Five stars for the UN cafeteria

Today for lunch I had Ratatouille. Really. French Ratatouillie. It took me back to my childhood. I rated the UN cafeteria has having five stars and thought it daring for serving a peasant dish.

The UN cafeteria really is an amazing place. Each lunch they have five international meals things like African perch, perhaps a Thai dish, or maybe a lamb and humus dish from the Middle East, I had an Afghan meal yesterday a roasted meat (of unknown kind) in a yogurt sauce. There is also a Japanese chef making sushi and sashime in one corner. I think this corner rotates because when I was here in November it was an Italian chef making salads of rare mushrooms, olives of such variety that I never knew existed. Yum!

Vienna sits on the border between Eastern and Western Europe. When you ride the subways the sense of international presence is stunning. A variety of languages is constantly being spoken around you some recognizably Slavic (I can't distinguish Russian from Lithuanian), French, Italian, English, Arabic, and of course German and English. But this sense of international milieu is most palpable in the market near our house! The Naschmarkt! (Which translates literally as the "sweet little tidbits to nibble on market."

Every fruit we ever had in Hawaii is here. Monday night Nathan and Emily were introduced to the wonders of pomegranates (Emily found them far less wondrous than Nathan who ate almost the whole thing). There are entire stores devoted to cheeses. Another devoted to bread. There is a little place we visited that served us carved lamb sandwiches with yogurt sauce. The kids favorite is just getting a half of roasted chicken. Or rather three halves--we like these a lot! We even found fresh whole ginger like we had in Hawaii and we have been making ginger tea every night as we watch the first season of Lost (our one decadent indulgence (well not our only one (don't you hate it when people embed too many parentheses))).

There is a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker! Lori buys meat from the butcher. Well, one in particular. When we first got here we came up to another butcher and I asked in flawless German (see my B+ blog) for a half kilo of hamburger. He laid out a white piece of . . . well, butcher paper. . . and proceeded to pile on kilo after kilo of meat. He was moving so fast he had about 10 kilos on the paper before I could stop him. I reiterated how much we actually wanted. He started putting it back until we really had a half kilo. Then I paid with a 20 euro note. He gave me the change, except he held on to one of the 5's he owed. We just stared at him trying to figure out what was going on, but he refused to hand over the cash. At last we walked away confused. It was more complex than this, as he was acting all hurried and we WERE confused by the miss communication and so it wasn't until we had walked away that the full force that we had just been cheated dawned on us. Make no mistake this was intentional. He had the right change in his hand but would not give it to us. By that time we had walked away it was too awkward to go back and sort it out. Say la vie, or rather auf wiedersehen. But the huckster has payed with a year of loss of business and as you know we Americans eat a lot of hamburger so that's a lot of euros he flushed. It's our national cuisine! Lori is already good friends with the butcher we use. We scowl at the blaggart who ripped us off every time we pass. He never notices.


On Saturday a flea market opens there with used brick-a-brack from all over Eastern and Western Europe. It deserves a blog on its own and I'd best leave that to Lori. Get ready to drool in envy.

Photos by Lori.