Nate and Kara Buchanan take a guided Bratislava food tour led by Linda. The transcript recounts arrival early in the morning, meeting the guide at the castle, sampling multiple traditional Slovak foods (chicken liver pâté, sauerkraut soup, smoked cheese, potato pancakes, fried cheese, Coppola soda, and the EU-protected Bratislava roll), and learning cultural traditions (bread-and-salt greeting, regional blueberry brandy). The tour emphasizes food as a way to learn local history and culture and ends with positive reflections on the experience.
Questions this video answers
About 5:30 AM on an overnight bus.
Stefanka.
The Bratislava roll.
Bread with salt (a Bratislavian tradition).
Chapters
We got into Bratislava early this morning at like 5:30 on an overnight bus. We checked into our hostel, slept for a few hours, and now we're ready to go.
We are so excited to go on a Bratislava food tour today. We had so much fun at the one in Krakow. I can't wait to learn more about the history and the culture of Bratislava through our favorite thing, food eating.
We're heading to the castle to meet the group now.
Nice to meet you. I'm Linda, your guide.
I'm Karen.
I'm Nate.
Karen, nice to meet you.
Our tour guide, Linda, greeted us with bread with salt, which is an old Bratislavian tradition. Apparently they don't really do it anymore, except for when the king is like meeting somebody important. The bread is life and the salt is health.
We also when we have friends coming over here and we have something to celebrate people in north of Slovakia where there are enough mountains and enough blueberries in them. They try to make their own blueberry brandy at home, so it's a real delicacy. I hope you will like it.
We have some homemade blueberry brandy.
Cheers.
We're starting with some sauteed mushrooms on toast with some parsley on top.
Do you know what is this?
No, not a. Not a clue.
Those are onions and bread. And this is chicken liverpath.
Much better than I thought it would be. Okay, chicken liver pate.
I prefer Jacky liver pate, but vegetables.
We learned that pate is so common here. It's like the Slovakian version of a PB and J that kids bring to school in their lunchbox. The kids bring pate. I ended up eating three pieces of bread with chicken liver pate on top. So I guess it's growing on me or I'm just really hungry.
Appetizers are down. I think we're going to soup next. Apparently here they eat soup with all of their big meals, and even if it's summer, they always eat hot soup.
We're going to the oldest working restaurant in Slovakia. It's called Stefanka, named after the princess of Austria, Hungary, back in the 1890s.
We're trying the traditional sauerkraut soup they have on Christmas and at weddings.
Just say an entire bowl of cabbage soup. And then she told us we have five more stops. Now I'm all full and warm and cozy inside and I just want to go back to sleep.
But she said ice cream and coffee.
Yeah, sheep's cheese.
It's called orawski korbachik or zabli korbachik. It's one of the geographically protected foods. Like you. No one can call this, like, really good name. Laduan usually starts from the side.
It tastes like bacon.
Bacon flavored string cheese is what it tastes like. It's actually smoked cow cheese. We get to take home the leftovers. We got a little bit of the sausage and the cheese. The smoked cheese was my favorite.
Next we're having the potato pancake.
With duckwort on top, duck water on top.
It's very nice.
This is a Slovakia version of a pierogi, which is like the dumpling things we add in Krakow.
Mmm.
Good.
The fried bacon on top really adds to it too.
There are actual three pieces of beef under that so that you won't be surprised. This is a cranberry jam on top. And this is like some type of a bread that we often eat with gravy. This one is really fancy food. It's actually a Czech national food.
This is basically a mozzarella, but with Gouda cheese.
You like it? I think I only go like knives, so.
They're so good. Feel like you can't go wrong with fried cheese.
So we're drinking Coppola, which is Czechoslovakia's version of Coke, because during the communist era, they didn't want to drink capitalist Coca Cola, so they made their own version of it. But it has lots of herbs in it instead of like sugar and syrup. It's actually really good. I feel like it's healthier than Coca Cola.
She says it's not, though.
She says it's okay.
Getting fuller.
That was the main course. Now it's time for dessert. Luckily, I have a separate stomach for dessert, so even though I'm really full. What a room for ice cream.
It's all been so good.
All the food here is like, so hardy, though. We've had like 10 courses.
She's taking us to the best ice cream spot in town. It's quite obvious by this line of people.
We're at the oldest ice cream shop in town, slash the best.
It must be.
For our last dessert, we're having the Bratislava roll. It is protected by the European Union. It's trademark. Nobody can call rolls that look like this. Bratislava rolls. Except how do you get permission?
You have to follow a special recipient, then get a permission from the. From the European Union.
It's a very complicated process.
They're even on their postcards.
Yeah, there used to be on our postcard.
Yeah, old postcards.
Interesting. It's not as sweet as I expected.
What's in the middle? Walnuts.
Walnut. It's the walnut filling, but walnut filling in the middle.
We got a gift.
This is a typical Slovak snack.
Food.
Tour number two was a success. We got way more food this time. It was all delicious. I didn't try a single thing that I didn't like. I wish I wouldn't have eaten so much, but I don't regret any of it. And I feel like I've been here forever already, Even though we just got here this morning because we learned so much about the country already.
You really can learn so much through food, be it like history, culture, traditions.
Our guide, Linda, was so adorable, and I asked her so many questions, and she was so informative. And anytime we were walking from one place to the next, we would take the long way so that our food could settle a little bit before we got to the next place. And she would just talk about the buildings and the history, and I just love it. It's like the best tour you can take on your first day, in my opinion.
Thank you for having us. Radislava food tours. Now we're going home to go into a food coma.
Yes.
Look at that.
I love that.
Next stop on our food tour. Just kidding. But apparently they have a specialty sandwich on the dollar menu. That's the fried cheese that we just had, but they just put it between two McDonald buns. And here and the Czech Republic are the only two countries that you can get it at, so McDonald's could technically be a culinary experience.
