sam and the city

Mmm, food

Good day faithful reader. Yes, I've returned from my week long holiday and I'm pleased to report that the trip went extremely well and I've come back with many a story to regale you with!

The first 4 days of my trip were spent staying in the Osborne House cottage (see link on the right hand side of this page), which is located about an hour and a half SW of Toulouse. The last 3 days were spent staying with some friends in Madrid. I think that if were asked to describe the theme of this particular holiday in one work then it would have to be eating. In both France and Spain I enjoyed some very good meals!

While I was in France my general practice was to tour around the little villages and when it got close to lunch time I would stop somewhere that had a menu du jour which I thought looked tasty. The next hour or two would then be spent gorging myself, leaving the rest of the afternoon to do more touring. This worked out well, because it would mean that I could just have a light dinner back at the house at the end of the day and not be forced to buy too many ingredients.

This was particularly the case on my first day in the country where for starters they basically brought me an entire cauldron of soup and as much bread as I could eat. I thought it best to stop eating half way through the cauldron so that I could fit the rest of my meal in, so I was rather distressed (no only because I thought that my translation had gone sadly astray) when the next plate that was put in front of me contained a lettuce leaf and few slices of salami! Of course then I was equally distressed when they then brought me what I was expecting and the quantities were even more voluminous than the soup! I managed to get through it all, but in doing so left no room for dessert... and for those that know me, you'll know that there is 'always' room for dessert!

My first culinary experience in Madrid should have given me great cause for concern, given it was literally a stick, bought from the basket of a guy standing in the Puerta del Sol! Despite the fact that it wasn't exactly unpleasant, I did feel like something of a spectacle wandering around the streets of a major city with half a tree hanging out of my mouth (I'm still not convinced that my friend wasn't taking advantage of my unfamiliarity with Spanish cuisine), so I was pleased when all following meals were in restaurants, where the chef didn't use pruning shears to prepare my meal!

The restaurants that we went to were mostly in the Cheuca region and were very good! When I was in France there was an element of luck to how good the place was, but I think that the odds were increased somewhat by the fact that my friends seem to be avid readers of the restaurant reviews in the local papers. This is really something that I should start doing here in London so that I'm not forced to take visitors to Cafe Nero, or worse still, the world famous Blue Anchor Pub!

Of course, being a chocolate connoisseur it would have been remiss of me to leave Spain without having indulged in one of their famous hot chocolates. For those not aware of this, the Spanish do not do hot chocolate like the rest of the world, oh no. Theirs is much better... it's really more like chocolate sauce than chocolate milk, and you dip fried dough sticks in it. Sadly it's not really something that you can have on a regular basis without giving yourself a heart attack!

posted by sam @ 7:51 pm