We did have one new thing in Dublin- Murphy’s Ice Cream. It is a local chain based out of Dingle and they have amazing flavors!
Jules went with the sea salt and honeycomb and I went with the brown bread and balsamic…
All four flavors were just incredibly good. If you ever go to Dublin (or Dingle for that matter)they have a few locations throughout the city. It is a MUST EAT!
I seriously cannot wait to get an ice cream maker when we get home!!!
Being back in Dublin meant eating a lot of the food we loved the first time we were there. We went back to fave restaurants and of course I drank a few pints of the plain…
as well as steak and Guinness pie…
Comforting and hearty, Irish food reflects their beautiful culture in a really delicious way.
Remember when I talked about how I didn’t love the food in Paris? And remember that I later fell in love the food in the south of France?
Well, we had the chance to put two and two together and voila, we love eating in Paris! And it didn’t hurt to have Frenchie to guide us around to restaurants and translate menus.
We went to a wonderful little Provencal restaurant where we started with some crispy little fish with aioli…
Pardon the color, we were sitting outside under a red heat lamp. They were delicious.
I went with the duck breast with fingerling potatoes and mushrooms…
And Jules went with the escargot pasta…
Oh, little snails- you are so delicious.
We had an even better meal the next night, but the place was so quaint and local I didn’t want to pull out my camera like a big ol’ honking tourist.
We had such a better food experience this time around. I think we covered all the basic French food groups on our weekend- croissants, escargot, foie gras, duck, cheese, and baguette. Frenchie even introduced us to saucisse (dried sausage) which is so good and canned fish liver which we actually really loved.
very. yummy. weekend.
Although I’m not a fan of the traditional lime caipirinha, Jules adopted the national Brazilian cocktail as her own. After much trial and error, I finally fell in love with the frutas vermelhas (red fruits, i.e. strawberries, raspberries, etc) version…
These are super easy to make and this simple recipe can be varied with any fruit you want for a caipifruta, substitute vodka for a caipiroska or even sake for a light caipisake. The choices are endless, just be sure to use fine or powdered sugar so it dissolves well or a sugar substitute.
When you talk about steak in Brazil, you’re talking about picanha. I’ve done a little research and although people say it is top sirloin or rump steak or tri-tip- I think it’s just a Brazilian cut of deliciousness. Outside of the amazing picanha M made us in Sao Paulo, the best we had was at the famous Garota de Ipanema.
I’ll admit we didn’t’ even know it was famous until we had been there like 4 times. I kept seeing the song lyric t-shirts people were buying and had even thought “Is this place called Girl from Ipanema or something?” only to find out it used to be the site of the café where the songwriters used to hang out watch the now famous girl walking by each day.
I was obviously too focused on cooking and enjoying my picanha…
For those who know me, I’m sure you could guess I’m planning on getting one of these little table top grills when we get home. It’s so great to have everyone cook their own steak to their preferred temp.
And no, I don’t plan on eating another steak for a good 6 months.
One of the first things we noticed when we first came to Rio was all these people walking around carrying these huge clear bags of little white packages of food. We didn’t know what was in those little white packages, but we vowed to buy one before we left. For weeks we kept seeing them and kept wondering what in the heck they could be.
We finally got some on one of our last days in Copacabana…
Inside was a very light (hence why the vendors could carry bags 3 times the size of themselves) and fried kind of cookie…
I think we ended up getting the salty one. I don’t know what the other offer was, but we heard “sal” and went with it since we knew what it meant. Remember my cow stomach incident? Go with what you know.
It wasn’t sweet and tasted buttery. We kept debating on what it actually tasted like, but I settled on pie crust.
Mystery solved.
I know we’ve been hearing about acai in the States for a few years now. I’m sure Oprah had something to do with it. Anyway, I know it is supposed to be some sort of miracle fruit that helps you lose weight. Apparently, here in its home of Brazil it’s a cool treat…
We saw a woman with it while walking with M & S one day and they couldn’t believe we hadn’t had it yet. I reminded them we were in Rio with zero Brazilian friends. What else should I be eating??? We turned the corner and found a little place that sold it. It kinda looks like a big cup of yuck. As we were waiting on the guy to make it, Julie turned to S and said “Oh, I can’t wait- looks delicious!”. It actually was good. They told us this one was a little too sweet because it is mixed with guarana syrup and the guy put too much. I had another acai later and liked the sweeter one better. It comes with a little cup of granola that you sprinkle over it, so it is like a salty sweet frozen sorbet. Sort of.
It’s one of those things that as you eat it you can’t really figure it out so you just keep eating it. I will say the one major downfall is how purple it stains your lips, mouth and teeth. I was so embarrassed I had to hold my hand over my mouth through the lobby of the hotel.
