The best view, stewed head and tripe soup.

Jessie, Tero(our new Finnish friend), and myself went to the touristy city of Český Krumlov to see some sites, relax, and enjoy the beautiful summer day. Here is Tero:

After wading through the hordes of chessboard buying tourists, we stumbled to the outskirts of the bustling tourist town and found ourselves in front of this sign:

U BABY! We decided to have lunch here at this dirty shack on the side of the road. Imagine our surprise when we walked back to the terrace and found this:


With a beautiful view of the valley:Right then we knew we made the right choice.

I ordered the tripe soup to start
Really well cooked tripe, not very chewy at all. However the broth somehow reminded me of ramen, I think there was a lot of chili and MSG in the broth, but it was still very tasty and had a whole lot of tripe in it. A very good starter if you ask me. Please don't be afraid of tripe, it has a very meaty flavor, not at all reminiscent of organ meat or liver. The texture is something most Americans have trouble with, but once you get past that, or learn to love it, it's really a treat.

My main course was a pickled headcheese. This is made by boiling a whole pigs head in water or broth and letting it cook to the point that all the meat falls off the skull. They pull out the head and chop the meat and assembled tasty bits into bite size piece then reduce the cooking liquid a little further. Since there are so many tendons and bones in the skull the broth becomes something like a french aspic, or broth with gelatin suspension. When you mix all the meat and the broth together and chill it in a loafpan, it becomes a large solid mass. Thus, headcheese is born.

We're gonna need a porn shot of this one.
Really good and quite tangy from the pickling process. Tasty and filling traditional food.
Jessie ordered a smoked and cured pork belly, covered in grated horseradish, served with really good mustard on the side. I don't think she really knew what she was ordering. A little too fatty for her likes. I thought it was a pretty amazing dish, I know surprise surprise, Max likes pork belly.

It was a magical lunch! Great food and an incredible view. We sat and enjoyed the terrace for almost two hours. New friends, new cities, this is what traveling is all about. Although travel is really a lot of work, sometimes it's moments like this that make it all worthwhile.

-NOM!