South Tyrol Part II: Vögele and Avalon in Bolzano, Stafellalm

Bolzano, the capital of South Tyrol, has a charming old city center. My favorite part are the medieval arcades found all along the Laubengasse and throughout other parts of the city center. It's a fun town to go shopping in. Worth visiting is Seibstock Delicatessen, which sells fresh goods, such as pasta and hams, as well as shelf-stable goods, such as coffee and liquors. 

When we visited we by chance ended up having lunch at Vögele, a restaurant commonly recommended in guidebooks. We sat outside under the arcade. I went for the lunch trio, which was penne with pesto, fried zucchini with mozzarella and meat tortellini in ham and cream sauce. J. had the veal tenderloin served with a slice of bread dumpling (Semmelknödel) and chanterelle sauce. Both meals came with a mixed salad. We were quite full by the end of the meal, but everything was tasty.

 

For dessert I just had to try the gelato at Avalon, which I had read about. It's a short walk from the city center and very much worth it. I had the Manjari chocolate, which was made with Madagascan Valrhona chocolate, and the coconut ice cream made with Sri Lankan coconut. Both were very tasty and full of flavor, not full of fake flavoring commonly found in ice cream sold in gelaterias. 

On one of our hiking days we hiked up to Stafellalm from Verdins. Although the weather changed from cool to cloudy to drizzly to stormy the hike was beautiful as it led us through forests and meadows. The highlight was the Stafellalm where we had lunch in the smaller of the two houses. Due to the bad weather we were the only guests there. The woman running the hut was very kind. We decided to go with the typical drinks of home-made syrup mixed with water. I had raspberry and J. had elderflower. We liked them so much we bought a bottle each to take home. Then I had Tiroler Apfelschmarren, which is similar to an apple pancake but broken into pieces. J. had a noodle soup with beef. We both didn't think we'd finish our meals, but we were so hungry and the food was so delicious that we even had room for marble cake. It was one of the few "not dry" marble cakes I've ever had. 

South Tyrol Part I: Thurnerhof in Scena

Just spent my first vacation in South Tyrol (Italian: Alto Adige, German: Südtirol), Northern Italy, a region where Italian and German are the two main languages. This provides for a very interesting dialect that at times sounds like a mix of Austrian and Swiss German with a sprinkling of Italian. We booked last minute so several hotels we called had no more vacancies. We finally came  across Schlosswirt in Scena in a guide book and booked a room for a week. It was a very clean hotel with spacious rooms and a nice breakfast buffet. The only disadvantage were the nearby church bells that woke us at an ungodly hour. 

On our first night we went to the rustic Thurnerhof, just a short walk away from our hotel through the typical South Tyrolian apple orchards. We were lucky that it was warm enough to sit outside or we wouldn't have gotten a seat inside as the restaurant is quite popular. 

We got started off with a basket of typical South Tyrolian breads including Schüttelbrot, a dry flatbread made of a mix of rye and wheat flour and spiced with fennel and caraway seeds as well as anise, coriander and fenugreek.

As a main I had the curious dish of mixed salads with the South Tyrolian specialty of bacon dumplings (Speckknödel). Who came up with the idea of putting hot dumplings on cold salad? It's delicious nonetheless.

 

J. had Tafelspitz (boiled beef) with vegetables, potatoes and South Tyrolian apple horseradish cream. Also a very tasty dish.

For dessert we shared a dessert platter, which turned out to be amaretto semifreddo, chocolate mousse and apple strudel (another South Tyrolian specialty). The semifreddo was very good, the other two a little disappointing due to a lack of flavor and strange texture. 

All in all we were really happy with the restaurant and would have gone back on two other occasions had they not been fully booked. 

Markthalle Restaurant in Zurich and Sihlhalde in Gattikon

This weekend I finally made it to Im Viadukt in Zurich, a new strip of shops and restaurants built into a viaduct in Zurich's district 5. The shops were already closed by the time we got there but the restaurants and bars were still open. After walking down the entire strip we decided to get a bite to eat at the restaurant belonging to the Markthalle (market hall) which houses a market 6 days a week. The restaurant serves produce from the market hall. Since we weren't very hungry we shared a beefsteak and buffalo mozarella salad as well as a vegetable and potato omelette. Both dishes were very fresh and tasty. Since the market hall was also already closed by the time we were there, I'll definitely have to go back to check it out. It would also be fun to go back to the restaurant for their Sunday brunch.  

Last weekend we went on a mountain bike tour and passed the restaurant Sihlhalde in Gattikon on the way. The restaurant is in an old half-timber house and it looked absolutely charming. On the front it had a sign identifying itself as a member of the Grandes Tables de Suisse, a selection of gourmet restaurants in Switzerland. Back at home I looked it up and although the website showed only very few images of the food I decided I'd have to try it some time. After this weekend's bike ride we spontaneously headed over there. And we were not one bit sorry!

Okay, maybe I was a bit sorry when the amuse-bouche on the house turned out to be calf's head carpaccio. I ate most of it, trying hard not to envision where exactly the pieces once were located in the calf and that I might contract BSE. It did taste much better than I had imagined, though.

For the main dish I had sea bass with champagne foam served with chard and a side of new potatoes. 

He had beef tenderloin with green peppercorns and a side of basmati rice. It was perhaps the most tender beef I had ever tasted. 

For dessert I had the zucotto-an Italian dessert with liquor-soaked sponge on the outside and cream with chocolate bits on the inside. 

Mister had the Tahitian vanilla soufflé with berries and honey ice cream. 

Along with our coffees we got a plate of small goodies. Everything was very delicious and fresh and not over the top. A very satisfying meal indeed! 

As we were leaving the restaurant, the hostess handed us a copy of La Tavola, a Swiss food and travel magazine and told us that the magazine's publishing director, Marion Michels, was our neighbor at dinner. How exciting! I would have liked to have asked her a few questions. 

Brownies with chocolate chunks and nuts

I've tried so many brownie recipes already but it doesn't keep me from trying new ones. This weekend I tried a recipe off  the BBC food website (follow this link). I used the base recipe and then added what I wanted. That's the cool thing about brownies. You can add whatever you want just not too much so the brownies don't fall apart from the weight of things like chocolate chips and nuts. I added the pecans and white chocolate mentioned in the recipe, but did not add the milk chocolate. Instead I added dark chocolate chunks, some hazelnuts and some shredded coconut. The brownies turned out heavenly.

The Dogs Restaurants in Edinburgh

Ever since I started reading Alexander McCall Smith's The Sunday Philosophy Club series, which takes place in Edinburgh, I've been wanting to visit the Scottish capital. I finally had the chance to do just that. Scotland really is a beautiful place and is beautiful thanks to the frequent showers that like to surprise innocent tourists such as myself. One minute the sun will be shining, the next minute a cloud dark as slate will pour its insides out right over your head. It could happen that you'll be standing in the rain on one side of the street and the people on the other side of the street will be enjoying the dry sun (that's an adapted quotation from a Scotswoman). 

My favorite restaurant experiences are when I randomly come across a restaurant, decide it looks good judging by the exterior (yes, looks do count!) and the menu, and it turns out to be good! This was the case with the group of restaurants The Dogs, Amore Dogs and Seadogs in Edinburgh. What I like about the three restaurants is that they are minimalist but still stylish and the food is unpretentious, fresh, and delicious. Amore Dogs and The Dogs, both located on Hanover Street, were on our way from town to our B&B so we passed them a few times and finally decided to eat at Amore Dogs, the Italian restaurant of the Dogs restaurant group. 

At Amore Dogs my friend and I both went for the coley (a.k.a pollock) with olive crushed potatoes and lemon and caper sauce. It was very good. For dessert I chose the chocolate, pear and almond cake. Little did I know that it would be served with balsamic vinegar caramel sauce. I took one taste and twisted my face. I'm not one for mixing flavors generally associated with savory foods with sweet foods. Otherwise, the cake was outstanding offering the perfect amount of chocolatiness and sweetness. As we were leaving I asked the waitress for a business card and she explained that there were two other restaurants belonging to the same owner: The Dogs and Seadogs. The Dogs is located right next door to Amore Dogs, whereas Seadogs is located within walking distance. 

Since we enjoyed Amore Dogs so much, we decided to try The Dogs the following evening. The Dogs was the first of the three restaurants to open up and features Scottish cuisine. My friend and I once again ordered the same thing: fidget pie with boiled cabbage. The fidget pie was described as gammon, pots, apples, sage, onions & cider. I had to ask what gammon and pots were. "Gammon" is ham and "pots" are potatoes. Talk about comfort food! It was very, very good. Along with my meal I decided to have Crabbie's, an alcoholic ginger ale or ginger beer as they call it in Britain. At first I found it a little watery, but after a while the ginger flavor lingered and it became quite tasty!

Of course you can't go to Britain without eating fish and chips! So that's exactly what I had on our last night when we went to Seadogs. You could choose between coley, haddock, smoked hake, rainbow trout and whitebait for the fish and beer batter, oats or grilled for the way the fish was cooked. I chose haddock in oats. The fish was very good and I really liked the oat batter because it didn't seem as greasy as beer batter although it must have been fried as well. The mushy peas that came with the fish were also very good. The first time I'd had mushy peas was at a pub in Ireland last year and they were absolutely hideous. For dessert my friend and I couldn't help trying the raspberry and whisky trifle. It turns out there are lots of different kinds of trifle. I thought trifle always had sponge cake in it, but this one didn't. And I also thought trifle always had fresh fruit in it, but this one had a raspberry jello in it. The sweetend whipped cream on top and the vanilla custard sauce (which I assume had the whisky in it, although I couldn't taste it) were delicious. The raspberry jello on the other hand was a new thing for me. It didn't taste like much on its own. Nevertheless the dessert was very good. 

Next time I'll also have to try Underdogs, the bar located beneath Amore Dogs.