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Day 2
Updated: Aug 31
Bosnia, Croatia, North Macedonia
Perhaps, the best stories actually start with going backwards.
Before Ali met Bob, she spent half a decade in the glorious employ of the National Audit Office. Part of her year was spent overseas, auditing the United Nations’ Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO) in the Former Yugoslavia and the other part was spent auditing Scottish Government departments such as the Scottish Prison Service.
Pretty gritty stuff but the whole experience was somehow pulled together over food.
For many years, Ali audited the food contracts for every prison in Scotland and gained invaluable experience of the difference between dinner parties at home and catering for thousands of inmates, three times a day, seven days a week.
The budgets for feeding prisoners back then were just over a pound per person per day and the pressures to spend as little as possible was huge. Every penny had to be justified and the prospect of a roast dinner on Christmas Day usually made the national press. In contrast, overseas, Ali was tasked with tracking down millions of dollars of assets, donated or funded by UN member states to the former Yugoslavia, some of which seemed to mysteriously “disappear” overnight without any repercussions.
The memories of eating in post-war Sarajevo and Zagreb are something that are quite difficult to describe. Sarajevo public dining was dominated by the international community and the mafia. Most evenings were spent in the Irish bar: a dystopian pretence that we were really still at home all along. Occasional forays into the native restaurant scene were only with the approval of the full-time international staff who had vetted local institutions to declare them safe.
The main focus was meat. Mixed meat and sometimes “mystery” meat. Huge allowances were made for the very privilege of being able to eat out in a restaurant at all, so complaints were few and far between. But that didn’t stop us seeing the funny side to some of the encounters. A request for a side of vegetables one night resulted in our table being presented with a plate of peas. Just peas. On a dinner plate, rolling around like marbles. We were so astonished with the waiter’s ability to carry them safely to the table without spillage that we ate them without another word. The local salad was “shopska”, originated from Bulgaria but had been commonly adopted. On one occasion in Zagreb, the cucumber seemed to have been soaked in formaldehyde, but it was politely assigned to a napkin and hidden in a coat pocket.
We regularly ate in a local restaurant in Skopje and were astonished to find lobster and fresh seafood on the menu in a land-locked country. The grand décor included a floor-to-ceiling marble statue in the centre of the room, a waterfall and various over-sized plants beside the running water. The entire ceiling was mirrored and smoking was expected, cigars freely offered.
After six nights in a row, we all noticed that there were a series of tables around the outside of the room with two men on each table. A woman would arrive at the restaurant and join their table and be bought a drink. A few moments later the woman would leave with one of the men and money would change hands. One of the waiters told us that the seafood had been smuggled in that morning from the coast of Albania. On our final night, the owner joined us for our meal and declared us to be the finest examples of international guests and insisted on preparing us his chef’s ultimate dessert.
Three bottles of wine and an hour later, the doors to the kitchen swung open and a trolley on wheels appeared, followed by the entire kitchen brigade. There were indoor fireworks on the trolley and a large meringue-like structure the size of a sheep on the top of the trolley. It was on fire.
Underneath were about twenty pancakes filled with ice cream, three kilos of fruit, syrup and fresh cream, topped with flambe meringue. The staff were singing. The owner was clapping. All the waiting staff joined to sing along and then stood and watched while we ate. Ali awoke the following morning and found pancakes in her handbag. She left Macedonia on a flight the next morning and Ali’s barely eaten a pancake since.
This is Day Two in our series sharing 31 Food Memories for the 31 Days of August.
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