Fiona and I had breakfast at Sunday's, the cute little former ice-cream shop on 39th and Holgate. It's only a breakfast and lunch place, open 8am to 4pm. I had eggs, hashbrowns, toast, and some fruit and Fiona had pancakes. Everything was really good. It's run by a couple, the husband works in the kitchen and the wife works out front. She told us it gets really busy on weekends.

I posted some pictures on Flickr.

Honestly, haven't you finished your gift shopping yet?!

No, of course you haven't, and you're not alone. So here are a few hot tips for everyone's favorite stocking stuffer, last-minute gift pack, or holiday hostess gift: weird foreign treats!

JAPANESE

How could we not start with Japan, whose economy, as far as I can tell, is entirely based on bizarrely bright, incomprehensible treats? In Portland, you can hit Anzen, or, if you have time and wheels, the Mecca of Asian foods, Uwajimaya.

Now, you can also buy lovely ceramics, lacquered chopsticks, sake sets, and other nice gifts, but this is a food blog, so we'll stick to the edibles.

For the "intelligent connoisseur who enjoys the finer points in life", may I suggest some Men's Pocky, or delicious Pocari Sweat drink mix? You'll find Tomato Pretz, Kiss Mint gum, and, of course, Black Black Gum, full of caffeine and "high technical taste and flavor." There are sushi gummy candies and Meltykiss green tea chocolates, not to mention beautifully-packaged teas, sakes, and crackers.

MEXICAN

At Mexican grocery stores, you can get delicious Mexican chocolate tablets (dissolve a quarter tablet into hot milk for delicious, subtly cinnamon-almond flavored hot chocolate) or tangy-hot tamarind-chile candies. Oh, and everybody loves the Chupa Chups! (I found this image doing an image search for Chupa Chups. Yikes!)

EUROPEAN

Duh. Europe is all about the chocolate (well, the cheese too, but that's harder to do as a gift), and we are lucky enough to be able to get fantastic European chocolate in Portland. Try Martinotti's downtown and Pastaworks in Northwest or on Hawthorne for Italian imports, Edelweiss for German goods, or head to Taste of Europe for an emphasis on Eastern European imports (all of these have products from France and Switzerland as well, which is good news for us chocolate lovers).

As for brands, you can hardly go wrong, but Lindt, from Switzerland, is generally considered the queen of chocolates. German Ritter Sport chocolate comes in fun square packaging, while Milka comes in purple packages and is particularly known for its milk chocolate.

As far as flavors go, there's nothing wrong with sticking to the basics of milk or dark (true conoisseurs swear by extremely high percentages of cacao, up to 85%, but this results in a significantly less sweet and creamy confection), but I particularly enjoy marzipan, nougat (this is not like American nougat, but rather a divine, meltingly creamy chocolate filling; it's also called praline) or rum raisin hazelnut. Martinotti's (and nowhere else) also carries my favorite chocolate of all time. It has little crumbles of amaretti di saronno almond cookies in them (I could only find this kind of weird picture online); it is amazingly delicious. You can also get delicious chocolate confections, like truffles, liqueur-filled chocolates, or the wonderful Kinder Surprise Eggs, filled with awesome, tiny toys.

Of course, you'll also find delightful candies (Haribo gummi bears taste better than any other brand), jams (some in flavors we don't have here like sour cherry, red and black currant, and quince), cookies, liqueurs, shaped marzipan fruits, and a hundred other things anyone would love to get.

...OK, now it's time to stop reading this entry and get at the last-minute shopping. Good luck from all of us here at Digest!

Marisa Meltzer and J. John Afryl recently checked out one of Portland's great new restaurants, clarklewis. The following is an ichat transcript discussing their evening.

Last night I took Mr. Peterson to a fancy dinner at this place we'd read about called Malabar. Malabar! Malabar! Malabar is located near my work, insignificantly lodged on a block that contains my favorite store name of all time ("Cigarettes Cheaper!") and a pretty nifty bike shop. Malabar is a small, elegant, fancy restaurant that serves a sort of pan-asian mix of food, or Sri Lankan, or Indian, or maybe all three. Actually maybe that's what "pan-asian" means.

We began with a hibiscus cooler that was red, cool, refreshing, quenching and delicious. Malabar is an all-vegetarian restaurant, and they can make any menu item vegan on request. Overwhelmed by the multitude of tiny, fancy dishes that all sounded amazing, I decided to order three appetizers instead of an entree, while Mr. Peterson chose the "baked ravioli," which contained such seemingly-disparate items as "truffle oil," "black mission figs," and "parmesan." Andrew pledged to order it without the parmesan so that I could have "bites," i.e. "half of the entire plate of food."

Woe!! Our waitress informed us sorrowfully that the restaurant was out of the baked ravioli.

"I'm getting out of here," I said angrily, pushing my chair back and throwing my napkin down on the table. The restaurant grew quiet, as all eyes were turned uneasily on my visage to see what I would do next. Filled with rage, my hands began to curl into fists when suddenly--

"honey? honey! what do you want instead of the ravioli?" Mr. Peterson asked.

"I think you should get this coconut thing," I said forcefully.

"I'll have the spinach dahl," he said to the waitress, heedless of my instructions.

We spoke of this and that, sipping the hibiscus cooler, which was red as wine (red wine). We spoke of the laundry that must needs be done in our home. We spoke of my job and the multitude of hi-larious things that happen there on a daily basis. We spoke of Mr. Peterson's family. The ambience of Malabar is extraordinarily well suited to the task of pleasantly chatting. The light is low, your table lit primarily by candles. The window into the kitchen is right there, so a lively bustle of noise--clanking pans, people shouting, bells ringing--fills the space. The couple next to you contains a quiet woman and one of those men who likes to chat with the waiter and ask you what you're eating. Malabar was filled with young couples on fancy dates, just like us. There was also a lovely hippie family with those hippie children whose beauty can not be adequately described.

Soon the food began to arrive. Our first item was the spinach dahl. It was a yellow dahl, perfectly cooked. The lentils were slightly hard, which made the overall texture of the soupy dahl quite interesting. The spinach was just barely steamed, so we knew we were getting lots of iron out of it. Sometimes dahl can be bland, or over-spiced, but Malabar did it perfectly. It was an excellent first course.

Our next course was the coconut roti bread. These were small pancakes made of flour, anaheim peppers, and coconut. They were fried so that they were crispy on the outside and really soft and doughy on the inside. They were served with green onions, which I promptly scraped off and quarantined on a "green onions only" section of the plate, never to be seen or heard from again by any man.

I should pause here to note that Malabar has taken great care when it comes to aesthetics. I appreciate this very much, as I am someone who will search through someone's cupboard until I find a coffee cup that is pleasing to my eye and to my touch. Malabar exists for people like me, who wish to admire a tall, stately limeade glass or marvel over the wonderful contours of a rectangular, concave serving dish. All of the many sauces and dips and chutneys were also served on banana leaves, which I enjoyed.

The coconut roti was divine. Light yet rich, delicate yet filling, and served with a creamy, savory dipping sauce, they were the highpoint of my personal meal.

After the roti, we received our pakoras. The pakoras were tiny bits of vegetables deep batter fried in a coconut-flour batter. They were pretty good, but a little bit bland. Still, a nice complement to the rich food that had come before.

Our last dish was this amazing plate of super crispy lentil patties. They were so good, but at this point it was just too much. I couldn't deal with them. I just kept going, "oh, oh, oh." We brought them home for my lunch today, and then I forgot to bring them. So all I have for lunch is this old tangerine. Which I already ate, and it's only 9:30 a.m.

We were beginning to think they had forgotten our avocado dish, which was two avocado halves stuffed with vegetables and tofu and served with a rosette vinaigrette sauce or some such. And in fact, they had. They had forgotten it. This would later turn out to be a blessing, as we were both extremely full.

When the check came, we were shocked. Somehow, we were expecting to pay 30 dollars, because each dish was fancy and we thought it was all expensive. But instead, for the delightful cornucopia which I just described, we paid the positively MEASLY price of sixteen American dollars.

In short: MALABAR! When I do a google image search for "malabar," this is what I find. So this is what I shall leave you with:

Cooking with lava.

Need I say more?

Let me guess--you still have some holiday shopping to do, right? And maybe you need a few ideas to help you get through the worst of it. Well, we aim to please, and one thing that pleases (almost) everyone is: booze! Here are some great gifts that are sure to be a hit.

Lillet is a delicately sweet, fruity aperitif wine from France (warning: sucky web page). Aperitif wines are wines, usually white ones, that have been been flavored, sweetened and fortified (alcohol added, or concentrated, to result in a stronger drink). It comes in rouge and blanc (red and white, duh) varieties, and I prefer blanc. It's usually drunk before dinner, chilled, over ice, with or without soda water, and is particularly good with a slice of orange and/or a twist of orange peel. Also, they have some fantastic old posters. You can buy this at European import stores (like Martinotti's downtown, or Pastaworks on Hawthorne or in NW), or at Whole Foods. Nicer liquor stores might carry it too.

Japanese plum wine is a longtime favorite of mine as well. It's slightly thicker and sweeter than Lillet, but it's not at all syrupy or cloying. Instead, it has a bright plum taste (there are actually fruits in the bottle). Choya is the most common brand, and it comes in a handsome cylindrical green bottle. You can buy this at Japanese grocery stores like Anzen on MLK. If it's good enough for NYC, it's good enough for me. I like this over ice, or heated, or even just plain.

I discovered Vin Santo during our last trip to Italy. I thought I didn't like dessert wines, because I'd only had sickly-sweet concotions. Vin Santo is a dessert wine, made with white Chianti Classico, but it's subtle and charming, and tastes both like apples and caramel. It's traditionally served after the meal with biscotti, for dipping, and I think it's quite elegant in place of dessert. Again, Martinotti's or Pastaworks are the best place to purchase these.

If you want to stick to local, you could do worse than going to Elephants or the aforementioned Pastaworks and picking out a Willamette Valley dessert wine, or better yet get a recommendation. As for stronger stuff, I haven't yet had anything made by our (very) local Clear Creek Distillery that I didn't adore. They specialize in traditional European-style eau-de-vie, or aged fruit brandies. They make their own framboise, kirschwasser, poire william, grappa and more, and my particular favorite is their oak-aged apple brandy. Their packaging is particularly lovely too, I think.

Any of these would make a classy gift, and none are particularly expensive (OK, you can buy expensive Vin Santo, but you don't have to; I haven't yet met one that doesn't taste great). If you want to dress it up, present it with two pretty small wine or cordial glasses.

Liquid nitrogen ice cream....on the ugliest web page this side of 1995.

Anyone have any liquid nitrogen around? Party at my house!