This Greek salad and baked beans were served to us in a station-side cafe (think Kenny's Wellingtonians) in Larisa - a staging post in our epic bus-train-train-train-ferry-bus-taxi-train-bus trip from Amalfi to Thessaloniki. There was no English menu at the cafe, so the waiter invited me into the kitchen to point at what I wanted.
In Thessaloniki we found a small restaurant with fine wines, run by three women. The menu was limited and in Greek, so we asked them to tell us what to eat. This salad, carefully made from scratch and including spinach and freshly toasted nuts, came with a round of very soft and mild goat cheese - more cream cheese than feta.
Potatoes and meatballs baked together, the potatoes were sticky with reduced meat juices.
We had started by ordering red wine. I saw a dish of small pickled fishes on the next table, and pointed, asking if I could have one of those please (a dish for myself, not one of the other guest's fishes).
'No', said the waitress, looking at me sorrowfully with big dark eyes and shaking her head so that her plait - a dark rope to her waist - swung. 'Not with red wine. Never with red wine.'
'Afterwards?' I said hopefully.
'Maybe afterwards,' she said, still looking doubtful.
In the end I was allowed some fish (sour and salty and sharp - not good with red wine), but only after I had drunk my wine, and on the condition that I drink some raki with them.
And it was good.
The restaurant (name only in Greek).
We followed the policy created in Hania, and went back for a second night. They were pleased to see us, and gave us a special type of raki, and slices of the most delicious marble cake, moist but crumbly... and madeira cake... on a par with cousin Liv's.
This octopus...
and this ENORMOUS lump of fried haloumi were highlights of our food experiences in Edessa.
We needed something substantial and calming for the nerves, having been shouted at by a large man in camo as we entered the taverna. The owner of the taverna laughed and took his arm, then quickly bought us the menu and flipped to the back page. 'Billy - Edessa's Mascot' - there he was, the same round blank face, but dressed in a town crier's uniform. Harmless, clearly, but slightly unnerving for the uninitiated.
Anastasia's prize pumpkin, Hotel Varosi, Edessa
The last of the Greek salads, Thessaloniki train station
Fresh figs for desert, Istanbul
Turkish coffee in a tea garden just outside the Spice Bazaar, Istanbul
Inside the Spice Bazaar
Dried aubergine skins (for stuffing), Spice Bazaar
Turkish delight mountains
Street food, Istanbul
Street vege stall, Istanbul
tbc...
No comments:
Post a Comment