It should come as no surprise that food is an integral part of my travel experience and even though I wrote a fair amount about some memorable culinary delights, there was still a lot I left out. The foods mentioned here (broken down by city) shaped my trip as much as strolling along the Seine or climbing to the top of Saint Paul's.
As you may know, I started off my trip housesitting in North London for a great family with the most wonderful dog ever. Before the fam left I was invited to dinner where I was exposed to British-style oven roasted potatoes.
This sounds so stupid because, I mean, I've definitely had oven roasted potatoes many times here in the states, but these were different. Thanks to a dusting of cornstarch and some good fat these crispy potatoes come closer in taste and texture to french fries. I knew from the first bite that I wanted to make my own when I got home and I found a great recipe here on BBC Good Food. I subbed grapeseed oil for the goose fat instead of olive oil because it has a higher smoking point. (That basically means that grapeseed can withstand a higher temperature than olive oil.) It worked like a charm when I made these with a roast chicken last month and they are by far the best potatoes I've ever made.
I've already talked about the croissants and the duck confit and the rotisserie chicken so I'm just gonna plug the pastries here. What kind? Doesn't matter. Try them alllll. Laduree's famous macarons were amazing as were the tarts from Eric Keyser, although I'm sure anything from either of these two places is divine. Check out this pistachio-apricot tart:
So pretty!
It's worth a trip to Laduree just to see the store (I got scolded for taking this photo). We bought eight macarons and they were gone within an embarrassingly short amount of time. Rose petal, violet, and orange blossom were my favorites just because they were so different, but the more traditional flavors like pistachio and caramel were equally delicious and intense.
Munich
I'll admit: I wasn't expecting a whole lot food-wise from Oktoberfest aside from giant beers, sausages and strudel but I was pleasantly surprised by a couple of things:
Cheesy Spatzle, which is the egg-noodle-meets-gnocchi dish pictured on the right (also notice the half-chicken. I finally had one!) and knodel, grated potato dumplings served in the most delicious dark beer sauce were revelations:
Unfortunately, both of these dishes involve a maddening level of steps and require tools (ricer, spatzle-maker) I don't have so I won't be recreating either of these any time soon. However, James and I plan on checking out the Munich Haus in Chicopee, MA at some point and if they have even passable versions of these dishes you'll be the first to know.
Prague
Like Munich, Prague is a part of the Bohemian region and thus shares many of the same foods (meat, potatoes, bread, repeat). For our first meal we wanted something authentic so we checked out local favorite Hastalsky dedek. I had the (crazy cheap) duck which came with two different kinds of weird dumplings (think canned bread) and some absolutely delicious red cabbage. I'd eat a bowl of it if I could. In addition, the menu's English translations were...interesting.
I came for the red cabbage, but stayed for the pig-slaughtering bread. And of course, a trip to Prague would not be complete without this:
THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE.
Vienna
We're still in the land of meat and potatoes, people, but now we have Austrian coffee. Viennese coffeehouse culture is a huge part of Vienna and is even listed as a UNESCO Intangible Heritage so yeah, it's a pretty big deal.
I chose the Ubersturzter Neumann, or Upside down Neumann, partially for the name and mostly for the whipped cream, which is put into an empty coffee cup while a double mocha is poured over it.
Many Austrian coffees have very specific instructions for their preparation and presentation, which can seem a little overwhelming at first but is all part of the fun.
During our visit to the famous Cafe Sperl our waitress gave us a little booklet called the ABC of Coffee which helped explain the extensive offerings while making Starbucks look like McDonald's dollar menu.
Budapest
Confession: I had a pretty bad cold during our two days in Budapest so I didn't really experience much in the way of Hungarian cuisine. I did make sure to have goulash for dinner on our first night and, from what I could taste, it was good and spicy. But my appetite was rather wain for most of the trip. However, we spent a nice afternoon at 1000 Teas, a cozy tea room with the largest tea menu I have ever seen. I had a pot of elderberry tea which was supposed to help with colds and I was good as new within a few days.
We also had some pretty great Thai food on our last night night, which was a welcomed break from the meat-and-potatoes express.
Dubrovnik
I've already rhapsodized about the wine, bread, and cheese so now I'm going to talk about the ham. Specifically, Dalmatian ham:
A thick-cut, smoked ham reminiscent of prosciutto, Dalmatian ham is a Croatian specialty and was featured on nearly every menu we saw.
Dubrovnik also has a great selection of high end restaurants (many of which were out of our price range) but we had a particularly memorable meal at Lucin Kantun, a Mediterranean tapas-style restaurant that included a delicious stuffed squid and beef carpaccio.
For our last meal in the walled city we decided to try something different and checked out Taj Mahal, a misleadingly named Bosnian restaurant. The food was a bit of a mix between Turkish and Greek--lots of spiced mets, phyllo, and yogurt. Katie ordered the sausages pictured above, which were a highlight, along with the teeny baked potatoes topped with thick yogurt.
Rome
Oh Rome, I could write about your food forever. Instead, I'm limiting myself to only three things:
We stopped at a random cafe for breakfast on our way to the Colosseum and happened upon the best breakfast pastry of the trip: coronetto (little horn) alla marmellata--a sort of Italian version of the croissant filled, in this case, with some kind of red jam or jelly. I'm not exactly sure what it was, actually. Marmellata can refer to what we think of as orange marmalade along with jam and conserves, but it didn't distinctly taste like raspberry or strawberry. If anything, it was some kind of mysterious red stuff. And man was it good. My cousin and I each had one and then we each got another before we left because well, when in Rome!
We had the BEST meal at Nipotino del Solitario, a tiny traditional family-run restaurant in the Esquiline neighborhood. Everything was fresh, home-cooked authentic Italian food at a very reasonable price, but the carbonara was outstanding. So, so good. I still dream about this dish. I'll be dreaming about it for the rest of my life. In fact, I need to go make some carbonara right now....
(Twenty minutes later)
Nope. Not as good.
We had our second best meal at Piccolo Arancio an inventive and reasonably priced restaurant near the Trevi fountain, an area that can be a bit of a tourist trap. I had lasagna with saffron and zucchini flowers (a long-standing obsession) which was light and flavorful.
Despite all this indulgence, I actually lost weight on this trip thanks to the hours of daily walking. But even if I hadn't it still would have been totally worth it.
