I recently blogged about the wonderful eats I indulged in during my time in München, Dublin & London. Now, let's move on the tastes of the Côte d'Azur and Berlin. Yum yummmm...
So first off, I should point out that Côte d'Azur (or French Riviera) is just a really pretentious way of referring to a series of several cities along the Mediterranean coastline in France. I had the chance to visit three of these cities last summer, and of course made it a priority of the highest order to gorge-out on pastries, baguettes, pasta, ice cream and oh so much more.
Did I mention I came back from Europe several pounds heavier? Here are some visual representation of the culprits:
Culprit # Une- The Original Tuna Niçoise at Le Magnan in Nice
This salad actually hails from Nice, thus the name. I hadn't had massive prawns like these in a while, and had forgotten how tasty (yet tedious) they are.
Also, isn't the way the food is assembled on the page just darling?
Culprit # Deux - Somekind of really delicious dish at Pasta Basta.
Nice is host to many wonderful Italian restaurants, due to its influx of Italians by way of its proximity to the Italian border. Pasta Basta is a more affordable (yet highly-sought after; we waited nearly 45 minutes for a table on a weekday evening) peddler of amazing Italian eats, such as this wonderful Spinach pasta and spicy sauce dish pictured below:
Culprit # Trios - Fennocio Ice Cream
Come around to Old Nice (pretentious alert! It's also called Place Masséna) during the summertime, and you'll find droves of locals and tourists flocking to this creamery, eating up their yummy scoops and crepes which are served until the wee hours of the AM. Fennoccio has nearly 100 flavors, most of which were pretty untraditional to this American, such as rosewater, sweet & salty cracker, and lychee. My pick, after much consternation, was a double-scooper of sweet basil below and gingerbread cake on top (second pic below). We came here every day, sometimes twice a day. Good thing we walked around* a lot?
*rode the bus and train
Culprit # quatre - Generic pâtisserie, everywhere, France
You see this? These were everywhere. I dare you walk in and not get seduced by the colors and smells of a place like this. They are everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE in the French Riviera, so keep your guard up. Or down, depending on how much fun you want to have ;)
After we left the French Riviera, we traveled to Berlin, a land full of history, friendly folks, breathtaking architecture and tasty schnitzels ;)
The first thing I ate in Berlin was a tasty (and halal! There is a lot of halal food in parts of Germany due to its influx of Turkish immigrants) Chicken Schnitzel. It was good, but I wasn't aware of the fact that Chicken Schnitzel is essentially just a breaded and fried chicken cutlet. I think it's the sauces that make it special though.
We were three countries and many many cities in by this point of the trip, so we decided to save some $$ by grabbing food from grocery stores and making picnics for our outings. Grocery stores in Germany are much much smaller than our massive corporate HEBs and whatnot, but they still have pretty much everything you'll need. The carb-aholic that I am, I would always make a B-line for the breads section.
Germans love their sausages & wursts & schnitzels, so of course their deli meat selections reflect this. I almost immediately became overwhelmed by their deli meats section, mostly because there were too many options, and partly because the ingredients were listed in German and I was worried that my non-pork eating self would pick something made of pork belly, cooked in lard, covered on porkloin juice and then wrapped in bacon.
Instead of meat, I opted for some cheese; it was in the cheese section where I decided I just had to take a picture of this. Because sometimes I have the humor of a Bro dude. Thus is the state of my life, hehe.
Whatever money I saved from making sammiches was put towards sweet treats, no doubt. Unfortunately Fortunately, Germany has just as many and just as wonderful bakeries and pastry shops. Here are some tasty views from one we went to whose name I can't remember, but I know it was in the city center.
I got me one of these luscious strawberry-tart things. Soooooo completely amazing.
Our last night in Berlin, we ended up in Kreuzberg, which is known as the birthplace of German punk rock. This wonderful neighborhood still retains many artistic/independant/hipster? characteristics from its halcyon days, so we thought it would be the perfect place to go on our last night in the city. During our walkabouts, we were told by a local to not leave Berlin without have some scoops from Eiscafé Berghem. So, we loosely followed his directions (told in broken-English) and somehow ended up in the right spot. The ice was very tasty, and quite worth the wild goose chase.
When I saw this poster in the ice cream shop, I instantly knew it was there for a reason - to have this aaadorable baby sum up my thoughts about leaving Berlin. I decided his lament goes something like this:
"Why did all go by so fast? I will be back, Berlin!"
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