The Broad Did It! She Schooled Foodie King Eric Ripert on the BEST Fish Taco. Ever.

Posted on May 20, 2015 by Pfro

It’s not easy to introduce the king of restaurants, chef Eric Ripert, to a Puerto Rico seafood shack he’s never heard of. The restauranteur and host of the Cooking Channel show “Avec Eric” is married to a Puerto Rican (my pal Sondra) and has visited the island at least three times a year for the past 20 years. But I did it. (!!)

Eric was shooting his show in Puerto Rico and called to see if I wanted to come down and learn to surf. Obviously, I said (HECK) yes.

WATCH: Schooling The Food King, Eric Ripert, In Puerto Rico

We met up at his hotel, the Condado Vanderbilt (as opposed to my hotel — the Courtyard Marriott), and when I found out he hadn’t been to my favorite food shack, Tresbe, I was shocked. Floored, even.

“But it has the best fish tacos ever,” I said.

“OK, we go then!” Eric said.

A half hour later we were digging into the dream tacos, ceviche, empanadas and … pretty much everything on the menu.

“Oh, this is gooood,” Eric said. “So light, so fresh!”

And somewhere, I felt like I won the food gods’ approval.

Go now and school your friends and family. It’s that good.

*Weird editor’s note: There are times in traveling when you think no one is around. Someone asks you to do something like, say, sing on top of a piano in a bar and you think, “Why not? I’ll never see any of these people again?” And then you… do. I hadn’t seen Eric in a while — but he’d seen me. A few years back, while in Hanoi, Vietnam, I’d been invited out by a couple communist officials who wanted to play a joke on the American — by taking me to lunch where only hard alcohol was served and instead of water there was beer. Little did they know I was raised on and below the Mason Dixon Line. Six hours later, not unlike that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” they were on the floor and I was at the bar of the Sofiftel Metropole Hotel belting out show tunes. Apparently, Eric was shooting a show there at the time, was walking through and …

“Hey, I saw you!” he said. “I was so dirty — I had been out in the fields all day so I thought, ‘I will go change and come down, but then I fell asleep. You were having so much fun and entertaining the room.’”

Enter the face palm.

My Walk Down Memory Lane in Leeds, England (and the Best Fish and Chips Ever)

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Pfro

In every life there are pivotal “Sliding Doors”situations, where things would be very different if another path had been taken. I’ve had several of these, but the first one happened when I was very little in Leeds, England.

My father was getting his PhD at the university there, and my mother was teaching locally. My sister and I were both born there, and we lived in a quintessential Yorkshire home — dark, coal-stained stone; long, thin windows; and a door my mother painted bright red. It was a good time for our family. My mother would push me in a pram to the to fish and chips shop on the corner — now called the Fishermans Wife — every time she didn’t want to cook or do dishes (read: every other day), and by all accounts we were a happy little family.

Then my dad’s thesis was accepted and he got his degree, along with two job offers: one from the University of Leeds … and another from Riyadh University in Saudi Arabia.

Had he chosen the job in Leeds, I most likely would have grown up with a British accent in that very house, and my entire life would have been very different. As it was, we moved to Saudi Arabia — and very quickly back to the United States, where I grew up in Cincinnati. My parents divorced.

Visiting the old Leeds house (Andrew Rothschild)

But Leeds and that home have always loomed large in my family’s history. So when I went to England last month, I wanted to see the house, and the couple living there now were kind enough to let me in.

It was an emotional full-circle trip: seeing where I was born, where I could have grown up, where my family would have been a unit. It was like an alternate, bizarro universe.

Fish and chips! (Andrew Rothschild)

Afterward, I stopped at the Fisherman’s Wife — and mom was right. It is the best, lightest fish and chips ever (despite the fact that I will never be a mushy peas girl). If you’re ever in Leeds, stop by.

Thanks to Visit Britain for the opportunity.

World Traveler and Now… Chef!

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Pfro

Dinner for two!

A close up of my masterpiece

Fun Fact: I grew up in Ohio and Kentucky – a landlocked area. Okay, fine, there was the Ohio River but nobody’s eaten anything out of there for at least 100 years. Hell, I don’t think anything has actually lived in there for 75.

The point being, I’ve always been a meat and potatoes kind of girl, especially as I grew up in a time when there was no such thing as “flash freezing” and fish in Cincinnati grocery stores were just… nasty. But. 2014 is a year for trying new things and broadening my horizons (in between flying off to amazing places) so I faced my biggest kitchen fear and decided to cook some damn fish.

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Tag Archives: fish

The Broad Did It! She Schooled Foodie King Eric Ripert on the BEST Fish Taco. Ever.

My Walk Down Memory Lane in Leeds, England (and the Best Fish and Chips Ever)

World Traveler and Now… Chef!