Foodnotes

Budapest

Chimney cake: Basically a cake funnel made over hot coals, covered in sugar and cinnamon and optionally filled with creme anglaise and whipped cream. A real calorie booster. 

Langos: A deep fried bread dough (think bhatura) that can be topped with both savoury or sweet toppings. This has garlic cream and cheese. Devilishly delicous and fattening.

Breakfast platter: that consists of Hungarian sausage covered in mustard along with goulash and beef chilli. Goulash is a very traditional Hungarian dish but I don't have a specific picture for it here because I forgot to click it. 

Vienna 

Apple strudel: A very popular Austrian pastry that combines layers of thinly rolled out dough stuffed with tart apples and topped with powdered sugar. A real treat and complex tastes that are very Region specific. 

Wiener Schnitzel: Did you even go to Austria if you didn't eat this? Their National dish. "Vienna is three things. Sacher, Schintzel and Mozart" someone told me, and I'm glad to have experienced all three in abundance if my ever expanding waistline is to be believed. This is crumbed and fried thinly sliced veal, to put it in basic terms. Crunchy, delicious and traditional.

Sachertorte: The most exquisite form of chcolate cake one could ever eat, and one that I had the chance of eating in the fabulously chic 'Hotel Sacher' which is over 200 years old. This is the original sachertorte and served with a delicious mound of unsweetend whipped cream to cut through the sweet chocolate. It tasted something magical and few words can describe the satiny ethereal bites that this pece of cake offered. December 5th is National Sacertorte Day and naturally another reason to love this. Tradionally Viennese and a must try.

Prague

Svíčková: A very basic Czech affair prepared with beef and cream and served with bread dumplings. It had a sweet undertone to it and flavoured mildly. The right way of eating it is with a knife and fork by bathing the piece of dumpling in the thick soup. 

Coffee time: Hot chocolate is one of those delicacies that is served almost uniformly throughout Central Europe and it's most interesting because as opposed to finding chocolate dissolved in milk it's literally molten chocolate. So thick and creamy and thankfully not to sweet does it taste that it's most definitely a must try. I didn't have it seeing how it might have had milk and I don't do well with lactose. Marzipan covered delicacies are much popular and this is a marzipan cake with chocolate filling along with hot chocolate and espresso.

More coffee: Coffee is a mantra here and it's served almost always with some water and a small macaron. I love the whole presentation and ritual attached to these cafes. People spend hours sitting over good coffee and big slices of delicious desserts, just talking and laughing. No laptops, no screens. There are starbucks for that almost always filled with that crowd, but cafes have an entirely different culture. Beautiful.

Bratislava

Halušky: A traditional dish here and unbearably delicous. Soft potato dumplings slathered in creamy sheep's cheese and topped with thick cut cubes of crisp fried bacon. Sheep's cheese lends that distict salty almost briny flavour to this dish that's unlike any cheese and the fried crisp bacon adds to the texture. Not an everyday affair but by the gods it was delicious.

Kofola: Even though czech in origin, kofola is much popular in Slovakia and really it's a carbonated drink like coke or pepsi, except it has a more anise flavour and is not as sweet. It's distinct and delicious and definitely not anything like a carbonated beverage I've known the taste of.

And coffee: Again, I love the ritualistic preparation and presentation. This is a Slovakian filter coffee and though it looks like any other, it tastes rather different. It has more earthy tones and tastes and a slightly bitter note. 

-fin-