This is one final post of our trip from Marseille and Nice to Finnish Lapland and back to Nice, concentrating solely on food (some of it) we ate during our travels. We ate a lot of fish, especially in Finland since it is so good and reasonably priced. We did not only eat fish in the restaurants, but also when we cooked meals ourselves, which was mostly new potatoes with hot smoked fish and green salad — so yummy!
Our first meal was the dinner at the restaurant La Daurade in the touristy area of Marseille’s old port: monkfish and grilled shrimp skewers for Tei and seabass and mussels with basmati rice for Tomi.
The next meal was in Nice as soon as we had arrived by bus at the airport. We tried to figure out how to get to the Airbnb apartment, but were already hungry, so we had hot dogs from the gourmet hot dog stand Monsieur Albert just outside of the terminal 1.
On our first night in Nice we had dinner at an “Italian” restaurant Davisto: a mixed salad and raviolis stuffed with burrata in orange sauce for Tei and “Menu Touristique” for Tomi. Funny, I remember that the raviolis were really tasty, but I don’t remember anything about the restaurant itself.
Next day, before leaving to the Stade de Nice for the FIFA Women’s World Cup third place match we had lunch at Copper Branch, a plant based restaurant in Nice’s pedestrian center. We had bowls, Azteque and Aristote, but I don’t remember which one was which, and their descriptions online do not quite match what we had. I do remember, though, that I had the bowl on the left below, one without seitan.
As mentioned in the earlier post, we were staying at an airport hotel for our last night in Nice, and did not want to make a longish trip to downtown, so we chose the neighboring hotel Novotel’s restaurant for dinner. We started with tuna tataki. For the main Tei had beef ribs and Tomi chicken skewers. The food was very good and so was the service, and we were happy with our decision, both for restaurant and food!
At restaurant Nerone in Helsinki we had oven baked perch and pasta vongole.
A meal on a train from Helsinki to Oulu (or was it from Oulu to Rovaniemi?): meatballs and mashed potatoes with pints of lager. Nothing to write home about, but much better than the gas station cafeteria buffet we had on our way back from North.
We didn’t take many photos of the breakfasts we had on our trip, which were many and mostly very good, but this is from the breakfast buffet at Hotel Pielinen in Lieksa. Very typical Finnish hotel breakfast buffet.
The last night of our trip, before returning home, we spent in a hotel near the Nice railway station. We arrived late, and had little desire to explore the neighborhood or wander farther to downtown in search for a dinner place. We basically walked around the block and entered the first decent looking restaurant, which was Le Rossini. We started with Salade Burrata and then shared a pizza “Cannibale”.
Few more notes about the food. While alcohol — mainly wine — is more expensive in Finland than in France (because of high taxes), the food seems somewhat less expensive, especially fish, which here in the Alpes is super expensive and not too good. And I repeat again that the selection of everything is so much better in Finland: herbs, vegetables, cuts of meat, types of cold cuts, types of fish, cheese, beer, and wine. In Finland one finds things from all around the world, whereas in France one only finds French things, items that the French people are used to. Some supermarkets do have a foreign section but they are mostly pathetic and overprized. And why is that? Maybe because the Finns travel more internationally and they are used to a variety of things, and actually want them in their daily lives, too. Whereas in France … it is like Tomi once went to a cheese shop here to find parmesan (Parmigiano-Reggiano) and the shopkeeper looked at him like a zombie “what?”