We Are Never Full

Right before it was yesterday’s news and tossed on the cultural junk pile as passé, everything was the next big thing. Devotees of Anthony Bourdain will know that as of two weeks ago, Croatian cuisine is the new black. Prior to all this, somewhere between Spanish food blowing up into our collective consciousness and the advent of Ecuador in the global gastronomic stakes, in 2010 Portugal flickered briefly into view, largely on the strength of David Liete, before vanishing under the rising tide of new and undiscovered. Continue Reading »

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Named for the grandson of Puerto Rico’s first governor, the southern city of Ponce is blessed with appropriately distinguished architecture. The equal of few in the Americas, it is a delightful surprise for the visitor. That conquering Americans were responsible for the preservation of the city’s historic district is equally surprising. Continue Reading »

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I almost can’t believe it myself! Not only is We Are Never Full updating twice in a week, I am the author of the two posts. I told you I would try and hold on to my promise from the last post. To celebrate our attempt to get back in the blog game we are offering a pretty awesome contest. A few weeks ago we were incredibly lucky to be offered a copy of Lightroom 3 to try. We knew our pictures needed some help and, after having some time to feel comfortable using the product, it is my absolute go-to photo correcter, not only for the blog, but for my personal pictures. Adobe has just released the newest version of Lightroom (Lightroom 4) which is getting rave reviews and offers new features such as the ability to create and print photo books with easy-to-use templates. You can even color correct stuff in a digital video! Would you like a copy of Lightroom 4? If so, we’re giving one away. See the contest rules at the end of this post (after the recipe). Continue Reading »

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New York City. The saying goes that if you can make it here you can make it anywhere. But I think they were talking about young, cute, single and childless 22 year olds (which I’d like to believe I once was and, damn, that was a fun time). I don’t think Sinatra was talking about older, married, overworked parents making a decent wage but still in the lower-middle class because they live in NYC. We’re tired. Very tired. I know, I know, bust out the violins to play a sad song for our tragic city-living lives but this is a bit of a way to apologize for our lack of blogging over the past year and a half. Living in NYC may seem magical for many but for us it’s beginning to become more like hard work than “magical fun”. Continue Reading »

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Conventional wisdom dictates that one should never eat at an empty restaurant, especially early in the week, but if there is absolutely nowhere else open and you have no choice, do yourself a favor and avoid the seafood. Happily, Vieques, a 55-square mile island off the east end of Puerto Rico, and former bombing range of the US Navy, if it doesn’t exactly flaunt convention, certainly defies it. And Tito Bloque, the only restaurant off the malecon in the village of Esperanza, and therefore the only empty restaurant, personifies that defiance.

Blazing overhead strip lights do nothing to obscure the restaurant’s complete absence of customers. In fact, when the only visible human forms in the place are a signed photo of Charles Bronson in his Death Wish era and an old man dozing in a hammock fashioned from a Puerto Rican flag, the feeling of unwelcomeness is only accentuated. Continue Reading »

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With wine there is probably more room for personal interpretation and opinion than in any other area of gastronomy. The sheer variety of wines available from across the globe encourages this, but the reputation of the wine connoisseur and his often ridiculous descriptions of the perfumes to be nosed out of the glass makes wine-tasting seem a spurious and silly pursuit to some and downright intimidating to others. Continue Reading »

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As you already know, we don’t do reviews of products we haven’t really enjoyed and would continue to use and enjoy in the future. When we were contacted to give Adobe Lightroom a whirl we were excited to use a product we never considered purchasing but had heard was an excellent tool. Once our excitement subsided, the reality hit that we may have been chosen to test it out because our food pictures were not really up to snuff and, in a nice way, we were being told, “Maybe Lightroom can help?”. Yes, our photography skills have come very far from the early days of such beautiful and well-lit/well-plated pictures such as this, this (the chip in the plate really brings out the vibrancy of this dish) and this beauty but we still have a long way to go. Let’s be honest – we used to suck majorly when it came to photography. Once we discovered that instead of using our $8 IKEA lamp to illuminate our photos we could, or should , use something called a Photographer’s Light Kit things began to improve a bit. Along with lighting, we began paying attention to plating and using light colored plates to make the food pop. Yet, even with these things, we still aren’t up to the photo-quality level as many other food blogs. I’m totally not crying into my bowl of Ecuadorian Ceviche (shameless plug) but I have always wondered, what the hizzel are they doing that we’re not? Continue Reading »

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Rarely on time, and never on trend, we are perennially late to the party. Yes, we may have been blogging about offal since way before David Chang made it cool, but we have yet to purchase our first ironic message tee featuring butchery terminology or get our forearms inked with a selection of cutlery. This may be even more surprising given that we live in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, where the hardcore of Williamsburg’s hipsters would move if only they were cool enough. But if further illustration of our being behind the times were necessary, look no further than our brand new facebook page, now only a week old (feel free to “like” us, as the kids say). Continue Reading »

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“We may have lost paradise because of the apple, but we’ll get it back with cider.”
- Asturian saying

“Reach out your arms, as far apart as possible – one high, one low – then just bend your wrist, but do not look!”, instructed the waitress. “Oh, and beginners like you must stand over the barrel,” she added. I followed her advice exactly but still ended up with a soggy shirt-front and damp shoes, wasting half a bottle.

Even though the cider was cheap, learning to pour it like a local wouldn’t be and accepting I could be thirsty for a long while before I acquired the knack, I invited my hostess to demonstrate proper form. Sure enough, her aim was perfect and my glass was soon two inches deep without the loss of a drop. “Now, drink it! Fast!” she cajoled. “Before it goes flat!” Continue Reading »

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Most Brits associate mincemeat with Christmas – its intoxicating mix of fruit, spices, booze, nuts and mixed peel provide Pavlovian stimuli, stirring memories of cherubic choirs a-caroling, roasted poultry, and the Queen’s speech – whereas I associate it with Easter, because it was always around then that we finally ran out of mince pies. I use the term “ran out” quite deliberately, as mince pies were the kind of thing that, growing up, were considered within the realm of “supplies”, so numerous were they. Every year in early December, my industrious mother would make at least six, but often as many as ten, dozen individual mince pies, fashioned lovingly from homemade mincemeat she had prepared several months in advance. Continue Reading »

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I often think that living in a small scruffy New York City apartment is akin to a pioneer life in a log cabin somewhere remote. Sure, the commute is easier, but the myriad quotidien affronts and man traps of a city existence certainly resemble the perils of life on the range. Continue Reading »

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I’m not very old, but for much of my youth in the north west of England, it was almost impossible to find fresh foods that weren’t local. Today such a statement seems like an echo of Victorian times, but, literally, that’s how it was until a supermarket was built behind the Knutsford courthouse in the late 80s. Continue Reading »

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