As you may have noticed I need to wear glasses. But I prefer to say: I wear glasses. Of course I have to, otherwise I don’t see that good. I could wear contact lenses but I like glasses and especially the ones I have since I met Karsten of Optik Kittel. He has an incredible taste of glasses and sunglasses. He had Reiz before everyone was running around with them. If you ever make it to Düsseldorf check out his store in Heerdt.

One of his newest treasures is Kilsgaard. The Danish eyewear brand is working closely together with the design company Bonnelycke MDD from Århus, Denmark. They manufacture in Italy. Their glasses and sunglasses are beautiful, the matt black aluminium is so smooth. Every single detail is manufactured with such an accuracy, you can see it on the photos below (all shot by myself, which was really fun – see them in large on flickr).

“We think that good design has the courage to be simple. That’s why we’ve designed logical spectacle frames that are reliable and insist on elegant tech solutions. One screw makes up hinges and rim-lock and all frames are 100% aluminium – some combined with the finest acetate money can buy – light as a feather and strong as h….
The frames are designed in Denmark, produced in Italy, color-anodised back in Denmark and assembled and finalised in Italy; an expensive process necessary to maintain the high quality level desired. Anodising is a chemical process that colours and tempers the metal making it impossible for the paint to peel.” (via kilsgaard-eyewear.com)

I am now proud owner of the Kilsgaard Model 37.1/3 and the sunglasses Model 2.0 which are not able to buy. I have them now for two days and I am so happy. Jacob Kilsgaard – respect, you are doing a great job. Karsten, thanks for convincing me to buy them.

Model 37.1/3

Sunglasses Model 2.0

“Their short rib taco — two crisply griddled homemade corn tortillas, double-caramelized Korean barbecue, salsa roja, cilantro-onion-lime relish and a Nappa Romaine slaw tossed in a chili-soy vinaigrette — so iconic to Kogi, would soon become anointed as an L.A. classic.” (via kogibbq.com)

I am fascinated by Korean BBQ since I had my first one in New York 2005. It was delicious and it is a great experience to sit around the hot plate, try different ingredients with all these amazing marinades and prepare the dish right in front of yourself. Perfect. But Tacos? Filled with Korean BBQ Ribs? For me it’s like the premier league of food, the Kilimanjaro of culinaries. You know I love sandwiches – and this is the ultimate sandwich for me, on one level with self-made burgers.

Two days ago I saw Ailine Liefeld making Korean BBQ on instagram. I was wondering where she had the recipe from. But then I got a new idea.

For a few weeks now every once in a while I have been in contact with Rob Choi via twitter and instagram. So, who is the best person to ask for a recipe for a Korean BBQ marinade? Right. I send him a tweet and Roy answered, telling me that I should check out his blog on Monday. And now this:

Roy Choi posted a blog post about his experience with Germans. Funny anecdotes, about naked Germans, Bratwurst and –  of course – Soccer. But the best thing was a personal recipe recommendation to me. Here it is:

This is for you, Markus. It’s a little different than a traditional marinade. This one tastes almost like an emulsified tahini milkshake. Use it on vegetables or meats or anything. I hope you enjoy!

Korean BBQ Marinade

2 cups of soy sauce
1 whole onion, peeled, cored, and rough chopped
1 cup full of garlic cloves
1 full bunch of green onions, washed, trimmed, and rough chopped
1 cup of Aji Mirin (use sweet sake or rice vinegar if you cannot find, or omit)
2 cups of fresh squeezed orange juice
1/2 cup of sugar
1 cup of pure sesame oil
1/3 cup of toasted sesame seeds
1/2 of an Asian pear or apple (eat the other half yourself)
1 tablespoon of maple syrup
Pinch of black pepper
A splash of champagne or sparkling water or 7-up if you happen to be drinking. Just a tiny splash. If you are not drinking any of the three then don’t worry. Omit.

After you’ve done your due diligence in cleaning and prepping all the vegetables, please put it all in a blender and purée away!  That’s it.

Marinade ready for making friends all Summer long.

Spread the love.

Maybe next time I visit Germany it won’t be only CurryWurst I smell from the streets.

Cheers.

This is so super awesome, check out the post. I am so incredibly happy. I can’t wait for the next BBQ. I guess we will make on next Sunday. Saturday we have our burger event.

Dear, Roy Choi, I am grateful and honored by this blog post. If it is up to me, this could be the beginning of a great new friendship. And just to make sure:

When it comes to coffee, there is a huge third wave and artisan movement going on in Japan. It’s basically their tradition to do everything until they reach “perfection”. There is no such thing as perfection but learning 7 years to make rice for sushi is beyond perfectionism.

Well, one of these Japanese coffe examples is Bear Pond Espresso – a small coffee shop in Tokyo. Between Bear Pond and me is something like love at first sight, I stumbled upon Katsuyuki Tanaka and his coffee bar already a while ago at the NY Times where you can find also a link to A Life Worth Eating’s great report about Bear Pond. I can’t wait to travel to Japan and sit daily at this coffee bar and talk to Tanaka. Why? Watch the video below and listen to him talking about stains.

Photo by Adam Goldberg

“All of our coffee are harvested at the peak of their flavor. Our roasting techniques are designed to enhance the location, elevations, soils and climate that give each coffee a unique individuality.
These quality coffees are brewed to perfection with the espresso and coffee extraction arts of highly trained baristas.
We especially recommend our featured “Flower Child” espresso blend with a subtle flavor that is at once spicy, salty, and silky body mingled with the suggestion of a dark chocolate flavor.” (via bear-pond.com)

“I never change my style. We don’t care about other people – It’s a Bear Pond, totally different. Not only barista, not only science, not only data, not only experience, not only hippie – it’s a classic.”

That made me smile.

So, why did I get a camera? Nikon is interested if the camera – the J1 – is something for bloggers. So, they asked me to test it. And I did. In fact I was lucky to do it. I was looking for a camera a whole while now. I asked several times on twitter for recommendations in exactly that price range. I narrowed down the choice to these cameras: Fuji X10, Ricoh GR, Olympus PEN. I didn’t know the J1 existed. But then I got the offer to test it.

I need to mention that I don’t have a clue about photography. That’s why I always decided not to buy a DSLR. I have no idea what all these apertures, luminosity, shutter speed and all these other terms exactly mean. Well, I know what they mean but I have no clue how to combine them to get a decent photo. I am the biggest fan of the automatic setting. Steffen, Kai, Malte, and Martin tried to teach me this stuff several times now, but I can’t remember it. I don’t have the interest to do so. I want to click on a button and a have a nice photo in the end. I don’t do photos for the purpose of shooting photos. I take pictures to show something I am talking or mostly writing about. Most of the time I take photos with my iPhone 4S, but sometimes it isn’t enough, the result looks crappy and then I don’t want to use it. Now I have a better toy for that, the Nikon J1. But I won’t talk about the technical things. You can find them here if you need them, I will talk about using the camera.

Test/Review

Saturday I ran around the town and took a lot of photos. It wasn’t that fun to me, because I didn’t see any purpose in doing so. Until I found some decent motives, like food and coffee. I had fun taking photos of my dinner. I am more than happy with the results. And in fact using the camera is fun too. It is simple, simple enough for me. You can do a lot of stuff, RAW (+JPG) formats, HD movies (720/60p -1080/60i), and these new Motion Snapshots. At first I thought it was crap but it’s actually super nice for taking photos of moving stuff. The camera takes 20 pictures, offers you the best/sharpest 5 and saves them on the SD card.

The screen is damn fast, you see no delay between the actual movement and the things it shows on the screen. The menu is cool. Reduced to what I need. No stupid icons of portraits or anything.

If you want you can get a special lens for taking videos. Or a cool thing for Nikon DSRL users, you can buy the mount adapter and connect any kind of NIKKOR lens.

The build-in flash is cool. It reminds me of Number 5. I can’t tell if is any good, I didn’t use it so far.

But now to the important things. You know that I love to take pictures of food. So, this is the master class for me, the exclusion criterion. But the results speak for themselves. The 10-30mm lens is perfect for that. See for yourself:

I like it. The food looks good, it is nice to play with the manual focus. The colors are good, which you can see also here:

Result

I am happy. I like the Nikon J1, the way it looks, feels and especially the results. So, is it a good camera for bloggers? Definitely. For me it is perfect. I am looking forward to the next times I can use it. The size is perfect to keep it with me all the time.

You don’t need to question my opinion. If the camera was crap, I would write it. But it’s not, and I am glad. Now I can write a good review and actually use the camera for the purpose Nikon asked me for.

Event

Background

Lund is a small town. Something about 80.000 citizens and 35.000 of them are students. But nonetheless, the culinary culture is so well developed, it’s hard to compare it to any other place I’ve been so far. Scandinavia in general has a high quality when it comes to culinary things (the best restaurant currently around is also supposed to be in Copenhagen – NOMA). But Lund, because of its high density of well educated and cultural interested people (University staff), has compared to its size a fantastic selection of restaurants, cafés and bars. And a lot of these cafés and restaurants sell one type of coffee: LOVE.

I’ve visited Daniel Remheden and Peter Frennhoff of LOVE coffee a while ago. It was very interesting to see where good coffe comes from and how it is made (at least the last few steps). We talked a lot about coffee, coffee culture, especially the differences between German, American, Japanese and Swedish/Scandinavian coffee culture. It is interesting how much the coffee cult developed so far. In a positive way? I guess so. It is not only about Starbucks and such, although they made it very big all around the world. But also the little coffee shops, roasters and barista culture than came afterwards: also known as the Third Coffee Wave.

LOVE coffee is maybe not the best example of this movement. Daniel and Peter have been in the coffee business for almost ten years. Daniel has been fourth best barista of the world in 2008. Both have been working in gastronomy and hotel business for a long time. Early 2010 they decided to produce their own coffee. Their beans are all from specialty coffee, a very high quality coffee. Their artisan way of making coffee was delightful to experience. The moment when they let the fresh roasted beans out of the roaster… that was a smell. Daniel tested the status of the beans almost every 20 seconds. He told me the timing is the most important thing about the roasting. You have to know exactly what to do at what time. Almost scientific art/craftsmanship.

The cool thing about them is, that they have this huge passion for coffee and everything around it, like the brewing and serving, but they also share their passion with pleasure.

And of course, we also tasted some coffee. A seasonal coffee in a french press and some espresso made in this amazing huge machine.

Oh, and by the way, these white tall coffee cups were amazing. I remember they were from Finland and hand made. I forgot the producer, but I will ask Peter and Daniel again.

Thanks Peter and Daniel for this great insight. And people, you can also buy the coffee online. It’s so delicious you should try it.

I have been blogging a lot about passion, inspiration and ‘doing your own thing’ here, but the documentary Being Elmo comes straight to the point. I had goosebumps for 76 minutes. I had tears in my eyes, because of funny stories, sad stories and most of all just beautiful stories. The life story of Kevin Clash, the man behind Elmo and several other puppets, is just breathtaking. He started to have a dream since he was 8 years old and now he is still living that dream. If you are looking for inspiration and motivation, watch that film. Or if you just want to watch a wonderful movie, watch it.

Kevin Clash says some very wise sentences in this documentary:

“I’ve been very very lucky, very blessed. I go around talking to kids around the country and around the world. Saying: if everybody else your age is doing something very different to what you doing, theres always gonna be someone saying to you that you might not succeed with it, you might not make any money with that. There is always gonna be some type of obstacle in your way. All those things go away if you really focus on what makes you happy.”

Focus on what makes you happy – that’s what it’s all about!

A TV show with focus on music is already really nice. There are not a lot of TV shows about music. But when the TV show also deals with food… Hell yeah, you got me! Treme is created by David Simon and Eric Overmyer, who both also produced the incredible TV show The Wire.
The show is about New Orleans, its people and culture, after Hurricane Katrina. All different characters are struggling with the consequences of the hurricane. People who are coming back and want to re-build their homes, musicians who try to make a living, people who look for missing ones, a chef struggling with her restaurant.

I only watched five episodes of the first season so far, but I can tell for sure that this show is the best I have ever seen. Why? Because this show is mostly about one thing: passion. Those people can hardly make a living with their music or restaurant, but they would never do anything else. Every episode the music makes you want to jump onto an airplane and fly to New Orleans, get into a bar, drink some cold beer and hear that music live. And of course eat some delicious Louisiana Creole and Cajun cuisine: jambalaya, gumbo, beignet, sweet potato pie and and… dishes you can’t get anywhere else. I have a Creol cookbook which is really recommendable.

Within the first five episodes already a bunch of guest stars showed up: Elvis Costello, Dr. John, David Chang or Eric Ripert. Great musicians and great chefs.

Anyways, if you haven’t seen any episode yet, watch it! TV shows like New Girl, Two and a half men or Community are fun but this show makes really addictive. I never felt like this before, not with The Wire, not Lost, 24 or anything else. Maybe Anthony Bordain’s No Reservation, but more on this one another time. Oh, and How To Make It In America was also a show I was really into, until HBO decided to cancel it – which really pissed me off. I hope they won’t do it with Treme.

Oh, and by the way John Goodman plays a very cool part. AND it is the best intro for a TV show since How To Make It In America

…and nobody is happy. Well, usually I would agree. but for the last few days it seems like everybody is happy. One main reason: the weather. People are in a good mood. After this “winter” and especially without a whole summer in 2011, it feels pretty great to run around in your tees, shades and spent life outside. And all this in March.

Yesterday Kai and I went to Darmstadt. We drove 2hrs 15mins back and forth to see Ólafur Arnalds. Nils Frahm was playing with him. At first he had a set of three or four songs and and then Ólafur came on stage. It is tough to describe it. It was definitely the most beautiful concert I have every been to. And “beautiful” is the best word to describe it. Ólafur’s songs seem to be perfect. Himself on the piano (and sometimes some echoes, loops and electric beats), a man on the violin and a woman playing the cello (I can’t find the right names). Ólafur is really entertaining and seems to be a nice guy. He made some jokes about people from Dresden having no musical talent. And he mentioned that he actually wrote the song Ljósið for a bath tub commercial.

If you like his music, you should watch the documentary The Sky May Be Falling… But The Stars Look Good On You (part I, II and III). There you can find out more about that musical genius Ólafur Arnalds.

Next week I will go to Berlin for a few days. One reason is to see The Shins live. Luckily I made a good deal on eBay and got a ticket after the show was sold out. Looking forward to see another musical genius, James Mercer with his band.

Coffee and travelling are two very important things in my life. Coffee just became important to me within the last 12 months. Within that time I developed a passion which can only be topped by the passion for sandwiches or my girlfriend. Travelling is a constant passion. Who doesn’t love travelling?

Natalie Hanke, a very talented interface and editiorial designer from Berlin, started a project which combines these two things: The Coffee Traveller. Basically her idea is to create a collaborative café guide for Europe.

“It’s actually quite easy: You live in a European country and love good coffee? And there is just this one perfect place you always go to, you love to hang out at, where the atmosphere is unique and the beverages are delicious? Well, then grab a pen and write a short description about that place to let all the people know why you love it so much! What makes it so special? Is it the coffee, the environment, the colours, the details? Maybe it’s even that one guy that always comes along at 2pm in the afternoon, takes out his violin and starts playing beautiful music that makes you love your place so much. Whatever it might be, tell me. Tell us. Tell the world”

Hell yeah. But just telling the world is not enough. Be creative! Send her some nice photographs, illustrations, sketches or tape a creative dance within your favorite coffee spot, do what ever you want. Natalie will choose the best stuff and create a little PDF and/or a one-page-version for the iPad.

Send her the stuff until May 31st, 2012. I know I will. More information, more first impressions here.

Coffee. Travelling. Collaborative. Inspiration. Everybody wins. The world needs more ideas like this.