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@MajorRage said in Happiness Scale:
Best city food discussions are as pointless as best cricket player lists. Subjective and ultimately futile. I’ve had amazing, and shit, food in every city I’ve ever visited.
But today, I picked up a gnr uk tour shirt from ‘87 in Rome. For 20 EUR.
Rome just wins. Every time..
The worlds top 50 best restaurants list and 51 to 100 list interestingly have Bangkok as the city with the most restaurants in 6.
Paris has 4.
Rome 0.
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That is surprising, both for Bangkok and Rome. Though top restaurants are not the real story, for me at least, as they offer an experience that is often far removed from the actual food. yes the food is good, sometimes phenomenal, but it is usually about the mix of ingredients showcasing the chef's skills, presentation and in many cases the wtf element. For me the discussion would be centred on the more everyday eating experiences and then it usually comes down to which type of cuisine do you prefer. If you prefer French, then Paris will shit on Rome and vice-versa.
I like the simplicity of Italian food but I also like the marriage of flavours that you get with French food insofar as with one dish you will get say dauphinoise potatoes and another you will get sarlardaise spuds and the marriage just works.
So on the whole I just about prefer French food, plus of course (in the north) they use butter. Lots of it.
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@Catogrande said in Happiness Scale:
That is surprising, both for Bangkok and Rome. Though top restaurants are not the real story, for me at least, as they offer an experience that is often far removed from the actual food. yes the food is good, sometimes phenomenal, but it is usually about the mix of ingredients showcasing the chef's skills, presentation and in many cases the wtf element. For me the discussion would be centred on the more everyday eating experiences and then it usually comes down to which type of cuisine do you prefer. If you prefer French, then Paris will shit on Rome and vice-versa.
I like the simplicity of Italian food but I also like the marriage of flavours that you get with French food insofar as with one dish you will get say dauphinoise potatoes and another you will get sarlardaise spuds and the marriage just works.
So on the whole I just about prefer French food, plus of course (in the north) they use butter. Lots of it.
What's interesting is Lima has the second most spots. Ive never been there or Bangkok.
I didn't have a great food experience overall in France and I felt like many places were phoning it in on reputation. There were some memorable meals though.
Havent had anything special in Rome but other parts of Italy were great.
Spain was great overall. Barcelona, San Sebastian etc.
Interestingly Amisfield Restaurant in Queenstown is in the top 100. Never been to the restaurant either but Ive bought a dozen of the Pinot Noir which is a great drop.
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@brodean France is certainly not immune to the dumbing down of the restaurant scene and yeah, the dial in in element is certainly alive and kicking. I had .a few days in Paris earlier this year with the two Ms Catos. It was NOT a cultural trip, it was all about food and wine and was a great trip. We did our research pretty thoroughly and the only two disappointments were a boulangerie that had a great rep but was trading on past glories and a mediocre Croque Monsieur experience in Le Marais area. No great surprise.
One great little restaurant not far from the river did mainly grilled meats. Madame grilled all sorts of cuts on a plain griddle over an open fire in the main part of the restaurant without a timer or seemingly any attempt at co-ordination at all. The result was fantastic. I had the most beautiful plate of grilled veal kidneys with frites and a green salad which were simple, great ingredients, cooked perfectly. Two courses were about 28 Euros from memory.
My nephew has a house out in the sticks in the Charente Maritime and the local restaurant does a set three course lunch for 16 Euros. Again, simple food cooked beautifully. That is the sort of French cuisine that gets my taste buds going.
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@Catogrande sounds amazing. Last time I went I clearly did not do enough research. It was rocks and diamonds a bit. I did enjoy some excellent Vietnamese food, had a couple of very good traditional French meals, and even had a dirty kebab which was most enjoyable
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A little further afield from my nephew's place - about 20 minute drive at most, there is this beautiful restaurant called la Scorlion, which we always go to whenever we're over there and we always go for the Prix Fixe lunchtime menu. 24 Euros for three courses with a decent choice for each course. It is astonishing value. My favourite main course is the imaginatively named "Buthchers piece of beef with crushed potatoes and brown sauce". It is reffing amazing.
Notre carte| Saint Jean d'Angely | Restaurant le Scorlion
Sur cette page, découvrez notre menu. Tous nos plats sont concoctés maison à base de produits frais et de maison. N’hésitez pas à nous contacter pour réserver une table.
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@Catogrande said in Happiness Scale:
A little further afield from my nephew's place - about 20 minute drive at most, there is this beautiful restaurant called la Scorlion, which we always go to whenever we're over there and we always go for the Prix Fixe lunchtime menu. 24 Euros for three courses with a decent choice for each course. It is astonishing value. My favourite main course is the imaginatively named "Buthchers piece of beef with crushed potatoes and brown sauce". It is reffing amazing.
Notre carte| Saint Jean d'Angely | Restaurant le Scorlion
Sur cette page, découvrez notre menu. Tous nos plats sont concoctés maison à base de produits frais et de maison. N’hésitez pas à nous contacter pour réserver une table.
Reminds me of a place we stumbled on in a little village outside Nice. Ate in the courtyard of this little restaurant. One couple had been holidaying there and ate at the restaurant every year for years. The best french meal I've ever eaten. But your place has a lot more seafood on the menu
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@mariner4life said in Happiness Scale:
i love them both. the simplicity of Italian food is incredible. But no way am i judging one to be way better than the other.
Worked in Basle for 2 years and we used to go over to Mulhouse in France for shopping and a meal. Loved the Alsace cookery and it's simplicity and we found one restaurant/Inn which had Cognac's from 1917 to '87 - which we worked thru diligently.
Great days.
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Strangely the beast meal I’ve had in France was a Kangaroo dish. Chef had just returned to a village outside Tolouse after a trip to Aus and invented a French style recipe. Was superb. Most memorable though was the waiter that did this hopping thing as he went past our table. I hadn’t seen it again until this: https://www.google.com/imgres?q=raygun hopping&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Frockcms%2F2024-08%2F240812-rachael-gunn-breaking-wc-0813-309c36.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fbreaking-paris-olympics-raygun-kangaroo-hop-rcna166177&docid=jVCbZKNY33JrHM&tbnid=CBzf3_p9a4FHPM&vet=12ahUKEwjgrvX2xcCQAxWFpCcCHT41IM8QM3oECBsQAA..i&w=1500&h=1000&hcb=2&ved=2ahUKEwjgrvX2xcCQAxWFpCcCHT41IM8QM3oECBsQAA
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@MajorRage said in Happiness Scale:
Best city food discussions are as pointless as best cricket player lists. Subjective and ultimately futile. I’ve had amazing, and shit, food in every city I’ve ever visited.
But today, I picked up a gnr uk tour shirt from ‘87 in Rome. For 20 EUR.
Rome just wins. Every time..
Well, it only becomes a discussion if someone has the audacity to suggest anyone other than Don Bradman
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I don't think I had the best ever meal of my life in Rome. But I did have possibly the best sandwich and best pasta dish of my life there.
Best thing about the pasta dish is that I made it! WE did this pasta making evening which was fantastic. The chef/coach was such a classic Italian with all the stereotypes in flow. We made a ravioli which was then cooked for 6 mins and then swirled around a pan with pecorino cheese and some of the pasta water. Literally 6 ingredients only but it was unbelievabley tasty.
It would be wrong to talk about Rome without mentioning the drives. Absolute borderline of genius and insane. Such a strong control of their cars too with knowing what gaps they can/can't get through. My dad reckons when he drove from Rome to Florence it damn near killed him mentally. I totally understand why. He was supposed to drive back but dropped the rental off in Florence instead and got the train!
There were places you could see some of the broken politics though. It was pretty heavily graffiti'd as soon as you got off the main tourist areas. Mainly about Gaza/Palastine but also plenty with Meloni written in. I don't read Italian but I'm fairly sure it wasn't saying they loved her.
Still, wonderful city, wonderful people, wonderful food and a brilliant trip all around.
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@MajorRage said in Happiness Scale:
It would be wrong to talk about Rome without mentioning the drives. Absolute borderline of genius and insane
the first and only time i drove a left hand drive vehicle i had to get us out of Florence and brave the motorway. Fun times.
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You get used to it pretty quick. I drove our van all around Italy (and most of Western Europe) in '99 - had to do a 3pt turn taking a regular corner on the main road driving to the Amalphi Coast at one point because the road was so narrow. The scariest is the first time someone overtakes you when there is someone coming the other way so you and the oncoming car both swing to the edge and the passing car is split across both lanes - terrifying. That and the moped riders...
The other fun drive is the Arc de Triomphe - we tried to avoid it but got funnelled in and that was a game of Frogger I'd like to forget.
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@voodoo said in Happiness Scale:
You get used to it pretty quick. I drove our van all around Italy (and most of Western Europe) in '99 - had to do a 3pt turn taking a regular corner on the main road driving to the Amalphi Coast at one point because the road was so narrow. The scariest is the first time someone overtakes you when there is someone coming the other way so you and the oncoming car both swing to the edge and the passing car is split across both lanes - terrifying. That and the moped riders...
The other fun drive is the Arc de Triomphe - we tried to avoid it but got funnelled in and that was a game of Frogger I'd like to forget.
I was the same re-the Arc. Was given instructions from the agent about how to get onto the motorway. Pre-GPS days so missed a turn and ended up on the Champs.
Got off the motorway near Naples later on the trip. Certainly an eye opener
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@canefan said in Happiness Scale:
Got off the motorway near Naples later on the trip. Certainly an eye opener
one of my proudest driving achievements was driving to find the leaning tower of pisa with only a very high level lonely planet map, navigating crazy italian drivers. I got us there with no dings - so that's a win!
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@voodoo said in Happiness Scale:
Amalphi Coast at one point because the road was so narrow.
you drove that road? Are you fucking nuts? I took the bus, and wanted to hire every driver and bring them back to Aus, incredible skill.
By the end of the week i was fine, and even driving back in to Florence was no problem. But trying to navigate, learn to do things the "opposite" way, and getting honked at for being a stupid tourist was fucked.
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@mariner4life said in Happiness Scale:
@voodoo said in Happiness Scale:
Amalphi Coast at one point because the road was so narrow.
you drove that road? Are you fucking nuts? I took the bus, and wanted to hire every driver and bring them back to Aus, incredible skill.
By the end of the week i was fine, and even driving back in to Florence was no problem. But trying to navigate, learn to do things the "opposite" way, and getting honked at for being a stupid tourist was fucked.
Young and dumb man! Now I'm old and dumb, but that's another story.
We did about 12,000kms over 4 months - I did all the driving and my mate was chief paper map navigator. No chance I could have done both.
We bought the van just out of Amsterdam at some dealers nearly-scrapyard (I still remember turning out of the lot onto the wrong side of the luckily empty road) and it was our transport and home for the whole time - it saw some damn good times and we eventually drove ourselves to Prague airport and left it there to fly to London.
Happiness!
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@voodoo said in Happiness Scale:
@mariner4life said in Happiness Scale:
@voodoo said in Happiness Scale:
Amalphi Coast at one point because the road was so narrow.
you drove that road? Are you fucking nuts? I took the bus, and wanted to hire every driver and bring them back to Aus, incredible skill.
By the end of the week i was fine, and even driving back in to Florence was no problem. But trying to navigate, learn to do things the "opposite" way, and getting honked at for being a stupid tourist was fucked.
Young and dumb man! Now I'm old and dumb, but that's another story.
We did about 12,000kms over 4 months - I did all the driving and my mate was chief paper map navigator. No chance I could have done both.
We bought the van just out of Amsterdam at some dealers nearly-scrapyard (I still remember turning out of the lot onto the wrong side of the luckily empty road) and it was our transport and home for the whole time - it saw some damn good times and we eventually drove ourselves to Prague airport and left it there to fly to London.
Happiness!
I did 10,000 kms in a Peugeot in 2009 (France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium), and another 5000 odd in 2014 (France, Italy).
I reckon the absolute worst was Granada in Spain. Italians were mild by comparison - but I'll admit that I didn't do the Amalfi coast! Fuck that.
I've driven the roads around the Cinque terre though - that was a fucking mission in a mid sized SUZ, and there was a parking building at Portofino which still gives me the shits when I think about it.
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you've never lived until you've taken a wrong turn and got a rental car stuck in a small village square in Spain on the side of a mountain unable to get the thing out and having to beg a local to rev the fuck out of it and drive it at 30mph up a hill so steep at it was hard to walk up between buildings that until that point were definitely not far enough apart to get the car between. Bought that guy a lot of drinks. When we eventually found him.
As for happiness. My brother had a little girl this morning, his first child, my first proper niece (wife's sisters kids don't count) after a very traumatic pregnancy. Mother and baby doing well. Only downside is that she was born in Australia. My dad will be looking down with a big grin, bemoaning the fact both of his feckless sons are still unable to have a boy. Cheers to you all, today is a good day.
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Congrats @Dodge great to hear they are doing well, particularly if it was a difficult pregnancy, I know how stressful that can be. Funny you say that about having girls, my family has been the opposite. I have 3 brothers, my older brother has 2 boys, my younger brother has 2 boys, and I have 3 boys. So from my mums POV that's 11 boys in a row (a cricket team!).
Happiness Scale
