Basking in glory with Bilbao's kings of cod

"Al bacalao, le debo la vida, el poco dinero que tengo y la popularidad," Jenaro Pildain, 1931-2004.

“To salt cod I owe life, the little money I have, and popularity,” the words of Jenaro Pildain, legendary chef of Bilbao’s Guria restaurant, show just how close this once humble food is to the heart of Basque gastronomy.
Local lore has it that fishermen from the rocky Basque coast sailed to America long before Columbus but kept the discovery of the new world to themselves to prevent rivals getting their hands on the cod stocks off what would become Newfoundland.
So Guria’s (

www.restauranteguria.com) reputation as having the best bacalao in Bilbao, has been hard won.
Restaurants like Guria can be found in all Spanish cities. Serious, discrete places, seemingly unchanged for decades and serving time-honoured dishes to a loyal clientele unhappy with any messing around with the old recipes.
Guria’s origins date back to the 1920s in el Casco Viejo the old heart of the city, but after the catastrophic flood of 1983, they moved out to the current location on the Gran Vía.
Inside there’s a bistro with dark wood paneling with a posher dining room out back decorated in el estilo inglés _ with leather seats, white linen and 19th-century political cartoons on the lemon-painted walls.
It's not only bacalao. There’s a menu packed with dishes like sirloin steak with fresh goose liver in sherry (solomillo con hígado de oca al jerez) or fillet of hake with hake chins and clams (lomos de merluza con kokotxas y almejas).
However Pildain wasn’t known as el rey del Bacalao for nothing. Although he passed on in 2004, his four classic recipes are still the centerpiece of Guria’s cuisine.
If you can’t decide, you can order bacalao a los cuatro gustos made up of a bit of each, or bacalao del chef where your plate is divided between the two chunks of cod each blanketed in the time-honoured Basque sauces _ pale green pil-pil or deep red Viscaína.
Bacalao al pil-pil is a deceptively simple dish in which the fish is gently heated with garlic, olive oil and a hint of chili in a clay pan until the oil from the fish emulsifies with the oil to form a think, pungent, mayonnaise-like sauce.
Viscaína is the signature dish of the maritime province of Biscay, a rich mixture of red peppers, tomato and onion.
The cuatro gustos option add a quarter plate of bacalao Club Ranero _ invented by a French cook in Bilbao in the 1930s who combined the two local favorites by adding a sauce of red and green peppers to bacalao pil-pil _ and Guria’s own cod recipe with spinach and yet more peppers.
This was all excellent, and well accompanied by an excellent Viña Alberdi crianza from the Rioja Alta. Be warned that both food and wine were powerfull stuff, so go easy on the starters _ go for a plate of seasonal grilled vegetables or a salad of asparagus with tuna.
Still hard to resist desserts like canutillos con crema de queso (cream horns with cream cheese) or cuajada con mel (ewe’s milk curd with honey).
Bilbao, like Lille or Manchester, is one of those gritty, working cities which have reinvented themselves as cultural and tourism centres after some bad years following the decline of steel and shipbuilding industries.
The unavoidable centerpiece of Bilbao’s renaissance is Frank Gehry’s startling, titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum (www.guggenheim-bilbao.es) which sits like some burnished battleship on the banks of the river Nervión.
It’s undoubtedly one of Europe’s great modern buildings and houses an eclectic mix of works from Richard Serra’s vast spirals of rusting steel to intimate Surrealist interiors. Perhaps the most iconic works are outside, Louise Bourgeois’ giant spider sculpture Maman, or Jeff Koons even more disturbing Puppy.
Much as been made of the Guggenheim’s restaurant, part of the empire of superstar Basque chef Martín Berasategui.
It has fabulous sounding dishes like roasted squid with hazelnut oil and Joselito ham, or roasted leg of suckling veal with curd of milk and mustard sauce.
Be warned though you need to book well in advance. Even getting a cup of coffee and a cake at the front of house café required considerable patience.
In Gehry’s wake, the world’s celebrity architects moved into Bilbao big time. Santiago Calatrava did the airport and the delicate arch of the Zubizuri bridge upstream from the Guggenhiem. Norman Foster designed the fast and efficient metro with its, glass, shell-like entrances known affectionately as “fosteritos. Mexico’s Ricardo Legorreta built the 10-story, raspberry colored Sheraton Hotel. Cesar Pelli is building the Iberdola Tower, which will be the tallest building in the Basque country.
Perhaps the city’s greatest architectural marvel dates from an earlier age, out along the metro line towards the seaside suburb of Getxo. The Vizcaya Bridge, popularly known as the Puente Colgante, or hanging bridge. This is one-of-a-kind iron structure, granted World Heritage status by UNESCO. It was built in the 1890’s by a disciple of Gustave Eifel. To allow the high-masted ships to sail into the port of Bilbao from the Bay of Biscay, it links Getxo to Portugalete with a bridge 50 meters up over the Nervión. Hanging from wires is a gondola that swings up to six cars across the river every eight minutes. Vertigo-resistant tourists can take the lift up to the top and walk over or ride below as a foot passenger at a cost of 30 cents a time.
FoodEurope normally likes to avoid the big hotel chains, but made an exception for the Legorreta’s Sheraton. (http://www.starwoodhotels.com/sheraton/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=1457)
The rooms and public spaces abound with natural finishings _ marble, onyx, tropical hardwoods. There’s a soaring atrium rising above a column of light conceived by Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida. The heated rooftop swimming pool is small but offers great views and downstairs there’s a hearty breakfast to be had at the Aizian restaurant, one of the trendiest eateries in town.
Early starters get tortilla, churros, tuna pie, manchego cheese, as well as more familiar international items.
Later in the day, renowned chef José Miguel Olazabalaga offers a menu that aims to modernize traditional Basque cuisine with tempting concoctions like presa ibérica sobre un turron de pipas y arroz venere y jugo de soja (Iberian pork on sunflower seed nugget and black with soja juice), or rape en costra de bacón sobre mermelada de tomate y pulpo al pimentón (Monkfish wrapped in bacon on tomato marmalade and octopus with red pepper sauce).
Food that's less of a mouthfull can be found in the countless bars in and around the old town serving pintxos – the Basque version of tapas.
One of the great pleasures of Bilbao is aimlessly wandering the alleyways of the Casco Viejo past the tall, narrow houses with their wrought iron balconies and glass fronted facades pausing when the fancy takes you to snack on a pintxo or two.
The imagination of Bilbao’s pintxo producers is endless.
This is a sample of what we got through in one weekend:
- Skewers of green olive and anchovies;
- Red peppers stuffed with creamed cod paste;
- Dried ham on a slice of baguette;
- Potato tortilla;
- Baby squid, tentacles up on a bed of tomato, pepper and onion;
- Bacalao al pil-pil on an open sandwich;
- Mushroom and shrimp kebab;
- Deep fried squid with lemon;
- Tuna pickled with onions, carrot and peppercorns;
- Anchovies with red peppers;
- Smoked ham with brie;
- Spicy tuna paste with shrimp;
- Ham and cream cheese paté.
One of the best places to sample such delights is on the terrace of the venerable Victor Montes café in the Plaza Neuva with a glass of the tart Basque white wine, txakoli. (http://www.victormontesbilbao.com/ivictormontes1.html)
Best of all however is the Café Iruna, outside the old town in the shady Jardines Albia, where the splendid tiled walls date back to 1903 and the pintxos morunos pull in the crowds until late into the night. These are fabulous lamb kebabs, marinated in lemon and paprika and grilled in a corner of the bar. You’ll want more and more but try to save some space for another house specialty, the Valenciano, a cocktail of freshly-squeezed orange juice, vanilla ice cream and Grand Marnier. The way to do it is stir until the ice cream melts then gulp it down. (http://www.cafesdebilbao.net/cafes/)
If you can face the thought of more food, between the old town and the river is the Mercado de La Ribera, an art deco covered market build in 1929 that’s filled with salted pigs tails, Villarcayo black pudding, Pamploma sausages or Idiazábal ewes cheese. Pildain would approve.

Avoiding the hordes in Honfleur requires some Norman wisdom

Visiting Honfleur on a sunny spring bank holiday gives a whole new meaning to concept of Norman invasions.
Rather than mail-clad hordes heading for Hastings or GIs hitting the D-day beaches, this was an attack by armies of Parisians in pastel polo shirts and espadrilles flowing along the quays and alleys of the old port.
Honfleur is sufficiently charming to withstand even such an onslaught. The shimmering refection of its narrow merchants’ houses in the waters of the Vieux Bassin is one of Frances the classic sights. Behind the harbour, there’s a maze of cobbled streets lined with half-timbered shops filled with cider and calvados and weighty jars of tripes à la mode de Caen. Massive medieval warehouses, once filled with salt for the cod fisheries are now art galleries. Ancient churches show were the first settlers prayed before sailing to Canada, and museums highlight the work of the Impressionists attracted to the Norman coastline by the pearly Atlantic light a century .
Faced with the holiday influx, the best way to appreciate all this is to make an early start. At eight in the morning, the streets are deserted apart from street cleaners, waiters setting up tables and vans dropping off crates of fruit and vegetables for the over 80 restaurants squeezed into this little town of 8,000.
Then you can stroll in the still chill air and imagine the three wooden boats of Samuel de Champlain bobbing in the harbour before they set sail in 1607 to found Quebec, or Monet and Boudin painting the wide, invariably cloud-filled skies, over the mouth of the Seine.
Of course, one time when it’s impossible to avoid the crowds is dinnertime. We were warned to get in early to find a table, but lingered too long playing baseball on on the broad sandy beach at Vasouy and found the town’s best known bistros overflowing by the time we arrived.
Getting a bit desperate, we sank with gratitude into the old lace and velvet comfort of the Auberge de Vieux Clocher when we saw a table free.
As we perused the menu, a handsome young English couple sinking down with similar sighs of relief after ending a lenthy quest for dinner. After the wispy blond, quietly ordered a fishy selection in halting French, her beau looked up hopefully and asked, “Vegetarian?”
“Ah non,” replied the outraged patronne, “pas ici.”
“Just a little salad, perhaps?”
“Les salades vous trouverez dans les cafés á côté des quais monsieur,” she spat back and all but chased the hapless anglais into the street.
The legumes, she explained in triumph to the roomful of somewhat shocked diners, are all needed for the dishes on the menu. To serve a lettuce leaf and half a tomato separately would bring the whole system crashing down.
This hardly seemed very sympa and was rather typical of the place, which although recommended in some prestigious guides, obviously feels it does not need to make an effort to bring in the customers. Our food was okay _ oysters, chicken in cider, cod in sauce bordelaise _ but it carried a rather tired, institutional air to it, and there really is no excuse for serving stale bread in France.
Thankfully, we’d fared better on our first night in Honfleur, thanks to a recommendation from the charming owners of our out-of-town gite.
The Germain family has run L’Ancrage in a 17th century house for three generations, but it still has a fresh modern feel, with jokey young waiters and a few pavement tables overlooking the Vieux Bassin.
Dinner there was a pleasure from the aperitif of chilled glass of pomeau. There’s a daily menu updated with fresh catches – coquilles St. Jacques with linguini, lieu-noir (pollack) _ which is caught by line off the beaches north of Honfleur _ cod in cider. It came to €40 a head including a bottle of crisp Loire wine.
The great thing about staying in a gite, is that you always have the option of doing your cooking, eating al fresco with no worries about finding a table and taking full advantage of all the treasures available in the glorious French markets.
The Honfleuraise (http://www.honfleuraise.com) in the village of Equemauville, just inland from Honfleur, which was once home to the writer, Francoise Sagan, and how contains the famed Tartine et Macaron bakery, where we bought oven-fresh baguettes and buttery hot croissants for breakfast each morning.
Gites can be found all over France, usually in rural homes that are partly or wholly to rent. This one was a typical half-timbered Norman house, with an ancient cider press and a splendid garden shaded by cherry and apple trees which is shared by the Lefebvre family, the owners who live next door.
Taking our hosts’ tip, we headed early to the Honfleur market on Saturday morning to stock up. You can usually bet on French markets being a pleasure for the senses, but this one is really special. Surrounding the mighty église Sainte-Catherine _ France’s biggest wooden church which resembles an upturned man o’ war _ the variety and quality of the food on show was mind-boggling.
Dairy stalls are laden with pats of direct from the farm, the thickest, richest crème fraiche and the holy trinity of local cheeses _ Camembert, Livarot and Pont-l'Evêque. There are glistening piles of mussels and oysters, tables groaning with strawberries, thick andouille sausages and trays of jellied tripe in cider that will rend down to a think pungent stew when slowly heated. Farmhouse chicken and tender pink veal lay ready to be plunged into some of that cream and cider in classic recipes like poulet vallée d’Auge.
Naturally, you’ll need something to help all that down so its good that you buy calvados direct from any number of producers dotted around the countryside here. The Domaine Apreval (http://www.apreval.com/index.htm) is a just about the nearest to Honfleur, its orchards set in lush meadows on the slopes above the Seine estuary. After sampling a selection of vintages at the in a their thatched barn, the 10-year-old blend revealed itself to be an excellent choice at €39 a bottle.
Before you hit the calva, there are plenty of sights to drive out to around Honfleur. Deauville and Trouville are chic fin-du-siècle resorts. Le Havre just across the Seine was that rebuilt after Second World War bombing in a concrete modernist style that was once reviled and is now granted world heritage status. A bit further up the coast are the majestic white cliffs of Etretat and a short ride inland is Rouen the capital of Normandy with its vast cathedral and memories of Flaubert and Monet. A little further afield is Bayeux with its tapestry and the extraordinary beauty of Mont-St. Michel.
All well worth a visit, but if you want to avoid the crowds, it’s perhaps best to try a wet mid-week in November.

Galloping Gourmets in Slovenia

They love horses in Slovenia.

Those prancing, white Lipizzaners, stars of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, are a source of national pride.

Perhaps surprising then to discover that our chevaline friends also feature so widely on the dinner tables of Ljubljana, from burger joints like Red ‘n Hot Horse to fancy restaurants such as Spajza, where horse steak is served with truffles rather than ketchup.

Of course the Slovenes are not the only people to enjoy this lean, flavoursome meat. I’ve had foal goulash in Innsbruck and thick juicy horse steak in Brussels’ much lamented Au Brabançon restaurant (which was also renowned for its choesels _ a rich and now rare offal stew served with a single lamb’s testicle floating on top!), not forgetting the saucisse d’âne made from donkeys in the French Alps. In the English-speaking world and beyond, however, eating the relatives of Trigger or Red Rum is really not the done thing.

In the Gostilna Šestica they serve young horse with blueberries and brusnicami (curd cheese pancakes). This is an 18th century inn that’s a bit out of place on the busy main street Slovenska Cesta that cuts through central Ljubljana. Although the meat was a tad dry and the service a little idiosyncratic, this was a fine place to come late on a Saturday night, when the main room fills up with waltzing couples and a gutsy songstress belts out Slovene versions of “Yesterday” and “My Way”. I’d asked to start with a plate of kraska polenta s prustom in radicem, which was not easy. It turned out to be a creamy mix of polenta, curd cheese, dried ham and radicchio and was a delight, although I was somewhat nonplussed when the waiter simultaneously set it down alongside the main course. http://www.sestica.si/.

Slovene cuisine is a happy mix of things Mediterranean, Alpine and Balkan. Expect to find pasta, dumplings and baklava cohabiting on the same menu. The delightful Gostilna Mencigar-Nobile has even more influences. It takes inspiration from the cooking of the Prekmurje region in the far east of Slovenia along the border with Hungary. The Mencigar family philosophy fits in nicely with FoodEurope’s ideals. Having made their name serving Italian food, they decided to go back to their roots in the earthy cuisine of their homeland. Their mission, boldly stated on the restaurant’s web site: “to serve traditional delicacies from Prekmurje, prepared the same way our grandmothers used to prepare them.”

Ljubljana’s first Prekmurje restaurant is a bit off the beaten track, a 15-minute walk east along the Ljubjanica River, tucked away behind Sv. Jožef’s church. From the outside, it’s modern and nondescript. Inside however, great care has been taken to give the three rooms a cool-yet-cozy feel, with soft colours, rustic ceramics and vases filled with dried flowers.

The food here is really something special. Starters include tunka, meat preserved in lard; buckwheat soup made with milk; frogs’ legs with Prekmurje ham. Two of Prekmurje’s trademark dishes _ bograč and bujta repa are so well-liked around Slovenia that they have featured on postage stamps. Bograč is a stew of pork, beef and veal richly spiced with paprika to show off the region’s Hungarian links. Bujta repa is shredded, sour turnip traditionally prepared to accompany fresh pork on koline _ festive pig slaughtering days. The Mencigars serve it in a steaming cauldron served with home-prepared koline pork and sausages.

Also featuring on those stamps is the region’s best known delicacy, Prekmurska gibanica, a fabulously intense cake made of layers of filo pastry, poppy seeds, apple, walnut and cream cheese. It’s divine and something of a national dish in Slovenia. Mencigar’s has a dessert to rival it _ ice cream made from the black-as-pitch pumpkin seed oil which Slovenes usually use to season their salads. Needless to say, the wines – from Istria rather than Prekmurja, were excellent and the staff strongly encourages consumption of slivovica both before and after the meal. http://www.mencigar-nobile.com/


Ljubljana is a perfect place for a weekend trip. It’s small enough that you don’t have to rush around or cover great distances to see it all, and instead can amble around the car-free streets of the old town on either side of the river or take the little funicular railway up to the castle. Once at the top, admire the ceiling of the gothic chapel of Sv. Jurija chapel and the view from the lookout tower, then stroll down through the crocus covered hillside. There’s a plethora of baroque churches around the city, with pride of place going to the richly decorated interior of Sv. Nikolaja’s cathedral. For fans of more modern architecture, the city’s most famous son is Jože Plečnik the secessionist master who scattered the Central Europe with his works. He’s responsible for the landmark Tromostovje bridge in the heart of the city and the National Library is considered his masterpiece. The city’s best-known secessionist building is not one of his however, Ivan Vurnik designed the shocking pink Cooperative Saving bank opposite the Grand Union Hotel and his wife Helena painted the bold façade.

Plečnik did design the two-tier market halls that run along the southern bank of the river. At street level there are little shops selling bread and cakes or cheese and sausages. Down below by the river, there’s an elongated fish market with a varied catch from the Adriatic and Slovenia’s Alpine lakes and the fast flowing rivers. For visitors overdosing on meat, horse or not, the fish market offers a popular restaurant, the Okrepčevalnica Ribca. On the terrace under its arcades you can snack beside the water on squid, shrimp or whitebait with a glass of cool malvazija wine, or take a more substantial fish lunch.
A plate of fried kalamari, with a green salad, bread and a chilled glass of white came to €9.70.

Ljubljana’s morning market spills out of Plečnik’s halls into the squares and streets around the cathedral forming a glorious confusion of colours, with piles of fresh fruit, spectacular arrangements of fresh and dried flowers and a curious and uniquely Slovenian art form _ painted bee hive panels. On Sundays the food stalls are replaced by a flea market on the banks of the river between the Tromostovje and the Čevljarski bridges which is surprisingly hot on mementoes of the old Yugoslavia. Busts of Tito are a bargin.

Two of Ljubljana’s most renowned restaurants are the aforementioned Spajza, a nicely bo-bo place in Gornji trg, one of the most atmospheric streets of the old town and the Gostilna As, which sits in a courtyard next to the central Prešernov trg. Both serve what might be called Adriatic cuisine, with dishes that blur the line between Slovene and Italian. Sea bass baked in salt may be claimed by the Ligurians as their own, but it’s also a firm favorite with the Slovenes, who use their own pure crystals from the salt pans of Piran for the purpose. Both these restaurants have it as a signature dish. As well as its fancy basement restaurant, As also has a covered terrace popular with Ljubljana’s ladies-who-lunch. It does a mean plate of Kraški reznici _ broad ribbons of pasta with karst pancetta, leaks and parsley. http://www.gostilnaas.si/.

One of the attractions of Ljubljana is its location close to both the Adriatic and the Alps. Time your visit right, and with barely an hour’s trip in either direction you can ski one day and plunge into the sea on the next.

On the edge of the Alps, heading north out of the city is the Kranjska region known for its buckwheat and sausages. In the little village of Predoslje pri Kranju is the Gostilna Krištof which would be worth a trip out from the capital even when it doesn’t have the local folk musicians waltzing visitors in on a Friday night.

The chef prefers local organic products and while the food is firmly rooted in the region’s traditions he’s not afraid to innovate which such ideas as “gorenkski suši” an appetizer with raw river trout and their bright red caviar.

The banquet which was offered on the night I was there, started with drinks on the terrace that included liquors made with odd things like pine needles, oregano or fennel.

Inside thinks got serious: smoked beef tongue with horseradish, pear and ruccola was followed by barley soup with that kranjsko klobaso sausage. The highlight was black pudding mixed with freshwater crayfish and spiced carrots. Then came lamb chops with rosemary flavoured polenta, served with black radish and sour cream, To end, chocolate dumpling with homemade strawberry ice-cream and dark chocolate cunningly spiced with some of that Piran sea salt. Each course came with matched wine, including the weird and wonderful Movia Lunar, a cloudy white made by fermenting whole bunches of grapes in underground casks, and a sweet red Pikolit, which like the vins de paille of southern France is made with grapes dried on straw mats. http://www.gostilnakristof.si/.

The whole meal was a tribute to Slovenia’s great attachment to its terroir which produces an astonishing variety of food in such a small country. Only the Illy coffee was not domestically produced, but that come pretty close _ the Yugoslavs only recognized Italian rule over Trieste in 1975, forty years after Hungarian immigrant Francesco Illy set up his company in the border town.

For places to stay, the Antiq hotel in the old town, rates highly; http://www.antiqhotel.si/; the Slon’s rooms can be a bit cramped, but it carries a faded between-the-wars panache and has two fine cafes, http://www.hotelslon.com/; the Grand Hotel Union lives up to it’s name _ if you can afford to stay in the posher, older part, http://www.gh-union.si/.

As for reading material, books set in Ljubljana are not too easy to find but you could try “Death of a Prima Donna” by Paris-based Slovene author Brina Svit, or “Veronika Decides to Die” by Brazilian best-seller Paulo Coelho. Set mostly in an unnamed Slovene industrial city “The Cartier Project” by Miha Mazzini is a wry, punky look at life in 1980’s Yugoslavia.

On the Road to Go Home Lake

Foodeurope takes the family for a great American road trip and discovers you can find some darn good cooking across the Atlantic.

First stop: New York City. We fly in to JFK and like good Europeans get dirty looks for under tipping the cab driver and the bell hop at the Roosevelt Hotel, a grand Midtown landmark named after President Teddy that opened in 1924 and features in movies like "French Connection" and "Maid in Manhattan" (Jenifer Lopez making up rooms!). http://www.theroosevelthotel.com

Jetlagged but in need of food we wander east down 45th Street and find Menchanko-Tei amid a row of Asian eateries. It offers ramen noodles, roast pork and oden to visiting salarymen. Oden is a broth filled with a rich mix of mysterious ingredients. Mine had daikan radish, an octopus leg, grilled tofu, bits of crab, sausage and more rubbery things that I couldn’t quite identify. The kids take Hakata raman _ noodles in a thick milky broth from the city of Fukuoka topped with sliced pork, red ginger and shitake mushroom. With a bottle of beer and water it came to just $29 for three. http://www.menchankotei.com

Breakfast was in Bryant Park, once a junkie haven, now an island of greenery surrounded by art deco gems. We grab cinnamon bagels, blueberry muffins, orange juice and coffee from the great Turkish deli on 40th Street. By lunchtime, a downpour forces us into Macy’s where we plunder the basement salad bar _ aubergine with saffron, baked tofu, cracked bulgur, bok choi with sesame.

An old favorite for dinner, Cabana, serving nueva latina cuisine with wonderful views over Brooklyn and the towers of Wall Street from the pier at South Street Seaport. Set up originally as a Cuban joint in Queens, this is now a mini chain with three outposts in NYC and more in Florida. It’s bright and brassy, with singing waiters, a salsa soundtrack and spicy Caribbean food. Mojitos and virgin mango daquiris get us in the mood. Fried plantain chips with garlic dip and shrimp in coconut sauce lead the way into a great mariscada of fresh, firm scallops, prawns, clams, crayfish in a spicy tomato broth, served with black beans and saffron rice. The pollo jamaiquina was juicy, barbeque blackened and blasted with jerk sauce; the pollo al ajillo, was tender and lightly spiced. It’s a fab place, with a couple of glasses of Californian chardonnay, dinner came to $40 a head. http://www.cabanarestaurant.com

Next night we cross the Caribbean to Mama Mexico on E 49th Street to be serenaded by mariachis, as we suck on Tecate beer and frozen margaritas. There’s also a vast range of tequila. The décor is technicolour, the atmosphere fun and friendly, the menu an encyclopedic array of Mexican classics. The enchiladas de Mole Poblano, dripping with savoury chocolate sauce, were perfect. The enchiladas suizas with salsa verde and burrito relleno defeated the most voracious adolescent appetite. Great coffee, $140 for three a bit steep, but perhaps worth it for La Bamba from the guys with the moustaches and sombreros. http://mamamexico.com

After a morning at MOMA, it was time for a NYC classic, a picnic in Central Park provided by the Carnegie Deli on 7th Avenue. Waiting in line at the takeaway bar you can admire the photos of former customers like Halle Berry, George W. or Sylvester Stallone. The pastrami sandwich is about 6 inches thick, not easy to get your choppers round but more than worth the effort. http://www.carnegiedeli.com

Fairway Market at 2127 Broadway, offers great gourmet shopping for inhabitants of this cool Upper West Side neighbourhood, and the food is available for sampling in upstairs steakhouse. They serve tangy Brooklyn Ale, there’s a wood burning oven fired up for pizza and a great sizzling grill for the renowned burgers and steaks. On our visit, dishes of the day included pasta bake, shrimp and garlic salad and a seared salmon with green beans and cherry tomatoes. http://www.fairwaymarket.com. We skip dessert to head round the corner to the Café Lalo to wait beneath the pavement fairy lights for a table at the place where Tom Hanks met Meg Ryan in “You’ve Got Mail.” Inside this French-style cafe serves up a baffling variety of pastries. Head straight to the triple chocolate truffle. You won’t be disappointed. http://www.cafelalo.com

Stop two: Washington DC. Amtrak down the east coast to a steamy July capital. We’re staying out in leafy Reno Road among the squirrels and songbirds, but it’s still 85 F in the shade. When we head out for an evening at Dupont Circle. Everybody’s eating al fresco, but we manage to grab a terrace table at Raku, a pan-Asian diner filled with after work media and diplomatic types seeking some spice. We feast on pad sew – Thai squid and shrimp in black bean sauce with noodles and stir fried veg, grilled beef and chilli salad, crab ravioli and Hunan chicken salad with ginger and sesame noodles. For afters we head to Kramerbooks & Afterwards café, a late night bookshop that serves a mean ice-cream. http://www.kramers.com. We grab some cones and sit beside the fountains watching crowds dancing away to a souped up New Orleans Jazz band on Connecticut Avenue.
Summer on the Potomac is hot and humid, so we seek refuge amid the air-conditioned delights in the world’s grandest collection of museums. Among the marvels along the Mall we see Judy Garland’s ruby slippers, fly jet fighter simulators, gaze on Monnet facades and snack on Navajo cookies.

Since 1856, the Old Ebbitt Grill has been welcoming Washington insiders to partake of steak, oysters and other American classics. Just a few steps from the White House, this was once a favorite of Presidents Grand and Cleveland. The walrus head looking out from one wall was reputedly bagged by Teddy Roosevelt. The crab cakes are justly famous and the cheese burgers drew rave reviews from the kids. Fresh summer ingredients made the salads a winner and the lamb kebab with garlic, yoghurt and baba ganoush was perfect hotwave eating. http://www.ebbitt.com.

In the happy suburb of Bethesda, Maryland. It was kids’ choice, and we headed to Uncle Julio’s Rio Grande Café. Part of a Tex-Mex mini chain that began life in Dallas in the 1980’s, it’s vast, noisy, and chummy, a fake hacienda serving up huge portions of fajitas, tacos and frijoles while you drink Dos Equis and coke from the bottle and watch football (the real thing Chelsea were playing) on big screens. http://www.unclejulios.com

Stop three: Wellsboro, PA. Drive north in our rented Mitsubishi Gallant along the mighty Susquehanna river we pass big, wooden farmhouses, gleaming grain silos and the occasional Amish buggy as the road takes us deeper into rural Pennsylvania. The aim was to discover a typical all-American small town for the night and the choice was Wellsboro, pop. 3,300 in Tioga County. It was perfect, with a colonnaded court house, pastel-painted weatherboard homes built by 19th-century timber tycoons, a neon-lit 1950s’ movie theatre and a nearby natural wonder in the Pine Creek Canyon _ a forest-covered valley 1,000 feet deep where you can watch Turkey vultures gliding the thermals.
The Penn Wells Hotel is a solid, turn-of-the-century main street hotel which may have seen better days, but is justly proud of its US flag made from Christmas tree decorations that graced the cover of Time in 1940s, and reminds us that Wellsboro was once the Christmas decoration capital of the world. Although the rooms could do with a bit of fleshing up, the fine old Art Deco restaurant is a favorite with locals. Friday was fish night, a thick and tasty clam chowder, followed by Atlantic haddock fried with chips or grilled with baked sweet potatoes and ratatouille. They have the local Yeungling lager on tap, root beer for the kids and chocolate-peanut butter cream to finish up, like a big, sticky spoonful of America. For four this was a snip at $70. http://www.pennwells.com. Before leaving, you must take breakfast at the Wellsboro Diner, an authentic 1930’s rail car serving eggs over easy, crispy bacon, French toast, hot cakes and home fries. http://wellsborodiner.com.

Stop 4: Niagara. Through the wooded hills of northern Pennsylvania and over the border into Canada. The city of Niagara Falls is kitschville, filled with stores selling chocolate “moose droppings,” and droll tee-shirts featuring Mounties and beavers. None of this can detract however from the sheer power of the falls, roaring away in the chasm below. The walkways take you surprisingly close to the thunderous Horseshoe Falls, but to get really intimate with the one-million-bathtubs-a-minute torrent, get drenched on the Maid of the Mist trips which is awe-inspiring and a lot of fun. Dinner took us to Edgewaters Tap and Grill overlooking the falls in Victoria Park. This was apparently the place where Princess Di took her kids on a visit to the Falls some years ago. It’s a fairly standard burger and ribs place, but offers great views and is a reliable family option in a town not overflowing with gourmet choices. Canada has some great beers and this has a good choice including Creemore Springs lager and Rickards Honey Brown ale _ a wiser choice perhaps than the Wayne Gretzky merlot, even for diehard ice hockey fans. http://www.niagaraparks.com/dining/edgewaters.php

If Niagara Falls is a little too tacky for your tastes, head down river to Niagara-on-the-Lake a prim little Victorian town of craft shops and tea rooms sitting on the edge of Lake Ontario across from the 17th century French-built fort on the U.S. shore. The drive down along the Niagara River is a delight trip through orchards and vineyards. There are lots of roadside stores laden with ripe local peaches, apricots and cherries and tasting visits are available at the elegant wineries responsible for Ontario’s growing reputation for table wines as well as the renowned, sweet ice wines.

Stage 5: Muskoka. Highway 400 north from Toronto cuts through rich, rolling farmland that eventually gives way to the rugged granite outcrops and towering pines of the Muskoka lake region. This is 2,500 square miles of lake and forest where Torontonians come to get back to nature. There are 1,600 lakes spread between the wild coast of Georgian Bay and the vast wilderness of Algonquin Park.

Although city folk flock here at weekends, the scale of the place means getting away from all is no problem. Our home was a fabulous wood cabin close to Go Home Lake _ where trappers once gathered at the end of the season before heading homeward. We stayed at our friends' place, but private cottages can be rented across Muskoka, check out www.discovermuskoka.ca.

This is every overcrowded European’s dream of an North American hideaway, perched over the bottle green waters, miles from the nearest neighbor, surrounded by forest, a big stone fireplace, a porch overlooking the lake where ruby-throated humming birds hovered, chipmunks and blue jays disputed crumbs, and raccoons showed up to root around for nocturnal leftovers.

Nature of course has its downside. That became clear when we first stepped out of the car to be assailed by storm of carnivorous insects as we rushed to carry our luggage to the cabin. We soon learned to avoid the early morning and dusk rush hours for mosquitoes, deer flies and other man-eating bugs. Fortunately we saw no sign of the rattlesnakes we’d been alerted to, but the sound of something large crashing through the undergrowth one night and a pile of steaming poo on the drive next morning proved the “watch-out-for-the-bear” warnings were more than scare-mongering.

Although there are restaurants a-plenty in the pretty little lakeland townships like Bracebridge, Bala or Gravenhurst, we were living off the land, or at least the stock of Canadian products we brought up from Toronto, supplemented with occasional trips into town.

The pace of life soon slows down. Breakfast on porridge or pancakes with local maple syrup and dried cranberries from the nearby Wahta Mohawk community. Then a swim or kayak ride on the lake, dodging the snapping turtles _ they are big, scary and curious, coming up close to get a good look at sunbathers, but we were assured they don’t bite unless really provoked. There’s not much too but relax, watch the wildlife, wander the woods or read a good book (Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace is a dark tale of murder in an isolated Ontario farm _ if that does not freak you out too much on a dark and stormy night in your lonely lakeside cabin).

The farmer’s market in Bala provided smoked trout, fresh corn on the cob, maple-pumpkin butter, and nutty Oka cheese made by monks in Quebec. The Chelsea buns from Don’s bakery are justly renowned in the little town build around the rapids where two branches of Lake Muskoka run together. The variety and quality of Canadian beer was a revelation, from Montreal’s St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout or Moosehead from New Brunswick to Ontario ales like Burlington’s Nickle Brook ale or Confederation from down the road in Barrie, just the thing for watching the sun go down on the deck (just make sure you’re behind the mosquito netting).

To be continued …

Eating beaver the Lithuanian way

On my first visit to Vilnius, we arrived late, dropped off the bags and headed into the Old Town to get a glimpse of the famed nightlife, only to find it was dead, deserted, a ghost town.
We were bemused, depressed, then a roar went up from bars and homes all around, hordes of cheering people spilled into the streets, a cacophony of claxons rent the night air.
The whole city had been watching basketball and the local club Lietuvos Rytas, had just beaten some Greek upstarts to win a European title.
The impact was astounding. In a bar on Didžioji street just down from the Town Hall everybody wanted to be our friend. A smart chap newly rich from selling Audis bought us drinks, recalled his grandparents’ ordeal under Stalin and extolled the virtues of the free market. One young lady, somewhat under the influence of Lithuania’s excellent ales, decided there was only one way to celebrate and went from man to man in the search for suitable partners. She soon found someone to take up her offer and both were thrown out when they starting getting jiggy with it on a bar stool.
Wild enough you might think, but the next night saw us eating beaver.
It seems these cute little dam-building rodents used to be something of a staple among the Lithuanian hunting and fishing set and beaver stew is now a favourite on the menu of Lokys (www.lokys.lt) a restaurant dedicated to serving up ye olde food of yore in a 15th-century merchant’s home. «Visit our house and taste the master’s hunting takes turned on fire for your delight ! » Lokys’ advertising says it all.
Medieval theme restaurants are all the rage across the eastern Europe, so thankfully Lokys stays just on the right side of kitsch ... or maybe not.
On my first visit, a big group of us sat seated around a vast, roughly hewn table on the ground floor where we quaffed a brain-fuzzying variety of local drinks, ate “beaver meat stew with champignons and farce potatoes,” “quail with blackberries sauce, loved by charming Lithuanian ladies”and “boar-meat roast with cowberries, praised by Grand Duke Gediminas.” We were well prepared then for the wandering minstrels who then showed up to serenade us with bagpipes, tambours and hunting horns, before handing round instruments to all the diners so we could participate in this outburst of Baltic folklore.
My recollection of the place - insomuch as I have any recollection after sampling samanė (homemade vodka), žalgiris (extra-strong mead) and the like – was that it was a lot of fun, but that the food was perhaps not the greatest.
However, the lure of the beaver is strong and on a drizzly winter’s night some years later, I found myself leading a group of curious visitors past the wooden bear at the entrance (lokys is Lithuanian for bear) down the shoulder-width stone staircase to the gothic basement vaults for a second go.
This time the atmosphere was more restrained - troubadours only show up at weekends it seems - but the food was excellent. To start, a glass of gira, a refreshing, only slightly alcoholic drink made from fermented bread and similar to Russian kvass. Since this is Lithuania, this one is made from the wonderful black rye bread duona flavoured with caraway. These loaves show up not only as a basis for a drink, but deep fried with garlic as a starter or snack with beer, and even as dessert soaked with cranberry juice and crowned with whipped cream in the local equivalent of bread-and-butter pudding.
Soups are something eastern Europe does very well; beet and potato are two of the most favoured varieties here. But since Lithuania’s forests are famed for their wild mushrooms, the “boletus” soup seemed a good choice, a meaty broth in which these kings of the fungal race floated in abundance. I stuck with them for my main course, a thick, ripe steak of roe deer on a bed of these cèpes, served with little carrot dumplings and bundles of thinly sliced carrot and courgettes.
Lithuania’s big breweries Svyturys, Utenos and Kalnapilis produces some fine alus (beer), but the Lokys also sells its own “old Lithuanian beer,” named Butautų dvaro which is a deliciously malty brew served in one litre bottles, which you can also buy to take home (although remember you won’t be able to carry them on to the plane.) Just one more treat to help that rye-bread pudding down, Bobelinė, a bitter shot made with cranberries. A great meal even without the bagpipes, for around 100 litas (€30).
A few facts about Vilnius: it’s the capital of Lithuania which together with Latvia and Estonia broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991. In the 14th and 15th centuries in a union with Poland, Lithuania was one of the most powerful states in Europe, with borders stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Lithuanians claim the old town of Vilnius is the biggest in Europe _ although it’s hard to see how they measure these things. Over the years it’s been fought over by Russians, Swedes, Poles and Germans. Even when the rest of Lithuania gained a brief burst of independence between the wars, Vilnius was still ruled by the Poles who called it Wilno. Polish and Russian are still spoken by minorities in Vilnius. One of the most popular dishes in Lithuania are Zeppelins (or actually Cepelinai) _ airship-shaped lumps of mashed potato stuffed with minced meat and served in some slimy cream or oil-based sauce. Lithuanian claims to be one of Europe’s oldest languages and is like no other. Hello is labas, thank you is ačiu (pronounced atchoo, so if you catch a cold people will think you are really polite.)
Lithuania was the last pagan country in Europe, converting to Christianity only in 1387. Since then they’ve made up for it and the skyline of old Vilnius is a forest of church spires, mostly in the baroque style with soaring facades in lemon, cream or peach and ornate bell towers, which give the city a strongly Catholic and almost southern European feel. However, he three best known churches buck the trend. The Arkidatedra Bazilika cathedral is the heart of Lithuanian Catholicism, but looks more like a Greek temple behind the columns of its classical portico. The Cathedral of the Theotokos, Vilnius main Russian Orthodox church, is even more exotic, with its conical towers build in the style of far away Georgia. St. Anne’s is a gothic gem, whose lacy pinnacles so impressed Napoleon that he reputedly planned to have it dismantled brick-by-brick and rebuilt in Paris. The Old Town is not just churches; there are fine palaces and alleyways lined with shops selling linen and Baltic amber. In the heart of it is Vilnius University which dates back to 1570 and is one of the oldest and grandest in northern Europe. Students spill out of the vaulted auditoria and airy courtyards to ensure that the Old Town is no dusty museum piece. There are student bars all around. One of the best is Cozy (www.cozy.lt) which contains a laidback all-day café and restaurant and a hot basement DJ bar at weekends.
You can stay in four-posted style in the old town at the Stikliai Hotel (http://www.stikliaihotel.lt) a luxury inn that’s welcomed guests since the 17th century, from €190 a night. Another historic boutique hotel is Grotthuss (http://www.grotthusshotel.com) a power yellow town house with rooms from €120. Easier on the wallet is the Ida Basar (http://www.idabasar.lt) which has comfortable, if unremarkable doubles from €100, in a great location just down from the Gates of Dawn, part of the old city fortifications decorated with a venerated gold-coated statue of the Virgin Mary. Appropriately, the Domus Maria guest house (http://domusmaria.vilnens.lt) is even closer to the golden gates, offering rooms from €72.
To enjoy the view over all those dreamy church spires, climb the hill in the Užupio district, an artsy neighbourhood beyond the river Vilnele which actually claims to be a sovereign republic with its own independence day … on April 1. Another fine vista can be had from the Gediminas Tower, a squat little fortress perched above the city that’s a symbol of Lithuanian nationhood. Grand Duke Gediminas is the national hero here, a 14th century pagan warrior whose relative religious tolerance saw Vilnius expand into a city of Catholic and Orthodox Christians, Jews and Muslim Tartars living alongside the local followers of ancient Baltic deities. Later that century came an influx of Karaites, a mysterious from the Crimea speaking a Turkic tongue and following a religion with roots in Judaism. They have left their mark on Lithuanian cuisine through the kibinai, lamb or beef pies which look a lot like Cornish pasties and have become a popular Lithuanian snack.
They are particularly tempting in the delightful little Julara bakery and café near the Lithuanian parliament on Gedimino Prospektas, which is the main avenue of Vilnius, housing imposing government buildings, theatres, bookshops and several swanky new shopping centres in elegant stucco buildings.
In the summer, locals will tend to head out of town to eat in the restaurants of Trakai the former capital with its spectacular island castle or to Vandens Malünas, (http://www.vandensmalunas.lt) a friendly restaurant in an old watermill near the Verkiai mansion, which although its menu has standard “international” food it also includes dishes with a Lithuanian flavour such as herring with wild mushrooms and roast leg of duck with pears.
In the winter though, it’s perhaps best to go underground in search of good Lithuanian food in the cellars of the old town. Forto Dvaras (http://www.fortas.eu) is a good bet for the likes of sauerkraut soup with smoked sausage or vedarai, described as “mashed potatoes stuffed in animal guts with crackling and sour cream.”
Then there is Žemaičiai (http://www.zemaiciai.lt) on Vokieciu Street whose underground rooms are divided between bare benches and wooden tables filled with happy crowds of local beer guzzlers and upmarket rooms hung with antlers, stuffed pheasants and the like.
We began with the “half-metre eel,” a thick, smoked monster with a pointy tail and a fixed toothy grin at the other end. Best taken with a shot of iced vodka. Backup came in the form of the “Beer snack” a wooden platter laden with garlic fried black bread, slivers of pig’s ear, slabs of smoked pig’s tongue with pride of place taken by a thick slice from the tip of a pig’s snout, nostrils pointing up to the low arched ceiling. It was excellent with their homemade, unfiltered beer, although I’m not so sure about the Voruta blackcurrant wine. Next up, roast goose breast with fried apples, potato dumplings, brown sauce and apple jam, and to follow šimtalapis, a poppy seed and puff pastry cake with vanilla cream. Maybe that’s what Cole Porter had in mind when he pointed out that the “Lithuanians and Letts do it.” Į sveikatą!

Join the Brats pack in central Europe’s Cinderella city

Poor Bratislava never seems to get a break. Disfigured by demented urban planners and permanently outshone by its trinity of glamorous neighbours _ Vienna, Prague and Budapest. When the Slovak capital finally gets some big time international attention it’s in a Hollywood horror flick, “Hostel”, that suggests any tourists foolhardy enough to go there are likely to meet a grisly death at the hands of sadists wielding power-tools.

Bratislava has tried to fight back, selling itself as a cheep booze and stag night destination with such inventive tags as “Partyslava,” “Bartislava,” or just “Brats.” Fortunately there’s more to this city of half-a-million. As Slovakia got over its messy, post-independence years of the early ‘nineties, foreign investment has given it one of the fastest-growing economies in central Europe and the capital has had a facelift.

On a chilly weekend between Christmas and New Year, the narrow streets of the Old Town filled with fog, and frost coated the trees above the city up on Castle Hill. The Old Town, or Staré Mesto, is the freshly restored heart of the city. New boutiques, galleries and bars have sprung up all around and there are enough cosy cafés serving great wedges of cream cake to satisfy the most voracious Habsburg appetite.

The Staré Mesto is small in size, but big on atmospherics. Its streets are lined with pastel painted palaces and the skyline punctuated with church spires. With few tourists and most of the locals away skiing or huddled up at home, the pedestrian-only streets were almost deserted as we picked out rococo angels, baroque towers or art nouveau fretwork from out of the mist.

On Hlavné Námestie, the central square, the colourful tiles on the Old Town Hall roof face a trio of great old cafés serving as havens from the wintry weather outside. Café Roland is the grandest, taking up the ground floor of a splendid jugendstil building. Its tall glass façade looks out over the lemon-and-white tower of the town hall, while the dark wood panels inside are hung with turn-of-the-century photographs of the city then called Pressburg or Pozsony by its Austrian and Hungarian overlords.

Roland is a classic central European watering hole offering milky cups of Vienner melange coffee to remind us that the old imperial capital is just an hour’s train journey away, and wonderful makovo-višňová štrúda (cherry and poppy seed strudel), for a fraction of Viennese prices. Just next door, is the rival Maximilan Delikateso, the place for an unctuous mug of hot chocolate. The third of this trio is the Café Meyer a remnant of the Kaiserlich-und-Königlich era where marzipan, chestnut and chocolate tortes are served under a wistful portrait of Empress Sissi.

Café Meyer was a favourite of the great British travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor who stopped over in Bratislava during his epic walk across Europe in the 1930s. In his book “A Time of Gifts” he lovingly describes a lost world where Slavs and Magyars, Germans and Jews mingle in a colourful polyglot city adjusting to its sudden switch from Hungarian to Czechoslovak rule.

Pointing the way into Mayer's with a flourish of his top hat is the smiling statue of a character known, somewhat unfortunately, as Schöne Nazi. It seems Nazi was short for Ignatius, and this old boy was a much-loved pre-war character known for serenading the ladies of Bratislava in his battered topper. Quirky statues have popped up all over the Old Town as part of post-Communist efforts to liven the place up. On the busy Panská street there is a cheeky bronze chappy sticking his head out of a manhole. Stories vary as to whether he’s a resistance fighter or a peeping Tom looking up the short skirts of passing girls. Outside the elegant French embassy building on Hlavné Námestie is a Napoleonic solider. Bonaparte’s army bombarded the city in 1809 and one of his cannonballs is still said to be embedded in the Town Hall tower. Four year’s earlier, Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz forced the Austrian Empire to sign the humiliating Peace of Pressburg in the glittering mirrored halls of the Primaciálny palác, the pale pink palace of the primate of Hungary, which oddly enough contains a unique collection of 17th century English tapestries.

Bratislava became the capital of Hungary after the Turks captured Buda and Pest in 1541. Hungary’s kings were crowned in Dóm sv Martina the great gothic cathedral of St. Martin for 300 years. The Magyar aristocracy filled the city with grand palaces like the Pálffyho palác which now houses art exhibitions or the Grasalkovičov palác, currently the abode of Slovakia’s president. Hungary’s first university the Academia Istropolitana is still in the patrician street Ventruska ulica. After the Hungarian lords moved back to Budapest in the 18th century, Bratislava reverted back to a provincial backwater of the Austro-Hungarian empire, although it still managed to acquire some fine public buildings like the National Theatre on the Hviezdoslavovo Námestie, an elongated square lined with embassies and the sumptuous Carlton Hotel down near the Danube.

Workmen were dismantling the famed Christmas market in Hlavné Námestie when we arrived (it closes on Christmas Eve), but some remnants were still operating in front of the theatre, serving thick, paprika-flavoured kolbasa sausages with rye bread and tangy mustard, and steaming glasses of spiced wine. Just round the corner is a Czech bar, Prazdroj serving Pilsner Urquell, but also the thick, sweet tamavy dark beer from the Šariš brewery in eastern Slovakia.

In the old Czechoslovakia it was said that Bohemians made the best beer, Moravians the wine and Slovaks eau de vie. Bratislava’s bars certainly have an array of firewater made from just about every available fruit, although the juniper scented borovička and the slivovica plum brandy seem to be the most popular. The Slovaks also do beer, the pilsner style Zlatý Bažant (golden pheasant) is the favourite in Bratislava. Excellent white wines are produced on the slopes of the Little Carpathian hills that rise out of the Danube valley starting from Bratislava’s own castle hill. Vinyard villages like Svätý Jur and Pezinok are just a few minutes by bus or train from Bratislava.

The best place we found to sample such liquid delights, alongside traditional Slovak cuisine was the imaginatively named 1. Slovak Pub, just out of the Old Town on the Obchodná shopping street. In a jumble of upstairs rooms this is an old student krčma (tavern), that claims to be the only pub in the world where you can get a free bowl of soup with an A-grade exam result. The rooms are dark and cozy, heated with ancient stoves, decorated with stuffed game birds and portraits of Slovak heroes like the local Robin Hood, Juraj Jánošík or Ludovít Štúr, the 19th century poet who fought for Slovak identity under Hungarian rule.

Pride of place here is the national dish: bryndzové halusky - thumbnail sized potato dumplings similar to Italian gnocchi, swimming in melted sour sheep’s’ cheese and topped with chopped bacon and slices of spicy sausage. Brynza sheep’s cheese is the nation’s culinary pride and joy. 1. Slovak Pub gets it from its own organic farm and sells tee-shirts proclaiming: “Slovakia - we gave the world Brynza.” It is a wonderfully warming winter dish, but just one of the delights on the pub’s vast menu. Cesnaková polievka v bochníku is garlic soup served in a hollowed out loaf of bread; gazdovské rizoto has no rice, but groats fried up with smoked meat and vegetables; bryndzové pirohy so slaninou are mashed potato-stuffed pirogi with bacon and yet more brynza; Nakladaný encián is a pickled, camembert-type cheese served with rye bread and chopped red pepper as an appetizer. There’s infinity of roast meats, guláš and schnitzels and cholesterol-packed desserts like slivkové knedle s tvarohom, which the menu happily translates as “stuffed big dumplings with plums and sprinkled with cocoa.” Our vast meal accompanied with beer, wine and slivovica was followed up with a glass of zákvas, the sour sheep’s milk which Slovaks swear is an effective vaccination against hangover. This banquet came to 700 koruna, or €20, for two.
1. Slovak Pub was a happy find. Until then we’d been a bit doubtful about finding a good place to eat in the Staré Mesto, most of the restaurants seemed to be either modern places with cool minimal design serving international cuisine to upwardly mobile Slovaks or folklorish tourist traps. Prašná Bašta, undergound in some old wine vaults, was an exception, offering mostly Slovak dishes to a youthful crowd. We tried fazulová polievka (bean soup with smoked meat and noodles), Arménsky šalát (Armenian salad, basically coleslaw with tons of garlic), Jelení guláš (venison goulash with wine sauce and dumplings) and yet more of the bryndzové halusky, finishing up with a nutty Somló halušky (Hungarian cake). Prašná Bašta has a cool, jazzy ambiance and the food was ok, but not a patch on 1. Slovak Pub.
A couple of other posher places also come recommended, Tempus Fugit just off Hlavné Námestie, Wock among the palaces and churches of peaceful Františkánske námestie, or the restaurant of the new Hotel Michalská Brána in a narrow lane round the corner form the tower of St. Michael’s, the last of the old city gates to survive. Opened in January 2007, the hotel is a gem, with perfumed oil lamps showing the way to modern rooms built into a 600-year-old house. Double rooms start from 4,200 koruna (€120), including breakfast.
Bratislava’s best known landmark is its castle, the Hrad, perched atop a hill overlooking the town and the Danube. Often compared to an upturned table, this oblong block with its four stubby towers is not the most beautiful of chateaux, but the Hrad’s sheer bulk is impressive and the views alone make the climb up to the ramparts worthwhile. On a clear day you can see three countries _ Austria, Slovakia and Hungary, although when the Winter fog comes down even the endless communist-era tower blocks of the Petržalka neighbourhood across the river where barely visible.The castle was built in the 15th century but gutted by fire in the early 19th by boozy Austrian soldiers and rebuilt by the Communists in the 1950s. The exhibitions of furniture and coins are likely to interest only the specialist.
Tragically the Communists also decided to drive a motorway through the center of town in the 1970s, cutting off the castle from the old city. In doing so they demolished about a third of Bratislava’s historic heart, including the Jewish quarter which lay just beyond the city walls at the foot of castle hill. The cafes where Leigh Fermor drank slivovica while practicing his Yiddish disappeared under the bulldozers and although the cobbled lane winding to the castle is still there, its terraced houses are more likely to hold cafes or art galleries rather than the bordellos of the 1930s. Bratislava is never going to rival the splendors of Prague or Vienna, but it’s well worth a visit either on its own, combined with a trip to the nearby Austrian capital, or as a base for exploring the spectacular Slovak countryside up to the Tatra mountains.
http://www.prasnabasta.sk
http://slovakpub.sk
http://www.michalskabrana.com
http://www.rolandcaffe.bestintown.sk/
http://visit.bratislava.sk