lines of flight

^ This stuff is mildly addictive for some of us

Carousel Candyland in Kahala Mall is the only place in Hawaii with a reliable source of black licorice and most importantly, the salty salmiak kind. Above are the four strong ones they had earlier this week.

The kitty kat one is very mild and sweet with a hard, gummi texture but sort of a waxy, shell coating. The diamond and the coin are Dutch, very salty. Both are usually chewy, but unfortunately this double salt coin is hard and stale. The lil gumdrop is somewhere in the middle flavor-wise, sweet but with a definite tang.

Course there is a blog devoted to salt licorice now. LOL. I’m adding this important resource to the blogroll.

Also happy to report I’ve got a lead on a place in SF that supposedly has “17 different kinds of salt licorice”?!? This I must see.

From ice bar to sauna bar plus communist kitsch in Cuban and Russian flavors, Helsinki drinking establishments are not lacking in novelty. This of course means they are slightly corny and very expensive! A recent travel-section article in USA Today confirms that this trend of theme bars is on the upswing.

After reading the article, I can’t say I’m sad that we didn’t actually make it to the Arctic Ice Bar when we tried a couple years ago, at my insistence. The hours were all messed up and then our party of eight balked at the cover charge. Didn’t even know at the time that the room only seats 12 and has an average visit length of 20 minutes! Sheeeeeeeeeit.

As my charming cousins had already shown us, there are much better places to have a drink in Helsinki. This sounds good tho:

“The most intriguing offering is the $7.25 Fisu shot, found throughout the city. It’s a blender drink made by mixing chilled vodka with pastilles of Fisherman’s Friend, a menthol-flavored cough drop. The result looks filthy brown-black, but the taste is all fresh, Arctic icy burn. It has supplanted in popularity the similar but far more vile [lies!] salmiakki shot, made from vodka and salty licorice candies.”

IDK about “Arctic, icy burn” but it sounds yummy to me, like mentholated Jägermeister, maybe? Or maybe not. This blogger Cracker Lilo from whom I, ahem, borrowed the “fisu and sisu” line (but who is wrong about fisu meaning fish; I think it’s probably based on the name Fisherman’s Friend?), tried it at home after reading the article, even going so far as to try other kinds of cough drops like Sucrets and Halls. LoL!

Another blogger at Necroblogicon was less inspired but equally LoL-able. “The body of a Finn seems to be immune to the nigh-magical hangover inducing quality of this concoction. As a weak American, I spent the next two days dancing on the razor’s edge of vomiting and contemplating suicide. I didn’t cough at all, though, although that may have been because of the acid reflux ripping my esophagus to tiny mentholated pieces.”

In related news, the stereotype of Finland as a nation of alcoholics remains undiminished.

One of my missions in life is to taste every product made with a mouth-watering substance known in Finnish as salmiakki. I usually explain it to my American friends as “salty black licorice” but that description in no way does justice to this undeniably acquired taste.

Anthony Bourdain said something about all cultures having that one food that they are crazy about that no one else understands, but when he did the salmiak-vodka shots at the biker bar on the Swedish episode, I think he overlooked the passion Scandinavian people have for this substance. He treated it like street food, easily endured by one so iron-intestined as he.

But my love for salmiakki goes so much deeper. I’m not even ready to talk about it right now except to say that one of my missions in life is to taste every product made with salmiakki.

First on my wish list of new products to try–this is kind of insane–is salmiak HONEY.