Cravings for food I used to love in Holland
I think most people that move to another country know this feeling
You move to a new country where the food is different compared to your home country. In some cases that's a big plus, in other cases not so. What I remembered from our times in Spain, that I had these cravings for snacks we used to order in the snackbar in Holland (aka de frituur). Then we moved to Budapest and there happens to be a Belfrit where we can order "frikandellen", so that problem was solved. Meaning I ate them a few times, and the cravings were gone, as suddenly it's available.. funny how that works, right? But then I found new things that I suddenly had cravings for, like the "Vietnamese loempia's" like we call them in Holland. You can buy them at these little food trucks outside of shopping malls usually, and they are delicious. You also have them in a bigger variant, which tastes totally different because the filling is different as well. In Spain I liked the ones they sold at the Chinese restaurant around the corner. Not completely the same, but good enough.
Bingo!
Once we moved here I only found these miniature versions like 1/3 the size of the image shown above. A while ago I sat in the tram with my daughter, a route we have taken hundrds of times before, I suddenly noticed a Vietnamese restaurant with an image of these rolls outside of the restaurant. Bingo! I finally found them.. A few days later I went there with my daughter, what a disappointment.. Although they look similar on the outside, the filling was not tasty at all.. Scrolling down my folder with images I now have these cravings again ...
Probably they will have the good ones somewhere, but Budapest is so big, I may never find that place.. And besides that, it's so funny that some of the same things are prepared so different in other countries that you sometimes can't even recognize it as the food you've been eating your whole life.
Do you recognize having cravings for some things when you're on holiday or living abroad?
~Anouk