Christchurch has been through so much. The devastating effects of the huge earthquakes that ripped up the town, and more recently the trauma caused by a white terrorist in the city’s mosques. But the city has an energy, and a sense of purpose found. Spending two weeks there for work, plus some regular visits to see my awesome friends, have allowed me to experience the city’s energy through its street art, and delicious food!
[Read more…]Updated: I had to add to this post to include (among others) the amazingness that is Bodega 1900 – thanks for the recommendation Shouting Chow!
True to form, my visits to Barcelona have so far featured a lot of sightseeing, but also a lot of seriously tasty food. If you’ve been reading for a bit, you may have picked up that I’m a massive foodie – I love trying new places and flavours, and I think it’s a great way to learn more about a culture. Food traditions, styles, and rituals can all give you insights into the priorities and loves of a people. Plus – delicious food!
While brunch might not be the first thing you think of for Catalan food, we had an incredible brunch at federal café near Ciutat Vella. The veggie and egg breakfast burgers were both amazing… and of course, when on holiday, don’t forget to start with a mimosa!
Stacey and I starting our day with some vitamin C
Fried potato is an ingredient I’m unused to in brunch, but when it’s accompanying this much delicious smoked salmon, as it did at Milk Bar & Bistro Restaurant, I can definitely give it a go!
A close second for most awesome Barcelona brunch was Picnic Restaurant, where I had a crazy combination of Mexican/Spanish breakfast that somehow worked oh so well!
Loved this owl – and can you spot Sagrada Familia peeking out on the left?
La Boqueria is a big food market in central Barcelona, located right on La Rambla, the central pedestrian boulevard. Both the incredible food displays and the crowds of people reminded me of London’s Borough Market, although there was a lot more delicious jamon here!
The market’s origins date back to the 1200s, and it was originally located by one of the gates to Barcelona’s old city wall. In the 1820s, it was officially inaugurated as La Boqueria, on the site of the convent of San Josep. Many of today’s stall-holders are third- or fourth-generation, and there are over 250 stalls. We picked up lots of goodies for our own little tapas session!
Man I love some well-stacked fruit
I have a tendency to suffer from food envy, where it seems my dining buddy has made a superior choice, so the sharing ethos of tapas is perfect for me – I get to try everything! On a recommendation we visited Bodega 1900 – it’s a little bit outside the city centre but well worth the walk for the incredible tapas that awaits. Bodega 1900 has some incredibly innovative takes on tapas, from exploding olives to Spanish/Korean hot-dogs, as well as classics like the above mussels done incredible well. This is now one of my favourite restaurants in Barcelona and I will definitely be back for more next time!
Alsur Café (El Born) was another hit, a bit closer to the city centre, where we ordered some more of the less usual dishes – tempura-battered tuna (amazing), and a caprese salad, alongside the more standard patatas bravas, spicy chicken wings, and tomato-soaked crusty bread. We washed it all down with some icy-cold sangria – perfection!
Most of the time in Barcelona we simply wandered until we were hungry, then found somewhere that looked good. After bypassing the marina’s expensive and packed restaurants one day we stumbled across La Rumbeta which was much more our style. I mean, just look at that sangria!
Yep, that is a serving for one…
Oh how I love a beach. While we didn’t spend much time on it this trip, just getting my toes in the sand and gazing out at that beautiful horizon was fantastic ocean therapy for me. Barcelona’s main beach area, La Barceloneta, is easy to reach by metro or bus from the city centre and home to many fabulous restaurants – and these beautiful evening views.
When I’m on the coast I always want to try as much seafood as possible, and paella is one of my favourite foods. This made our choice of Restaurante Salamanca II for dinner perfect – steaming plates of paella and platters of seafood are what they do best!
We had more great paella at another Barceloneta restaurant, Paco Alcalde, where they served it the way I like best – in a great steaming pan at the table, ready for everyone to dive in and pick out their favourite seafood bits! Of course, I can never resist having a little play with my food…
While pintxos are properly a Basque food, there’s plenty of spots in Barcelona where you can lean against a bar and scoff your fill of these delicious mini-delicacies. At Irati, I was nearly overwhelmed by the range of choices – they serve up to 50 savoury and sweet varieties! The idea is that you simply choose what you like the look of, then your toothpicks are counted at the end to work out your bill. It’s great as you can keep coming back for more, ensuring your eyes don’t get bigger than your stomach!
My favourite was the pepper stuffed with tuna and topped with a tiny pikelet!
The Cathedral of Barcelona in the afternoon sun
Barcelona in the summer is HOT, so there’s really only two options for refreshment – liquid or ice! When exploring the Castell de Montjuïc we grabbed one of these delicious fruit ice-blocks to cool down with, and they were so good we had to go back for seconds. Mine may or may not be mojito flavoured…!
As I’m lactose-intolerant (although I do occasionally cheat with lactase pills), I was thrilled to discover Gelaaati Di Marco, which not only has an amazing array of normal ice-cream flavours but also a few with no dairy at all, including this velvety coconut “ice-cream”. Yum!
One of our top dining experiences was La Portería, even though I didn’t take a single photo. It was an authentic little Catalan restaurant, where we communicated in our very broken Spanish and ended up with fantastic meals. I highly recommend checking it out!
I know that there are loads of great places in Barcelona so if you’ve visited or you live there, please let me know your recommendations 🙂
Linking up for #TravelTuesday with Bonnie, Sammy, Kaelene and Van – check out their blogs for loads of travel inspiration!
Until my trip this year, my experiences of Turkish food were pretty much limited to kebab places of varying quality – from decent to the 3am on-the-way-home-kebab – and to Turkish delight, so I was really excited to see what Turkey had in store for us. There were plenty of kebabs, although not of the rolled variety, and also lots of yummy Turkish delight! But we also got to sample a range of other dishes, along with one of my best fine-dining experiences to date.
Sis Kebab
While in Turkey I got to grips with the different kinds of kebab – turns out the version that I’m most familiar with from New Zealand and England is the doner kebab, but there are other varieties that are both tastier and better for you! Above is a sis kebab, my first meal in Turkey, from a little place next to the Grand Bazaar. Sis kebab is made with meat, in this case minced meat, threaded onto a skewer and grilled. It was served with bulgur wheat in a tomato paste, and with a whole chilli, salad and yufka (flatbread). Simple but yum!
Sis kebab with turkish pied in tomato sauce – so good!
Testi Kebab
In Cappadocia I tried Testi Kebab – a mixture of delicious meat and vegetables cooked in a clay jug over fire. Testi is actually Turkish for jug! The jug is sealed with dough, which is knocked off, along with the top of the jug, to serve the kebab. The meat was beautifully tender and so tasty!
Gözleme making
Near Ephesus we had gözleme – paper-thin bread filled with various toppings, folded and baked over a fire. The finished product was light, simply flavoured and so tasty – the girls had spinach and feta and I had mince and mushrooms.
At the same time I tried menemen, a dish I loved for the ease of recreating it at home as well as the delicious taste. Sautéed onion and green peppers, tomatoes, spices, and eggs are scrambled together in individual metal dishes. This is apparently also known as the bachelors’ dish as it’s so easy to prepare!
As alluded to above, in Istanbul I had one of my best fine dining experiences to date at Mikla Restaurant – if you go to Istanbul I can’t recommend it highly enough, from the amazing views to the incredible food! I had octopus and huge prawns and both were so delicious. I’m a massive seafood fan and will always try it if I’m somewhere near the coast – this meal is going to be particularly hard to beat.
Another educational experience was learning about apple tea, which I’d always thought of as quite Turkish. Turns out that herbal teas are viewed more as medicinal than proper drinks, and apple tea in particular is a very touristy drink. Nevertheless, it was tasty! True Turkish tea is black tea, served without milk, which I also really liked.
And then there’s raki. Raki is the national alcoholic drink of Turkey, an aniseed-flavoured liquid that is initially clear, cloudy when mixed with water, and delivers one hell of a kick! There are a number of traditional customs associated with a night of drinking raki, from the youngest person at the table being the designated pourer, to the eldest being the one that dictates when everyone stops drinking – or falls over! We only tried it a couple of times and it certainly wasn’t for everyone, but I like liquorice flavours so it went down pretty nicely with me.
And so to the last, and probably the best – the many many sweet treats we tried in Turkey! Most will be familiar with Turkish delight or lokum, at least in its plainer form. These are the basic starch and sugar gel, commonly flavoured with rosewater, orange or lemon, and dusted with icing sugar. However, while we were in Turkey we tried a lot of different varieties – purely in the interests of research, of course – and I discovered my favourite type. This was a pomegranate turkish delight, filled with pistachios, and rolled in marshmallow… my mouth is watering just thinking about it!
My favourite type in the front and also back centre… yum!
Another favourite treat was baklava, which you might think of as a Greek dessert, but is actually common throughout the region covered by the former Ottoman Empire, as well as in Central and South-West Asia. Layers of sweet filo pastry, filled with chopped nuts and honey, it melts in your mouth… mmm.
There was a lot of dried fruit, including figs, dates, and citrus. I was surprised to see both natural and sweetened kiwifruit in the Spice Bazaar, but one of my readers informed me they are actually grown in Turkey, by the Black Sea. So nice to have a taste of home!
As a caffeine addict, I loved the Turkish coffee we tried all around the country. Served black, it is usually made by boiling coffee grounds with sugar in a small pot, and then served without straining into a small cup, with the grounds settling before being drunk. It did usually result in a bit of coffee sludge at the bottom, but was also very strong and delicious – just the way I like it!
Have you tried Turkish cuisine? Do you like it?
