Food Food Food!

Wowee have we had some great food! Even though I shouldn't eat chocolate, I decided to go for it while in Belgium - and that is some FINE chocolate! A totally OTHER thing from even the best US stuff...be nice to us and you may get a taste when we get home!

and the Fries - frites in Belgium are best when cooked in the outdoor stands, because it's there where they're twice-cooked in "animal fat". We got the best from a stand behind a church, with bearnaise sauce - one of twenty-four choices (mayonnaise, ketchup...). See accompanying picture.

Very good also when accompanying Moules - mussels. I had two big kettles of Moules, one with a lobster-bisque sauce, one served a mariniere - sort of a celery clear soup that was VERY good dipped with crusty bread...

The Best Restaurant goes to the Taverne du Passage, a classic bistro type spot in the old fashioned covered gallery shopping area that was frequented by Victor Hugo and Jacques Brel and Georges Simenon. This place (see pic) had starched linen table cloths and waiters with gold braid epaulets on their starched white jackets and champagne chilling on the bar in a shell-shaped bucket! Lindsay had the same meal basically twice - a vegetable soup, slightly creamy, leeky, one night squash flavored and the next green pea-flavored; followed by a true filet of sole meuniere, served with a fish knife of course, buttery and perfectly cooked, beautiful fresh flavor, with braised endive one night. She had the light flavored Maes beer in an elegant glass. I had the herring - pickled and basking on a fresh pickled vegetable salad of peas, carrots and capers. Then the Moules the first night. The dessert on night #1 was Sorbet du Cassis - a black currant flavor almost too intense, and two big scoops. I had profiteroles - three crusty light globes of pastry with creme inside and ice cream, with dark hot fudge over top. We crawled out, moaning. My meal the second night - I had read that Jacques Brel ordered this - was cheese croquettes - two breaded lightly fried hunks of creamy, runny cheese, with a pile of flash fried parsley and fresh lemon to squeeze over. Then Tete du Veau avec Sauce Grimiche - literally Head of Calf. Piping hot, three hunks of tongue and five big pieces of (what can I say...) were a bit of meat, gristle and luscious fat and skin, braised and creamy and rich. The sauce was a mystery, but delicious - bright yellow, obviously some boiled egg chopped in. Afterwards, the waiter explained it's a fresh mayonnaise made with capers, pickles, fresh herbs and - yes - a bit of the calves brains mixed in. If only you could have been there!

A big surprise, a timely find, was Charlie's Boulangerie, near St. Catherine's Square. A bright, light, modern place, very crowded on a Sunday morning, where we sat at a counter and drank black dark oily coffee and ate hot fresh croissants and brioche and a cherry clafouti - a little eggy cupcake with sour cherries. Part of the delight of the place was watching the guys behind the glass in the kitchen putting fresh baguettes into the giant rotating ovens and making fresh sandwiches with thin crusty mini-baguettes and fresh apple slices and great long hunks of brie and the other ones with smoked ham sliced see-through thin and stone ground mustard and fresh tomato. The bag of ten "choux" was a yummy 1.5 euro super find..little puff pastry balls with sugar on top that broke into nothing but buttery crust and flavor in the mouth!

But the official Best Meal of the Trip, so far...today's midday meal, at the table in Elizabeth Balint's newly renovated apartment here in Budapest. Cooked mostly by her mother...it started with Elizabeth's cheese spread, orange and crunchy and creamy, on fresh rye bread. Then a light, fresh vegetable soup. Then Chicken Paprikas, falling off the bone, on top of homemade egg noodles with sour cream to top it off. Then...drum roll...a cut glass dish of delight, a chestnut puree dish to die for. Whipped cream and thin strands of chestnut puree (mixed with rum, of course) and sour cherries perched all around. We ate firsts, we ate seconds, we cleaned up the last few spoonfuls, we scraped the spoon, we licked the plates and the bowls. We are happy, and an hour's walk by the Danube at sunset restored equilbrium and a bit of self respect. We may get more later!

We won't dwell on the street food - might have been a mistake to choose what we did, but we got caught up in the drama of the Christmas Market. We are looking forward to Kajo's Mom's Mushroom soup, of course. We loved the light dinner at the little place near the church where we ate quiche and salad and croque monsiieur. But it'll be tough to beat Mrs. Balint.