Europe Eating: Seaside Dining @ Sole Bar & Restaurant, Rapallo, Italy (or, a Taste of Spontaneity)

For our trip to Europe several months ago, we decided not to plan too far in advance.  We would enjoy it so much more if we didn't lock ourselves down to staying for a certain number of nights in a certain place.  The end result was that we had to pay through our noses for what accommodation was left after the best hotels were booked out, especially in the four cities where, we discovered later, our visit had coincided with Radiohead concerts (in fact the band followed us back to New Zealand and had a concert in Auckland too!).

Someone trying to sell a Radiohead ticket.

In the spirit of adventure, we also hired a car for part of the journey. Driving in Italy was certainly an experience! Before we even managed to get into the traffic, we had to wait "15 minutes" (this is Italian for an hour) for the rental vehicle to arrive, because we had requested an automatic and they had given us a manual replacement without warning, which meant they had to send yet another car over from the airport, a larger, more fuel-guzzling and expensive one.

We were terrified of driving in the cities: even without having to operate a clutch, it was too much trying to dodge pedestrians, remember to stay on the right side of the road, and worry about possibly damaging the Audi A5 with 300km on the odometer (that's right, 300km, not 300,000km!). Once we made it to the autostrada though, it was smooth sailing—our journey from Bologna westwards, along the coast towards Nice, was mostly on toll roads, where bridge after tunnel after bridge meant no mountain was an obstacle.

Our first day of driving also coincided with us having absolutely nowhere to stay.  Up till now, we had generally booked accommodation at least the night before.  This time, not having found the time, crossed with not being sure how far we could get in the car, meant we were in the wild without a plan.  Perhaps we thought we could sleep in the car in the worst instance.

After failing to find a parking space in Florence, and giving up on visiting the touristy Pisa, we had a horrendous lunch at an Autogrill (restaurant at a service stop on the side of the autostrada), before reaching the beautiful walled city of Lucca.  We did some research over drinks, and decided to push on ahead.  Our target was now a hostel in the mountains of Moconesi.

It was a good thing we aimed to get there early, because we had underestimated how difficult the narrow roads would be.  By the time we made it to the hostel, it past 6pm, and we were hungry.  Unfortunately, there was no one at reception.  Although we met a guest while waiting, there was still no staff there over an hour later. Trying the ring the hostel's number failed miserably. It was now dark, and we decided to give up and go elsewhere. There was no obvious other place to stay in Moconesi, so we selected a hotel at Rapallo, a half hour's drive away on the Ligurian coast.  As you can see, this meant making our way down crazy, windy roads, where we were tail-gated by impatient locals (who had much more practical cars) and nearly had a head-on collision with a bus heading up the mountain!

This gives you an idea how windy the mountain roads were.

It turns out it was a good thing the hostel owner in Moconesi never showed up, because we would never have experienced one of the highlights of our trip otherwise.  Our hotel in Rapallo (we just managed to check in before they closed for the night) was a mansion compared to the run-down and more expensive apartments we found elsewhere.  Our suite in the 17th century building had a sea view, a fully functional kitchen complete with dishwasher, plenty of wood-panelled cupboards and a dining table, a separate bedroom opening out onto a private courtyard, a sofa bed in the lounge area, and a massive bathroom.  If only we could have stayed for longer!

What's more, it was just a few doors down from a couple of bakers (where we bought our breakfast the next morning, including a chickpea-based thin pancake which is a local specialty) and just a short stroll to the water.  There, we had a very late dinner while looking at the impressively lit Castello sul Mare, a castle in the sea built in 1551 to fend the residents against frequent pirate attacks.

Beautiful seaside castle setting for our dinner.

There were actually a few restaurants along this strip, but we were glad we chose to eat at Sole.  This restaurant not only had impeccable service, a huge drinks menu (including a delicious range of granitas), and a good Ligurian vegetarian option, their seafood was simple and stunning.

The tuna tartare was fantastic, but the most memorable dish on the table was the taglierini al granchio, translated on their blackboard as "fresh spaghetti with crab".  We had come to expect great pasta everywhere in Italy, but this surpassed our expectations.  Even before we tasted this exquisite dish, our breaths were taken away by its presentation: served in the crab's shell, with a pair of pliers so we could crack the legs open and suck out every last morsel.

Special of the day: crab spaghetti in the shell, and a tuna tartare.

The desserts, too, did not fail to impress, with the waiter coming out with a blowtorch to create the sugary crust on our crème brûlée.  Sure, we've seen this done before, but it was a fitting end to a what turned out to be a beautiful evening.  Thank goodness for the missing hostel staff.

Crème brûlée for dessert.

Restaurant Details

Sole Bar & Restaurant
Via Montebello,14, Rapallo Province of Genoa, Italy
+39 0185 50241

Opening hours:
Tuesdays to Fridays 10am - 1am
Saturdays 10am - 2am
Sundays 10am - 1am

Europe Eating: I'll Pass on the Prickly Pear

Hiding beneath the different types of eggplant, not far from zucchini flowers and plump, beefsteak tomatoes, I spotted some curious-looking lumps that ranged in colour from yellowy-green to purplish-red. We were in Rome, and I had discovered the prickly pear, also known as cactus fruit.

Strange looking things, which turned out to be cactus fruit.

I rinsed the fruit under running water, picked out the reddest and softest specimen, and cut it open.  The flesh was sweet and juicy.  Not bad, I thought, but it's bit of work trying to eat around the hard seeds inside. I felt a little something on the side of my finger, and barely made out a tiny prickle sticking out of my skin.  I absent-mindedly pulled it out, and kept eating.

Cross section of a cactus fruit.

But wait, there's another.  And another!  My hands are covered in these little needles.  What had looked like smooth, spike-free fruit turned out to have invisible defenses called glochids.  Some of the bristles broke when I tried to pluck them out, leaving an end still in my skin.  Some got transferred to another place, with a couple ending up on the backs of my hands somehow!  I couldn't keep eating. I washed my hands and hoped the barbs would just fall off.

Prickly pear still on the cactus, shamelessly lifted from Wikipedia.

The next day, my hands were still feeling irritated.  And because I hadn't cleaned the table properly, I picked up a couple more prickles.  I gave up, and threw the rest of the fruit away (they were still green anyway).

Would I eat them again?  Only with extreme caution.  I might have to try burning the tiny spikes off, as some people seem to do.  Or cook them away in a jam.  I have nothing against the flavour of the fruit, but trying to eat them the way I did is more trouble than it's worth.

Prickly pears at the supermarket, below the eggplants.

Prickly pears at the market.

Europe Eating: Confusion at the Table

Going overseas is a very humbling experience, especially when you turn up at a country unable to speak the local language, and unsure of local customs.  But that's also what makes it an adventure.  Combine it with great food and good company, and in most cases, your mistakes will just be something to laugh about afterwards.

Here are a few stories I could tell about our recent trip to Europe, via Seoul...

Seoul: Just One Please

We were at the huge Noryangjin Fisheries Wholesale Market, where, although not hungry, we felt obliged to try the freshest fish possible.  We had no idea which restaurant upstairs was good, so when the staff at one place called out "sashimi" (along with some Chinese words of encouragement), we decided to go in.  Too late, we discovered that the sashimi would cost around NZ$80, which would probably have been far too much food for us to eat.  Instead, we perused the menu and looked for something more suitable for a light meal.

We decided to get a portion of the crab soup, the first item on the menu.
Waitress: Sorry, no.
Us (looking at each other): There's no soup available?
Waitress: Cannot one.  Must soup two.
Us: Oh, but we only want one.
Waitress: One, no. Two, OK.

We were pretty bewildered at this.  The soup cost something like NZ$25 and we thought it was splashing out a bit already.  If you have been to Seoul, you would know that food there is generally pretty cheap, less than its equivalent in New Zealand.  What a tourist trap!  we thought, silently cursing ourselves for randomly walking into a place like this.  We scanned the menu desperately for something more reasonable, but everything was either boring or even more expensive, so we ordered the soup anyway.

Did we just spend $50 on soup? we asked each other.  OMG, OMG, OMG, wailed the scrooge in me.  But there was nothing we could do.  We were there, we had ordered, there was no use worrying about it now.

The complimentary side dishes came out. Not only was it high-quality food, the portions were huge.  From a seaweed salad, to silken tofu with a drizzle of sauce on top, to the obligatory kimchi, there was more than we could eat already.  Good from a value point of view, not so good when you don't have much of an appetite.

The rice came out, then finally, the soup.  Set on a gas burner, it arrived in a giant pot with huge chunks of fish in it, not a crab in sight.  And on top, sat a pungent vegetable I knew of as tong ho.  Our hearts sank.  This was a fail on so many levels.  This was surely at least two portions, and there was no way we could finish it. We would be spending a small fortune, and to top it off, we seem to have ordered the wrong soup as well!

Large pot of Korean fish soup, set on a burner.

It wasn't until we went to pay the bill that we finally worked out what had happened.  The lady didn't mean that we had to order two soups.  What she was trying to say was that soup number one, the crab one, wasn't available, but soup number two, the fish one, was.  That pot of soup was clearly not intended for one person, but for the whole table.

Istanbul: Tale of Two Figs

On our last day in Istanbul (our first destination in Europe), we got up extra early to check out the Inebolu Sunday Market, which according to the Guardian was "an Anatolian culinary carnival located in the downtown grime of Beyoğlu's Kasimpaşa district", a highlight for "genuine Istanbul foodies".  The ferry north wasn't running for some reason, and we weren't sure we trusted taking the bus (we had no idea where to buy the tickets, when it would come, or whether we had really been told the right bus number), so we walked the 3 km or so there. (Of course, if we had done our research beforehand, we probably wouldn't have stayed in the touristy Old City in the first place.)

I had expected a major international city like Istanbul to be open all the time, like other big cities in Asia, but as we took the refreshingly cool walk to the market, nearly all the shops we passed were shuttered and closed.  Our map led us to what looked like a nondescript little lane, more like a place you could get mugged than a treasure trove of culinary delights, but as we neared, we began seeing people with bags of groceries and finally, some stalls.

It wasn't a large market, with about the same number of traders as the Wesley Community Centre Market (a.k.a. Sandringham Market) here, but with smaller quantities of everything.  I admired how huge the heads of cabbage were, and how rustic the sellers made the eggs look, sitting in hay in woven baskets.  There were various forms of breads, olives, cheeses and jams, as well as fresh fruits and vegetables.  I wish I had tried harder to learn basic Turkish, as I would have loved to have found out more about the various products.

Since we were planning to leave that day, we couldn't go on a shopping spree.  But I also didn't want to leave empty-handed.  I decided to buy a couple of figs to try—if Turkish tomatoes were anything to go by, these would be packed with flavour and an absolute joy to eat.

Me (holding up two fingers, then pointing at the pile of figs): I'd like two figs, please. How much would that be?
Seller (holding up four fingers): Dört lira.  Four lira.

Wow, that's pricey, I thought to myself, but, well, no worse than if I'd bought them in New Zealand.  Maybe they are particularly delicious.  I handed over the money.

The seller put a handful of figs into a bag, then another handful.  And that's when I realised that I had purchased two kilos of figs, rather than just two.  I considered stopping him at one kilo, but as I had already paid for the full amount, and it would be too hard to explain anything in my non-existent Turkish, I waited, took the bag with a smile, and thanked him.  I gave away a lot of figs that day.

Quite a few more than two figs.

Rome: Tips for a Great Meal

We found ourselves at a restaurant close to our hotel in Rome one evening, without having researched what the tipping etiquette was in Italy.  The service had been friendly and the food excellent, so we decided to play it safe and err on the side of tipping too much, giving the waiter an extra 10% above the price on the bill.  It wasn't until we got back to our hotel and had internet access that we realised that this was 10% too much, as service is already included in the form of coperto.

The next evening, we returned to the restaurant as we had promised the waiter we would.  This time we were welcomed with a bubbly aperitif to begin, before we had even decided on what to order.  The tomato and mozzarella bruschetta we chose to share as an entree was clearly up-sized when it came out, with each of us receiving our own plate.

After another delicious meal, we couldn't bear to skip dessert.  We ordered the tiramisu as recommended, and for those who needed something lighter, simply pineapple and icecream.  Except it wasn't simple-looking at all.  We didn't know if this was how pineapple was normally served, but we were very impressed with being presented an elaborately-cut wedge of the fresh fruit, complete with leaves on top and the fibrous centre pinned back with a toothpick to reveal the sweet flesh laid out in a zig zag pattern.  The accompanying ice cream flavours were a delightful selection of chocolate, hazelnut and coffee, topped with a swirl of whipped cream.

Italian pineapple and ice cream dessert.

Just as we were about to ask for the bill, the waiter returned, this time with a glass for cloudy limoncello for each of us.

Well, that sealed it.  We certainly couldn't reduce our tip this time.  We may have paid a little too much, but for all the freebies and the royal treatment, it was definitely worth it!

Dresden: Once or Twice?

Our hotel in Dresden had warned us that everything would be closed on 3 October, because it was a national holiday.  On the German Unity Day (Tag der deutschen Einheit), the receptionist claimed, none of the supermarkets and practically none of the restaurants will be trading.  We might find some tourist attractions still open, but be prepared!

This was disappointing news indeed, as we had only planned to spend one day in this beautiful city.  Fortunately, it was not as dire as she had made it out to be.  We had no trouble visiting the eye-raisingly amusing Hygiene Museum or the Volkwagen Transparent Factory (where we were the only visitors on the English tour), nor did we have any difficulty finding food to eat.  In fact, there was a Herbstmarkt, or autumn market, in the old market square right next to our hotel.

As you might imagine, there were plenty of stalls selling sausages and beer.  There were also rides for the children, from a mini train to a ferris wheel.  Sweet treats included gingerbread hearts with words of love on them (I was surprised there were also messages in Russian, until I remembered we were in East Germany), French crêpes, and round doughnuts called Quarkkrapfen, which you can have either as is (ungefüllt), or filled with either jam (Marmelade) or eggnog (Eierlikör).

Fried quark ball filled with German eggnog (Quarkkrapfen mit Eierlikör).

We walked around until we found what we deemed to be the stall with the freshest-looking food.  This place offered multiple types of sausages, from currywurst to pferdebockwurst, herbed garlic mushrooms, a homemade Russian soup called soljanka, and a kale stew (pictured below) which we ordered.

Large pans of food cooking: soljanka (left) and kale stew (right).

Lady (ladling kale onto plate): Would you like fried potatoes with that?
Us: Sure.
Lady (adding fried potatoes, then placing a sausage on the kale): Mustard?
Us: Yep, great.
Lady: Once or twice?
Us (confused): Does she mean one or two sausages, or one or two squirts of mustard? Oh, twice, please.

Kale with smokey sausage from the Ore Mountains, fried potatoes and mustard (Grünkohl mit erzgebirgischem Knacker, Bratkatoffeln, Senf).

Wrong answer. We got two sausages and a large amount of mustard anyway, but what that question actually meant was: one plate or two?  There was only so much we could eat of the intensely smokey sausage, the salty kale and the very filling fried potato.  Sadly, we had to throw a plate away, and we didn't even get to try anything else on offer.  But hey, we enjoyed the meal, and we will know what to say next time someone asks us "once or twice?"

Europe Eating: Missing in Action

We've just come back from a six-week holiday in Europe.  Yay for returning to our electric toothbrushes, and as much internet usage as we want.  It's good to be home, and somewhat strange as well.  The puha weed has taken over our garden.  The November issue of the Cuisine magazine was waiting for us, with a Christmas tree on the cover (what, Christmas already?!).  We spent all day eating things we'd been missing on the other side of the world: muesli and milk for a very early breakfast (we woke up before 6am), a peanut butter sandwich snack, a cooked breakfast with bacon and eggs for the other panda (fried in butter for extra tastiness), then yum cha for lunch.

Puha running wild in our garden.

You'd think that major international cities like London, Paris and Berlin would have all the things you could possibly wish for, at all hours of the day and night.  It turns out that they did not have the same frenetic pace as the large cities in Asia, nor was the cuisine as varied as we had thought it would be.

Foods in New Zealand that we missed

Below are what we haven't been able to have (or have much of) on our European holiday, with which we have been spoilt in Auckland.  You could probably obtain some items, like peanut butter, from a specialty store, but we weren't prepared to go far out of our way, and besides, we enjoyed eating the local dishes too.

1) Cheap and Delicious Chinese Food (including yum char)

In Germany, the Chinese restaurant we went to didn't even offer us chopsticks, gave us sugar cubes with our jasmine tea, and served all the dishes on on a bed of tea lights (apparently they do this in Thai restaurants also).  In France, every Chinese eatery we saw outside of Chinatown looked like a deli, or a colder version of Magic Wok, with all the dishes precooked and laid out for you to choose from.  We didn't dare try Chinese anywhere else, on the assumption that it would be expensive and bad.  And there was no yum cha to be seen.

[Added 1 Nov 2012: I said "Chinese" rather than "Asian", because that's what we tried, and also because we found good Asian in the form of Vietnamese food as mentioned below.  A friend told us of dismal attempts to eat ramen in Spain and Italy though: in one place he was served rice noodles, and another gave him instant noodles.]

2) Cooked Breakfast

Outside of Britain, the typical European breakfast seems to consist of croissants and coffee, or maybe bread and jam with a glass of juice.  All sickeningly sweet and unfulfilling.  At one hotel, I asked if they had anything which wasn't sugary, and they pointed me in the direction of the supermarket!

Cooked breakfast in London - not the best, but we were glad to have one at all.

I wasn't after bacon or sausages, or even something as exotic as baked beans or hash browns.  A simple fried egg on toast would have sufficed.  We might have been able to find places that would serve us such a meal, had we tried hard enough, but in the end it was easier to skip straight to lunch.

3) Fresh Milk (with your tea)

France, Italy and Turkey (well, as least part of it is technically in Europe) have abundant quantities of butter, cheese and yoghurt, but nobody seems to drink milk, at least not with their tea. We never saw a 2L bottle of milk for sale in the supermarket, and it was never offered with the black teas we ordered, though you can of course have it with your coffee.  Perhaps it's the cafés au lait which account for the surprisingly higher consumption of milk in France and Italy than in New Zealand?  Strangely, the tradition of adding milk to your tea apparently began in France in the 17th century, before being adopted by the English.

What milk we have seen has been in the form of UHT sterilised milk, rather than fresh.  According the David Lebovitz' blog, the London Times reported that 95.5% of milk consumed in France is UHT sterilised.  A forum post from 2009 showed that UHT consumption as a percentage of total consumption according to the newspaper was:

Country	% UHT milk consumption
Austria	20.3
Belgium	96.7
Czech Rep	71.4
Denmark	0.0
Finland	2.4
France	95.5
Germany	66.1
Greece	0.9
Hungary	35.1
Ireland	10.9
Italy	49.8
Netherlands	20.2
Norway	5.3
Poland	48.6
Portugal	92.9
Slovakia	35.5
Spain	95.7
Sweden	5.5
Switzerland	62.8
Britain	8.4

4) Reasonably Good Coffee

Every coffee we have had in Italy - even on the train - has been fantastic.  Every coffee we have had anywhere else, be it in Germany, the UK, Switzerland or even France, has been dire: sometimes bitter, sometimes sour, sometimes burnt, sometimes chemical-tasting (as if you were drinking the cleaning solution with the coffee), sometimes a mixture of the above.

Numerous articles have been written on why the coffee in Paris is so bad, explaining that the French government pushed the inferior robusta coffee beans that was grown in its colonies, rather than the higher-quality arabica beans.  You might also like to read how the French ruined coffee and how not to drink black tar in Paris.  I couldn't find any commentary on the other countries, but I guess there isn't the same expectation of good coffee elsewhere, except maybe in Spain, which we did not visit on this trip.

5) Peanut Butter

Actually, we forgot about this one until we saw a peanut butter milkshake on the menu of a Parisian burger joint.  Yes, it's available, but it's definitely not commonplace.  People in Europe much prefer to spread their bread with Nutella or jam, from what we could see.

Foods in Europe that we will miss

Of course, now that we are home, we will start noticing plenty of things which we could eat in Europe, which are not available here.  Here are some that come to mind.

1) Excellent Butter

The Lewis Road Creamery is doing a good job of providing New Zealand with tasty local butter, but the butter from Jean-Yves Bordier, which David Lebovitz lists as one of the 10 insanely delicious things you shouldn't miss in Paris, was better.  Even the supermarket-branded butter which we sampled at an aunt's house in France was unbearably delicious, and we ate it up in much vaster quantities than was good for us.

2) Proper Hamburgers

It may sound odd that we sought out burgers to eat in Paris, but let me tell you this: every burger we have eaten there has been superior to any burger we have been able to buy here.  Why?  Because they cook their patties the way they cook their steaks, so that the meat is still pink in the middle.  Because they use the proper bun and the proper cheese, without trying to do anything fancy like add rosemary to the bread, slather everything in aioli, or use a special salsa in place of the usual lettuce and tomato.  And probably because they use fresh ingredients and simply care.  (On the other hand, they never salt their fries, so you can't have everything.)

A half-eaten burger, pink inside.

3) Good Vietnamese

We had our best Vietnamese meal to date (outside of Vietnam of course) at Good Morning Vietnam in Berlin.  We enjoyed our meal here more than at the more famous Monsieur Vuong down the road, and there were plenty of other Vietnamese eateries we didn't get to try, presumably because of the communist connection.

Likewise, the Chinatown in Paris was predominantly filled with Vietnamese eateries rather than Chinese ones, no doubt because Vietnam was a former French colony.  We've heard they are very good too, though we ran out of time before we could try any.

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At the end of the day, it's a good thing that the European countries have kept their cuisines and cultural identities intact.  We might gaze in wonder at the self service kiosks you can find in the McDonald's of Switzerland and France, and while it is a curiosity for us, we travel so that we can see and taste something a little different.