For a lot of people, part of the cuisine
scene in Europe is actually about drinking.
I want to talk a little bit about wine, beer, spirits, and also, of
course, that great cafe culture that
you're going to find in Europe.
Wine is a European staple and there's an expectation
that everyone should have access to cheap table wine.
There are literally filling stations like this one all
over Italy where you can go and just fill up jugs
of good but basic table wine so that you can always
have a little wine on the table with your family.
There's sort of a half-joke that you'll hear
in Europe that it's cheaper to buy wine
sometimes than it is to buy water and that
really is the case in a lot of restaurants.
It's just a very important aspect.
If you really want to go high-end, of course, you can do that as well.
There are some really refined wineries.
There are some great opportunities to taste what the local
vintners are doing and what they're sometimes experimenting with.
There's a whole breed of super Tuscan wines,
which has to do with Tuscan vintners,
who were mixing wines in an interesting
way and creating really exciting blends.
If you want to taste some wines in Europe,
there's a few good opportunities.
You can go to a wine bar.
This is one of my favorite wine bars
in the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia.
You can learn a little bit about local wines.
Often you'll have a bartender who understands that you're a visitor
and you're just curious to learn about the wines and they're happy
to walk you through some of your options and very often they serve
some really nice food that's paired to go perfectly with that wine.
There are also great wine shops where,
again, somebody can help you, maybe give you
different samples to help you narrow in on
exactly what kind of wine you're looking for.
A few bottles of wine for picnics, while you're in Europe or even
shipping some bottles home, is a good
investment if you're a wine lover.
Of course, the ultimate experience if you're
a wine lover in Europe, is to go to a
winery where you can actually see the
facility where the wine is grown and created.
Oftentimes, you can just go and take a tour where they'll
actually walk you through the vineyards and they'll walk
you through their cellars and their operation and you'll
come to understand exactly where that wine came from.
By the way, Europe doesn't really quite
have the Napa Valley experience that we
expect in the US, where you can just drive
around and drop into wineries as you like.
For the most part, they really like you to call ahead.
If you're a wine lover, it's worth doing a little bit
of homework, figuring out which wineries interest you.
It's really, just a day or two ahead, give them
a call and say, "Could I stop by sometime
tomorrow for a tour?" and very often, for a small
price, they'll be happy to do that for you.
One of my favorite things about going
for wine tastings and touring vineyards
in Europe is you get to meet the people who actually make the wines.
This was a wonderful gentleman named
Adamo who lives in Montepulciano,
that beautiful Tuscan hilltown, and he is evangelical about wine.
I've never seen somebody speak so poetically about wine.
It's his whole life.
In fact, the last time I went to a Montepulciano,
I walked into Adamo's shop and I saw him there in
his apron and I say, "Adamo, how are you doing?"
He said, "Oh, Cameron."
He says, "It's wonderful.
I retired, but they still let me come to work every day."
[laughter]
Wine is his whole life, Adamo.
It's fun to meet those people.
Another tip for wine lovers, of course, we know that French, and
Italian, and Spanish wines are really
top quality, but there are some
really excellent wines in other parts of Europe that you might not
think of immediately with wines, but
it is worth getting to know them.
For example, in a lot of the former Eastern Europe, places
like Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, they didn't have very
good wine a generation ago because under communism a lot
of the wine production was consolidated and centralized.
These days really talented vintners are going
back to the traditional methods in these
places and you can get some really excellent
wines in countries that you wouldn't expect to.
Of course, another great aspect of European
drinking culture is the beer culture.
There's a lot of countries that are more
known for their beer than for their wine.
Of course, Germany is one of them.
Again, it's fun to enjoy German beer, but
beer in Germany is a whole social custom.
It's not just about drinking the beer, it's about the experience of
sharing it with friends and how you organize your life around it.
In Germany, for example, especially down in Bavaria
in Southern Germany, you have lots of beautiful beer
gardens, which are basically big picnic tables under
chestnut trees and it's a self-service system.
You have to walk around and each little
kiosk sells something different.
This is where you get the Steckerlfisch, which is
a mackerel grilled on a spit over a rotisserie.
If you want to get sausage, there's a little sausage kiosk.
If you want to get a pretzel, there's
a pretzel kiosk and so forth.
A beer is served by the mass, ein mass,
or as we call it in English, ein pitcher.
[laughter]
You can try to order a half mass if you'd like to.
This is a really memorable meal.
Some white sausages from Munich, a big pretzel, some spiral cut
radishes, and a big mass of beer is a really memorable German thing.
It is a cultural thing as well.
Again, it's a whole social custom, not
just an opportunity to eat and drink.
Another country that's really known for its beer is Belgium.
Belgium has a very different approach to beer.
It's less about quantity and more about quality.
Belgian beers tend to be really a high alcohol content.
They, also, have a more artisanal approach to their beers.
Every beer is designed in a very careful way.
They bring the French attention to crafting food
and they import it to the way of making beer.
In fact, every Belgian beer has a very specific
glass in which it is meant to be served.
If you go to a Belgian bar and they have a beer
that you want, but they don't have the glass for
that beer, they will not serve you the beer because
that beer can only be drunk from the glass it's
designed to be drunk from, it's really fun as you
travel around Europe, not just to enjoy the beer, but
to come to appreciate these little aspects and
details and nuances of the culture around the food.
There are also some beautiful beer halls in
Belgium, really fun places to try the beer.
Great Britain, of course, is also a great country for beer.
One thing I love about, not just the beer, but
again, the social custom around the beer is,
it's this spontaneous cocktail party that
erupts after work in a big city every evening.
Everyone who's on their way home from work
will stop off at the neighborhood pub.
They don't have the laws that we do
where you have to stay within the ropes
because British people love to just spill out all over the sidewalk.
One thing I love to do in Britain is wander
around if I'm in London just as work is getting
out and float from pub to pub and you'll
see little pockets of people at each one.
It's a very social experience.
By the way, if you're a fan of craft beer here
in the United States, you'll find it in Europe.
That's becoming very popular there as well.
Italy of all places, which we think
of as a wine country has an excellent
craft beer culture that's very similar to our craft beer culture.
You can get a little flight of different kinds of beer
and taste a variety of what the people there are doing.
Another aspect of European drinking
culture is spirits and Europeans, I would
say, have a more sophisticated, nuanced
approach to spirits than we do.
A lot of Europeans will begin a meal
with an apéritif, a pre-dinner drink.
A lot of them will finish their meal
with a digestif, a post-dinner drink.
Again, it's really fun to really dig into the
culture of the different spirits of Europe.
If you're in Scotland, you obviously
have to try a dram of whiskey.
You want to stop by a whiskey shop
where they can do a little tasting and
help you figure out whether you like
your whiskey peaty or not, smoky or not.
You can also go tour a whiskey distillery and see the
place where all of this beautiful stuff is made.
You could even go to a cooperage where
they make the barrels to age the whiskey.
Every country has its own firewater.
Every country has its own hard drinks.
In Poland, of course, it's vodka.
In Southern Italy, it's limoncello,
that delicious lemon-flavored liqueur.
In Turkey, in Greece, they have ouzo, which is an anise-flavored
drink that turns cloudy when you add water to it.
The Czech Republic has Becherovka,
which is almost like a Jägermeister.
It's a really strong herbal blend.
Hungary has their own version of that called Unicum.
It's fun to see how popular and important
these are to the local cultures.
In Hungary, for example, this Unicum
liqueur is the subject of some very
whimsical, nostalgic kind of Guinness
style ads that people really love.
If you're a teetotaler, there's also a world
of interesting soft drinks to try in Europe.
For example, in Switzerland, they have a unique
soft drink, that I've never had anywhere else,
called Rivella, and this is literally made with
milk serum and it tastes like chewable vitamins.
[laughter]
It sounds odd, but it's a very distinctive flavor and I don't feel
like I've been in Switzerland until I've had a bottle of Rivella.
I actually like it.
I've developed a taste for it.
Scotland, they have a bright orange,
sugary soda called Irn-Bru.
It's fun to go beyond just the hard drinks and realize
there are some interesting soft drinks as well.
The last aspect of drinking culture I'd like to talk
about is this great cafe culture that Europe enjoys.
In the United States, we've only recently
sort of discovered the cafe culture of Europe
through Starbucks and now through a variety
of second and third wave coffee shops.
If you want to go back to the mothership, you're going to find that
in Europe, especially Italy and France, have a great cafe culture.
It's fun to go there and stow your preconceptions and your Starbucks
menu order and really learn about the local coffee customs.
The different drinks you can get in an Italian cafe, for
example, it all has to do with how much espresso and
how much milk they mix together and the way they mix
it together, and they really think a lot about this.
The other thing is, remember I talked earlier
about how important digestion is to Italians.
Italians, for example, believe that you should not have milk
after about midday because it's really bad for your digestion.
If you go to a local Italian cafe in
the mid-afternoon and asked for a cafe latte, they're going to say,
"No, we can't serve you a cafe latte.
You don't want that much milk."
They're worried about you.
They're worried about your health.
You'll notice that Italians don't drink a lot of milk.
Now, I'm joking.
They will serve it to you, but you actually might get kind of a funny
look when you order it, because of that, if you don't want to just
take a straight espresso shot, Italians have an art of mixing in
just a little dollop of cream, which
they called un caffè macchiato.
It's a coffee that's marked with cream.
By the way, a latte macchiato is the opposite.
It's a big glass of milk that's marked with a little bit of espresso.
This is where when Starbucks popularized this form of
drinking coffee, they've played fast and loose with some
of the terminology, so you might want to study up if you're
a coffee lover to make sure you get the right drink.
A caffè macchiato in Italy is a little
different than you'd get at Starbucks.
If you go into an Italian cafe and you say, "I'd like a
latte," they're going to give you a glass of steamed milk.
If you want a latte, we think of a latte
as a cafe latte, it's coffee with milk.
The other thing that you should be aware of,
especially in Mediterranean countries and France
and Spain and Italy, you might pay different
prices depending on where you have your coffee.
You'll pay the most if you sit outside on the
terrace, you'll pay a little bit less if you sit
inside, but if you really want to save money,
you can get your coffee standing at a counter.
In fact, there's a law in Italy that
says that every cafe in Italy can only
charge about a euro for a basic
espresso shot standing at the counter.
This is a sort of Egalitarian Law that makes sure that
the average people aren't priced out of their coffee.
I've actually tried this.
I've gone to the fanciest cafe in Venice
where it's €15 for a coffee out on the
square and I walk up to the counter and for
€1 they give me the exact same coffee.
Beyond the France, Italy, Starbucks style coffee scene,
other parts of Europe have also really great coffee scenes.
Budapest, and Hungary, and Vienna and Austria
have some really exciting, beautiful grand cafes.
Portugal has a great kiosk culture,
where in these beautiful shady squares
all over Lisbon, you'll see little
kiosks that serve drinks and coffees.
One of my favorite coffee scenes is actually in Bosnia.
This is where they have, what some people call, Turkish coffee.
Bosnians call it Bosnian coffee.
[laughter]
It's the unfiltered coffee that is very
time consuming and exacting to prepare.
Actually, Bosnians explained to me,
"We're not trying to caffeinate quickly.
We do not like the Italian coffee culture, where you walk up to
a counter and you slam down a espresso and you get out the door.
If we're having coffee, it's because we really want to slow down
and connect with the people we're having coffee with."
They liked the fact that it takes longer to make Bosnian coffee
because it gives an opportunity to connect with their friends.
It's interesting to get these insights as you travel around.
What talk about European food would be complete
without a quick tour through the sweets of Europe.
There's lots of great opportunities to finish your meal in Europe.
Many countries are known for their
candies, especially their chocolates.
Belgium, of course, has its delicate pralines.
Swiss chocolate is very famous for its creamy milky qualities.
There are lots of other interesting
candies you can seek out on your travels.
Again, be adventurous.
If you're in Scandinavian countries,
go ahead, give salted licorice a try.
If you don't like licorice, don't try it, but if you
like licorice, you're going to love salted licorice.
It's one of my favorite treats when I'm in Scandinavia.
If you like salted caramel, why wouldn't you like salted licorice, right?
[laughter]
Be adventurous.
Seek out these interesting flavors and be willing to give them a try.
Of course, there's a whole world of
traditional pastries and croissants and this
sort of thing, but I like to figure out
what the local pastry is in each place.
In Portugal, for example, they have a really
beautiful cream custard tart called pastel de nata.
There are some shops in Lisbon where
you can actually go and watch them making this custard tart and it's
a really delicious way to learn about this.
In Hungary and lots of parts of Eastern
Europe, they have a dessert called
a Kürtőskalács, which is literally a chimney cake
where they wrap dough around
this little spindle and they slowly run it over a rotisserie on hot coals
and it picks up some really delicious flavors and it caramelizes the sugar.
It's really delicious.
In Spain, of course, you have to get some churros con chocolate
served with a thick pudding-like hot chocolate and so forth.
As you travel around Europe, you'll realize there's actually
sort of a cultural divide as you go towards Southeastern Europe.
Most of Europe sweetens its desserts with
sugar, but as you get into Southeastern
Europe, the Balkans, especially into Turkey
and Greece, they sweeten things with honey.
There's kind of a cultural fault line that you
discover in your crossing as you go over.
If you want some completely different beautiful,
sweet flavors, you can go to Southeastern Europe.
Of course, we have to talk about ice cream,
which exists in every culture in Europe.
Of course, for a lot of people, Italian
gelato is the ultimate ice cream experience.
I actually walked through Florence with a very good
friend of mine once, who has a friend who opened a
gelato shop and I asked her to teach me how to find
the best gelato, so let me give you some of her tips.
She said, first of all, keywords are things
like artigianale, which means artisanal.
You want to look for homemade.
You don't want somebody who's just pouring
packaged powders into their machines.
You want somebody who's actually making it fresh every day.
It's a really bad sign when you see big colorful
mountains of gelato that are piled above the containers.
These are literally designed to mesmerize little kids
so they go over and say, "I want that one because
it's got the flashiest colors."
She said the best thing to look for are natural, muted, subdued colors.
My last tip from her that I thought was
really interesting, if you want to be
able to judge the quality of a gelato
place, you try their pistachio flavor.
The reason is every gelato costs the same, but
some of the gelatos cost more to produce,
and pistachio, if it's real pistachio,
is the most expensive gelato to produce.
If someone runs a gelateria and they're trying to do
it on the cheap, they're going to use basically an
almond-flavored gelato and add in a little bit of pistachio
and some green food coloring and call it pistachio.
If you lick that pistachio flavor and
you can really taste real pistachios,
you know that this gelato place is not
going to cheap out on their flavors.