by jessica yoon
Early this fall I took a week long vacation in Southern California. Among the many many restaurants and cafes I was able to go to, Bon Appetit’s 2013 best new restaurant Alma was one of them. Before the year officially ends, and this title is so-last-year, I wanted to share with you my two cents and what I’m thinking about for the new year!
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It’s been a particularly hard week on all fronts. Work, life, and the start of winter have all bombarded me at the same time. I guess it’s just that time of year right before the holidays when everything comes together like a perfect storm. It’s never easy, but this year seems particular harder. I do admit, I tend to dwell on the negative when I’m feeling down. I’m no pessimistic, but I also don’t think I’m a beacon of optimism. I spent a good portion of the last few days in a gloomy cloud, until I finally gave in and let myself have a little meltdown. It wasn’t the prettiest of pictures, but I felt a lot better afterwards. None of my problems have washed away, but my attachment to them have…a little bit. Sometimes I forget that I’m still (fairly) young, and need to grow up more. When I reached my mid-twenties, I put a lot of pressure on myself to know and be everything I wanted to be. I’m still learning, which means I also have many more mistakes to make…I guess I’m just going through some growing pains.
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A few weeks ago, my family took a short trip to Tokyo. We didn’t make a long list of things to do or see, but we did make sure to have a reservation at a good sushi restaurant. There are many exceptional places in Tokyo, but not all are foreigner friendly. Even some of the Michelin starred restaurants don’t accept non-Japanese diners (!?), but luckily Sushi Kanesaka isn’t one of them and we were able to get a reservation for dinner.
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I’ve been doing a little reminiscing about my time in Europe these last couple of days; going over places I visited and things I ate. I don’t really miss being there, but sometimes I do get fleeting thoughts that maybe I didn’t take full advantage of all my surroundings. However, I don’t have big regrets and I know I’ll go back again…just maybe not soon. In the meantime, here’s one of my favorites from Paris: Pouchkine‘s Croissant à la Vanille. My friend who interned there introduced me to it and it’s absolutely amazing. There are tons of different croissants in Paris, but this one stands out as most memorable for me. It has the perfect ruffle and crisp of a croissant with a defining presence of vanilla in the middle. It’s quite large for one person so I always split it with a friend, but I’m beginning to feel like maybe I shouldn’t have!
My friend didn’t quite find out the secret to that filling (which is more of a buttery addition than a filling filling), but maybe one day she’ll whip up something similar at her newly opened patisserie in Quebec! I’m dying to go, and one day I will, but if any Quebecer readers are out there, check it out!
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The start of a new year always feels like a pause between everything that happened in the past to all that lays ahead in the future. There are regrets in what could have been but also hope for what can and will be. Usually I spend a lot of time suspended in this moment trying to neatly timeline my life in chronological order, but life is anything but neat and (chrono)logical. Everything is intertwined, looping together from ahead, below, up, and behind. So instead of trying to unravel what will forever be tangled, I am deciding to focus on today, whatever knots it may hold from the past, present, or future.
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