So Many Dishes

We’re more than halfway through our river cruise, (I’ve actually been working on this post for three days), and it has been wonderful. The scenery has been spectacular, our excursions very interesting, and the food uniformly delicious. We haven’t eaten anything we didn’t enjoy, with one exception, and that was the lunch we ate off the ship. More on that later.

It has also been an educational trip. For instance, we learned that the favorite vegetable in Austria is—the pork chop 😄 It definitely is a meat heavy diet. I made the comment at dinner last evening that it felt as if I’ve eaten more meat five days than I’d normally eat in a month.

Although there are always fish and vegetarian options on the menu, the real stars are the meat dishes. Wednesday evening was the “taste of Austria” sampling dinner, and the chef joked before the meal that, if you’re vegetarian, tough luck. (Actually, they had an off-menu vegetarian option, and there was a fish dish also, but he referred to that as “an afterthought.”)

The roast pork on Monday evening, as well as the beef roast on Tuesday, was fork tender. The pork was served over potato dumplings, the beef over mashed potatoes. This is comfort cooking at its best. The sampling buffet last night included delicious sauerbraten, one of my favorite ways to cook beef. Paired with sauerkraut and spaetzle, I felt as if I was back in my Pennsylvania Dutch childhood. But I also tasted two different sausages, pickled beets, cucumbers—well, let’s just say that it was a lot of food. Ken and I took a few minutes to walk on the top deck after breakfast this morning, where we met the chef enjoying his coffee. He said the fine print in our booking agreement absolves him from responsibility for any excess pounds!

That one not-so-great meal? That was the lunch that was included in our excursion to Cesky Krumlov. Our group had lunch at a quaint restaurant on the old town square; it had the feeling of being in a cellar. We started with Budvar beer on draft: the “real” Budweiser, brewed in Cesky Budjovice. For many years, Anheuser-Busch kept the beer from being imported to the US. Now, it’s available, but under the name Czechvar. The beer was a great start, and we were all served an interesting soup that had the consistency of egg drop soup but was flavored with dill. Then things went downhill. The food was served family-style, and the servers brought out platters that contained boiled potatoes, bramboraky, or potato pancakes, and something that Ken and I were looking forward to, potato dumplings known as bramborovy knedlicky. But when the platter was set on our table, Ken turned to me and said, “where’s the gravy?” You don’t serve these dumplings without gravy! Someone in our group described them as tasting like Wonder Bread. Plus, the potato pancakes had been fried past crispy to hard rocks.

The meat platter included roasted chicken, beef, and pork. I took a slice of pork, which was too salty to my taste. A small fruit-filled crepe-type dessert was the saving grace of the meal.

As I said, this post has been put together in bits and pieces, and I’m trying to wrap it up before we leave for today’s walking tour of Bratislava. So I will leave you with a picture of last night’s delicious Wiener Schnitzel. I’ll post soon about our actual travels. In the meantime, happy eating!