I splurge at breakfast this morning and get a croissant. I slather it with the hazelnut cream from the breakfast “buffet.” They were milk chocolate. I don’t think I’ve ever seen milk chocolate croissants… ever. Not that that’s bad, but it’s just…different. They look better than they are on the inside. The flakiness and layers losses something in translation when you open it up.
It was a quick day today, actually. For some reason, I didn’t photograph lunch. We had 4 types of pie. I talked about pie in the first post here. There was beef pie, cheese pie, potato pie, and spinach pie. I liked the potato and the spinach. I didn’t try the cheese. The meat was really heavy. I can’t imagine how the Bosnian people aren’t all clogged up. I’m sorry if it’s TMI but seriously! I drank two containers of the yogurt in hopes of the probitocis doing their magic. GAH!
Okay.
Since this is a food blog, and I can’t REALLY tell you what I’m doing, I’ll just say, it was a productive day. We all piled into cabs and headed to Noovi. If you’re in Bosnia, you HAVE HAVE HAVE to eat at Noovi. It’s across from the British Embassy. Apparently that’s important when you’re telling a driver who’s never been there before where to go and you don’t really speak either of the three languages spoken here.
Anyway. The sky was amazing!
Noovi is this small restaurant. All the food is cooked to order. DO NOT expect this to be a quick meal. This is a grazing restaurant. You nibble, you talk, you drink, you talk, you sip Rakja, and talk. Seriously. It’s the experience of eating; not just the eating.
We have a nice white wine. It was oak aged Žilavka by Gentille Vinarija, which is a grape found primarily in the Herzegovina region. It was a delicious white wine; very similar to a white burgundy. *shrugs* They bring us a basket of what they called foccacia, but it was like thin crust pizza topped with herbs and cheese and baked. It was the same dough they use for their pizza crust.
We started with a traditional cheese and sausage plate with olives, dried figs, and tomatoes. Fabulous! I loved the olives. They weren’t like the regular green olives we get, that are over brined. These had the olive flavor without all that salt/vinegar taste that we’re used to. You could taste the olives. It was amazing!
N and L ordered pizza. Yup. It’s on the same dough as the foccacia. It’s crispy and tasty and delicious. The “ketchup” is a fabulously fresh tomato sauce with spicy pepperoni. I had one slice. It was like pizza SHOULD taste.
Okay…now for rakja. Do you know this rakja? Holy cow! The owner gave us one round for free. The women receive cherry (višnjevača) and the men received walnut (orahovač). O. M. G. The cherry was fabulous! I mean, lick the glass can I please have the bottle fabulous! It’s tart cherry flavor in this sweet wine. The perfect marriage of sweet and tart in alcohol. WOW. We were all enamored with this drink we’d never had before, so we all, of course, wanted to purchase bottles of this heaven. I only purchased one bottle of cherry. I imagine I will have withdrawal symptoms from this one bottle and will DEMAND anyone someone form the Balkans will have to purchase me a bottle, which I will reimburse them for, of course.
The next round, I asked for the quince. Now, that one came in a little bottle. Now, that one, holy alcohol! It’s like quince flavored everclear! Man did it burn. I can see why A warned us about this stuff. If all we had were the bottles, I probably wouldn’t have even considered purchasing any. Thankfully, I wasn’t ruined by the second rakja and was able to taste the cherry. I can’t wait to get home and crack that bottle open and share it with S and the rest of the fam.
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