The Ukraine. A big surprise, they brew their own Hefeweisse! And it is very popular, too. It's called "Bile Pivo" (white beer), and is often available on tap. Also in 1 litre bottles in supermarkets and corner stores!
Very Yummy.
There are also dark varieties of "bile pivo", but not as easy to find (picked up a can in a small supermarket), quite good that one too.
Biggest brand/manufacturer is Obolon (which also exports a bit to neighbouring countries, seen Obolon brews on the shelves in at least Poland and Belarussia), which also has a big range of more normal lagers. My lager-drinking SO says they are ok, too.
But Obolon isn't the only Ukrainian brewery. In Lviv we encountered several others, in particular a small one that called itself something like "First Private Brewery". Reportedly their "Stare Misto" lager is quite good, and I tasted (in Uszgorod, so it's not just a local Lviv-thing) another one of theirs that - on a hot day - might almost have converted a lager-hater, a very deep amber thing, almost red.
It was actually weird to come from Ukraine to Slovakia - Slovakia (along with the Czech R) should be *the* beer mecca, but for a non-lager person it really isn't.
And as Heineken and SAB now owns nearly every brewery in Czech&Slovakia, the variety is even more limited. Good luck with finding non-light/pale lagers in a normal, non-specialised, pub/café/restaurant. And finding anything that isn't a lager? Forget it.
A normal Slovak place would have 1 or 2 lagers on tap, and an additional 3-5 in bottles. Usually 2 different brands, plus one "foreign" (license brewed Stella or Carlsberg).
All but one light/blond/ "Svetle". BUT usually in different strengths (not alcohol - what is it called in English? Plato?).
And of course at least one, not that seldom two, "ne-alko" beers. And the locals actually drink those! So they are probably not that bad. But since I a) don't drink lager, and b) don't drive, I saw no reason to try them.
But in Slovakia, outside of specialized pubs or brew-pubs (there are a few, one in Kosice called "Golem" in particular is fun) finding anything but lager is just impossible. Luckily they produce wine, too.
I'll deal with the weird Poles in another post...
Thursday 31 July 2008
Wednesday 30 July 2008
Coffeeee!
Lviv (in Ukraine today, used to be Polish Lwow, at times under either Moscow (Lvov) or Vienna (Lemberg)) surprisingly was a great city for coffee & cakes.
Unfortunately the ubiqutous espresso machines have taken over completely, so we didn't get to taste the local variant of what is called "Turkish" in Poland & Slovakia; lots of rather course grind stright in the cup (or preferably a glass mug) with hot water.
But the Ukrainians at least know how to use the machines. If you want a "long" cup you order an Americano*.
We also discovered one of the best cafés ever when it comes to coffee. "Svit Kavy" (~ "The world of coffee"), a coffee menu of upwards 30 different *non* flavoured coffees (and pretty good descriptions too, even in English). Good pastries, too. And many locals seem to really dig their ice cream and milkshakes.
I'm still kicking myself for feeling economical and not ordering a Blue Mountain.
I think I made a faux pas when I ordered as a latte - the girls behind the counter rolled their eyes. But damn, it was *good*, AND just subtly different from the usual stock-Italian espresso base.
Other observations from Lviv: Local men (and especially middle aged overtly successfull but non-flashy "biznesmen") seem to like meeting over a cup of coffee and cakes. And they carry handbags! (Or very small briefcases.)
"Svit kavy" is absolutely the place to go for *coffee*, but for pastries we were lucky enough to discover about the most marvellous patisserie ever just across the avenue from our hostel. It is called Veronika, and not only do they make cakes and such, they also make chocolates and truffles. Plus, the restaurant in the cellar is pretty darn good (my first suckling pig!), and has lots of exotic (to us) Ukrainian, Moldovan, Armenian and Georgian wines *per glass*.
* The Americano thingy seemed to have caught on in the provinces, too. In the Carpathian holiday, sheep and timber village of Yaremche we managed to find probably the only "real café" (ie not selling beer or vodka or even food) and either the girl who runs it is an extreme purist (& a very overworked one) or a bit vague on the concept of an Americano: my SO got a small espresso in a big (cappucino-sized, roughly) cup and a small pitcher of scalding hot water!
Actually pretty nifty, when you think of it. You can take a small sip of the really concentrated espresso and then dilute to exactly the strength you want. (I like to do this with milk when I get the chance.)
This same small place (really not an esthetical hit - small and murky inside, not so good plastic furniture outside, construction work going on everywhere around) actually did produce one of the better Lattes I had during the whole trip. Very pretty, and quite tasty too.
Other things from our trip: it is a good idea to still be a bit wary of "cappucino" on menus in Ukraine - those nasty, nasty overly sweet aromatized, artificial all-in-one instant thingies are still overly popular. AND served in cafés too. (They did this in Estonia too, around 1996 or so, hopefully it will be a passing fad in Ukraine too.)
And we discovered - after 5 years! - that "turkish coffee" in the Polish sense isn't something we have to give up once we cross the border into Lithuania. When I was finishing my (on the border between acceptable and bad) "machine coffee" while having breakfast in Marijampole (a dump of a town between Kaunas and the Polish border) I spied the waitresses taking a break from setting up the restaurant of the B&B for the day drinking coffee in this way! So I naturally went over and asked to get one too. Unfortunately (and weirdly, because they were all pretty young) the waitresses didn't speak much English, so they didn't understand my question about what they called the coffee they were drinking. But the receptionist could help (she too didn't understand at first what I was asking) and she told me that "grinds in the cup" coffee is just "normal", and the way to get it in Lithuania is to ask for "normal" and "not from machine" coffee.
And that she personally prefered it too, but that tourists seem to always be afraid of anything that doesn't come out of a machine. She was honestly shocked when I told her this manner of coffee was unknown in Finland.
This chat with the very nice receptionist also gave some perspective of why it is that especially in Poland one is in such a danger of encountering *really* bad coffee (of the "bitter cheapest instant made in a thermos" or "sure, we clean our machine once a year!" -varieties). If "real coffee" is only "grinds-in-cup" it probably seems to lots of people that stupid foreigners or snobs from Warsaw or Krakow can't tell the difference between good coffee and bad anyway, since they don't appreciate "real coffee".
OTOH being a fan of *good* instant coffee, Polish supermarkets are a mecca. Probably because when the traditional way of making coffee is putting grinds in your glass mug and then pouring water on it, doing the same procedure sans the grinds doesn't seem so far fetched.
I still have a few un-opened jars of various "exotic" instants at home, so I didn't buy any this trip (except for the drugged variety, good instant spiked with Guarana). But in a happy marriage between probably Europe's two most instant-coffee loving cultures, the Tesco hypermarket in Lublin actually carried quite an assortment of Tesco fair-trade *origin* instants! Darn, as with the Blue Mountain in Lviv, I really should have bought some...
Unfortunately the ubiqutous espresso machines have taken over completely, so we didn't get to taste the local variant of what is called "Turkish" in Poland & Slovakia; lots of rather course grind stright in the cup (or preferably a glass mug) with hot water.
But the Ukrainians at least know how to use the machines. If you want a "long" cup you order an Americano*.
We also discovered one of the best cafés ever when it comes to coffee. "Svit Kavy" (~ "The world of coffee"), a coffee menu of upwards 30 different *non* flavoured coffees (and pretty good descriptions too, even in English). Good pastries, too. And many locals seem to really dig their ice cream and milkshakes.
I'm still kicking myself for feeling economical and not ordering a Blue Mountain.
I think I made a faux pas when I ordered
Other observations from Lviv: Local men (and especially middle aged overtly successfull but non-flashy "biznesmen") seem to like meeting over a cup of coffee and cakes. And they carry handbags! (Or very small briefcases.)
"Svit kavy" is absolutely the place to go for *coffee*, but for pastries we were lucky enough to discover about the most marvellous patisserie ever just across the avenue from our hostel. It is called Veronika, and not only do they make cakes and such, they also make chocolates and truffles. Plus, the restaurant in the cellar is pretty darn good (my first suckling pig!), and has lots of exotic (to us) Ukrainian, Moldovan, Armenian and Georgian wines *per glass*.
* The Americano thingy seemed to have caught on in the provinces, too. In the Carpathian holiday, sheep and timber village of Yaremche we managed to find probably the only "real café" (ie not selling beer or vodka or even food) and either the girl who runs it is an extreme purist (& a very overworked one) or a bit vague on the concept of an Americano: my SO got a small espresso in a big (cappucino-sized, roughly) cup and a small pitcher of scalding hot water!
Actually pretty nifty, when you think of it. You can take a small sip of the really concentrated espresso and then dilute to exactly the strength you want. (I like to do this with milk when I get the chance.)
This same small place (really not an esthetical hit - small and murky inside, not so good plastic furniture outside, construction work going on everywhere around) actually did produce one of the better Lattes I had during the whole trip. Very pretty, and quite tasty too.
Other things from our trip: it is a good idea to still be a bit wary of "cappucino" on menus in Ukraine - those nasty, nasty overly sweet aromatized, artificial all-in-one instant thingies are still overly popular. AND served in cafés too. (They did this in Estonia too, around 1996 or so, hopefully it will be a passing fad in Ukraine too.)
And we discovered - after 5 years! - that "turkish coffee" in the Polish sense isn't something we have to give up once we cross the border into Lithuania. When I was finishing my (on the border between acceptable and bad) "machine coffee" while having breakfast in Marijampole (a dump of a town between Kaunas and the Polish border) I spied the waitresses taking a break from setting up the restaurant of the B&B for the day drinking coffee in this way! So I naturally went over and asked to get one too. Unfortunately (and weirdly, because they were all pretty young) the waitresses didn't speak much English, so they didn't understand my question about what they called the coffee they were drinking. But the receptionist could help (she too didn't understand at first what I was asking) and she told me that "grinds in the cup" coffee is just "normal", and the way to get it in Lithuania is to ask for "normal" and "not from machine" coffee.
And that she personally prefered it too, but that tourists seem to always be afraid of anything that doesn't come out of a machine. She was honestly shocked when I told her this manner of coffee was unknown in Finland.
This chat with the very nice receptionist also gave some perspective of why it is that especially in Poland one is in such a danger of encountering *really* bad coffee (of the "bitter cheapest instant made in a thermos" or "sure, we clean our machine once a year!" -varieties). If "real coffee" is only "grinds-in-cup" it probably seems to lots of people that stupid foreigners or snobs from Warsaw or Krakow can't tell the difference between good coffee and bad anyway, since they don't appreciate "real coffee".
OTOH being a fan of *good* instant coffee, Polish supermarkets are a mecca. Probably because when the traditional way of making coffee is putting grinds in your glass mug and then pouring water on it, doing the same procedure sans the grinds doesn't seem so far fetched.
I still have a few un-opened jars of various "exotic" instants at home, so I didn't buy any this trip (except for the drugged variety, good instant spiked with Guarana). But in a happy marriage between probably Europe's two most instant-coffee loving cultures, the Tesco hypermarket in Lublin actually carried quite an assortment of Tesco fair-trade *origin* instants! Darn, as with the Blue Mountain in Lviv, I really should have bought some...
Dumping ground? Why not?
I never got around to digging up old and new AC and depression texts from various sources to post here (I did start looking, I did!), but these last days I've been feeling a bit bad about inundating forums and mailinglists with looong posts about my recent travel. So why not post those texts here?
Longish rambling text about coffee in the Ukraine and in Poland coming up!
Longish rambling text about coffee in the Ukraine and in Poland coming up!
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