A baker I am not. I will be the first to admit that I prefer to cook without measurements and recipes. A “little” of this or a “sprinkle” of that, along with a good gut sense, is truly all you need when cooking. An uncanny olfactory system and more taste buds per capital than the population of some horrible new Williamsburg restaurants (another post) helps a lot too.

Baking on the other hand is a completely different story. Hence this failed Red Velvet cake. Longs tory short, I am attempting a tres leche cake for Thanksbringing today. As a back up I bought a box of cake mix. It so happened that it was buy one get one free. I went for the red velvet thinking, “How hard can it be?” Obviously, for me, kinda hard. I’ll tell ya how the tres leche comes out. Stay tuned.

Cafe Crepe, Vancouver from Anthony Anello on Vimeo.

I will tell you this, that is the last time I go into a crepe restaurant and get a hotdog and a burger. Seriously, what was I thinking in the first place? I’ll have to go back and get their crepes for breakfast. Cafe Crepe has to do better.

I have been to Vietnam. I have had this sandwich a hundred times. The above is raved about as the best in San Francisco but I sure hope they are wrong. I realize I am not in Saigon and I don’t hold this sammie to the standards that only a third world, health code-less country can achieve but this barely beats Blimpie. Tasty but not worth the trek from my Noe Valley temp digs to the edge of the Tenderloin. Seems to me that this is just another tragic hype job propagated by the rocket fuel powered specialty food trend. We are so desperate to find the next HOT place serving that BEST single item that we wait on line, travel and tweet about the whole thing.

The way I see it, realize that there doesn’t have to be a best of everything in every city. Savor the undiscovered land that you have yet to visit. Yearn for that day when you can have authenticity rather than hype. In the mean time, drool on the below which I shot in Saigon a few years back. (If you have been to Vietnam, really drool on this) This is unbeatable.

Yesterday I closed a pretty huge chapter in my life and opened up an even bigger one. It’s the kind of day I live for. Leave something totally awesome and jump into the complete unknown because you have a feeling, in your soul, that it’s more awesome where you’ll land. You know I am a “life is about the journey not the destination” guy. Hence this blog. So, the move to start my own agency is not that ridiculous.

My last day at Yahoo! after 4 years would not be complete without a last meal. For years I struggled with the horrible customer service, apathy and mediocre food located in the bottom of my office at Cafe Beyond. I have many tales of horrors that happened when I ran down for a quick coffee or a snack. For a while, I put a personal ban on the spot but it’s convenience forced me to lift that ban. Rain and wind in NYC has a profound effect on me. I felt it only appropriate that I venture to this land of disengaged staff and pre-made sandwiches one last time. An homage to the days of old. A cleansing for the adventure about to begin. I stuck with my standard, romaine lettuce with eggplant, zucchini, chick peas and cucumbers. A little Asian sesame dressing and a slice of multi grain bread. It was delicious in it’s mediocre goodness. Every bite pushed me closer to my exit from the life I currently was living.

Soon enough it was time for my exit interview. I laid out my Yahoo! property on the table like a bad lieutenant being suspended for not obtaining a warrant before chasing a perp through his apartment and onto the rooftops which, ultimately, lead to a midday, public shoot out culminating in a tanker truck explosion and the escape of the suspect. Sorry for the run on but you can see why. My interview ended as I finished my last bite of salad. My equipment was given to IT. I threw out my salad trash and walked out of the office for the last time as a Yahoo! employee. Manifold was born, my stomach was full but I was far from satiated. Here we go.

In Sanya China our goal was to hit the beach for a little while. We got in a cab and the cabby was supposed to take us to a close beach. The cabby kept driving and driving and driving. We must have passed about 4 beaches and we still were not where he was thinking of taking us. Finally we had him just pull over and we walked across the street from a bunch of hotels and plopped down on the beach. There was a little Tiki restaurant on the beach and it was the only thing around that was close that had food. This Tiki restaurant mainly sold Italian food. Italian food is the last thing I wanted on the beach let alone having Italian food in China. I should have known this was a sign of a crappy meal. The menu was interesting. It let me pick the noodle and the sauce for my pasta. I decided on a gnocchi Carbanara. Sounded great when I order it….then it came. I honestly had no clue what I was eating. The gnocchi was so large and it was totally a moosh festival. It was horrible and I ended up having to share the pizza my friend ordered which was worse than a frozen pizza. The only thing that was nice was the blue drink and the beach was right there. Ugh, Italian in china… never again. To make matters worse, the cab driver back to the ship kept putting his hand on my leg. The cabby kept laughing and I was also at first but after 4-5 times I had enough. Then he wanted my sunglasses and kept asking me for them. Getting back to the ship never felt so good.

Ohhh Shanghai, what a great city. It was a perfect day. I started the day off by winning the World Series. It’s great to be on top again. Then took off into Shanghai and found my friends at the Yuyan gardens. It was so peaceful and beautiful then did some bargain shopping and got some Christmas gifts. Another friend had to stay on the ship for the day and asked if I could pick up his tailor made suits. I felt sure why not, it was in the neighborhood. On our way to pick up the suits we made a turn down a market street and we found a butcher on the street cutting up some meat. Not to surprising, I’ve seen that a bunch of times. What I saw at first was the picture you see above. What I saw second is the picture below.

I always thought it was just a myth but no….That’s a fucking dogs head on the table!

I had no choice during my event build but to eat McDonald’s. Normally I am not a McD’s fan but in India the cow is sacred and so the international icon does not have a Big Mac. (two all beef patties special sauce….you get me, right?) What do they have instead? Ohh, they have the chicken maharaja mac. This is not quite chicken and not quite a “mac”

It’s got the special sauce and the lettuce and the sesame seed bun BUT, beyond that it’s a far cry from a Big Mac alternative and a blood curdling scream from tasty. Words can not describe the taste. Just trust me when I say steer clear from McDonald’s except if you have to get a fry fix.

The saving grace of this meal was this guy, the manager. A good home town shout out is always nice to see. Apparently he bought the tie across the way at the Big Bazaar store.

This was the largest gnocchi I have ever seen. It was tender and dripped with a marscapone cheese sauce. What could go wrong? It was lunch time and I sat at a long table just off of Covent Garden with 8 colleagues who were helping me figure out the details of my October Project. Our surprisingly alcohol-less table quieted up so that we could fill our empty bellies with round one of what I will dupe the flip lunch.

After a short digestion period my tuna entree arrived and again the table quieted down to fill our respective pie holes.

I ordered the tuna rare, probably my first mistake. This could be the worst piece of fish I have had in a 3 years. It sat on top of a bunch of tasteless and soggy vegetables that seemed to be there more for support of the fish than for consumption. The saving grace was teh pesto sauce drizzled around the side of the plate. The thin quarter inch thick piece of tuna didn’t stand a chance of being properly seared and yet still remaining rare so the chef opted for some sort of grill mark machine after it came out of a poacher. (at least that is my best guess).

I said in an earlier post, London took some trial and error to find the good stuff. This was clearly one of the errors. But, coming off the gnocchi dish ist really blind sided me. An espresso to finish the meal did little to wipe the tuna dish from my memory and I headed back to work disappointed, once again, with London food. I would need a redeeming meal next and QUICK.

Max – Sweden from Anthony Anello on Vimeo.

I have been to Stockholm Sweden a bunch of time and some of my friends raved about this local burger joint called Max. Now I am a huge burger fan. A good burger is definitely in my top 3 meals to eat. Some say I am a burger connoisseur because I eat so many. Check out this video and you’ll see what I thought about the Max burger…