Vive le Slovensko! Slovakian cuisine

Ok, so that title’s a little linguistically confused, but then again so are we! Disclaimer: Some of the Slovak phrases below do not have the correct case inflections. Sorry! Actually, this post will be about Slovak cuisine, at least as much as I know on the subject!

Môžem dostať trochu vody? (Could we have some water?)

As in many other European countries, it is common to drink bottled water, both in restaurants and at home. Apart from the standard varieties, still and sparkling (perlivá a neperlivá), there is a third kind, jemne perlivá, which means ‘lightly sparkling’. When I was attempting to buy my first bottle, I also noticed that some said sýtená or jemně sýtená. I wondered if this was another way to say still. I was wrong, and ended up with a bottle of lightly sparkling water by mistake. Sýtená is just the Czech word for ‘sparkling’. A lot of the food packaging has the writing in Czech on one side and Slovak on the other. It’s confusing because often it’s hard to know which is which because they are only slightly different. When every trip to the grocery store is a vocabulary lesson, I have to be careful because I don’t want to be learning mistakes!

Cesnakový dressing s jogurtom (yogurt-based garlic dressing)

Pretty much the best thing ever. It’s a really clever idea to use yogurt as a base for creamy dressings rather than mayonnaise, it’s lighter, better for you, and tastes the same. I’ve already made it through a package of lettuce and one of cherry tomatoes pretty much single-handedly. And a bottle of the dressing… At this rate I may need to pack a few in my suitcase!

Reštaurácia (Restaurants)

Ordering Slovak food at restaurants can be a challenge. Usually the local food is offered as a set menu at a very cheap price, and the a la carte menu has more common international dishes, which often cost quite a bit more, but are still cheap by DC standards.

The catch is that while the à la carte menu often has an English translation, the set menu usually does not. The English may be tenuous at times, for example last night I had trout in a bathrobe of bacon – I kid you not! At least with the English translations we can have a pretty good idea of what we’re getting though. With the set menu, I managed to work out that several of the options came with rice and potatoes (ryža a zemiacky), but had no idea what the main dish was. You could say that not being familiar with the type of cuisine, I probably wouldn’t be too much the wiser even with English translations. In that case I should just pick something and see what local cuisine is. I might have to try that sometime. I fortunately do know the word for mushrooms (huby), so I can at least be sure to avoid any unpleasant surprises!

Palacinky (Pancakes)

Pancakes are the one element of local cuisine that I have tried a couple times. They’re thicker than crepes, thinner than American pancakes, and usually come stuffed. They can be savory, stuffed with meat and vegetables in a sauce, or sweet, stuffed with berries, cream and chocolate. My experience of desserts with cream and berries is that they’re usually sour. For example, they often include sweetened sour cream, which I’ve come across 3 times so far, and am loving. The berries though I think could do to be sweeter. They are really sour!

Údené stehno a horčice (Smoked ham?? and mustard)

On our first trip to the grocery store, we noticed the prominence of meat on display, so we decided to buy some. Not knowing what the words meant, we chose something that looked like cooked ham. When attempting to buy mustard, there were bottles of Hellmann’s, jars of French Dijon, and one type of local mustard (horčice). I went for the local option. Then I made a dinner of a slice of ham, some vegetables and mustard on the side. It looked like a classy meal, but it tasted like we were eating hot dogs. The meat tastes exactly like hot dog meat, and the mustard, while lighter and paler, tastes very much like American mustard. I think we’ll be trying different meat next time…

And the oddest word of all…

Zmrzlina. Yes that’s, count ’em, five consonants in a row, and two of them are z’s. It may look scary to an English audience, but it’s really not that hard to say. What does it mean? Ice cream! I figure if you can say it, you deserve one, but I think I’ll wait until there’s a little less snow on the ground and the temperature is on the positive side of zero (Celsius).

I’ll end there because this is getting long, but I could go on. I’ll have to do another post just about cheese! I think I’ll need to ‘research’ that a bit more first though ;)

Karen