Euro trip food post: Macedonian segment

[amw]

I have been pondering how and when to do some kind of food post about my time in Macedonia and Greece. While i was working i often forgot to take photos because i was with colleagues, and when i wasn't working i didn't get a lot of good shots anyway because i ate outdoors where the lighting wasn't great. But aside from that, the food in Macedonia

Comments

[amw]

Good question.

I think pretty much anything you get through an espresso machine is going to be a darker roast, but there was only one coffee i got in Macedonia where i got hit with the full Starbucks-style "this coffee is fucking burnt" sensation. I think in general there is an expectation for coffee to at least be palatable over there simply because so many people drink espresso or macchiato. You can't serve them some acrid swill that needs milk or syrup to hide the flavor. It is much stronger than the coffee of Western Europe, but that's because the coffee of Western Europe is historically just brown water. (The situation seemed to be slowly improving during the time i lived in Berlin, probably thanks to immigration from Southern Europe, Africa and the Middle East.) In any case there weren't any grinds in it - that'd be a pretty major failure if there was!

You can buy Turkish coffee (which the Greeks call "Greek coffee", but the Macedonians still call Turkish coffee) that's brewed cowboy style and then you do get a thick, pasty cup with grinds in the bottom, but in Macedonia that's definitely not the standard and in Greece it didn't appear to be either, judging by what other people ordered. I did order "Greek coffee" a few times and, honestly, it wasn't very good. Definitely worse than the Turkish coffee i drank when i was in Istanbul. I suspect most coffee shops are just not set up to do it well, because it's a time-consuming process that doesn't really lend itself to modern coffee culture where you might have a line of customers out the door all waiting for their to-go cups.

All that said, i did enjoy coming home and drinking my usual brand, which is an Ethiopian medium roast with a fruity flavor... Yeah nah, nothing like that from the regular coffee shops in Greece, although there were plenty of hipster coffee places that had 27 different beans to choose from if you want that full ass pretentious coffee experience. They really do have something for everyone, even people who like completely flavorless coffee (that's the νέσκαφε/Nescafe option on every menu).