jamaica, thailand, and egypt

Catch-up time again! So last Saturday, the day after the WELNepal gala, my mission was to find a last-minute Halloween costume. Before this mission of course, I needed sustenance. When in my neck of the woods, Will and I usually gravitate towards picking up sushi from this place nearby called Dai Ichi. In the same plaza, we'd always see this place called Allspice Bakery Cafe, whose main offering seemed to be Blue Mountain Coffee (from Jamaica) and apparently some Caribbean pastries. The more we passed by on our way to sushi however, the more apparent it became that the place actually offered Caribbean food, not just coffee and pastries, making "Bakery Cafe" a bit of a misnomer. So last Saturday, we finally walked in to see if Carribbean food was indeed on the menu (and of course, if it wasn't, sushi was the back-up).

Well, we walked in and the delicious smell of food said it all: this place had jerk chicken, curry of all kinds, rice & peas, saltfish, and all sorts of other Caribbean delights! We were pumped! I'd been looking for a good, nearby place to get jerk chicken and rice & peas ever since we came back from Jamaica last year, and it seemed I had found the one!

We ordered take-out and waited in a booth. It isn't a fancy place - the counter and seating set-up looks a lot like it used to be a Tim Horton's. But that made it all the more promising, as per A.Bourdain's theory: if a restaurant can stay open and has customers despite being sort of a dump, then the food has got to be good. And like I said, it sure smelled promising. Also, the heat was cranked like crazy, we joked that it was done on purpose to make you feel like you were somewhere in the islands and therefore make the food taste better!

We took it home and opened the styrofoam containers - oh baby it smelled good. We dished it out onto our plates and poured ourselves some beer. One forkful each into our mouths, one swig of beer. Perfect! It was legit. It brought us back to Jamaica for sure. I could only take so much of the heat from the jerk and focused more on my curry chicken, but Will finished off the jerk with no problem.

Jerk chicken! Not the greatest picture because of the blackened spices, but that just means it was done right!

Curry chicken with rice and peas! (Had the patience to actually dish it out for this pic)

I'm sooo friggin happy we walked into Allspice Bakery Cafe. Favourite new go-to!

The following evening, my dad was in the mood to go out for dinner. He'd gotten into a car accident the previous Thursday that scared the crap out of all of us, but somehow he made it out with barely a scratch. To celebrate this, he kinda wanted to have a "fuck yeah I'm alive!" dinner. Just around the corner from Allspice and Dai Ichi, is a place called Ben Thanh (it's where a Mexicali Rosa's briefly stood, then shut down before I had a chance to go). It's a Thai/Vietnamese place that my parents had been to before and they wanted me to try it.

We walked in and initially I was impressed with the upscale-ish, lounge-y looking decor, it sort of looked like a nightclub. Then we were led around the corner to a huge additional dining room with the most ridiculous wall coverings of shiny black fibreglass panels interspersed with fibreoptic lights and mirrors. I wouldn't usually comment on decor but I just had to in this case because I almost laughed out loud when I saw it. I felt like I was eating on the set of Tron :P Anyway, doesn't really matter. My parents ordered the specials (our reason for coming) which was giant crab and lobster in the shell. I also ordered a yellow shrimp curry.

I should have put something next to the dishes as a scale comparison for the crab and lobster. They were huge! And they were fun to eat too. I haven't eaten crab in the shell in a long time, and it's a fun experience, even though it's messy. This crab (and lobster) was made even messier as it was doused in some sort of thick ginger sauce that really didn't add to anything except for when I was licking my fingers. The curry was yummy too. We ended up with a fair amount of leftovers.

The before/during.

The aftermath - CARNAGE!

The menu is really extensive (as it usually is with Thai/Vietnamese places) and I didn't get to try any of their other typical Thai dishes, so I can't really judge whether or not Ben Thanh does Thai or Vietnamese well. I usually judge Thai restaurants based on how well they do their Orange Cashew Chicken or Basil Beef. I like Thai Senses in Bronte best for those things, so if I have a Thai craving that's where I would go, but for lobster and crab in the shell, I'd feel good about coming back to Ben Thanh.

Alright, well with all that food out of the way, it's time for a bellydance update! This story starts at work. The creative team that works on Stanfield's (men's underwear) put together this amazing promotional campaign where a guy named Mark, a testicular cancer survivor, would live in a loft for 25 days wearing nothing but Stanfield's underwear, while being streamed on live webcam 24/7. If he could last the 25 days, and get 25,000 Facebook fans, Stanfield's would donate $25,000 to the Canadian Cancer Society. The campaign was hugely successful, and got 25,000 Facebook fans in just 7 days, causing Stanfield's to up the ante to $50,000 for 50,000 Facebook fans.

Well, to keep things interesting with Mark "trapped" in the loft for 25 days, the creative team arranged for him to have different visitors. When still in the planning stage, they sent out an email throughout the agency asking if anyone knew fitness instructors, celebrities, chefs, etc. that could come and visit. So I emailed back saying I knew a bellydancer if they were interested, intending for my instructor to come in and teach Mark a short lesson.

After all the arrangements had been made, my instructor called me about a week later telling me that she was getting cold feet! She told me she could still do it, but that she thought I would be a much better fit for this appearance. So reluctantly, and with some mischievious encouragement from my boss, I agreed.

My visit with Mark was scheduled for the Friday that has just passed, and let me just say how stressed I was about it all last week. I got even more nervous when I came to the studio on Tuesday for class, and I ended up having to teach the class cuz my instructor had unexpectedly been forced to put her dog down the day before. The class didn't go as smoothly as I wanted it to (which is fair, I mean, I was totally unprepared and it was my first time teaching in the studio) so I was pretty freaked for having to give a lesson to a guy in his underwear while a potential 50,000 people watched me live.

I ended up putting together a lesson plan on the Wednesday evening and running through it with Will on the Thursday, so by the time Friday rolled around, I was feeling much better. So when I got to the loft, it was smooth sailing, especially with how easygoing and friendly Mark was. It went as well as it could have and I was told it was entertaining, so that was a sigh of relief for me! Mark's last day was the following day and he succeeded in reaching the $50,000 goal for the Canadian Cancer Society.



So again, I'm glad to say that my bellydancing helped contribute to a good cause somehow. And it was tons of fun. It's also really building my bellydance repertoire and expanding the responsibilities that my instructor is entrusting me with. Just today, she emailed me asking to take over her Thursday class this week because she'll be in Montreal, and also to teach a lesson at the studio on Saturday for a private party. Should be a good warm-up for the next couple of weeks when she's in Cairo and I'll be teaching classes at the studio on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. It's crazy to think that I'm at this point when I only started at the studio less than a year and a half ago. But I love it!

Anyway, nothing else to report for the weekend that just passed. Halloween parties meant I was eating hangover food - pizza and McDonald's :P nothing special. Oh, and the costume I ended up finding after jerk and curry chicken was... a Ninja Turtle! Raphael to be exact. It was pretty effing sweet if I do say so myself.

Til next time!