and i ate some good stuff

obviously, things wrapped up and we made it back to america without significant incident. i didn't get a chance to detail some aspects of the trip, mostly because a lot of those aspects aren't that interesting for other people. food, however, is a pretty universal topic, and there were some notable things to eat along the way.
the first stop was in the carousel capital of the world, home of the square deal, the one and only parlour city, binghampton new york. we weren't there all that long, but i saw a few things. i liked the feel of the place a lot; it reminded me of some places i have been back in the midwest, trying hard to find its place and assert its primacy in its niches. it is just over the northern border of pennsylvania, pretty much due north from philly. there is a SUNY location there and the broome county arena, host to a couple notable phish shows once upon a time. but our purpose was not carousels, colleges, up and coming jam bands, or even parlours. no, we sought a square deal in the form of the city's famed sandwich, the spiedie. basically, it is some tasty marinated pork (or some other meat) on italian bread. i was trying to keep things cheap on the trip, so i just picked up a basic six inch. to my surprise, the sandwich was straight up meat and bread. nothing else. fortunately, this turned out to be because nothing else was required. that was some damn tasty meat, and just the right amount of juices transferred to the bread to soften it up without approaching sogginess. totally delicious, would eat again, a++. perhaps i will even return for one of the multiple festivals dedicated to this unique and proud sandwich. the big one also includes a balloon rally. i'm sold.
the next stop was rochester. i felt quite at home there; it is totally the gun rue of new york. comparable size, climate, and cityscape. that feeling that there was something going on, but one had to know how to find it and help to make it happen. our stop was once again wholly food motivated, only this time we were in search of a unique combination of flavor and experience, as opposed to the more pure culinary delight that was the spiedie. our quest took us to the wizened establishment of nick tahou hots, an institution for nearly a century in a building that had to be a couple decades older. this restaurant is famed for and the holder of the unlikely trademark "garbage plates". while the name is certainly not particularly appetizing and a description of the dish might not tickle your fancy, we concluded this was an experience we could not pass up. the concept is fairly simple: there is a base of some combination of french or home fries, macaroni salad, and/or baked beans. on top of this base there will be a typical american meat item, i.e. hot dogs or hamburger patties or a fish fillet. on top of this there must be something akin to a medium-bodied bean-less chili called hots sauce (not to be confused with hot sauce), which is in turn topped with onions. spicy brown mustard, cheese, or other enhancements may also be implicated. i tried to find a better picture than the one used in the wikipedia article i linked above, but let's face it, food photography is never easy, and making something like this look good is pretty much not going to happen. but the concept is pretty easy. i must say, it was an overall satisfying experience. i got plenty of solid food in me and a novelty experience at a reasonable price, and this ninety year old hot dog shop gets by on its gimmick. kind of cool if you ask me. we were kind of nervous about ordering because of the old-school feel of the place and the grizzled employees. this is because we have all been living in philly and such a setting there means you had better know what you want and how to ask for it if you want a modicum of pleasant service. turned out everything was fine of course, and there was nothing to worry about, but it was definitely a not in kansas anymore moment. big ups to rochester.
we crossed at buffalo, but since we had just finished the plates all of like an hour ago there was no desire on anyone's part to look into the possible advantages of the original authentic wings bearing the city's name. maybe some other time. beyond buffalo, the border, and then to toronto. while there are certainly plenty of definitively canadian food items (i love this list) and many normal foods available "quebec style", we did not get to a whole lot of those due to budget, region, and the fact that toronto is a global city in canada more than a canadian city. there were endless food options in toronto, but i mostly ate peanut butter sandwiches this time around as restaurants weren't all that cheap and are loaded with some pretty striking and unexpected taxes. sometimes that is the way it goes. however, there was one canadian food item we had all been set on from the get-go and would not be denied: poutine. french fries. cheese curds. brown gravy. what's not to like? this is one of the best possible combinations of food ever. so savory. so delicious. so filling. my friend summed up the experience pretty well: tastes great, but as soon as you're finished you feel like you just swallowed a pound of quick-set concrete. but damn was that stuff unbeleivable. my mouth is totally watering now as i meditate on the street culinary genius that is this dish. just think about how good this would be right now.
in other canadian junk food news, i checked out a couple chip flavors unavailable to me normally. the definitive canadian potato chip flavor is ketchup, but i didn't bother with these as i had looked into them before back in michigan. if you're curious, they are a lot like barbeque, but without the sweetness. pretty good. the flavors i tried were both from a company called old dutch, which of course amused me. i do not really associate the dutch with potato chips, but maybe i should. the first kind was creamy dill. the name was not misleading. imagine a sour cream and onion chip but with dill instead of onions. that was about it. the dill doesn't cut through the cream as well, but instead leaves room for some sour taste, which might have been the first time i associated sour cream with anything bearing the attribute of sour. they were pretty strong and a little cloying, as was the other variety i tried. i checked out the "ranch" because i am always curious about what qualifies for that title and the french translation on the bag bore no resemblence at all to the english, instead proclaiming the flavor to be something about three peppers. these were some damn flavorful chips. pretty tasty, but i think my breath would have felled a horse at twenty paces. they were actually so strong that i didn't finish the single serving bag all at once. overall, solid stuff, a change of pace, but nothing so exotic as what i hear tell of and had an opportunity to sample slightly from the other side of the atlantic.
that is about it for the good food news. like i said, it was a lot of peanut butter sandwiches for me. i did have an epic enormous hot dog from a cart. that was delicious. we also scored two for five falafel, which was a great deal. but yeah, that was about it. and since there is no more food that must be discussed, i would like to say a word about the beverages. by beverages, i pretty much mean beer. i am not sure if i mentioned this in passing in a previous post, but damn did it leave something to be desired. first of all, ontario has some pain in the ass booze laws which are not entirely dissimilar from pennsylvania, although less restrictive in some ways and moreso in others. mostly it was a real pain in the ass to get takeout beer, which is near-impossible to acquire outside of the state run booze stores that have liquor wine and beer or the beer store (that is its actual name). after some difficulty locating a beer store, we broke down and went to a state store, and happened to wind up at the largest one. the good news was they had an impressive selection compared to the other one we had looked at, the bad news was that prices are not only fixed, but are fixed by the container, meaning no breaks on quantity. understanding that the situation was not going to change, we hoped to make the best of it and take advantage of the wide singles selection. most of what i got i believe was imported into canada, but much of it i had not seen in the states before. a lot more packaging in large cans. i picked out a couple familiar things, lowenbrau and a warsteiner dunkel, a couple of varietal bocks from the same brewer, a canadian ipa, some ten percenter man can needed for bang for buck, and another thing or two. my god, was that stuff bland. for all their restrictive ad laws (borne out through not-so-subtle changes to american ads on canadian networks), i can't believe they let this company call that beer an ipa. i think the brewery is owned by labatt or something? in any case, this was just ridiculous. it looked like fucking budweiser, and was about as hoppy as pbr. it wasn't a crappy beer, but there was just nothing about it that said ipa. it was kind of like yuengling's lord chesterfield. those bocks? apparently from the same school of bock as texas' own shiner. huber bock has at least quadruple the flavor, and that ain't sayin much. i mean they weren't offensive, but they were not that pleasing either. the bang for the buck beer was not worth it at all in a steel reserve kind of way. the saving grace in all this comes from the one canadian craft brewery we all know and love: unibrou. 750 ml bottles were widely available at the standardized price of $5.40 canadian. now that my friends is a deal. la fin du monde and maudite kick the crap out of the other options, especially at the price. now you know.
as i mentioned, the beer was kind of tricky to get the hang of aquiring the first couple days. but hey, we were all on vacation, it was the boys, we didn't have a lot of money to go out, weren't sure about how to get beer, and we were going through the duty free. that meant liquor. we had some bombay sapphire, which was nice because i haven't had good gin in ages and i rather enjoy it. that being said, i don't think bombay had ever been mixed with such shitty orange juice (thanks all night convenience store across from hostel) or such flat perrier. oh well, it was still alright. i am bad at making decisions about things to eat or drink when i have a lot of appealing options, so i was looking around back at the duty free for a while. i wanted to go cheap but not too cheap, enjoy my savings in quality more than quantity, but the setup wasn't completely conducive to that. so i'm looking around for a while and change my mind a couple times. jager sounded real good, but cost a little more than i wanted to spend. however, one shelf down a bottle called out to me. it said hey, i have as much liquor of equal strength and that strong licorice flavor you're looking for. all this at a savings of approximately ten us dollars. my name is sambuca. so sambuca it was, and i like the flavor but i didn't remember it being so thick and sugary. so yeah, i still have like a significant amount of sambuca. i think people drink it after italian. come over and i will make you pasta and we will drink this stuff. i could use a hand with it.