Expat living abroad and blogging about food, sights, recipes, and books on travel in and around Stuttgart, Germany.
The Christmas lights have been up around the columns of the Königsbau Passagen for over a week now. My weather app is forecasting a chance of (gasp!) snow this week. Our grocery store has a full display of Lindt Christmas chocolate and rows upon rows of Speculoos cookies and Lebkuchen. And just yesterday, I watched as they began erecting the ice skating rink and Christmas village in front of the…
Last year on a trip to the Pfalz with a friend, we passed by what looked to be a giant fairgrounds. A quick Google search told us we'd seen -- and missed -- the Dürkheimer Wurstmarkt, purportedly the largest wine festival in the world. Set on making sure we wouldn't miss the festival again, my friend booked us a hotel for the next one. And so, on the weekend of September 16th, we hopped on a train…
In my last post, I talked about all the things we saw and did in London for the first four days of our trip. After taking in the capital, we hopped in the car and began our UK road trip...
We recently returned from a twelve-day tour of the UK, and it sure was a whirlwind trip! Now that I’ve had some time to process my photos and get back to work, I’m eager to share all the great things we did. In order to make my recap easier to navigate, I’ve divided it up into two parts. This first part will cover all the sights we saw and food we ate during our five days in London, which we used…
Summer seems to be holding on here in Stuttgart, but it can't stop the fall festivals that are just around the corner. Here's a look at the foodie festivals that you can look forward to over the coming months...
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Cathrin and Semih from Stuttgart isst at one of my favorite festivals in Stuttgart, the Bohnenviertelfest. While enjoying a few drinks, we got to talking about the many great restaurants in the area. Through the course of our conversation, I realized that we'd spent much of our time looking for good Vietnamese, Italian, and Japanese food, but that we'd…
The last couple of times that we've had a craving for Korean food, there's one restaurant that we've gone to: Eat Drink Man Woman. Though we had a layover in Seoul on our trip to Japan two years ago, I really don't have much knowledge about Korean food, and so every meal there happily presents us with a slightly new food experience...
While my blog is primarily about the meals that we eat at local restaurants, we really only eat out about once or twice a week. What do we do on the other days? Well, for the past few months we've put away our cookbooks and decided to try out HelloFresh. Since it's become such a big part of the way we eat, I thought it'd be worth a short blog post to share our experience...
While on our usual Saturday walk last weekend, we decided to grab a quick bite to eat at a new takeaway called Mi Bao. I'd absentmindedly snapped a photo of the advertisement for "bao" outside of the door earlier in the week, and though restaurants have a habit of staying on our list for weeks (if not months) before we get around to visiting them, something about Mi Bao's promise of "Asian street…
I've been spending a lot of time this summer going to Stuttgart's various festivals and enjoying picnicking in the warm weather out in the Schlosspark. As a result, I've felt that my restaurant adventures have fallen to the wayside. It was with this feeling that I decided I had to tackle something on our growing "Restaurants to Try" list and chose Restaurant Vinayaga (recommended to me by Kaffee…
Once summertime begins, I find myself eating ice cream or gelato at least once a week if not more. There's something about living in the city -- or perhaps in Europe in general -- that makes the act a priority in warm weather. (The relative lack of air conditioning in apartments and most public buildings might also have something to do with it.) And so, without further ado, here are my favorite,…
Summer is finally here, and with it comes all of the festivals that make Stuttgart a worthwhile place to staycation. Check out what's going on...
I can't remember how we first heard about Schräglage, but I'm so glad we decided to try it last weekend for brunch. We'd seen that they advertise a "Surfer's Breakfast" with pancakes, and I wanted to find out if they were real, American-style pancakes or just another European imitation...
My title is a bit misleading. El Mero Mexicano is actually in Fellbach, about fifteen minutes outside of Stuttgart by S-bahn. But when you've been deprived of Mexican food as we have in Germany, then it's worth the extra travel time to get to the restaurant. It is (especially since Mezcal^2 closed this year) probably the best Mexican food that that you can get in this city. The head chef and owner…
After moving to Stuttgart, we perhaps ironically discovered not only German cuisine, but also African cuisine, most notably Ethiopian. I say "African cuisine" with the full knowledge that Africa is a huge continent with a great variety in its cuisine from coast to coast, and yet I'm still just starting to learn what that variety looks like. Thanks to several trips to Ambiente Africa in…
I first had currywurst on a trip to Berlin two years ago where I'd read it was one of the regional specialities. While it wasn't love at first bite, every once in a while I get a craving for the singular taste of grilled German wurst (sausage) smothered in curry-flavored ketchup. I haven't seen many places that offer currywurst on the menu in southern Germany, butthere is one shop in town where I…
We've been in Germany for four years now. I know this because every May around this time, the Ausländerbehörde (the office for registering foreigners) schedules an appointment for us to come in and have our passports re-stamped to certify that we can stay here. In order to celebrate the event this year, we decided to take advantage of the morning off and go out for lunch at OGGI, a Mediterranean…
We were inspired by the warm, sunny weather last weekend to get out and enjoy the hills around Stuttgart. Weinmanufaktur Untertürkheim was having their annual Weinwandertag (wine walk day) on May 5th this year, which also happened to be Himmelfahrt (Ascension Day) and thus a public holiday (i.e. no work). We hopped on the S-bahn to take the 15-minute ride to Obertürkheim and arrived around 13:00.…
I like to cook fairly often, and on nights when I'm craving potatoes, Spanish tortilla usually comes to mind. I picked up this recipe at our Espai Boisà cooking class in Barcelona two years ago. I hadn't eaten Spanish tortilla before that trip, let alone made it, but after taking a lead role in making the tortilla at our cooking class, I felt confident enough to continue making the dish at home...
My husband and I have birthdays exactly a week apart. As we've gotten older, we've shied away from buying each other gifts and tried instead to buy experiences. This year, we decided that one of those experiences would be dinner at Délice, one of Stuttgart's very own Michelin-rated restaurants ...