A Taste of Europe

Chrumky!  Horalky!  Maggi!  Kofola!  Banany!

If you want Central European food, it helps to be somewhere Central European immigrants have congregated.  California and South Carolina are not those places; New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are.  Between the Taste of Europe in Norwalk and the Czestochowa gift shop in Doylestown, we were able to stock up on some old favorites.

Above is most of what we brought back (I'd already eaten my Banany, and I've since finished the other bottle of Kofola that was in the fridge at the time of this picture).  The two gold-wrapped Prince Polo wafers and the bags of herbal drops are from Czestochowa, while everything else is from Taste of Europe.

Prince Polo (in the gold wrappers at the front) is a brand of wafers made in Cieszyn, Poland.  European wafers are like the sugar wafers you get here in the States, but much better; they're wider, often covered with chocolate, and filled with things like hazelnut or peanut.

Verbena brand herbal drops (right) are made in Slovakia.  They're a hard drop with a soft center, as you can kind of see on the package's illustration.  We got two flavors: pinia and lipa.  The former really does taste like a pine tree, while lipa, which means linden, is harder to explain.  It's almost floral and a little citrusy. 

Horalky (front) is a Slovak wafer; this one has peanut filling, and the chocolate only coats the edges of the wafer.

I've discussed chrumky (back, left) before.  This isn't my preferred Slovak brand, but I'm sure they'll be quite satisfactory.

Maggi (the dark glass bottles with red-and-yellow labels) is a sodium-rich condiment that complements things like stews well.  I think we just got these two bottles because they're so much bigger than any others we've seen before.

Banany (not pictured) is a sweet that consists of a banana-flavored and -shaped jelly covered in chocolate.  Normally I'm not a fan of banana-flavored anything, and the jelly is a little gritty, but for some reason I really like it.

And Studentska bars (left) are the best chocolate bars in existence.  They're most similar to Cadbury Fruit & Nut bars, in that they are a slab of chocolate studded with nuts, in this case peanuts, and dried fruit.  Studentska adds little bits of jelly, almost like Turkish delight, to the mix.  They're available in many fruit flavors, including pear, raspberry, and cherry, though the original is raisin, and dark, milk, or white chocolate.  They're also one of the easiest things to mail from Slovakia, so I've gotten them as presents from my kids before.

Just as it's always a delight to find Slovak food in North America, it's always a bit of a shock to see how expensive things are here in comparison to there.  But I think every once in a while a special treat is worth the cost.