You are here: »
Home » Posts filed under Oysters
Parts of San Francisco, this will not be news to many of you, are quite spectacularly beautiful. You'll have seen the impossibly severe roads lined with picturebox Victorian rowhouses, the Golden Gate Bridge, the cable cars and the glittering waterfront from countless travelogues and movie locations, but up close it's all even more impressive.
The Pacific Heights and Telegraph Hill areas of town, in particular, have a unique kind of dramatic impact; standing at a street junction with one road plunging down towards Alcatraz Island and the other soaring infeasibly skyward is equally jaw-dropping and unnerving, like that scene from Inception when the buildings start folding up and over themselves. It's almost enough to put your off your lunch.
I said almost. Given my priorities when visiting a new city position eating and drinking significantly higher than sleeping or breathing, I had a list of places to cram into a whistle-stop 3-day stay, and all a strenuous traipse up and down Lombard St was going to do was work up an appetite. So breakfast at the excellent Thorough Bread bakery near our Air B&B in Castro gave way to a an obligatory terrifying cable car ride up to Russian Hill (surprising how paranoid Americans are about health and safety in most cases, and yet are quite happy to make you hang on white-knuckled to the back of a covered wheelbarrow as it hurtles up a mountain) and lunch at Leopold's.
A boisterous Austrian gastaus isn't the first thing that might come to mind when thinking of San Francisco, but a beer and a poached egg salad was just the ticket after barely having time to work off a pound of pastries from Thorough Bread. A white bean soup, too, was typically hearty Austrian fayre, even if we weren't as badly as need of its warmth as presumably most are in Austria this time of year, and one of our party even managed to stretch to a pile of grilled sausage and sauerkraut, all very well received.
Maverick, a restaurant in Castro serving regional (largely southern) cuisine had the kind of menu an American food obsessive like me dreams about. The buttermilk fried chicken was predictably brilliant, as were some miniature lemon tarts for dessert, but the star of the evening was devilled eggs with caviar, the kind of dish that can make an entire trip. We still talk about it.
The next evening was Oscar Night, and I'm afraid the first real disappointment. No, not just Brave winning Best Animated Feature (I mean come on, ahead of Frankenweenie, ParaNorman, Pirates! and Wreck-It Ralph? Are they insane?) - a takeaway from Mission Chinese. I am painfully aware that judging a venue on its takeaway offering is a bit like having a beer in the street outside Harry's Bar then moaning about the lack of complimentary peanuts, but we really found it hard to see what all the fuss was about. For a not insignificant chunk of cash, lamb ribs were 99% fat, Mapo Tofu was notable for little other than its eye-watering dry heat, and all dishes, including the famous Chongqing chicken wings and Kung Pao pastrami, were disastrously salty. I've since learned that the head chef has left to do something in New York, which may explain something, if not excuse it.
The next morning though, a stunning selection of pastries at Tartine got us back on track. One of the most acclaimed bakeries in the US, if not the world, Tartine is always busy and always churns out incredible product. The gigantic ham and cheese croissant, for example, was so astonishingly good with its dark crust, soft filling and perfect balance of dairy and protein that I can hardly believe a better version is made anywhere in France. The only downside, in fact, is that given Tartine's immense popularity, much like anywhere else that has them queuing round the block no matter what, the serving staff aren't often all sweetness and light. I realise it must stressful dealing with such huge numbers all day every day with no end in sight, but as we were unceremoniously chucked our carefully-selected purchases and told to bugger off (I paraphrase) a quote from Absolutely Fabulous came to mind from when Edina found herself in a Kensington art gallery - "You only work in a shop you know. You can drop the attitude."
And talking of bad attitudes, this might be a good time to bring up the biggest problem I had with this city, something which really took a shine off most of the many wonderful things it has to offer - San Francisco is Crazy Central. In no other place in the world have I ever seen so many drug casualties, hoboes, lunatics and destitutes. We were shouted at on the bus, screamed at in the street, sung to, propositioned and abused more or less wherever we went. Sure the smart areas of town had fewer issues, but it seemed every tiny area of public space was a cardboard city or had people pushing their belongings round in a old shopping trolley, and it made getting around - particularly on public transport though by no means exclusively - a bit, well, unpredictable. I'm not going to pretend I have any idea why the problems should be so bad here and why elsewhere in California seems to have more of a handle on it, but it's certainly something to be aware of.
I swear I will end this post on a lighter note, but we have one more disappointment to get out of the way first. I don't know what's happened to Chez Panisse since it was one of the most well-regarded and famous restaurants in the US, but I can only tell you time has not been kind on this Berkeley stalwart and these days the pioneer of California cuisine now appears happy to charge credulous guests (that would be me then) a vast amount for dreadfully boring food. Perhaps in 1971 it was acceptable to charge $150 a head for a spinach & ricotta pie, some greasy pieces of duck and a (actually this was OK) crème caramel, but we left feeling completely ripped off. Thoroughly not recommended, although I promise it wasn't me that set fire to it a couple of days ago.
But happier times awaited elsewhere. Back in Mission the next day we jumped in the queue for Dynamo Donuts, surely the next imported American fad to hit London if these are anything to go by (Electric Donuts have already made a start). Lovely friendly staff and great fresh donuts with a variety of very interesting toppings such as "Meyer lemon and huckleberry" or "passionfruit milk chocolate". And just round the corner, another first - lunch at an El Salvadorian restaurant for pupusa, a kind of thick corn tortilla filled with cheese and pork. The pupusa were very nice - incredibly filling for something so deceptively small and pretty cheap, but a huge bowl of shrimp soup was the unexpected star of the meal, powerfully flavoured with a generous number of plump, juicy shrimp. At the very least, I'm glad they turned out better than the "Mushy Disturbances of Corn" promised by my specially-purchased augmented-reality translation app (above).
Ah, I almost forgot. Straight from the airport early in the morning on the first day we hired a car and drove to Napa. A brief tasting at the Alpha Omega vineyard opened the door to lunch, and we found ourselves in the Oxbow market just down the road, sat at the bar at the Hog Island Oyster co. It is difficult, in fact I might argue impossible, not to enjoy yourself eating fresh oysters, drinking Sauvignon Blanc and pulling apart whole Dungeness crabs of an afternoon, and it is this place I think reflects the side of San Francisco cuisine the world is more familiar with - fresh seafood, served with charm and with a nice cold glass of local wine.
A strong start, and end, to the trip then, and plenty to love in-between, but like the city itself geographically and otherwise, the food was (groan) a bit up and down. Tartine aside, we seemed to do better by avoiding the big names and just wandering into whichever little place was nearest, which also had the advantage of not requiring risking life and limb by travelling on public transport. Getting there was a cinch, though, thanks to Virgin America, our little house in Castro was a joy, and though it will never replace dear old San Diego in my affections, it's clear there's a lot more to know of this enigmatic, topsy-turvy town.
Leopold's 7/10
Maverick 7/10
Mission Chinese 4/10
Tartine 8/10
Chez Panisse 3/10
Dynamo Donut 7/10
El Salvador 6/10
Hog Island Oyster Co 9/10
I'm sure I never used to be scared of heights. But as the glass lift at the Heron Tower torpedoed up into the sky, and the traffic of Bishopsgate dropped alarmingly away, I found myself gripping the handrail tighter and tighter. My friend who had agreed to come along for the ride that evening was taking no chances - she had her back to the view and her eyes tightly shut. I bravely attempted to enjoy the experience until the point where I realised we were nearly level with the top of the Gherkin and still rising, whereupon panic set in and I stared at my shoes until the doors opened on the 39th floor.
It's worth the petrifying journey, though. At least, Duck & Waffle on the 40th floor is. I'd like to tell you a little more about sister restaurant SushiSamba below, but after waiting 20 minutes for someone to pour us a glass of champagne, then giving up, that will have to wait for another time. It seemed popular enough, and of course everywhere you look there's that incredible view, but the bar staff seemed more preoccupied with accusing each other of petty crime ("He keeps stealing my muddler", "Would you like me to have a word?") than serving paying customers. First week nerves perhaps.
No such issues at Duck & Waffle. Shown to a windowside table overlooking Tower Bridge, we got our champagne within 30 seconds of asking for it, and from that moment onwards everything was gloriously, effortlessly enjoyable. A mysterious sealed bag was the first thing to arrive, along with a bijou portion of cod tongue fritters. The bag contained strips of spiced pig's ears and were exasperatingly moreish - I was trying so hard not to fill up on 'snacks' before the 'main' courses arrived but these tender bits of seasoned pork did not help. The cod tongues, ironically presented on newspaper like chippy fish, were lovely too, moist and crunchy and accompanied by a chunky tartare with bits of boiled egg.
Oysters were next, and no complaints here either. They had each been properly loosened, and retained a perfect amount of brine.
These pretty little things were slices of raw scallop on apple, topped with black truffle and lime. They arrived on top of a big pink brick, and we were told that if we considered the scallops a bit underseasoned to give them a "rub on the brick", which was actually raw Himalayan salt. They didn't need it, being perfectly seasoned already, and the combination of lime, truffle and raw seafood was incredibly successful.
Next, our favourite dish of the evening, a stunning rabbit ragout pasta topped with pecorino. Rabbit is a tricky old bird to get right, but this was preternaturally moist and rich, mingled with super-silky ribbons of pasta.
The two dishes ordered from the 'Brick Oven' section of the menu, while perfectly edible and well presented, paled slightly in comparison to what had come before. Lamb cutlets were overcooked and underseasoned - I half thought about asking for that salt brick back, but decided against it. Quail had been very cleverly (and presumably very laboriously) boned and rolled and wrapped in pancetta before roasting, but there was something unbalanced about the flavours - too much salty pork, not enough game bird. It may be, though, that we were just stuffed by this point and it's easier to pick fault when you're not ravenously hungry. They were both still very much worth the money.
Somehow between us we found room for a chocolate brownie with a fantastic peanut butter ice cream, and as the sun set spectacularly over West London we paid up and shifted next door to the Duck & Waffle bar. Here, enthusiastic and creative staff working on unusual "inside out" stations (there's no 'bar top', encouraging customers to feel closer to the drink-making process) are trialling inventive twists on traditional cocktails. Their "gin and tonic" comes with a gin-spiked yuzu sorbet floating on top of the tonic, and looks and tastes extraordinary. They are working, too, on a Negroni which comes inside a frozen globe of ice, which you smash apart with a little hammer to release the liquid, and coming soon is a drink which arrives inside a bag full of fruit essences - you pierce the bag, it collapses releasing the fruit mist, and you finish off with the cocktail. Sounds like a reason to go back, to me.
And believe me, it's not the only one. So often with restaurants in beautiful or otherwise desirable locations, it's a case of "never mind the food, look at the view". And the view from the top of the Heron tower is, make no mistake, unfathomably gorgeous - more than once last night we found ourselves just staring across London, speechless with awe. But the dishes from the kitchens at Duck & Waffle were reasonably priced, made with skill and served with care. It is, I'm guessing, possible to leave with a bill of £35-£40 a head if you're careful with the booze and although we didn't - ahem - quite manage to reign in our cocktail consumption I still don't feel anything was excessively priced. There are things I'd change - the stools in the bar raise your head up to just the height of the large window frames, meaning you have to duck under or peer over to see a proper view, and security at ground level meant a bit of a queue just to get into the lift - but these are niggles. Duck & Waffle expertly walks a line between spectacularly glamorous and accessibly homely, and I defy anyone to spend an evening here and not have the time of your life. I intend to be a regular.
9/10
Going to a smart restaurant in one of London's most expensive hotels and then complaining about the prices could be considered one of the more futile crusades a food blogger might engage in. I am certainly not, at least traditionally, the Rib Room's target audience - it's not just that I don't like spending £150 on dinner without a cast-iron guarantee everything will be excellent, it's not even that I feel slightly out of place in this most glitzy of surroundings. It's simply that in a more general sense, the Rib Room isn't "me". I would never have gone had I not been invited, and despite having enjoyed a perfectly decent evening I am almost certain never to go back. There was nothing drastically wrong with anything (well, there was one thing, but more on that later), but I just know there are better ways of spending that kind of money - call it a blessing or a curse.
To be fair to the guys behind the Rib Room, they have clocked on that basing their business model on a group of ageing Belgravia locals isn't a recipe for long-term security and have used a recent refurb as an opportunity to lower their prices to a slightly more egalitarian level. The problem is, whereas before the prices were "offensively high" (a £60 British fillet steak for one sticks in the mind), now they're just "high", and while most of the food we tried was very good, it's still hard to see past the numbers attached to them.
Half a dozen rock oysters were a little too bloated and creamy for my liking - I don't know what it is that occasionally causes rock oysters swell up like this (spawning season?), but I find the sensation of bursting a bag of white bivalve innards in my mouth ever so slightly disturbing. They came with a very nice Virgin Mary shot though, which helped cut through it.
A pear and Stilton salad was really good, and one of the relative bargains on the menu at only £9.50. Beautifully presented (this is a press shot but it did honestly look just like this when we had it), studded with crunchy toasted walnuts and hunks of oozing honeycomb, it was a dish that satisfied on every level - the sweet honey combining with the salty cheese, the crunchy melba toasts with the soft slices of chargrilled pear. I can hardly remember a better or more attractive dish calling itself a salad.
But then, the steaks. For a restaurant called the Rib Room you'd hope that these would at least be interesting enough to carry the flag, and superficially they looked decent enough, nice and thick and with something approaching a dark char. But looks were sadly all they had going for them - they each tasted watery and bland, like any bog standard £10 pub offering, and while my ribeye was just tender enough, a friend's sirloin was incredibly dry and chewy, really rather unpleasant. And there's the little matter of cost, too - the 250g ribeye was £26 and 250g sirloin was £29, a huge markup for what was very obviously commodity Smithfield market standard meat. I've never heard of Aubrey Allen before (the beef supplier) but I made a mental note to avoid them in the future.
Thankfully, a very enjoyable dessert of macerated oranges and vanilla ice cream went some way to obliterating the memory of the mediocre steaks. With bold flavours and more clever use of honeycomb for texture, this was thankfully more on the level of the starters than the mains, and - you'll have to take my word on this one - presented very well. And a cheese course consisting of five cheeses all from the same Sussex farm and all pasteurised would not normally have set my pulse racing but these were surprisingly good and although I'd like a bit more variety I'd say the Rib Room's bold decision to put all their eggs in one metaphorical basket just about paid off. Unpasteurised would have been better of course, but you can't have everything.
I have just finished reading Mark Kermode's book The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex. In it (bear with me, this is going somewhere), he describes how it is almost impossible for a blockbuster movie to lose money - throw enough special effects, explosions, internationally famous movie stars and McDonalds Happy Meal tie-ins at more or less anything and people will flock to see it, just to be part of the "event". If people were that fussy, any number of straightforward summer movies trotted out by the big studios over the years (Godzilla, Green Lantern, Tron: Legacy, you name it) would have been catastrophic flops - in fact, all of these were, financially at least, successful. The Rib Room is a Blockbuster Restaurant - millions have been spent on the revamp, it's in the poshest part of town, the menu is crowdpleasing in that "all bases covered" kind of way and the service is slick and professional. And on Friday night every table was taken, not with trend-chasing food geeks like me but with comfortably moneyed Belgravia locals who were enjoying a perfectly nice evening surrounded by all the crystal and silverware they could want. The Rib Room, as I said, isn't me. And for that reason, I'm sure it will do very well.
6/10
I was invited to review the Rib Room. Also, it was very dark in there so pics kindly supplied by Rochelle of Roche Communications (their PR people)
Is it technically still a press trip when it doesn't actually involve any press? There were six of us, amateur bloggers all, invited along to what was billed as a Shellfish Journey (with matching Twitter hashtag #shellfishjourney, 'natch) along Sweden's dramatically beautiful west coast. I remember a few years ago now when I first started getting invited for free meals and blogger events that my extreme gratitude at being asked was always matched with a kind of bafflement that they even considered it worth their while. At least if you invite a paid journalist they have a job to do, a duty to report, almost always a much larger readership. Where's the guarantee a blogger will even bother writing it up at all? These things must be a huge gamble for the organisers; after all you can never be completely certain how things will pan out, and if you think PR companies are taking a risk sending out invites to review a new restaurant, imagine how much is on the line on an all-expenses 3-day jolly to Sweden.
Fortunately, for us and more importantly the kind people of VisitSweden.com, the trip was an absolute blast. The weather, first of all, was incredibly good, and despite various PR-savvy Swedes informing us, tongue-in-cheek under bright sunshine, that it was "always like this" in mid-October, something about the rather more "broody" shots from previous trips tells me that isn't quite the case. But from a freakishly smooth SAS early morning flight from Heathrow (plus complimentary use of the Heathrow Star Alliance lounge, thankyouverymuch) to a boat trip on the last day which would have been a lot more... challenging if the conditions had been less than perfect, we could thank our lucky stars for benign Nordic weather gods. Well, that or global warming.
First stop on day one was a beautifully restored early 20th century mansion house, now a hotel, on a hill overlooking a lake in the town of Ljungskile. Oddly for the first meal on a "shellfish journey" our lunch was a dish of chicken and girolles mushrooms in an apple sauce (with some kind of alcohol too, perhaps cider) and a lovely sweet root vegetable cake thing. As an introduction to Nordic cuisine it all seemed a bit French, but the accompanying fresh bread rolls and crispbreads were fantastic, as was the butter, and apparently all the ingredients were very local/foraged.
For our first taste of West Sweden's seafood bounty we boarded a small boat in Lysekil (pronounced something like "Lisse-shil" I think) harbour and headed out to where the mussels grow, attached to cross-hatched ropes under large floating tubes. This being quite early in the season, all there was to see on the ropes themselves were the odd tiny juvenile mussel amongst an alarming carpet of strange writhing tiny sea creatures of some kind, but it was all still fascinating stuff. At a wooden hut knocked up on a remote island near the mussel beds we were treated to a moules marinere cooked on a portable gas ring ("here's some we prepared earlier"), along with our first taste of an extraordinary delicacy, the powerfully metallic native oysters. Sat in our hilariously oversized survival suits, eating fresh oysters and sweet mussels and watching the sunset on a remote island miles away from civilisation, it was a magical introduction to the country.
That evening, dinner was a seafood buffet at an atmospheric little restaurant in Lysekil old town called Ferdinand's. We were told it can generally only be booked by groups tied into a Sweden tour package, and mindful of the kind of "restaurants" you're lumbered with in the UK if you go for a hotel tie-in (50% off at next door's Harvester, or perhaps if you're very lucky a Groupon voucher for Pizza Express) it's fair to say my expectations weren't high. But the quality of the food and generosity of spirit was stunning. Huge trays of dill-softened gravadlax and fresh salads, hot rolls and more of that lovely salty crispbread, and - most importantly - as many fat langoustine and sweet crab claws as my freebie-loving face could fit. Bed that night was the eclectic Strandfickomo Hotel, clean and comfortable and good Wi-Fi coverage (gold dust to a Twitter-obsessed loser like me) but with an interesting approach to interior design. Some of our group shared their rooms with creepy dead sailors belongings and a disembodied Victorian nightgown; I think I got off lightly just having this staring at me as I tried to nod off:
Wasting no time the next day we were bussed off to Stromstad and from there a short ferry ride to the Koster islands, home to (be still my beating heart) the Lobster Safari. No cars are allowed on Koster; instead, residents (of which there are a few hundred permanent) and tourists (hundreds of thousands in the summer months) get around either on pushbikes or these strange machines that look like the flat trolleys at Homebase welded to the back end of a scooter. They looked fun, and are just the right size for hauling around big boxes of lobster and crab - handy that. Before the lobster, though, a tour of the island by bike, and lunch at a rustic farm/cafe in the centre of the island called the Koster Gardens. The food here was obsessively local - every ingredient in our lunch was either grown on the farm itself or, in the case of a handful of edible flowers, an hours boat ride away. It was very interesting to see how fierce localism (horrible word but I can't think of a better one) isn't particular to middle-class Tom and Barbara types in the UK - indeed, the locavore (ugh) has their own temple in Scandinavia, just further south in Copenhagen in the form of Noma. Personally, I don't think you're betraying any very important foodie ideals by having a bit of Irish beef or Spanish anchovy every now and again but hey, each to their own.
Due to a two-metre swell out in the open ocean where the lobster pots were, our hosts quite rightly concluded our weak city-dwelling stomachs couldn't deal with quite that much reality of a Saturday afternoon and after a pleasant pootle around calmer waters in a fishing boat came back to Koster to gawp at a few boxes of lobster braver people had caught earlier in the day. They were lively beasts, flicking and wriggling in a way you hardly ever see even from the freshest examples to reach London, and included a huge 50-year-old mammoth beast of about two kilos - not great for eating perhaps but fascinating to see.
So what did they taste like? Back at the hotel, later that evening, we were treated to a lobster menu, beginning with a gorgeous silky lobster bisque and generously followed up with a whole beast each. They were, if perhaps not any better than examples from Scotland or Canada, at least as good, although I'm not entirely sure their method of cooking them in 800g of salt per 20 litres of water was entirely necessary - they turned out quite on the salty side. The Swedes have a habit of serving their seafood with cheese, which took a bit of getting used to but actually is no more strange than lobster thermidor when you think about it. I wasn't that keen on the cumin flavoured cheese though, which brought back terrifying memories of Cheddar Tikka Masala.
The next day, early but not so bright thanks to spending until midnight in the hotel bar the night before drinking £7 beers and watching a middle-aged 3-piece work their way through a repertoire of Bryan Adams and Wham!, we set off for Grebbestad. This is where the Oyster Experience was to take place, which sounded very intriguing, but getting there involved an hour long boat ride over waters that, if they had been any choppier, may have meant a premature end to the gastronomic experience for a few of our party. For whatever reason, and I'm not trying to sound smug here, just stating the facts - I've never had too much of a problem with sea travel, and so I think I probably enjoyed bouncing around in the back of a small boat a bit more than some of my friends. Before long, though, we had arrived at an achingly picturesque seaside shack and were watching our host dredging up fresh oysters from the beds right underneath the building. Following a short demonstration we were even let loose with a shucking knife ourselves, to discover first-hand how opening oysters really isn't as easy as it looks. Having opened a few rocks in Spain a few years back I had nearly convinced myself I might repeat my success, only to "expertly" slice one of the precious, delicious natives almost entirely in half in an effort to get it open. Still tasted nice though, as did the 2nd massive seafood buffet of the trip served in the same shack, consisting of more huge langoustine and fresh brown crab.
A fantastic experience then, from start to end, and one I'm equally flattered and delighted to have been invited on. But let me try for a moment to be objective. There are some things that are irrefutable - West Sweden is a breathtakingly beautiful part of the world, clean and fresh and easy, populated by friendly, helpful (and helpfully English-speaking) people and where, at least from our PR-cossetted experience, the food is fantastic. And I would have no problem recommending anyone go there if - and it's a big if - it wasn't all quite so expensive.
Firstly, the biggest problem for a boozehound like me (and if I know anything about my readership, most of the rest of you too) is that alcohol is astonishingly wallet draining. A beer in the hotel bar - ONE BEER, and not even quite a pint (500ml), was 70 Kroner - about £7 at current exchange rates. Wine was worse, even the cheapest on the list in the lobster restaurant on Sunday being a Jacob's Creek Semillon Chardonnay for £36 - yes, the same as the ones you see in Tescos. And lastly, spirits - a double of something even quite ordinary like Jack Daniels or Beefeater gin will set you back at least £10, and in fact in many places is even more. Alcohol tax rates are set by the Swedish government of course, and are nobody's fault that we met over the weekend, but having to worry quite so much about how much you're spending on everyday holiday activities like eating and drinking really does become an issue. At least, I imagine it would.
Also, the hotel we stayed at in Lysekil, pleasant and clean if ever so slightly Haunted House is currently available on Expedia "from" £181 a night in October. I think there are better deals if you book in advance, but still, not cheap. Better value perhaps is a 3-day lobster experience (a more extended version of the mini preview we had) on South Koster which is £359 per person based on two sharing a room, which includes all meals including the final day's lobster feast. And for £24 the oyster class and tasting at Grebbestad is well worth the money - watching your live lunch being dredged out of the sea and then opening them up yourself with a glass of local porter is unforgettable.
So, blame the Swedish tax system, blame our pathetic currency or simply blame sheer cosmic injustice that this idyllic place is just slightly out of the average-earning Brit's reach. But for die-hard seafood fanatics I can't imagine there are many better places in the world to indulge yourself - the whole trip was almost worth it for a taste of those stunning native oysters, and after all this was always going to be a shellfish journey, not a steak-and-wine journey. It's worth repeating, too, just how utterly, heart-stoppingly attractive it all is, the rugged pristine fjords cut through by sparkling clear waters, the picturebox seaside huts hugging the lichen-covered rocks, and not to mention the abundance of non-edible wildlife - we saw seals, rockpools and jellyfish along with any number of different finches and sea birds. It may come at a price, but West Sweden is a rare and precious part of the world, and I feel utterly privileged to have been.
Photos, apart from Bjorn the Evil Pheasant, courtesy of Food Stories.
More West Sweden Tourist Info:
Website: www.westsweden.com
For more information about the Shellfish Journey: www.westsweden.com/shellfishjourney
Facebook page: www.facebook.com/westsweden
Twitter: www.twitter.com/westswedentb
Blog: www.explorewestsweden.com
