Kydroon

Author: Kurt

  • Sparkling Bistro

    Sparkling Bistro

    Coming from Frankfurt, everybody has to admit that there is more high-end cuisine in Frankfurt. I am still trying to distill this vague feeling into some unambiguous numbers, but!

    …yes, there are hidden precious gems in Munic that would shine bright and probably even brighter amongst the mentioned ones from Mainhattan.

    You just have to find them, and Hussi & Steffi found one for us that I have to share.

    Sparkling Bistro, the storytelling restaurant. I could now delve into that beautiful memory, but I want to make this story short and to the point.

    • Big green egg
    • Two wizzards of product based cuisine

    Embrace the pleasure of being guests and let loose any control. We went for a five-course dinner accompanied by matching wines. As a non-native, non-poet, I am far away from being able to describe the pleasure we had. Not just food and wine. Get in touch with Jürgen and unfold the storytelling. Enjoy being his guest, and you will find yourself in a well-balanced melange of olfactoric, gustatory, and dialectical experience.

    Again, I am writing myself into a rage, and we had enough words. Let us apply my highly sophisticated Kydroon’s Foodie Evaluation System 🤓 to Sparkling Bistro.

    (sorry, I have to repeat this part as most people are too lazy to click into the explanation to read it isolated)

    🤮 Miserable big fail! Runaway as fast as possible!
    🙂 Acceptable. Quite OK! There are some negative aspects,
    but on an overall view, outweighed.
    😋Excellent! It goes on the Foodie Happy list
    🤩Top rank! Epic, milestone and beyond exceptional

    Kydroon’s Foodie Evaluation System has some cool features I have to reiterate:

    • There is just one level for crap. That is enough for crap, and I do not care to distinguish between totally crap or somehow crap. 
    • The base level is acceptable, and this means good enough. That is already a lot, and we should, in general, apply more often the concept of good enough.
    • Excellent is good enough plus some unique features which make it shine out of the crowd.
    • Finally, the top rank is for the exceptional excellent ones. That is, of course, always a personal biased view.

    I also want to have stuff in all buckets, so in doubt, I will always favor the more extreme ones.

    The overall ranking for the Sparkling Bistro in Munic is: 🤩 Exceptional!

    If you want to read more, I would recommend this article from urban-pioneer.

    Another good review from the the Süddeutsche.

    • Herb butter out of thin air and fairy dust
    • Tuna carpacchio with caviar
    • Dove breast and leg

    As you see: perfect presentation. As I can tell, exceptional excellent taste.

    • Fish on a salad soup
    • Main course
    • Chocolate cake and mango sorbet (with no sugar)

    As I can also only tell, each dish comes with a story from Jürgen. Go and get your very own 😇.

    • it was a long dinner 😋

  • Young, wild, regional cuisine

    Young, wild, regional cuisine

    Go to the Pure Wine Food and go for the chefs choice. Claudia has a magic hand driven by Mediterranean temperament and local, high-quality products. For me, this is the classical young wild cooking class. The highlight was, without disrespecting the main course, which was also exceptional, the Rote Beete Soup! The magic process for this, at least this is what I could get out from Claudia: Boil the beetroot to the very end; Add almond milk; Add Verjus; Add grapeseed oil. The result is insanely good!

    Overall rating: 😋 (Excellent!)

  • Shootout Englischer Garten vs. Central Park

    Shootout Englischer Garten vs. Central Park

    Jogging helps me to run off some of the calories I am permanently adding, but the essential effect is mental garbage collection. I clean off mental tasks, and five minutes into the walk, my mind is clean, empty, and ready for new ideas or train of thoughts.

    • my weekend jogging round trip

    So on my beloved Englischer Garten jogging tour, I suddenly realized the beauty, size, facets and sheer size and could only compare it to the Central Park which is as I realized dwarfed by our wonderfull Englischer Garten in Munich.

    Let’s compare the two: Englischer Garten vs. Central Park

    Size3,75km23,5km21:0
    Age178918732:0
    HighlightsTeehaus, Monopteros,
    Chinesischer Turm,
    Eisbach, Eisbachwelle(n),
    Rumfordhaus,
    several Biergärten
    and even a nude area    		OK,
    I am probably biased,
    but I can’t figure
    anything comparable…
    😇    		3:0
    Ways78km93,5km3:1
    Main LakeKleinhesselhoher See (8,6ha)The Reservoir (43ha)3:2
    Bridges100+not even mentioned4:2
    Highest point and
    view from there    		512m+31m+15m=558m
    Frauenkirche and Alps    		43m
    Skyscraper facades
    (from below)    		5:2
    Miscellaneousyou can have a beer without
    being arrested    		I will not open this
    can of worms!    		6:2

    …so, that is what I would call: on an overall rating, the Englischer Garten wipes the floor with the central park, right? 😉

    …oh, and this is the way to the park…

  • Eibsee

    Eibsee

    There is not much to add. Watch and enjoy this incredible beautiful lake in the south of Germany.

    Eibsee
  • Pescheria: Homeport for fish lovers in Munich

    Pescheria: Homeport for fish lovers in Munich

    One drawback on Munich is its distance from fresh fish, and here I am talking about fresh fish from everywhere, not just the local coast. This lifts Frankfurt beyond Hamburg or even Barcelona. The good stuff from there is in a few hours in Frankfurt, along with good stuff from the rest of the world.

    However, the friendly, nice, and crazy guys from Pescheria seem to be well connected in the fish world.

    When you step inside, you can not miss the vitrine with fresh fish that you will also see on the daily menu.

    It has a vibrant ambiance with an earned own patina that can not be copied. It is full of people in a good mood, offering the right amount of background sound for your privacy without being too loud.

    …OK, first, I have to reiterate the fantastic highly sophisticated Kydroon’s Foodie Evaluation System 🤓

    🤮 Miserable big fail! Runaway as fast as possible! There is just one level for crap. That is enough for crap, and I do not care to distinguish between totally crap or somehow crap. Crap is crap, and it goes on this list with all the other crap.
    🙂 Acceptable. Quite OK! There are some negative aspects, but on an overall view, outweighed. The base level is acceptable, and this means good enough. This is already a lot, and we should, in general, apply more often the concept of good enough.
    😋 Excellent! It goes on the Foodie Happy list. Excellent is good enough plus some unique features which makes it shine out of the crowd.
    🤩 Top rank! Epic, milestone, and beyond exceptional. The top rank is for the exceptional excellent ones.

    And now…
    The overall ranking for the Pescheria is: 😋 (Excellent!)

    It feels good
    Sword Mussel – It is something I know from my very first book on sea life, I have to admit, it was the first time I could eat them: delicious!
    pulpo á la gallega
    …the salt covers, fosters, protects and unveils the:
    Royal gilt-head Bream, or Orata or Dorade
    Tasty perfect al dente side dish
    We had the Benito Ferrara, Greco di Tufo, which was a perfect fit
    Cardenal Mendoza is OK, Cardenal Mendoza Carta Real is from Fhloston Paradise
    we kept them busy until the very end…
    Looking forward to the next visit
  • Nobu: Peruvian Japanese Fusion in Munich

    Nobu: Peruvian Japanese Fusion in Munich

    I think most people who have ever visited a Nobu restaurant remember this for the rest of their life. It is excellent foodie stuff made of creativity, presentation, and ambiance. When those dimensions are well balanced, meaning maxed out, it is OK to excuse the high price tag.

    The last time I was in a Nobu was ten years ago in Gotham. I think at that time the restaurant was in Tribeca and we could only get in without reservation because of a blizzard, as most canceled their booking.

    The Nobu in Munich is on the first floor of the Mandarin Oriental, which is the building below our favorite rooftop sundowner enjoyment place. The summer dinner was a perfect excuse to try it out finally.

    I like this fusion because it is more than the sum of two exceptional philosophies:

    • Japanese: the pinnacle of product or ingredient excellence. What European cuisine puts into preparation, Japanese puts into the ingredients.
    • Peruvian: The best Latin American cuisine. Closely chased by Mexican Food but more elaborated – my point of view.
      Both are a little stuck in their philosophy and highly benefit from this perfect mix!

    So, enough words. Let us now apply my highly sophisticated Kydroon’s Foodie Evaluation System 🤓 to Nobu Matsuhisa in Munich!

    🤮 Miserable big fail! Runaway as fast as possible!
    🙂 Acceptable. Quite OK! There are some negative aspects, but on an overall view, outweighed.
    😋 Excellent! It goes on the Foodie Happy list
    🤩 Top rank! Epic, milestone and beyond exceptional

    Kydroon’s Foodie Evaluation System has some cool features I have to explain:

    • There is just one level for crap. That is enough for crap, and I do not care to distinguish between totally crap or somehow crap. Crap is crap, and it goes on this list with all the other crap.
    • The base level is acceptable, and this means good enough. This is already a lot, and we should, in general, apply more often the concept of good enough.
    • Excellent is good enough plus some unique features which makes it shine out of the crowd.
    • Finally, the top rank is for the exceptional excellent ones. This is, of course, always a personal biased view that may be linked to special occasions, locations, and my personal history.

    I also want to have stuff in all buckets, so in doubt, I will always favor the more extreme ones.

    The overall ranking for the Nobu in Munic is: 🤩

    Crispy Shrimps with three sauces
    The obligatory Pisco Sour (I always wonder why this cocktail is not more popular)
    Seafood Ceviche
    Peruvian Gazpacho
    Sushi+
    Grilled Monkfish with solid Chimichurri – here we are now in high orbit!
    Braised (48h) Short Rib – here we are activating the FTL engine! 🤩

    Please take a look on the feature picture of this post which which is a zoom into this dish. It is an absolute highlight and you have to enjoy it yourself. Explosion of taste and total surprise of texture. Enjoying food is one of the four main reasons of existence, I am in heaven and right now can not recall the other three! 😋😇

    Kydroon, the foodie
    Deconstructed lemon grass cheese cake – otherworldish good

    The evaluation breakdown is: there is no breakdown 🤓

    …because it doesn’t matter. That is the last important part of the highly sophisticated Kydroon’s Foodie Evaluation System. As a big fan of KPIs, measuring, counting, evaluation, and assessing, I know that this leads to a useless overanalysis. We tend to often come up with sophisticated models to hide our personal, biased, subjective opinion behind formulas.

    It is the result of a current mix of dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, and estrogen. There is no rationality in this complex soup of hormones in our brain.

  • Elephants

    Elephants

    …are huge and heavy. When they run, the earth trembles and the vibrations can be sensed far away, even by tiny invertebrates as worms which are remarkably similar to the trunk of elephants…

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  • Flamingos

    Flamingos

    …and the endless pain of a hobby wildlife photographer that will never make it on the title page of the National Geographic until his death…

    Birds are the perfect prey for a wildlife photographer. If you get close enough, you will see fantastic textures. The details formed by their eyes and feathers are like an alien life form. They also have this built-in nerdy look everybody loves. Well, I do, perhaps because I am a nerd. 🤓

    Here is my flamingo set, that I want to share. It is from Salar de Atacama, San Pedro de Atacama, Región de Antofagasta, Chile and Aguada Blanca, Arequipa, Peru

  • To all the past and future Astronauts, Cosmonauts and Taikonauts

    To all the past and future Astronauts, Cosmonauts and Taikonauts

    anybody else around who is so ashamed about the half-century anniversary of the moon landing?

    We had a good start. The 3rd Chimpanzee had a great start. We successfully wiped out the calm Neandertals, spread out fast, build Jumbos, and made it to the moon and then?

    We f* up – NOTHING of relevance since then!

    Considering resources, we could be easily on Proxima Centauri right now. We could offer skiing on Pluto’s frozen methane surface, and we could enjoy deep dives on Europa, hiking the Olymp on Mars. We could do so many fun stuff in the universe instead…

    50 years of nothing…

    So today I bow in awe and deep respect for all the astronauts, cosmonauts and tyconauts that have actually done something to extend our perspective, they took risks, and some gave their life for it – to extend our horizon – thank you and be remembered!

    …oh, I am not an engineer, but I am quite sure this is a hack 🤓

    This is a hack, right?

  • Sea Turtles from Puerto Escondido

    Sea Turtles from Puerto Escondido

    Sea Turtles (Chelonioidea)  are the panda bears of the seven seas. Everybody loves them, as they are cool, cute, and endangered. There are just seven types rooting back some 150 million years, and you will find them all over the globe close to the equator.

    The first time you see one, you will go wild, but then you will realize they are quite common. It doesn’t change the fact that sea turtles have this built-in coolness feature.

    Freshly hatched young sea turtle babies, or Tortuguitas, add on top an unholy sick amount of cuteness.

    Usually, the nests are at an unknown location, and it is hard to predict when they hatch. For a regular traveler, this means, forget it! Your odds are not in your favor.

    Travel Hack:

    You do not have to book a tour for this. Get a taxi, drive to Coco’s Beach Club, at the beach walk about 500m to the right, support Viva Mar and just enjoy the moment.

    However, there is a perfect spot in a highly unexpectable place: Puerto Escondido, a relaxed town on the west coast of the pacific ocean in Oaxaca, Mexico. A go-to place for Lonely Planet backpack hikers resulting in a very vivid trashy nightlife around the central beach. A little to much action for sea turtles, but!

    Playa Punta Colorada
    Playa Punta Colorada

    If you travel to the very west of Puerto Escondido, you will find a pristine endless sand beach, the Playa Punta Colorada, which is west of the Playa Bacocho. Such a beautiful place is, of course, the property of a very rich person. In this case, it is within the Carlos Slim Foundation portfolio.

    • Viva Mar Station
    • Beach Police

    You can only reach it through the Coco’s Beach Club that belongs to the Posada Real, more on this later, therefore no Lonely Planeters, no noise, and no pollution, just the right spot for cute little sea turtle babies.

    • Crowd gathering at 5 p.m.
    • Ready to release
    • Your baby sea turtle in a bowl

    The Vive Mar cooperation operates there a hatch station. They patrol together with the police every day 30km to protect newly found nests. This translates to a constant supply of eggs ready to hatch, and they have a hatching every evening at 5 p.m.

    Sundown
    …and then you enjoy the sundown…