The Latest T-Boy Film, Travel & Music poll is devoted to a positive cultural experience when visiting a new destination. Below you’ll find orignial content not found anywhere else on the globe by Richard Carroll, Audrey Hart, Ringo Boitano, Deb Roskamp and even two by yours truly. I hope you enjoy the entries as much as I enjoyed its compilation. – Ed

Richard Carroll: T-Boy Writer

Tango Culture: Buenos Aires

Traveling the world like so many others, I never believed that a city and it’s music would have the greatest culture impact. A musical magic that quickly captured me. Buenos Aires seems to float on a tango C chord, the wave lengths drifting through the city leaving a rhythm touching the heart. A dramatic, sensuous, feel-good rhythm, where some of the most gorgeous women in the world are moving their feet to a music that is the essence of Buenos Aires. The city, near the bottom of South America, is where tango was born in the America’s, and it’s alive and thriving. Walking through the neighborhoods one is greeted by tango, and often couples dancing tango in a sensuous and precise sway that is mesmerizing, where legs and feet are as precise as a jeweled Swiss clock. The city has tango boutiques, tango hotels for visitors in love with the art, tango night clubs, tango schools, and best of all a large downtown dance hall where the portenos go to dance after a long days work. You see street workers, fashionable ladies with a briefcase, and other portenos, all filing into the dance hall. The men on one side of the room, the ladies on the other, They dance tango with various partners for an hour or so and head for home, each going their separate way. Not a place to meet your lifetime lover. It’s just a place for the portenos to dance tango. Tango in Buenos Aires is the culture of the city and the magic is for both visitors and portenos alike.

Audrey Hart: T-Boy Food Writer

Chimichanga Culture: Tucson, AZ

No city is more associated with the Chimichanga than Tucson. The city’s tourism office published an ad in the nationally circulated Food & Wine magazine, inviting Americans to visit Tucson, “home of the chimichanga.”

Chimichanga, or “chimi,” has achieved cult-like status in Tucson where residents take their chimis very seriously and prefer large, overstuffed versions. Every restaurant and eatery have its own version of this favorite dish. But many consider El Charro Café’s the best and most authentic. – Source: Food Timeline.
Family legend says that owner Monica Flin in 1928 accidentally dropped a stuffed beef burrito in a pot of boiling oil. She immediately shouted some profane expletives, but noticed younger family members in the kitchen, and abruptly changed the swear word to “chimichanga,” the Spanish equivalent of “thingamagig.” Tucson was awarded the nation’s first UNESCO City of Gastronomy Designation, and Gourmet Magazine named El Charro Café, “One of America’s 21 Most Legendary Restaurants.”

See El Charro Café’s Chimichanga Recipe here.

Ringo Boitano: T-Boy Writer

The Culture of Family: Tahiti and Her Islands

Our jeep commenced deep into the mountainous valley of Tahiti’s Papenoo; a true Garden of Eden with fertile displays of ginger, vanilla, taro, noni and breadfruit. The medicinal and cosmetic benefits of the pants and flowers are well utilized by the Tahitians, renowned for their health, physical beauty and spiritual serenity.

My guide was an Euro-Tahitian anthropologist, who has lived in Tahiti Nui his entire adult life. He explained the intricacies of Tahitian culture, where the past meets the present, and that the Gallic texture of today is often only evident on the surface. The French police keep the islands safe but will never enter a home when there’s a family dispute or even violence. Often times when a local commits an egregious crime, justice is handled the tribal way, where the offender might ‘accidentally’ fall from the top of a mountain or ‘mysteriously’ drown while fishing.

When a Tahitian woman reaches the age to give childbirth, she is encouraged to take as many lovers as she chooses. When an infant is born, the child is given to a group of older women, often aunts (slang, motu mamas) to be raised by the community in wide open mountain valleys. From my guide’s studies, he believes that Tahiti and Polynesia illustrate the most tolerant and sophisticated child rearing practices in the world; a world where the youth find meaning through relationships with the family, community, spatial terrain, ancestral spirits and God.

Ed Boitano: T-Boy Writer

The Culture of the Currach: Aran Islands

Due to their isolated location at the very edge of Ireland, the Aran Islands are naturally detached from the rest of the world and have maintained unique customs and ways of life for centuries. With a population of around 900 people, Inishmore (Inis Mór) is the largest of the Aran Islands, approximately eight miles-long by two and a half-miles wide. If you have just a day, this is the island you must see. Its principal village is Kilronan where you’ll find tour guides, horse drawn carriages and bicycle rentals waiting as soon as you get off your ferry. The Aran Islands’ relatively flat landscape makes an ideal setting for walkers of all levels, while the 30-minute bike ride from the pier to Dún Aonghasa is one of the most popular cycling routes in all of Ireland.

Before you depart on your tours, stop by Ionad Arann Heritage Centre, a three-minute walk from the village of Kilronan, an excellent visitor’s center, which provides a good introduction and guided tour taking you back more than two thousand years in the life and times of the Aran Islands.

The center demonstrates the art of currach making– a traditional island boat made by stretching a fabric over a sparse skeleton of thin wooden/wicker laths, then covered in tar. The currach has been used on the islands for centuries and is designed to battle the rough seas that face the open Atlantic Ocean. Documentary film director Robert Flaherty was fascinated to find that the Aran fishermen would not learn to swim, since they knew they could never survive any sea that swamped a currach, and would drown without a struggle. His filming of the dramatic shark-hunt – whose liver the islanders would boil to make lantern oil for trade – was a centerpiece of his staged documentary masterpiece, the 1934 film, Man of Aran.

Deb Roskamp: T-Boy Photographer

Fado Culture: Lisbon, Portugual

The fadista sang mournful tunes with lyrics of resignation, fate and melancholy; best defined by the Portuguese word saudade, (longing), symbolizing a feeling of irreparable loss and lifelong damage. Fado (‘destiny, fate’) is a melancholic genre whose birthplace is Lisbon’s port districts of Alfama, Mouraria and Bairro Alto in the 1820s. Initially, its musical style was performed in cafes, taverns and ‘half-door’ houses (bordellos) to sailors, bohemians, and courtesans who were mainly from the urban working-class.
Today, throughout the world, Fado is regarded as the Portuguese musical symbol of culture and tradition. The music is performed without any form of electric amplification by either a female or a male vocalist, and accompanying music, generally by guitars (10- or 12-string guitars), one or two violas (6-string guitars), and occasionally a viola baixo (a small 8-string bass viola). Most of the repertoire follows a double meter (four beats to a measure), with lyrics arranged in quatrains or in any of several other common Portuguese poetic forms.

I listened to the musicians while dining in a restaurant. The music took me back to imagining women singing these ballads to their sailors, as they set out to explore the world, disappearing beyond the horizon.

Raoul Pascual: T-Boy Webmaster and Illustrator

The Clean Culture of Japan

This country stands above all others in terms of selflessness. Something about the Japanese and upholding family honor. It was back in the 80s when I went to Tokyo, Nagoya and Kyoto for a business trip. For the most part, the streets were super clean (no trash anywhere… (not even a single cigarette butt), the people were hard working and disciplined. They said you could leave your luggage in the middle of the street and no one would steal it. They reminded me of worker ants with individual integrity functioning for the greater good of the hive.

Ed Boitano: T-Boy Writer

Irish Session Music: Doolin, Ireland

“What brings you to Ireland?” asked my friendly cab driver. “All the above and more, and with a very keen interest in Irish music,” laughed thee. The cabbie smiled, “You know, I sing too. Give me a couple pints of Guinness and I’ll sing all night fer yah.” My mood was already euphoric; now kicked up a step higher, well aware that a trip to the Republic of Ireland is a cultural immersion of living history, heartfelt poetry, ethereal landscapes and locals with hospitality in their very DNA. And, yes, I soon found my traditional Irish Session (‘seisiún’) bands, playing jigs (faster rhythms) and reels (stepdance music in ‘reel’ time), and an occasional ballad about the Great Famine and emigration.

Doolin (Dúlainn) is an Atlantic coastal village in County Clare, considered the home of traditional Irish session music. And the local attractions are not bad either, with the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren, and a port that leads to Aran Islands just around the corner. But what could top a Doolin pub meal washed down with a pint of the black stuff at one of the village’s rollicking establishments? Well, grab your next pint and bask in the intoxicating music of an Irish session band on the floor.

The size of the groups may vary, and members are sometimes new to one another, yet seemingly never missing a beat on the Bodhrán Drum. Traditional instruments generally included fiddle (the life blood of a session); harp; flute and whistle; Uilleann Pipes; guitar, mandolin and banjo; accordion and concertina, and the Bodhrán Drum. You’ll notice the Irish have the gift of the dance where evidence suggests that the sun worshipping Celts and the Druids practiced a circular formation pagan dance which has a commonality to the modern Irish set dancing of today. And, if you’re feeling particularly festive, you can join in on a dance; in my case, a rather clumsy and improvised one.

At a conversational break, a musician informed me that the Irish dancer once carried a heavy stone in both hands, preventing them from holding hands with the opposite sex. Then adding, “I’d probably need a shackle (Handcuff, carrying alcoholic beverages in both hands at the same time).” What could I say, besides Sláinte! (Pronounced: ‘slaan-sha’) and ordered another Guinness.

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“Restaurant” is a derivative of the Latin word “restore.” Inns were places where travelers could have a simple meal, then hit the road for a continuation of their journey. Today, with the arrival of modern-day tourism, travelers often visit destinations for history, cultural and gastronomic components. Yes, food is the spice of life, and we asked our members to list their favorite state destinations for pleasures of the palate. It’s fun for our readers to see another side of our writers, who have been delivering original content not found anywhere else on the globe.

Richard Carroll – T-Boy Writer:

Louisiana Cooking.

Every trip through Louisiana our taste buds are jumping with delight. Louisiana, highlighted by New Orleans, the most European city in the United States, also have the most distinctively original regional cuisine in the country. The creative cuisine is influenced by Creole and Cajun cooking, and dining for us in New Orleans is an American treasure. Dishes invented in the city include Po’ Boy, Oysters Rockefeller, Oysters Bienville, Banana Foster and more. The Cajun Gumbo, Jambalaya, and various crayfish creations are the heart of the city’s cuisine.

New Orleans chefs explain that when the Cajuns migrated from Nova Scotia, the lobster decided to follow and by the time they arrived they had lost so much weight they were renamed crayfish. A resident added, “We have some 2,800 restaurants in New Orleans and if they’re not good they don’t last for three months, crayfish or not”  We have dined from open-air street stalls, where college kids with their foamy Go Cups are roaming the streets, to Armauds, steps off Bourbon Street in the heart of the French Quarter. The famed restaurant in a restored turn of the century building, family owned since 1918, and one of the grande dames of New Orleans, serves award-winning French-New Orleans inspired cuisine. A dress code is enforced, collars for men, and so we found that diners were tastefully dressed in this elegant room enjoying Creole cuisine while listening to live Dixieland jazz.

We feel that Louisiana and New Orleans for aficionados of creative cooking will not disappoint.

Ringo Boitano – T-Boy Writer:

A taste of California history.

It almost seems unfair to list California as my favorite food state destination. With a landscape of approximately 163,696 square miles, it is the most populous and the third-largest U.S. state by area.

The state’s geography is immense with the Sierra Nevada’s Mt. Whitney at 14,505 feet, the highest peak in the contiguous 48 states, to the Mojave Desert’s Death Valley, its lowest. Throw in the long Pacific coastline and Salinas Valley, coined the Salad Bowl of the World, plus the urbane euphoria of Cioppino, Ranch Dressing, Avocado Toast, Cobb Salad, French Dip Sandwich, Uramaki (California roll), and even the Fortune Cookie, which all proudly claim California as their birthplace – and you’ll find California’s gastronomic history to be both innnovative and monumental. Native-Americans were the first to arrive with a diet based on fruits, corn, pumpkin, shellfish and beans, followed by the Spanish, who brought the exotic flavors of garlic, peppers and olives, and then the migration of fortune seekers during the 1849 California Gold Rush, creating a fushion of culinary traditions, influenced by dishes from the U.S. East Coast, Latin-America, China and Italy.

And this leads us to Chez Panisse, the Berkeley-based restaurant originated by Alice Waters and film producer Paul Aratow, who ushered in the farm-to-table movement in 1971. The restaurant’s style of cooking emphasized ingredients rather than technique, using food that was fresh and seasonal, grown locally and organically. And because the ingredients were obtained nearby, the food took on a very Californian character, hence creating what is known today as California Cuisine.

Fyllis Hockman – T-Boy Writer

There is no other food!

And just to make a short story shorter. I live in Maryland. By definition that means hard shell crabs with Old Bay. There is no other food!

James Boitano – T-Boy Writer:

Favorite state for a food experience: Louisiana. 

Though I’ve only been there once, Louisiana seems to have quite the edge over other states. Sure, you can find any cuisine in the world in New York, but Louisiana has the trio of local good eating. First off, you get the best of Southern ‘comfort food’. Mac n Cheese, grits, fried chicken, red beans and rice: what’s not to love? And on top of that, Louisiana has the double Creole and Cajun experience. Both down-home and sophisticated. Crawfish, andouille smoked sausage, alligator, gumbo. Something for every mood… if you are hungry.

Phil Marley – Poet:

They have to be from Montréal to be REAL bagels.

Okay, I’m aware that Québéc is a Canadian province, not a U.S. state, but Montréal is the place of my birth and here are some of my favorite gastronomic memories.

Little Italy: Montréal’s Piccola Italia is the second largest Little Italy (after Toronto) in Canada. The community is filled with Italian cafés, restaurants and bars, specialty food shops, cultural landmarks, and Jean-Talon Market, Montréal’s most vibrant open-air food area.

Montréal Bagels: I once took a homeless man, a Montréal expat living in Vancouver, for coffee and asked if he would like a bagel, too. He declined, replying, Those aren’t real bagels, they have to be from Montréal to be REAL bagels. In Montréal you will you hear it pronounced bah-gal and yes, they are different. In contrast to the New York-style bagel, which also contains sourdough, the Montréal bagel is smaller, thinner, sweeter and denser, with a larger hole, and always baked in a wood-fired oven. It contains malt, egg, and no salt, and is boiled in honey-sweetened water before being baked.

Montréal Smoked Meat: Most Yanks know all about pastrami and corned beef, but what is smoked meat? Well, it’s basically beef brisket that has been dry-cured, but then soaked (unlike pastrami) to desalinate it before seasoning and smoking. The seasoning is apparently a secret, for no one will divulge anything else other than it makes the most delicious sandwich on the planet. Schwartz’s (circa 1928) is the oldest deli in Canada and is considered an institution, though others will make a case for the newcomer, Reuben’s Deli and Steakhouse, at only a mere 50 years of existence.

Québécois Poutine: This Québécois specialty consists of fresh-cut fries and cheese curds topped with a brown gravy. It emerged in Quebec, in the late 1950s in the rural Centre-du-Québec region. My father believed the name poutine originated from the English word pudding (French, pouding), used to describe a mixture, a particularly messy one, of the three food items. It made sense to me for in Québec, the term poutine  is slang for mess. And, yes, it is a mess, a mess of delightful flavors and textures. Some deem its high caloric character to be essential in dealing with the particularly cold Québec and Ontario winter weather. Its popularity has spread to upscale restaurants and fast-food chains alike, including Canada’s Burger King and McDonalds. Today, poutine has become a symbol of Québécois and Canadian cuisine and culture. For that, I am proud – and ten pounds heavier.

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Ed Boitano – T-Boy Editor

Apples are also good for eating.

I am embarrassed to the point of shame when discussing my favorite food items from my home state of Washington. As an unruly adolescent, I considered the bounty of food available throughout the state to be something that was on the entire world’s table. Crab apples, cherries and blueberries were designated as throwing objects in war games between other neighbors, even at the risk of facing my mother’s disdain for stains on my play clothes; with blueberries on worst. What’s the big deal, I thought, isn’t there an unlimited supply? After all we had apple, pear, apricot and fig trees in our own backyard; that is if the birds didn’t get them first.

But that was yesterday and when I return to my ancestral home in Seattle today, I recognize the immense bounty of delicious Washington state produce, produce which I had took for granted, despite having family connections to its terrain. My great, great cousin was an apple orchardist in the Yakima Valley in 1910, and today Washington produces nearly 60% of all apples consumed in the entire U.S. There’s a chance he actually thought he was responsible for that. Raspberries and blueberries also top the U.S. list in production. My in-laws own and operate Roskamp Vineyards, known for their well-sought-after grapes in central Washington’s Lower Yakima Valley. And just further east, there’s Walla Walla Sweets (onions), where less sulfur means less sharpness and tears. Cherries are delicious, but they’re no match for Rainier Cherries, a hybrid created at Washington State University, named after Mount Rainier, where huckleberries and wildflowers blanket its slopes in late July through early September.

And when the Alaskan fishing boats arrive in Seattle, we have all five species of Pacific salmon on our tables: Chinook (King), Sockeye (Red), Coho (Silver), Humpies (Pink) and Chum (Dog, usually canned for foreign markets, but now locally rebranded as the more palatable Keta).

For preparation, it’s every person for themselves; butterflied and smoked over Alderwood, or Cedar planked (steamed on soaked Cedar) and many home recipes.

Then there’s oysters and clams with the geoduck the largest, generally reaching 1.5 pounds, once sold at the Pike Place Public Market for a penny a pound.

And we have the most flavorful of all crabs, the sweet and delicate Dungeness, named after the Port of Dungeness on the Olympic Peninsula. With apologies to those who yearn for lobster, your crustacean is actually a common everyday food for Nova Scotians and New Englanders, but takes its lofty status due to shrewd marketing on luxury railroad trains to and from Chicago as the most expensive item on the menu.

But an important note should be made to chain restaurants; Dick’s, home to Dick’s Famous Deluxe, and Ivar Haglund’s Ivar’s Salmon House and Ivar’s Aces of Clams, with his famous motto, Keep Clam. Haglund (1905-1985), a city father and Seattle icon, once purchased the Smith Tower – then the tallest skyscraper west of the Mississippi – under the condition that no later buyer could demolish it. From the tower’s observation deck, I could watch the blaze of 4th of July fireworks over Elliot Bay, paid for out of Ivar’s own pocket.,

Deb Roskamp – T-Boy writer & photographer:

A taste of the Land of Enchantment.

Red, green or Christmas? It took me a minute to realize that the waitperson was asking what my preference was for chili salsa. I was asked that question countless times during my four-day culinary tour of Northern New Mexico, and was excited to succumb to the gastronomic pleasures of this indigenous cuisine that can be found nowhere else in the world. Like the food of Tuscany, New Mexican cuisine – not Mexican, Mexican-American, or Tex-Mex – is virtually devoid of any outside influences. Carne adovada, blue corn tortillas, sopapillas and biscochitos – cookies made with crushed anise seeds, a hint of orange and covered with sugar cinnamon, now New Mexico’s Official State Cookie – are among its many offerings.

Floridians stand warned: Santa Fe is the oldest state capital in the continental U.S. In its over 400 years of existence, a number of flags have flow over the city: Spanish, Mexican, the U.S. and The Southern Confederacy – not to mention the short-lived Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Today, no cars are required in Santa Fe’s enchanting plaza. Simply take a stroll, and bask in the galleries, boutiques and historic structures, and take refuge in many of city’s outstanding restaurants. As the third largest art market in the world, recommended is a self-guild tour of Canyon Road which boasts over 100 art galleries, and, a little further down the road, two centuries of adobe homes and casitas.

Maria’s New Mexican Kitchen requires a short car drive from the Santa Fe Plaza. It’s a true local hangout, with mobs of hungry and thirsty patrons waiting for a table. And when I was last there, Maria’s offered as many as 200 margaritas containing different combinations of tequilas and mezcals, but the pandemic brought the list down to forty.

My time in Taos was limited, but it was essential that I save my last meal for my favorite restaurant in New Mexico, Doc Martin’s at the Historic Taos Inn. Perhaps it was because years ago, my first experience with traditional New Mexican food was at this historic establishment. Or maybe it’s just because the cuisine is so remarkable, it’s my first choice to dine in Taos. Their award-winning chili stew is a Northern New Mexico speciality with potatoes, pork and plenty of Hatch green chili. And what may be labeled as hot might be medium or it might be fiery. As they say in New Mexico, the chili is the chili. Doc Martin’s Restaurant was well worth the drive up north from Santa Fe and proved to be a tantalizing bookend to my culinary tour of the Land of Enchantment.

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