• 1 small yellow onion, 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks, 6 cremini mushrooms, small dice (1/4 in)
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped (2mm)
• 1 tsp chopped thyme
• 1 Roma tomato, small dice (1/4 in)
• 1 cup red lentils, rinsed
• 1/2 cup beluga or Du Puy lentils, rinsed
• 4 quarts chicken stock or water
• Salt
• A squeeze of lemon
• 1 qt (a generous handful) baby spinach leaves
• 3 tsp. unsalted butter

In a 6 quart or larger pot, heat the butter until foamy. Add onion, carrots, celery, mushrooms, garlic and thyme, season with salt, cover, and cook over medium heat until onions are translucent (around 10 minutes).

Add both kinds of lentils, the tomato, and the chicken stock or water. Season with salt and bring to a simmer. Cook over low heat until the beluga/De Puy lentils are cooked through, around 45 minutes. The red lentils will dissolve, thickening the soup.

Just before serving, give the soup a final seasoning, and add the spinach and a squeeze of lemon to taste. Give the soup a quick stir to wilt the spinach, then serve.

Yield: About 3 quarts.

That’s right, a motherfucking Chinese restaurant in Alhambra!

The multi-course meal lacked the finesse of, well, Baja Fresh, but it made up for it in grease. Here’s the rundown:

1. A plate of cold jellyfish (soy-flavored plastic), cold pork, cold chicken, cold duck, cold something else, and another jellyfish-like substance. That was also cold.
2. Cooked shrimp, served hot, tossed in mayonnaise. Here’s the thing about mayonnaise: When you heat it, it turns into scrambled eggs+oil, unless it’s Homaro Cantu’s fried mayonnaise. Came alongside some nice caramelized walnuts, though.
3. Utility-grade beef masquerading as pepper steak.
4. Josh Groban seafood soup (bland and non-offensive, plus the whole baby octopuses looked like his hair)
5. Peking duck with pancakes made from bao dough. Kinda good.
6. A whole chicken, thrown in the deep-fryer as is, hacked up with a cleaver, served with the head.
7. ” ” lobster, ” ” ” ” ” “, ” ” ” ” “, ” ” ” “, tossed in a garlic sauce. Kinda good.
8. Noodles with minute quantity of slivered mushroom.
9. Fried rice. 9 courses in and we get rice. Smart.
10. A vaguely fruity custard.

I scarcely need to mention that I drank lots of wine to get that all down. Of course, both the red and white wines were served ice cold.

When I have my own company and we have our holiday party made up of 50% white employees and their kids, I’m *definitely* going to serve them something everyone can enjoy. Duck testicles on warm tapioca, perhaps.

Yes, the title of this post is a reference to the song by The Used.

So I was wondering where to have dinner tonight, knowing that today was my last chance to eat the famous Icelandic lamb. I walked past several restaurants before I said “fuckit, I’m going back to Orange.” and while the second time lacked the personal service that comes from being the only one in the place, it was no less tasty or fun.

Basically I got a lot of the same gimmicks, but with different flavors. I also got Nina, the cutest waitress in the whole wide world. Here’s what she brought me:

Amuse: duck confit in a pickle jar.
Second amuse: roasted langoustine with confit tomato floating on a helium balloon.
1st course: Smoked artic char, apples, celeriac
2nd: wild deer soup, foie gras, mushrooms
3rd: monkfish, chorizo, olives, potato purée
4th: lamb, celeriac gratin, natural jus, sauce bearnaise
Dessert: brownie, skyr mousse, sorrel ice, liquid nitrogen ice cream

To prove that I’m internationally adept at crashing parties of large groups of women, a super-gaggle of Icelandic cougars bought me a green apple alcoholic slurpee. I also had a Dracula cocktail, made with blooberri, razzberi and red chile. Mmm and only 20 dollars! And when the kitchen was about to go down like a sack of shit, they stopped everything and the whole restaurant played Bingo for 5 minutes. Umm. Yeah. Let’s rock.

There are a lot of places that do this kind of gimmicky shit, but none can match the quality of food. Orange is clearly deserving of a spot on the top tier of restaurants worldwide.

Icelanders, you'd have more goal-scoring celebrations like this if you had better fight songs!

So, Iceland lost, 2-1, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. They had many more scoring chances, they had better kits, they had the home crowd. Why, then, apart from taking a stupid penalty and giving the Scots a free kick, did they lose?

In the eyes of this impartial observer, the answer is simple: Scotland had MUCH better chants. The main one seemed to be a version of “Let’s Go,” you know, clap, clap, clap-clap-clap, clap-clap-clap-clap, SCOTLAND! They also had a tight-knit version of “Hey Baby,” and some other melodic chants that sounded very well-rehearsed. They brought bagpipers, they were loud, they made the difference.

Iceland, meanwhile, has two lousy crowd anthems: “Island, clap-clap-clap,” and “Afram Island (Go Iceland), clap-clap, clap-clap, clap.”  What the fuck? If I were in charge of the Icelandic Sports Federation, my first duty would be to commission some new fight songs using a percentage of the 38% income tax and 24% sales tax everyone pays here. Icelanders, you deserve better results from your exorbitant tax rates! And another thing, if there’s any country in the world that needs its own national cheerleading team, it’s this one. Other countries would scarcely be able to focus in the face of gyrating, leggy, ridiculous-hot blonde girls! Get it together, Iceland.

After the match, which clocked in at a tidy 2 hours, I walked a couple blocks to Vox, home of lox that rocks your socks. Actually, I can’t speculate as to the quality of their smoked salmon, but the tasting menu I had was pretty good. They emphasize traditionl Nordic flavors and ingredients, but with soigne technique applied. It turned out pretty well, though it wasn’t as good or as fun as Orange. The Duckling was amazing though, paired with a Hautes Cotes de Nuits Pinot Noir. mmm.

First course is cured hamachi with cream cheese and some sort of jelly. Ummm. I like the idea of cured hamachi, and the cream cheese and jelly go great with the bread. At least the plate was cool.

Next up is tuna with pumpkin and sesame seeds, and my hopes are low. I should mention the techno-accordion music that’s pounding away.

But wait, the tuna saves the day! With a spring roll of eel and langoustines (of course), enoki mushroom and miso sauce, it’s effing delicious. A bit over-garnished (raw bok choy???), the fish gets a little lost, but all the flavors are there. Good. And filling.

Dessert is called savarin “I’m a donut,” which I hope is a reference to Eddie Izzard’s take on John Kennedy’s line, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” wherein he meant to say “I’m a citizen of Berlin” but actually said, right, “I’m a donut.”

And…the plate is covered with Pop Rocks!

Okay, sjávarkjallarinn, you win. This was a comeback of 2004 ALCS proportions, as you’ve keep my good food streak alive at 7 days.

Orange’s motto is mixing fun with fine dining, which seems hackneyed unless you just say “Fuckit.” So when they floated out a deep-fried, peanut-encrusted shrimp attached to a helium balloon, I just went with it. The shrimp was very good–all the shellfish here is somehow velvety in texture–and came alongside a pickle jar filled with artic char, wasabi tobiko, potatoes and lime foam. Good. I should mention that, due to my ordeal in getting to Orange, I ordered the wine flight with dinner. This will explain the photography. Also, I should mention that the name of the tasting menu here is “Let’s Go Crazy.”

So speaking of wine, the first drink to arrive was the Tony Montana cocktail, a champagne glass filled wigth some champagne, a shot of vodka, a dissolving sugarcube and some red stuff, and dusted with powdered sugar, so that when you tilt your glass back, you get Chris Farley Nose. (Aww. Too soon?)

Every restaurant here seems to feature Icelandic langoustines–and with good reason, because they’re freaking delicious. At Orange they came with a sunchoke puree and a frothy pumpkin soup, served out of a Tetrapak container of milk. Perfect. Next was a tuna carpaccio with seared foie gras and porcini, then salt cod stuffed with more lobster and pickled asparagus. The meat course was local beef filet with heart attack potato galette and wild mushrooms–unexpectedly classic, but very good, and excellent with an Argentinian Malbec. Then it was time for dessert, a suite of passionfruit custards and foams and ice cream, which the waiter made tableside using a bowl of liquid nitrogen.

Now, I’ve been sceptical about the whole liquid nitrogen ice cream thing for a long time. It seems far to gimmicky to be true. But the reality is that it yields something totally unique–popcorn-like chunks of crispy, melty frozen goodness that tastes an awful like Dippin’ Dots (the ice cream of the future–today!) but better. Another interesting fact: You can stick you hand in liquid nitrogen; your hand won’t instantly freeze and shatter like in a Wesley Snipes movie.

So after dessert and 6 or 7 glasses of wine, I’m absolutely wasted. But I haven’t sampled the alcoholic Slurpees! That’s right, they feature a rotating menu of alcoholic slushies in such flavors as bloo razzberi (my spelling) and green apple. And the cocktail menu has the following quote:

“Here’s to alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

Score!

Then it was a shot of Brennivin, this odd cumin-flavored schnapps that Dave Grohl apparently loves, before I stumbled back to the hotel and passed out. Good times!

Today I am eating lunch at b5, which is the kinda of place I wish LA had more of: Spacious, tasteful design (well, maybe not the horse penis), subdued ambience (“Song For My Father” playing on the stereo), and yeah, really good food. I’m eating seafood stir-fry/curry with local scallops, tiger prawns and langoustines. Yay! The scallops, in particular, are pillowy and sweet. Mmm. Do I wish it weren’t $40 for lunch? Maybe.

Anatomically correct sculpture of wild Icelandic lampshade-headed horse

They even gave it a squeeze-bottle swirl of hot sauce *hearts*

Yeah. Reykjavik is like that. Stuff seems really close and then you realize you’ve walked a 10k. Really, though, the air quality is so good that it’s nice to just walk around. I think tomorrow I will get on a bus and go see the country if the weather cooperates again. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and it was way more comfortable than wearing the same thing in LA.

Today’s highlights:

Visited the Laugurdalur, which is kind of like Central Park. It has a zoo, sports complex, botanical gardens and aquatics centre, which has geothermically-heated pools. The water has an extra slippery feel to it, which I think comes from a high silica content. There’s an indoor Olympic pool, an outdoor Olympic pool, an extra heated happy funtime for the kids pool, and several hot tubs, including one at 44 degrees Celsius that ensured my sterility for years to come. Very refreshing, though, you just feel healthier having soaked in mineral-rich, chlorine-free water.

Before going swimming, I walked through the botanical gardens, which was meh until I found the edible plants section. Next time I go, I’m brining ranch dressing. They had broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, herbs, beets, chives, kohlrabi, chard, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Also, bushes and bushes of red, black and white currants, and a stevia plant that when chewed with peppermint leaves was like eating an after-dinner mint. People seriously do their grocery shopping there–the lettuce, chard and broccoli plants had all these knife cuts on them. So I made like Bear Grylls and foraged for food. It was pretty cool, and I’m kinda sure that none of it was sprayed with poison.

Ran into some exchange students who had never seen an iPhone. Thought it was a device the white man uses to steal your soul (not far from the truth). On the way back, we ate at Devito’s Pizza, which was surprisingly tasty and sort of authentic, although I’m pretty sure Mario Batali would shoot you in the face if you ordered a banana pizza at Mozza.

Food eaten: Salami sandwich (the grocery store bread here is tits), strawberry skyr (delicious Icelandic cheesecakey fat-free yogurt-like concoction, available at Whole Foods for a 500% markup), ground beef, mushroom and bell pepper pizza, Coke made with real sugar, Toppur, which is my new favorite beverage, a lightly-sweetened orange-flavored sparkling water. Given all the walking I’m doing, I’m consistently Duran and the food here hasn’t disappointed one bit.

Addendum: but the donuts themselves suck. Eff you, Boston. Eff you so hard.