Q? What was your favorite "new taste" while visiting somewhere?

M

marilynfl

Moderator
Michael/Tampa's comment about rose ice cream reminded me of Nice and walking to the sea in the early morning. We passed a bakery and stopped, I opting for a chocolate croissant while Larry selected something filled with...green?

And who wouldn't order a croissant in a country that accepts chocolate as a viable nutrient? Forget Wheaties. I say that's the breakfast food of champions!

We continued walking down the street and I took a nibble of his. I stopped. Larry kept walking. I stood there shocked at the utter delicious-osity of that bite. It wasn't sweet. It wasn't chocolate. It was savory puff pastry. It was spinach, for heaven's sake.

I was in love with a new taste sensation.

I actually turned around on the sidewalk and almost ran back to the bakery. Larry, by this time, had figured out something was off and just followed me. I pointed to the huge tray of square-cut spinach & onion-filled puff pastries and held out my hand of French coins...still too new to the country to figure out conversion factors before café au lait.

My sensory life changed that morning. I only regret that it didn't change enough for me to try out the sausages and pâtés that filled the morning farmer's market. I have photos of them, but no taste memories.

But as Michael says, one trip provides enough memories to crave another trip.

 
Really Really fresh oysters. While traveling around Nova Scotia we saw a

sign tacked to a tree that read. "Cheap Oysters"
While we waited he waded into the water and collected them! Opened them up and put a dot of fresh lemon juice and a grind of pepper. I never had anything so good!

 
"New" to me was my first taste of Moussaka in Cyprus! The combination

of flavors and textures. I was in love. And to experience food as it's done authentically. Like Sates in Bali. Wow! I can't even say how many recipes I have tried to recreate that Sate! But I'm gonna keep trying!

 
Wild game goulash, and morel mushrooms--both in the Waldviertel, Austria ...but the best was

introducing my husband to artichokes when we lived in Israel. He'd never eaten them before, and the look on his face when I demonstrated how to eat them was classic. smileys/smile.gif He also got a very happy look when he had his first taste.

Artichokes are quite rare, even now, in the Czech Republic (at least, in shops), and are expensive...so it's not impossible to imagine that they would be completely foreign to someone who grew up under Communism.

Best other new taste: St. Peter's Fish, eaten on the shores of the Galilee (Kinneret)--mostly for the novelty...so many bones!

Also... Homemade Calvados, smooth and warm, in Normandy. Cassis candies.

Ahhhhh...what a great idea for a thread, Marilyn! smileys/smile.gif

 
Ahhhh...where to begin...

My adult palate came of age when I was a student in Austria. Everything I ate and drank was different in tastes, smells, and textures than anything I'd ever had. Beer had never tasted so wonderful, fulfilling, exotic, flavorful, and absolutely yummy. French Fries? fried in beef fat of course--amazing. The sausages? Still one of my most treasured sensual food experiences, the scent of the local butcher's shop was like a perfume: smokey, spicey, so earthy. Talk about Terroir, whenever I smell that scent, ever so briefly, it zips me straight back to Austria.

But there are so many others:

Tartuffo in Rome’s Piazzo Navona—decadent chocolate ice cream stuffed with chunks of bittersweet chocolate and cherries, enrobed in a casing of chocolate…sigh…no ice cream has ever come close to this otherworldly experience.

Schweinshax’n in Munich---small roasts of pig leg, turning on spits with the popping fat sending sparks of fireworks as they turned seductively—arriving on a large board with a knoedel and a liter of Weissbier…a wonder of the Bavarian kitchen. The juicy interior surrounded by the crisp succulent brown crust is the height of carnivornirvana.

Realizing that raw rolled oats with raw organic whole milk was just about the best and simplest breakfast I’d ever had at a youth hostel in Copenhagen.

The smells and tastes of the roasting chilies at the Santa Fe Farmer’s market, the scent of the earth.

A loaf of Italian bread, a chunk of ripe Camembert, a 45 cent bottle of red wine, and a paper filled with tiny marinated octopi in olive oil and herbs purchased from a tiny hole in the wall grocery in a back alley way in Venice transported to the Lido to sit on the sand and have dinner at sunset by the Adriatic Sea with tastes so pure and wonderful they still haunt me.

My first taste of sushi in New York City. A major leap for a farm boy from Ohio who had just discovered one his new favorite foods. All my friends know that upon first bite of sushi, to respectfully stand back as I moan and writhe and shoot to the ceiling in joy like the cartoon dog Mutley did when he got his dog biscuit.

The taste and smell of the local fresh raw milk and cheese at Gastzimmer in the Alps.

Paris. Patissieries. ‘Nuff said.

And I would still kill to have my grandmother’s fried chicken and apple pie one more time.

 
Beutifully written Richard. Some of those same tastes while living in Germany. So right about...

the butcher shops. So many interesting meats to sample. The crusty hearty breads that kept well all week just standing on the cut end.

My first taste of real gelato--one cone with a dozen different flavors in melon ball scoops.

A kiosk nearby whould offer hot crisp snitzel on that rye with spicy German mustard or the same mustard with wurst on brochen.

And the beer! Everywhere you went you got to sample a new local example.

Pomme frites in a cone with a dab of mayo-great

A mater d at our favorite restaurant in Heidelberg would lead us to the best items on or off the menu. Venison was a specialty; from soup to hugh platters chock a block full of fresh vegetables and different cuts of meat.

Did I mention the beer? LOL.

 
Mead in Ireland. It was like drinking distilled sunlight and apricots.

I love wine and champagne and liquers and all that, but somehow mead had escaped me. We were at Bunratty Castle at a sort of medieval feast (yes, touristy but very fun) and they served us mead. Our friend didn't want any, so I got TWO servings. It was sublime.

 
I almost forgot those street vendors with fragrant toasted and candied nuts-and the chestnusts-and..

the soft salty pretzels.

 
Erin, yes, the Calvados of Normandie!

magical times driving around the little windy back roads of Normandie, through the apple orchards, and stopping at the barns with the Calvados signs out for yet another taste of liquid golden sunshine.

Life is so full of great food and tastes. There just isn't time for the processed chemicals and pummled fake industrial-complex "foods."

 
Pedestrian things, really. Breakfast of a baguette and a jar of local jam in Rheims, got me thinking

how there was bread and then there was BREAD! (And in all my bread baking I'm trying to recapture that first real loaf.) Pizza in Naples, from a street stall, looked the same as pizza in Canada but oh my goodness the flavours, the cheese, the tomatoes, the basil, the smoky crust, I did not think it was possible to sound like Meg Ryan in "When Harry Met Sally" over a cheap slice of pizza.

 
Molé. On a high school trip to Ensanada, Mexico. I ordered enchiladas,

at a chicken rotisserie restaurant with a little old lady making tortillas by hand in the window. The enchiladas came with the rich dark molé, which was the house sauce. I was blown away. I was in Ensenada again about 10 years ago and the restaurant was still there. Except that a younger woman was making torillas using a tortilla press, it was exactly the same.

 
while visiting my relatives in No Germany, I had fresh broetchen(hard rolls) with butter and "syrup"

the syrup was a deep dark lovely thing---not molasses and I have really no idea what it was. they just called it "zyrupp". And my Oma made the best Kasekuchen---a cheesecake but I think it had cottage cheese in it. And the wursten in rolls on the steetcorners in Bremen. Ahhh.

 
Erin, is this for me? If it is, I had no idea. To be honest, now that I know better

I'm not sure if it was puff pastry or filo dough. I'm leaning toward puff pastry, but would take either one to relive that first taste again.

 
Maybe, desserts in Thailand. I love desserts anyway, but there is such a unique flavour and scent

to what the Thais put together. ANd with the heat and humidity at the beautiful outdoor restaurant on the banks of the klong (Is that the word for river?) Chao Phraya, the aroma was even more powerful. All buffet with countless choices. Unforgettable.

 
Yes Marg, street food in Bangkok. And the wonderful smells of the food

as you walked on any street there. Just fantastic memories for sure. And I "think" the word Khlong means canal. I miss going there.

 
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