Sour soup with meatballs (Ciorba de Perisale) at Monte Carlo Restaurant by the lake in Bucharest
I’m sitting by an open window by a lake in the Cişmigiu Gardens near my hotel looking at young people having fun in rowing boats. I watch ducks paddling, dunking and flapping their wings and all the time can’t but help hear the birds in the trees, not just singing but singing piercingly. A truly sylvan setting.
Horse chestnut fluff swirls gently on the cooling breeze and menacingly up my nose – the price of Spring and nothing that a steroid spray won’t fix. (It’s the itchy eyes that I can’t manage.).
And I?
Well, I’m at a window table in the Monte Carlo Restaurant slurping Romanian meatball soup with sour cream and hot pepper – a new taste experience with the fresh, crunchy hot pepper spraying juice up my nostrils with every bite.
Another postscript:
The Ciorba de Burta (Tripe Sour Soup) was even better yesterday in a small pension nestled in the woods near Dracula’s Bran Castle in Transylvania.