If you wander a little bit outside the Old Town, the best karbonādes can be found at Lienes iela 10 - a place literally called Karbonādes. Follow up with some great local bear, there are several wonderful spots on Avotu iela!
Dear Mark, Thank you very much for such nice and correct review of Latvian foods! You almost nailed all of it! 😄 As a native from Riga really enjoyed your video.
One of the best ways to enjoy Black balsam - just add a teaspoon of it into cup of black coffee. Also black currant balsam is fine. Since 1700's recipe has slightly changed. Original one contained some 40 different herbs and spices. By the way Queen of England each year received a box of Black balsam which I suppose she had for the night-cup . Don't be frightened by the taste if you ever have tasted Yagermeister too :) Thanks for nice video !
In my experience, the best garlic bread I tried was in Folk Ala in Riga. Lido obviously is great, and cheap, but it is so so basic, I would suggest people try different places :) In Latvia, we call it just Cold Soup - aukstā zupa, not borsch, if every soup with that red vegetable we start calling a "borsch", we are in trouble :)
Those are good observations. As a native, I have actually never tried many of the items you are presenting. I suggest foreigners try desserts with kissel, as, in my observation, they really like it. Kissel is a sour Eastern European gel that goes well with sweet cake. Kvass was a popular summer drink in the Soviet Union. We could not get any other soft drink. There was no Coke, only Pepsi, and only in very few places, so we had to go to Tallinn to buy it as it was a model town where everything was available. It was also open to foreign tourists. I think most people switched to Coke when the Iron Curtain fell. I can drink Kvass, which one can buy in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and China, but it still has sugars in it. If I take my sugar, I would drink Coke.
speaking of tallinn that vana tallinn drink is one of the best alcoholic drinks that i and my girlfriend have tried, its also available in shops in rīga. in rīga there is rīga black balsam in tallinn there is vana tallinn but both are available in each of the countries
Pelmeņi is chinese. At least I have been told that. If your traveling Latgale of the country, try the Liepkalni bakery, their bread and garlic bread is heavenly.
However I must say that the soup options are limited in lido and other restaurants may be better for that. In addition it's in a coffee cup, so the soup portion in lido is very small. And only two available and those two get circled around it seems. They rarely offer other soups apart from the 3 or 4 that they constantly offer depending on the day
Gosh, took me back 12 years when I was last there ... good to see the Central Market and fantastic food at Lido - I always went for the sausages and sauerkraut but plovs is good as well! Nice one - subscribe to all the recommendations for tasting! 😀
I wonder if it's the crap that's in u.s foods that lead to lactose. I heard other countries outside of the u.s don't have that crap in it.I just read a story of a lady who said her and her husband went to Italy and ate what they wanted and had no side effects. When they came back home to the U.S. BAM, they couldn't eat those foods.
In Latvia is not called Borsch , it's simply Cold soup. And pelmeņi definitely need to add a little drop of vinegar. Shnitzel in Latvia is always made of minced meat , similar to meatballs . Karbonāde for Latvians is a plain piece of pork served in many different ways .
What you call cold borscht is not just any borscht. It's a cold beetroot soup. And NOTHING else I allow you to call it! No need for banal tourist slack. NOTA BENE!
