food at his restaurant is halal. In Arabic, the word means “permissible,” but it has come to describe an Islamic food classification similar to Jewish kosher laws. He serves it not because he believes it imbues his restaurant with holiness. It’s enough for him that it brings in profits from the consumers who want their food that way.

We had come to research the halal phenomenon as a business story for my job. Any city’s ability to attract international business will be directly correlated to its ability to make foreign businesspeople feel at home, and we wanted to investigate the accessibility of halal food in Atlanta. Café Istanbul is close to the office, and it was rated by a halal Web site as adhering to the dietary restrictions on at least some level. The food is amazing, and the atmosphere is top-notch Mediterranean. Customers can choose normal, Western-style tables or opt for a more exotic experience: reclining on posh cushions at low tables throughout two other exotically decorated rooms. Not ones for the status quo, my co-worker, Katy and I plopped down on cushions in the corner in a room with tufted, plum-colored silk covering the ceilings and half-walls and columns separating this middle section from the other two rooms.

After feasting on kebabs and other Turkish dishes, I approached Mustafa and dropped the name of a guy I met at a Turkish event a few months back. He runs a Turkish cultural association in town and told me he knew the owners of Café Istanbul, two brothers who were Turks but Kurdish in ethnicity. Introducing myself, I asked Mustafa to confirm what I’ve heard and told him that we wanted an interview once he finished cleaning a mess left by a party of 10 next to us. He was probably glad they were gone. At first hesitant to puff the hookah, one of the girls persuaded herself to partake by muttering, It's an authentic cultural experience, over and over again.

A few questions in, it was obvious from the rapid-fire intensity of his speech that Mustafa was a passionate guy. He was fiery, and not because he had just demonstrated to the big party how to really suck in and exhale the hookah's flavored tobacco smoke. He had an uncanny way of exuding intensity while maintaining a cheerful disposition, even as he volunteered information about the grave situation underway in his home country. The PKK, a Kurdish rebel group classified by the U.S. as a terrorist group, is fighting against the Turkish government from outposts in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. Mustafa seemed to think that such extremism gives peaceful, loyal Kurds like him a bad name in their native country. “They might not like me very much right now, but I love Turkey,” he says.

Mustafa also loves the United States. He came three months after his brother Kamal, who while we spoke picked up Mustafa’s slack, scurrying around the restaurant wearing a shirt that said “Got Hookah?” Kamal had won the green card lottery, but Mustafa had to wait for his permanent resident status. When he first got here, he and Kamal worked in an Italian restaurant, but in a strange turn of fate, the brothers decided to visit a local Turkish restaurant they had heard about one Sunday night. The restaurant was closed, but when the Turkish owner came to the door and saw fellow Turks, he ushered them for some drinks and conversation. By the end of the night, Mustafa and Kamal somehow became the proud owners of part of the building that now houses Café Istanbul.

Now a proud green card carrier, Mustafa can’t believe it’s already been nine years since he first came to America. He already thinks a little bit like an American, and that’s gotten him into trouble on occasion. Some stricter Muslims have taken issue with his decision to serve beer—which is forbidden in Islam—in a supposedly halal restaurant. “It’s not their business,” he says, becoming defensive when I ask how he weighs his customers’ varying standards of piety. “If they want to be like that they shouldn’t come to this country. It’s a free country, you know?”

The back wall in Café Istanbul’s largest room is covered by a painted mural. A portrayal of a large, keyhole-shaped doorway topped with a pointed arch draws eyes to a central point in the wall. I ask if this represents the niche in the wall of a mosque that shows devotees the qibla, the direction of prayer toward Mecca. Impressed that I even knew about the qibla (which was originally pointed toward Jerusalem), Mustafa says it’s just a door, but it does have an interesting story. The mural’s painter, a friend, originally included an Arabic phrase above the painted doorway, Mustafa says, scribbling his best impression of Arabic on a pad. One day, a patron complained that Mustafa could not defame the Qur’an by having such words scribbled on the wall. Although Mustafa thought it was just a generic Arabic name, he asked his friend to come back and paint over it to avoid any more disputes.

The few fits of ire the restaurant has drawn pales next to the fanfare it regularly attracts, especially on the weekends. A lively night spot that features belly dancers, imported Turkish beer, knock-you-down Turkish coffee in a somewhat out-of-the-way Decatur location, Café Istanbul threatens to break fire codes every weekend. Mustafa shuffles back over to a table where he had been calculating figures earlier. Grabbing the guest list for the coming Friday, his index finger trails down the page, passing parties of 10 and 15. It stops on a party of 80. “And that’s just from 7 to 9 p.m.,” Mustafa says with pride. Halal or not, Turkish or American, these Kurds must be doing something right.

The Colombian

He didn’t want to talk about the specifics. All the Colombian would say--and that through implication-- is that his experience with rebel soldiers in his home country was traumatic enough to make him want to leave and never look back. A civil engineer by trade who sometimes worked with the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, the Colombian stopped in one day to ask America for political asylum. Just nine days later, he was dropped in Georgia.

Without any English skills, he wasn’t able to find an engineering job, so he settled for the next best thing for a refugee—using a local connection to land a job as a menial laborer, scrubbing dumpsters at an apartment complex near Atlanta. The work was hard but nothing to get upset about. This was just an obstacle, and he could endure a few setbacks if by them he could escape his past.

He began studying English, and after a few years the owner of the apartment complex recognized his work ethic and asked if he’d like to become a painter. It wallowing in trash all day, so he jumped at the chance, even though he had little-to-no experience with a brush and roller. A few more years gone and his English much improved, the same boss asked if the Colombian would like to sell apartments to Spanish-speaking families.

Two years removed from that promotion, the Colombian now sells apartments to everyday clientele. His Hispanic accent is evident but winsome, and he’s extremely courteous without coming off as fake. He vigorously holds onto this job, which he says has its pros and cons. Just the other day, he had to tell a rowdy tenant to turn his movie down so a pregnant woman could get some sleep, and he’s been refereeing a group of unruly students who treat the complex like it’s the dorm for the college they cross the street to attend.

The Colombian represents an odd twist on the American dream, having come here by an odd confluence of desire and necessity. After eight years in America, he loves his new life, and he says he never even thinks about returning to civil engineering. He could care less that “sales manager” doesn’t have particularly prestigious connotations. To be honest, he’s just too busy reading about Colombian politics or helping customers retrieve their packages that were too big to fit in their tiny mailboxes.

When I ask him what he thinks about Americans who were born here but continually complain about the government even as they rely on it for sustenance, he replies with a pointed but non-judgmental response: “I think that we have so much here and we are accustomed to so much, that if one thing gets taken away, we complain about it.” The flipside is implied in his polite and grateful tone: If you’ve gone from nothing to something, you’ll appreciate all opportunities and the turns of fate and time that afforded them to you.

Photo: The jungle of Panama, the closest I've ever been to Colombia. Copyright 2006, Trevor Williams