Had an unforgettable meal at your local restaurants, or while you are on a trip, or that you made yourself and you are eager to share it with someone else? Then you, my friends, have come to the right place!
If you are more interested in discussing food & drinks in general i.e. recipies, tips & tricks, then head over to the topic below⊠
I am going to kick things off with a recent meal I had about a week ago at a Korean BBQ joint (havenât had one in a longgg time) with my boyfriendâŠ
Each of us got a Dinner Buffet package which gave us access to a variety of meat such as top blade (beef), beef short plate marinated in spicy sauce, pork skins, chicken ribs, etc. There was also a Special Buffet with a whole lot more meat dishes to choose from but to us, most meat taste the same so we couldnât be bothered.
We also ordered a grilled cheese dish of which the first piece was on the house 
. I think the cheese was Mozzarella as it was rather gooey and soft even after being cooked.
One of the things I love about Korean restaurants is that the meal usually comes with a variety of side dishes, called banchan and they are mostly free-of-charge, here we got our usual rice cakes (Tteokbokki), steamed eggs, corn with cheese, kimchi, etc. â You could literally get full on these banchan alone so I would advise you to not over-order them to save belly space for the main dishes.
Our favorite dishes (including banchan) were: chicken ribs marinated in spicy sauce, short blade marinated in spicy sauce, sausages, pork shoulder, and of course the grilled cheese 
The oyster dish was also good (especially the cheese covered on top), though the oyster themselves were rather small (but hey, it was a buffet sooo technically, I could have ordered as many as I wanted).
Sadly, we got so full by the end of our meal (there was a time limit of 2 hours for each table - strange I know), that we had to send back the prawns and octopus, and we did not get to order anything else the second time 
But well, for around $14/person, Iâd say it is money well spent. We would definitely visit this BBQ joint again, with a bigger group of course 
Let us know if there is a Korean BBQ joint near where you live and whether you have tried one out or not
Unfortunately, many of the BBQ style restaurants around my home did not make it through COVID protocol. They were not allowed to have patrons inside, so unless they could go to a âtake-outâ style diner, they could not open for business. We have (still) a Chinese restaurant that provided take-out but you could not go in the restaurant to pick it up. When you got to the restaurant, you then had to phone them to say you were outside and then they would put your dinner order out the door.
The most memorable meal we had was decades ago, my wife and I ordered Chateaubriand for two. The carrots had a sweet glaze, the other vegetables were heavenly with light sauces, the potatoes were astounding with a smooth sauce and the meat was cooked perfectly. Each plate has a âduplicateâ set-upâthatâs why itâs for two. We would point to an item on our plate and rave about its taste and the other would just moan with a smile while chewing away. Decades and I can still remember the dishâand it was with excellent company, too.
Thatâs a shame, a big part of why I enjoy sitting down at BBQ restaurants is to socialize with friends/family and also to people watching. Yeah, granted, you could also socialize at home, but the atmosphere is just not the same.
I honestly thought that they would lower your food down from the second floor like the video below 
I can only imagine how incredible that dish was based on your description. If you have had any other recent meals that have also left a similar impression on you, then by all means, share with us 
An English breakfast in the evening, why not?
So me and my bf recently went to this place called The Melbourne Cafe in our city. I ordered an English breakfast, while my bf had an Egg Benedict.
My impression of the dish was rather so-so - the bacon they used was the American variant, and the toast was sourdough, which was rather hard to cut with knife (and the hashbrown and baked beans were add-ons 
). And where were the stir-fried mushrooms 
As I have not had English food (nor any Western food) at all for quite a while, I did not realize how they can taste quite âblandâ sometimes (please donât come at me 
), so of course I had to spice them up with some tabasco.
What do you think of the dish @Russ_Thomas? Maybe you can whip up a Full English breakfast for brunch this Sunday?
Time for some little throwback of when I had Russian food with my friends at, presumably, the only Russian restaurant where I live - CCCP Saigon.
Some highlights were the Mimosa salad (if you have a small appetite, this dish would be enough to make you full), the Borsch and Solyanka soups, Pelmeni dumplings, and the Lamb Shashlyk (the lamb was especially juicy and the taste wasnât that strong). We also love the Napoleon and Medovik cakes for dessert. 
If you have had Russian food before, what was your favorite dish? Were there any dishes that were also in my pictures?
Borsch looks correct.
My wife love it. I hate it because beetroots.
Beetroots belongs only to pickles imho. Boiled or whatver else cooked are abomination.
Mimosa salad i think it is actually named âShubaâ or similar, it is a derivate from Olivier salad (google about) but layered.
(though my wife say ther is also a Mimosa salad which is famous, but should have different layers. for my eyes looks like Shuba which we do very often for Xmas)
Solyanka is actually Ucrainean and does not look right (should not have big chunks of potatoes or whatever is it)
Hope those chunks are croutons so i mistake. Should have also olives when served.
Anyway, since restaurant name start with CCCP (ex soviet union) we can accept it as part of the menu and various others which may not be 100 % russian at the origins.
Shashlik means âgrillâ so i hope you enjoyed it with the assorted pickles aside.
Overall looks good, balcanic kitchen.
LE. pelmeni are just pelmeni. it actually means dumplings. seems to be served right, with sour cream on top i hope.
can have various filing, minced meat, potatoes whatever.
i usually like to put also lot of black pepper on them
on the cakes i cannot judge, i hope are made also right. we rarely cook sweets but the picture seems to match with the recipe.
for the rest⊠yeah, we use to cook such even if i am not russian.
balcanic kitchen is complex
How can you hate Borsch?
Just googled both and the Shuba looks very similar to the one we had. Maybe 1-2 layers are different between the two? Regardless, I believe one can get almost a meal-worth of nutrition with only Mimosa/Shuba alone since it is quite filling.
Unfortunately those were potatoes, but there was also olives, so I guess itâs not too bad, and the taste was also rather sour/tarty as well.
Do you happen to know what each of the letters in âCCCPâ stands for? I could only guess âCommunist/Communismâ and âPartyâ are in there? 
They were not too sweet which suits us. Just found that they also make batches of them for delivery so I may order them soon
Given that Romania and Russia is quite close (is it? I am bad at geography), are there any cuisine exchnages between the two countries that you noticed?
Because of beetroots. Is is mostly a visual thing in my head, the taste I kinda like (altough is a bit sweet) but the color not.
Yes, so you have to provide more details, Mimosa have a strong layer of grated cheese lets say, Shuba may have thiner layers of various (and grated cheese also). Could be Mimosa what you had or just Shuba, anyway both are tasty.
This is how it should be, so we can ignore the potatoes. Solyanka it is usually made sour using the brine of pickled gerkins (and finely chopped pickles too).
It is a sort of âpoor man soupâ ⊠cooked with whatever you have in the pantry during the heavy winter (smoked and dried fish, smoked beef, some salami whatever). Except potatoes looks ok and I hope you enjoyed it.
Ofcourse, you need a bit of knowledge about Cyrillic aplhabet.
C in cyrilic is S in latin, P is R.
Therefore CCCP is SSSR == Soyuz Sovetskih Socialisticheskih Respublik
link: CCCP (disambiguation) - Wikipedia
It means âSocialist Soviet Republicsâ or so (donât remember right now what Soyuz stands for ⊠may mean Union?).
USSR on short.
CCCP included Ukraine, Republic of Moldova and many others, until it has been disolved during the time Michail Gorbatchov was president if I recall.
So we can accept in this particular restaurant menu some various dishes even if are not 100% Russian.
In addition of that, my wife is from Republic of Moldova which was for long time part of CCCP after WW2 as mentioned (previously was a Romanian teritory, the region was known as Basarabia at that time and still it is for those with some respect for history)
She is my best advisor in such 
as they share a lot of dishes from russian cuisine and other neighbours.
le: confirmed, soyuz means union, so my memory is not that bad.
Yeah, I get it. I mean, if a dish, like, beef stew, suddenly turn green (even though the taste is still the same), I would still be rather put off by it.
Looking back at the picture, I can see grated/finely chopped egg yolks in the first layer, the second layer was grated egg white for sure. The third layer was grated carrots, and the fourth was grated potatoes with (I think fish)?
Oh, and there was a dollop of sour cream & a few fish roe on top.
I think for Shuba it would have grated beetroot on the first layer (that would not be your favorite, would it? 
)
I really thought CCCP was some kind of English abbreviation lol (one of these day I may need to learn the Russian language - though its case system is so challenging - I heard that the Romaninan langugage is the same?).
Mhm ⊠I suppose indeed you had Mimosa (we never did it so I donât know the exact recipe ⊠and it is hard to tell since the recipes are pretty similar)
With Shuba I accept beetroots, I donât like them in soups.
I like also beetrots fine chopped mixed with horseradish (or wasabi if you like stronger) and a bit of vinegar, it is great with grilled sausages. And ofcourse, in pickles. So I am not 100 % against it.
Not sure what you mean âŠ
Romanian is a latin language, more close to Spanish, Italian etc.
Russian is slavic, like Bulgarian and so on.
But if you speak about âchallengingâ ⊠well, yeah, the grammar is overkill in Romanian, have plenty subtilities.
For Russian you have to learn also the alphabet wich ads one more layer of complexity, though the grammar may be a bit more friendly.
Got to try Langos (Hungarian fried bread) about a month ago.
According to Google, Hungarians typically spread garlic sauce and then sprinkle cheese on it. But here, they made it look almost like pizzas which was all the more appetizing.
I am sure every country has at least one version or interpretation of the classic Italian pizza, whatâs yours?
may be true or not.
Langos can be filled with anything. It usually served as a fast-food stuff, without anything on top.
what google show to you are deviations, in the end, you can put whatever you like on top of a pie to look like a pizza.
or you can put even a pizza (or worse, pineaple) on top of pizza âŠ
hint: the Langos it is just the one at the bottom. the pie letâs say which have some filling, cheese looks like in your case.
whatever else is on top are just fancy stuff ⊠at consumer will.
more hints: in the city i live now (Cluj) Langos is verry common at fast-food trucks.
As the Hungarian comunity it is quite large here.
In addition of that, my soon-to-be sister-in-law is Hungarian (born In Romania and with Romanian and Hungarian citizenship, soon to be married with my Moldavian brother-in-law with duplicate citizenship too). They will have the marriage in few months.
but indeed, is very tasty, a must try!
Next one I reccomend from the Hungarian cuisine, Goulahs (but make sure is authentic goulahs, not deviations)
Sounds quite like Goulash in English, and the dish looks a bit like Beef Ragu as well I am not sure if there are any Hungarian restaurant in my city or not but I will try looking.
I have also sat my eyes on a German restaurant where I live, though the fact that most of german food tend to be brown-ish, yellow, or beige is a bit off-putting for me 
Recently got to try out German food for the first time and my experience with it was rather alright, not too shabby, but not excellent either.
At one of the only German restaurants I could find in my city, we ordered a Lentil soup, a Parkhaus platter which consisted of 2 Bratwurst, 4 NĂŒrnberge sausages, 2 mini Schnitzel with Red cabbages, sauerkraut and potato salad as side dishes, and a Beef Roulade.
We did expect the dishes to be rather meat-based, but still, the amount of sausages surprised us. At first, the different type of sausages taste good, but after a while, they sort of blended into each other, resulting in a âsameyâ taste that was rather uninspiring (Luckily, the Tabasco sauce helped spice things up a bit). The Schnitzle, in our opinion, was a thinner version of the Japaneseâs Tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet) (maybe the two countries inspired each other - culinarily speaking - somehow ).
For desserts, we got an Apple Crumble pie, which was a bit of a disappointment, as the waitress had clearly reheated it in a microwave, and did not even do a thorough job of it. 
The âApfelschorleâ (apple juice with sparkling water) was surprisingly addicting though, so at least the Germans still have something going for them in terms of food & drink.
Despite my less-than-ideal first encounter with German cuisine, I may come back to sample more dishes, hopefully it will not be as meaty.
To all German-based members of our forum, which German dishes do you think I could try next?
I am thinking of Currywurst, but it is more of a street food dish
