Eating makes no difference where you are or who you are. You’ve got to eat. There are probably favorite foods and maybe favorite places. Most bakeries make my mouth water, no matter where I travel. Pizza seems to have won over the world for there are “Pizza” signs in every corner of the globe. Vegetarians are happier in the Asian countries and in the Far East. When sausage is mentioned, one immediately thinks of Germany and a stein of beer.
In the United States these days you can find a take-out for almost everything. Or, if you just want to fill a need quickly, there are tons of fast food shops on every other corner.
But wait a minute! I venture to say that each of you has a “favorite place” – a spot where you go on special occasions or even when you just feel the need to sit, relax, and fill your tummy. That’s what this story is about.
A month or so ago, Barbara and I found ourselves in Skopje, Macedonia. Admittedly, this is not a high-profile visitors’ country, but nonetheless it should be on your “bucket list.” The urge that brought us here was “we knew somebody.” The granddaughter of one of our best friends had married a young man from here and was now making a life far from the United States. I will elaborate in a later story on this pleasant country with such a rich, but unexplored history – after all Alexander the Great started here. But today, I want to tell you about eating a meal in Macedonia.
The lead-in to my two hosts was, “Where does a local go to eat and what do they order?” There were plenty of restaurants around, but I wanted something that was directed at the local population, and believe me I got it.
We wound around a series of short one-way roads littered with parked cars abandoned in a most casual way. There are plenty of cars here, but parking is in short supply. The sign advertising a place to eat was small and painted with no hype whatsoever reading MEAHA-KEPNHY. My friends told me this series of letters is pronounced care-peach. So we ate at the Care-Peach Restaurant.
We entered by going down a set of five to seven stairs and past an outside covered eating area populated by two folk who were sipping beers and smoking cigarettes.
The inside, no more than four meters wide, had a central aisle with five or six booths on either side. The walls were lined with history. Pictures of buildings long gone, or now renovated. People who shaped the Macedonian nation looked down on us visiting diners.
But proudest of all the collections were the ones of the soccer team, excuse me, football team. At the base of this “shrine” was an old un-inflated leather soccer ball and a pair of spiked running shoes once worn in the Balkan Soccer Tournament. The Rabotnicki of Skopje won ten titles between 1952 and 1980, using the Macedonian name – all of this while there was still no separate country of Macedonia. More on this in a later story.
The menu which was completely indecipherable to us was a gourmet map of delights to our hosts. They ordered meshana daska, something akin to “mixed board” he exclaimed. But first came the aivar. Now I’m getting a little over my head here because in reality this appetizer was quite extensive. We were served toasted buttered bread on which to spread this mixture of tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers. There were other dips of various colors, and a bounty of fresh veggies on the tray. And we ate these hors d’oeuvres with relish, dipping everything into the sauces. A meal unto itself!
The meshana daska arrived with two to three slabs of grilled cheeses, grilled veggies, and grilled meats. I’m not quite sure what each of them actually was, but I cut a portion and down it went. One thing I can vouch for – this country’s eaters love peppers. There was no shortage here. In fact, my mouth felt like it was on fire. In addition each of us received a plate of meat (I had sausage as it was advertised as being homemade by the restaurant,) and a pile of grilled sliced potatoes covered with some local cheese. These local cheeses do not come in packages similar to those found at Trader Joe’s. They have a unique taste and are delicious. It took a while and a great deal of confidence to work our way through this gigantic platter of food. My host told me what I was eating because all was not recognizable. If I lived here I would weigh twice my current weight. It was all delectable, but wow – the quantity!! I’m still a little unsure of what I actually ate, though.
We skipped dessert, waddled off to our hotel, and amazingly no heartburn.
One final note. The currency here is the denar. There are about sixty denars to the Euro, and about seven tenths of a Euro to the US dollar. The bill for the four of us came to 1,280 denars. I’ll leave the calculation to the math majors to figure out what we ended up paying.
Well, bon appétit!
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