cape town catch

something about being on the coast makes it difficult for me to eat anything other than seafood. living in landlocked atlanta most of my life if there is actual fresh seafood to be had, i'm going to have it. we enjoyed a lot of wonderfully fresh seafood this weekend in cape town. we chowed down on lovely local fish (the above photo being some of the best fish and chips we've ever had), prawns, mussels, calamari and even had some pretty decent sushi, which is something we haven't had since we left the states.

i did veer off track sunday afternoon and had some beef goulash soup. it was rainy and chilly and they didn't have clam chowder. the soup was incredible thanks to the delicious chunks of ridiculously tender beef.

we've found that south africans don't mess around when it comes to their meats and since captonians really know their seafood it turned out to be a pretty tasty weekend.

open letter

dear indian, greek, and south african restaurateurs:

we've enjoyed many of your various offerings but would like to point out that "doritos" are not the chips to use when offering "nachos" on your menus.

thanks in advance for your prompt attention to this matter.

sincerely,
mav & jsv

la perfección

i admit one of the biggest reasons i wanted to go to spain was to eat. i really think food says so much about a culture and i had little doubt i would not fall in love with spain's.

our first tapas was unfortunate but i believe it was due solely to our inability to order in spanish. and although our first meal wasn't spanish but mexican i think it says a lot to be able to get decent ethnic food in a country. the tacos al pastor were impeccably done, the margaritas perfect and the guac was really some of the best i've had anywhere...even mexico. in greece you can't even get decent italian much less something as exotic as mexican or sushi.

breakfast at the hotel was lovely and fresh beyond fresh. after living in a city where almost all coffee is instant i could have kissed the coffee machine when i saw it was freshly grinding beans.

at lunch on friday i went straight for the jamón ibérico and cheese plate...



madrid is really gaga for this ham. it is produced only in spain and huge legs of it can be found hanging in every single restaurant. you can even go to ham cafes where you literally stand at the bar drinking cerveza and eating nothing but plates of ham. these pigs are fed a diet almost exclusively of acorns and i found it to be delicious. i already made jules promise me that after our 2 years are done we'll stop in spain on our way back so i can get a big ol' leg for our kitchen.



can you find a better cuisine when even their salted boiled potatoes are spectacular...



on saturday we had crispy seafood paella in plaza major...



and saturday night we had what i really came here for...hot chocolate and churros. this chocolate was so thick your spoon could rest upon its surface for hours. the churros were fresh and a delicious vehicle for the chocolate goodness.



the aftermath...



gastronomically speaking spain is by far my favorite place we've visited.

ooh-la-blah

i know i may hear it from my foodie friends, but i can say without hesitation that the only part of our paris weekend that disappointed us was the food.

apparently we just don't care for french cuisine. going out to eat was the only part of the day we dreaded and each meal was as disappointing as the previous.

the only thing i did love was the ice cream scoop (salted butter caramel) i had at the royal garden. it was probably the best ice cream i've ever had and that is saying a lot since we just went to the "land of gelato" last weekend.

listen, we've been to fancy french restaurants all the way down to the crepe we ate by the eiffel tower...our obviously unsophisticated palates were just not impressed.

i'm not sure anyone can go to paris and not fantasize about living there, but each time my daydream began i kept asking myself if i could really live off croissants and ice cream alone.

let them eat cake? okay, because the rest of it isn't very good anyway.

mangia!

We were perusing a menu at a restaurant near Trevi Fountain when the waiter came up and encouraged us to eat there. I asked him "Is it good?" but to guilt him into an honest answer also said "Seriously, though because this is my very first meal in Italy, is it good?". He later told me that he really took that to heart and that if we'd asked him last year when he worked at another restaurant that he would have told us to go somewhere else. He didn't want my first taste of his country's cuisine to be sub-par...and it wasn't. We started with a lovely bruschetta and a warm sheep's cheese that we ate with honey. It was divine.



We both had pasta for dinner that night...Jules had a tagliatelle with wild mushrooms and I had something he said was very typical and good. I can't remember the name but it was a tomato sauce and it had parma (ham) in it. Both were delicious...so delicious I forgot about photos until we had already eaten everything.

After our first dinner we had our first gelato at Trevi Fountain. Jules made poor choices but I loved both my latte and tiramisu.



We grabbed a quick lunch the next day...ordering pizzas we thought would be small and personal sized...




Jules and I stuck to our previous mushroom and pork (prosciutto) choices...they were thin crust and so, so good.

Our last night we headed to the Pantheon where we grabbed dinner just outside its doors...the waiters were wonderful, the atmosphere couldn't be beat and the food was impeccable. We had the best bruschetta I've ever put in my mouth, a great Shiraz and my Penne Arriabiata (spicy tomato sauce) was shear perfection.



We ended our night with another gelato for our walk back through Rome...



a sweet ending to a very sweet weekend.

hip to be square

since i've banned any further ordering of tzatzki which the greeks put so much garlic in it takes 3 days to rid your breath of its smell this is by far our favorite greek appetizer.



called "saganaki" it's a flat square version of a breaded and fried cheese stick.

you can get sagankis made with different cheeses but we usually order the traditional hard cheese variety. it isn't as melty as a mozzarella stick but i think it tastes much better. no need to gunk it up with marinara sauce...just squeeze some lemon on top and enjoy.

favorite "greek" restaurant...

okay, so it is a little weird but our favorite place to eat dinner thus far is a korean bbq restaurant.

we just happened upon it one night while trying to find somewhere to eat. we had been to a japanese place the week before but were sorely disappointed. the sushi was really pricey and not very good. but, you don't see a lot of restaurants outside of cafes and tavernas so we decided to give it a try.

it's called Dosirak which i think is the korean word for bento box (kinda like a lunch box meal) and it serves these, rice and noodle dishes, bbq meats and even has sushi too. from what i've seen from other tables it all looks pretty good. but, in truth neither of us has eaten anything other than the bbq beef. we both got it on our first visit and both refuse to order anything else.

eating a nice greek meal can easily take you up to 3 hours. we tend to be pretty lame during the week so it is nice to have a fairly healthy (not fast food) and fairly quick (less than 2 hours) place to get dinner.

we've already eaten at this place 4 times and i'm sure it will continue to be on heavy rotation for the next 5 weeks. i'm also sure when we go to asia i'm going to be kicking myself for not eating more meat and potatoes!

breakfast of champions

okay, maybe i'm not a "champion", per se, or in any way...but i do love the breakfast here.

i get to look out at the acropolis while eating and i am confident in the fact that i will never tire of the choices here. i was so sick of the breakfast buffet at the hotel in india i thought i'd scream if i saw one more egg white omelet.

who could get tired of eating this?



while looking out at this?

rikki-tikki-RAKKI

While in Arahova we dinner at a great restaurant named Flox...the hotel owner had recommended it and promised great food and an even better atmosphere. It did not disappoint in either cases.

Jules had the rooster with pasta...she thought it just tasted like chicken but I thought it was a little gamy, in a good way. I also thought they did a nice job cooking it for 3 hours so it was juicy and tender like a hen.



I had the traditional lamb (sorry Beth Y. but hey, I am in Greece) with potatoes. I adore the simplicity of the dishes here...just some olive oil, a little oregano and you've got yourself a wonderful meal.



We all had too much Rakki- a traditional Greek liquor (think gasoline) served warm with honey mixed in.



The owner was a merry old soul and brought us pitcher (yeah, pitcher) after pitcher of the stuff. It was my first time drinking it and I pray my last.

cheese plate

Maria and I ordered a "small cheese plate" at a cafe in Nafplio this weekend. We made this choice from a section that also offered a large cheese plate, a small and large meat plate and a small and large mixed plate of both meat and cheese.

This is what we received...and believe me other than the small bowl of feta in the middle everything else was meat. Even the stuff I thought had to be cheese ended up being turkey.



We asked our waiter about 3 times if this was the "small CHEESE plate" and he assured us it was. He even brought over the menu, pointed to "small cheese plate" and assured us that it just came with "a little meat".

I suppose if we had ordered the large meat plate we would have received whole pigs, chickens and lambs.