Starbucks In Singapore, Malaysia, England and the USA, Chocolate and opening times

Starbucks in Singapore
Starbucks branches are all over Singapore. Many in shopping malls. So popular it is hard to get a seat at Starbucks in Clementi indoor shopping mall.

Our friendly motorcyclist family member in Malaysia came back with a box of chocolates bought in Starbucks. Dark chocolate, to go with coffee at home.

Starbucks in Malaysia
The Muslim ethnic Malays don't drink they are mostly looking for halal food with a Malay twist so you will find them in the markets and good value ethnic eating places. They are drinking kopi (coffee) out of a plastic bag sweetened with condensed milk.

The Starbucks branches my family found were inhabited more by ethnic Chinese Malaysian nationality graduates and students with laptops doing their homework or thesis. They presumably have more time and money and are more interested in Western food and drink.

A branch outside Ipoh on the road going East is a huge area, easy to find seating. Another plus point, open late, around midnight. Use your phone and Google maps to find coffee places in the area you are travelling through.

Starbucks in England
In London the Starbucks outlets like many other coffee bars are open for the lunchtime office trade. If you want a coffee in the evening you have to go to a pub or an Italian ice cream parlour and order a coffee with ice cream called affogato.

Starbucks in the USA
This is where Starbucks started. Over on the west coast. Read about it in Wikipedia. The Starbuck chocolate is their own label.

Websites
starbucks.com.sg

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my other posts on chocolate all over the world, London's chocolate shops, evenings, classes and events, more in York. Also Perugia, Italy. And France.
See my other posts on Starbucks, and chocolate.

Spanish Restaurant and Tapas Bar menus translated

I have been sent details of a forthcoming Tapas Restaurant meeting in London, England. London has several Tapas Restaurants. I looked up the menu on the restaurant website. I translated the words. I looked at the restaurant website and saw three desserts, all containing ice cream, but still did not know which was which. So I went to TripAdvisor where I found customer photos at the top and the most useful pictures, which I have a click for useful, showed the food and had a caption saying which ingredients were shown.

Having sorted out the desserts, I could see what was all sugar or all sugar and fat (I love it - but my companions will be telling me I need to lose weight and I will be wondering about my next dental appointment. Any dessert with chocolate? Scrumptious.

Any dessert with healthy fruit? Figs? Dates? Should I go for the cheese and figs? That has fruit and calcium.

If the restaurant has two sittings, or closes early, at 2 pm lunch time, or 6 or 7, o 9 or 10 in the evening, or I am running for a train to another event or to get home, I need to allow time for coffee and cleaning all that sugar off my teeth.

I then looked at the savouries and checked on all the foods to which I am allergic (prawns, oysters, lobster, mixed shellfish). I checked on what I might wish to avoid (suckling pig, pig's cheek, pig's trotters). Other members of my group will be very keen on these dishes. But it could be a problem if they want to share the food, or share the bill as we need two sets of orders, one for them and one for me. I also looked at salami (highly processed food - avoid if your family has been on a post-cancer and prevent returning cancer diet).

Finally I am making a translation of a Spanish menu. TripAdvisor did not help. Google found me Wikipedia and dictionaries and reviews but I wasted a lot of time on long posts like this one which made me hunt to the end for a translation. (I had to use menus from some nearby rival restaurants and those in other countries to finally get what I wanted). I remembered buying a laminated card which translates menus at a museum in Spain, either at a Rioja vineyard tour shop, or at the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao in Northern Spain. However, I now don't know where it is. Probably inside the front cover of a large English-Spanish Dictionary.

So now my next task is to create an ongoing menu translation for myself which I will share with you.
Please follow my posts. Some of the Spanish terms are so similar to the Italian and Portuguese that if you know one you can guess the word from the other, or they have dishes in common or borrowed from each other, just as English menus often contain French dishes.

Tapas - small portion or snack, originally the plate made from a piece of thick salami placed over an alcoholic drink at a bar to keep flies off. Later an accompaniment to drinks. Same as we serve olives or nuts with drinks in England. In some bars tapas would be free, to keep you drinking. Salted nuts make you thirsty so you feel the need to drink more. Dehydration makes you want to drink.

To avoid getting drunk or dehydrating, either ask for water, or take your own. If you take your own you could drink it before entering the restaurant or after leaving. (Or in the toilet cubicle if you are using it to clean your teeth.)

SPANISH / ITALIAN MENU TRANSLATED
affogato - coffee ice cream, sometimes vanilla ice cream with espresso coffee poured over it. Delicious.
porcini - mushroom

Spanish restaurants with menus online

www.dehesa.co.uk    Spanish-Italian menu
"Dehesa- a unique woodland area in Spain which is home to the black-footed Ibérico pigs – said to produce the best ham in the world."

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186338-d1027064-Reviews-Dehesa-London_England.html

http://translation.babylon.com/english/Porcini/

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/affogato

-ends-

Angela Lansbury BA Hons, ACG, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker. Books on Amazon and Lulu. Follow me on blogger and follow me and like my pages on Facebook. If you are Travel, PR, or any related business please invite me to events or contact me on LinkedIn.
 I have put this up for you to read and will add more here and to a later post.

San Marzanos Pizzeria & Prosecco Bar Menu Revealed & Translated

If you want to check out the menu it's on the front window or one of the owners will proudly hand you a copy. Red, white and green (I say it that way because I'm used to the UK flag which is red, white and blue, but here on the menu you see green, white and red, the colours of the Italian flag.

SALADS
The first dish I noticed on the menu under salads (Insalata) was tricolore, three colours, as both the Italian flag and the three colour Italian starter are known. The tricolore : colours of green avocado, white Mozzarella cheese and big beefy red Beef Tomatoes.

Another salad is vegetarian Vegetariano; and there's salad with meat: Napoli Salame, and Prosciutti.

In case you can't blow up the photo or want a quick summary or reminder:

STARTERS
Starters, first courses, Cicchetti: a range of choice including:
 olives - not just your regular olives but fried olives and gnocchi, which are a kind of pasta.  £4.95.

Smoked salmon appears on the starter menu as Salmon crostini, think smoked salmon with a crust (Toast ed ciabatta bread). £5.95.

 Or antipasti (literally before the pasta) which includes sliced Proscuitt, Napoli salami, cheese of the day and sun dried tomatoes. £6.50 per person.

PIZZA
Nine pizzas in this section of the menu, priced from £6.95 for a Marinara with tomato sauce; £7.95 For the Margherita with cheese; the N'Duja with spicy sausage at £8.95;  wild mushroom and truffle oil at £9.95.
Calzone The folded one! £11.95. Includes Friarelli (wild broccoli) and spinach (spinach). Optional chilli. and 'Nduja.

The long oblong table for groups has benches both sides. I was wondering whether this would suit the groups I know which are sometimes looking for venues for parties (a book group, a writers' group, two speakers' groups, a group of retired people mostly over 50). Each group often has somebody either with a stick or wanting a high back chair. The restaurant-bar owner says he had a group in last night and he can push together three tables with the freestanding backed chairs to make a table for a larger group and accommodate those wanting chairs with backs.

Extra toppings 95p/£1.95.
Sides include garlic pizza bread or chips picante at £3.95.

DESSERTS
Desserts from £3.95: for Affogato; Gelato 1 scoop £1.75, 2 scoops £3.25; 3 scoops £4.95.
Flavours: Nocciola, pistacchio, Vaniglia, Ciccolato, Sorbetto of the day.

MORE DESSERTS
I've emailed the menu to my family and among the desserts we were pleased to see Tiramisu. The San Marzanos version is listed on the menu as Deconstructed Tiamisu, ur homemade coffee flavoured dessert. Another item which brought an enthusiastic response was Affogato, Vaniglia (vanilla) gelato (ice) topped with a shot of espresso.

DRINKS
What about the Prosecco? I'll look at their drinks later, probably tomorrow.

GLOSSARY
You may want to check these terms:
affogato
bianca sauce - white sauce - bianca means white, therefore white pizza, sauce, or white anything
bocconcini Mozarella
bruschetta
bur rata cheese
Calabrian - from Calabria
ciabatta bread
crostini
e - and
fior di latte - flower of milk, either mozzarella cheese, or vanilla ice cream
friarelli - wild broccoli
gelato - soft ice cream, often made with milk and fruit juice and less caloric than British ice creams which usually have more cream, other fats and sugar
malanzana
Milano - from Milan
Napoli - from Naples
'nduja - spreadable pork sausage from Calabria. Picture in wikipedia.
nocciola
Parmesan cheese
Pesto
picante
pizzuros
Pomodoro
prosciutto
vaniglia - vanilla?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'Nduja

I don't see any service charge so I imagine most people will add 10% in cash. What about credit cards? I don't see them mentioned. We'll have to go (with some cash, just in case) and find out.
If you need to know anything more, or want to make a booking, their phone number is :
Tel: 0208 428 2052.

Angela Lansbury BA Hons
Travel writer, photojournalist, author, speaker, speech writer and trainer.

Shopping For Food For Dinner & Dinner Parties In London

Dinner party with napkins depicting grapes. Paper napkins bought from one of the vineyards and museum shops in the Rioja region of Spain.

Dinner Party Checklist

I recently attended a family and friends dinner party. First find recipes you like using seasonal foods. Some people think red wine is warming in winter. It certainly is, in colour, although for years I served only white wine because I was allergic to tannins and wanted to save my white tablecloths from stains.  

Our starter was salmon en croute, home made. We used salmon bought from Waitrose supermarket and readymade roll out fill pastry but added the butter sauce between the salmon and cooked the salmon and sauce in the pastry fresh for the dinner party. Make sure you buy plain salmon, not lightly smoked.

Use dill butter. Add lemon zest (from a fresh lemon) in the dill mayonnaise sauce. Mayonnaise is only egg yolk and vegetable or olive oil. You can make garlic mayonnaise with fresh garlic. A short cut if you are short of time - use bottled dill mayonnaise.

We served the salmon with three dips, wholegrain mustard, mayonnaise.

On the subject of meat vendors, our chef/cook, call the host what you will, says the rack of lamb was from The Ginger Pig. This amazing shop is in Moxon Street, Marylebone, near Baker Street station, which is conveniently on the Metropolitan, Circle, Jubilee and Bakerloo lines. (The pig breeds are on the Ginger Pig shop website.) 

Herbs included rosemary from the garden. Rosemary is a shrub which grows all year. 

It's very easy to grow. You just pick off a bit from a plant and stick it in the ground and water it. We've had so much rain in England that unless you plant your cutting in a hot, dry summer spell, you hardly need to look at it again. But then, I probably would go out watching anxiously over my cutting for a week to check it still looked all right. And I'd plant half a dozen cuttings. Then if one failed, or only one succeeded, I'd be certain of gaining at least one new plant. 

If you live near me and know me, just ask, and I'll let you take a cutting. Better still, I'll cut off a piece, I will feel generous, you will feel favoured, and I will put it in a plastic bag for you to take home.

In addition to rosemary, the family bought fresh basil and thyme from Waitrose. I'm not sure it added anything to the flavour of the food. But it does give aroma to the kitchen and home to welcome guests.

The Suffolk Charlotte potatoes, carrots, Italian grapes and cheeses (Petit Taupiniere and not Brie de Meaux but Brie de Melun) were from La Fromagerie next door to the Ginger Pig, in Moxon St.

We ran into a problem with our dessert of hot pineapple in syrup contrasting with cold vanilla ice cream. One of the guests was allergic to pineapple. So the cook quickly put an apple in the oven to bake.

We forgot that you have to make a horizontal cut around the middle of the apple to stop it bursting. So we hid the fact that the apple had burst by hiding it in a large bulbous cup. Bulbous meaning a large round shape cut which looks as though the top is cut off, so just the top of the apple shows.

You put sultanas and a sweetener in the middle. Our traditional family recipe required you to cut chunks out of the middle of the cored apple. You can mix in chopped nuts, flaked nuts, almonds (not if your sensitive guests are allergic to nuts - best to ask first. For sweetness, honey, marmalade, best of all your own syrup made from brown sugar dissolved in hot water with added flavours such as cloves or star anise. You could add juice from tinned fruit. Purists add chunks or puree from any other fruit.

On this occasion we served a gritty chocolate. The smoothest, milkiest chocolate we've found is Lindt. Green & Black's do lots of bars of dark chocolate with fruit flavours and spices.

The chocolate brand we used on this occasion was Dolceria Bonajuto which our cook buys at Gelupo, Archer St.  They do a great affogato too!

For more about ice cream see next post.

Angela Lansbury is a travel, food and wine writer, author of 20 books (10 by traditional publishers, 10 self-published). You can watch Angela talking about table etiquette on YouTube. (Angela Lansbury the actress is likely to pop up first, so type in Angela Lansbury author or Angela Lansbury poet or Angela Lansbury speaker Toastmasters.) You can read posts by Angela on her other blogs, also on Facebook and LinkedIn.