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27 February 2012

Sonko Orange

I bought these simply because I needed to get change for the supermarket trolley:




It's a Polish chocolate coated rice cracker (English Google Translate version).


There is a definite chocolate-orange tinge to the chocolate topping, while the rest of it tastes like any other rice cracker.

Czech & Slovak Bar/Gambrinus Excelent

On Saturday I went to the Czech & Slovak Bar in West Hampstead for a friend's birthday.


It's a pub which was set up in WWII for refugees from Czechoslovakia.


The decor is a bit strange: from the outside it looks like a suburban house, but inside it is like a hotel and various memorabilia from the old Czechoslovakia as well as both the Czech Rep. and Slovakia.


One of these was a poster of the ice hockey player Jaromír Jágr, who had an appalling late-80s/early-90s-style curly/permed mullet.


We ordered food: I had their beef goulash; Tola had a chicken schnitzel. I was a bit disappointed - while the goulash was perfectly edible, it was a bit bland and it came with what appeared to be uncooked baguette slices, which the menu described as "dumplings".


Naturally, I also had some Czech lager: I had a Budvar (aka proper, not US Budweiser) and also a bottle of this:




Gambrinus Excelent.


As to be expected, it is a Czech pilsner, and so is very nice to drink and goes down well. There's nothing - as far as I could tell - to particularly distinguish it from any other pilsner, but given that pilsners are generally decent drinks, that's not a bad thing.

Bruschette Maretti: Tomato, olives & oregano

A couple of nights ago, while heading home I stopped off in a shop next to my Tube station.


I fancied some crisps, and saw these on display:






It's a crisp done in the style of a sliced mini French-bread.


In spite of the name, this product actually comes from a company based in Bulgaria*.


I quite enjoyed these: they are quite spicy, and have a similar taste to salsa.


What may also be of interest from a linguistic point of view, is the many languages in which the ingredients are listed. These included ArmenianAzerbaijani, and Georgian, none of which you tend to see on food sold within the UK.


* Their name ends in AD, which is the Bulgarian equivalent to a PLC.

Kagor

A couple of weeks ago I saw a bottle of mysterious red wine in an eastern European food shop near our Tube station.


I had no idea what it was called because the front label is in Russian*:




However, I am reliably informed that it is known as "Kagor", and that it comes from the Château Vartley winery in Moldova.


It's quite a sweet red wine, but not too sweet.  It's probably best described as a dessert wine, although the Russian label states that it is a cabernet sauvignon.


* Thankfully the back cover was in German, which described it as "south Moldovan red wine".

23 February 2012

Hello world!

We are a couple who live in north London and we love food and drink, especially the latter...


We decided to start this blog so that we could share our discoveries as we eat-and-drink our way around one of the world's culinary hotspots.


We'll be mostly sampling non-UK food and drinks, but won't rule out occasionally covering more native offerings.


It'll be a mixture of restaurant reviews, summaries of snack foods, and our humble-but-completely-accurate opinions on any obscure-but-apparently-interesting drinks that we stumble upon.


We want the site to feel like a giant, global dinner party.  Feel free to join in with the discussions and leave comments. Also if you have any recommendations, we'll be glad to hear them, so please let us know!