Adventures of Mark and Stu: Bon Appetit

Bon Appetit

Stewed figs, honey, cottage cheese and cream

Stu suggested a food tour. We never ever do these things but this one sounded fun. A guide walks you around the fish market and describes all of the fish so you know what we might like. This market may be the only one in the world without flies since it is located by a sulphur spring. We went through our booty as the voyeurous sea gulls watched us. We opted for the scorpion fish. They were the color of the devil and apparently have a nasty sting. She told us the meat was sweet but she failed to mention the cat whisker sized bones. Every small bit was an adventure. We also had clams and two prawn--or so we thought. We got four prawns and fewer clams. Someone would be missing two prawns. We sat silently and looked at the prawns. All four of them. They were unbelievably sweet. Once again, don’t judge me. The kitchen was overwhelmed by our group and did the best they could. In the fruit market, we bought figs and cheese for dessert. Along the way we ran across locals annoyed by the tour and interesting trivia about Croatian life. She said they never meet in restaurants because they are so loud. Clearly she has never eaten with Americans. English speakers speak loud and Americans seem to have the best diaphragms for the task. We stopped at a vegetable stand at the dirty old lady speaking in Croatian started describing crooked carrots and their suggestive sizes. Our guide blushing, said, I’m not going to translate that. She was wearing all black and had a handful of teeth. I called her a studda bubba. The guide chuckled and agreed. She then told us about all the capers growing around the palace and as we came around the corner on cue, we saw a man picking them off the wall.

While the meal was cooking I asked her for a few recipes to make at home and we wrote down the names. Our guide was lovely. The meal was delightful and I survived a fish dinner. Dessert was creamed cottage cheese with figs and sweet chunks of cheese. It was unusual but good. What bothered me was the bill. The amount of the bill was more than reasonable and they charged us nothing extra to cook the food. What they did do, however, was to jack up the price of the water ridiculously. It was just unnecessarily petty, so I took the water bottle. Hell, I more than paid for the deposit. Don’t judge me.