No problems rising at 6:00am and leaving the apartment by 7:00. No problems in ignoring Tom until nearing Cavaillon when he insisted on going through the middle of a large and pretty boring town. No problem with the motorway south, No problem locating rental car return. Small problem locating service station to fill the tank while keeping the rental return in sight so as no to get lost and sending Tom into a deep sleep from which he will not be awoken till sometime in the future we return to Europe.

Around this point in time we realised that we had left Orta at home. He's always been a better traveling companion than Tom. Orta is a small rubber bear who we rescued when floating face down in Lake Orta in 2000. We think he was encased in a glacier thousands of years ago and eventually spat out into Lake Orta with all the other scree. He's been photographed all over Europe when traveling with us.

Qur travel agents had advised us that Hertz had said that they would notify the Marseille Airport office to sort out the fact that our vehicle ahd not been washed aor cleaned when we took delivery of it and had been short of around 25E in petrol. The girl at the office didn't want to know and couldn't have cared less.

What's to say about two flights and two transit lounges in Marseille and Frankfurt? We letf home at 7:00 am and arrived at our hotel (Radisson Blu, Bucharest) at 6:00. Take off 1 hour for another time zone change (we are now 7 hours behind Sydney) and we were in transit for 10 hours. Ches's response was to say "We are agreed that we will no longer drive from Sydney to Melbourne in one day, that we will no longer fly from Aus. to Europe without a stopover half way and we will no longer spend all day in transit within Europe"

At the hotel, we only took long enough to drop our cases before going in search of somewhere to have an early dinner. We'd made it through the day on a sandwich at Marseille Airport and two half sandwiches on the two flights. That's a half a sandwich per flight and in my case, one beer per flight. In Bucharest it was Easter Sunday eve and almost everything was closed down or going to close early.

What happened was perhaps one of the most fortuitous things that have ever happened in regards to stumbling on a restaurant/cafe.

On the 20km drive in from the airport, we had noticed that this city is in a pretty bad way. Decaying buildings, lots of soviet cement cancer riddled buildings... basically not a lot to get excited about. When we set out from the hotel to walk the main street, Calea Victoriei, in search of a restaurant, we held out hope that Caru' cu Bere might be open. This is a beer hall like no other. The decor is amazing and apparently it is so popular bookings almost always needed.

It was booked out for a private function as it was again on Sunday at lunchtime and dinner time. We suspect some of the cruise lines must have bookings that are excluding everyone else.

We only tried the narrow streets and lanes off Calea Victoriei,and didn't find anything interesting. On the way down, we had passed a Cafe that had a luxurious interior but no diners and had said that it might be a last resort. It was. But what a last resort.

Just to save you the confusion that we suffered over the next 12 hours or so, let me explain.
There is a Hotel Capsa. The entrance is hidden around in the side street. So is the entrance to the Hotel Capsa Restaurant. The only thing visible from Calea Victoriei, is Cafe Capsa, but it is a very large cafe with large from windows looking in on a room with marble floors, marble columns, plush red banquettes and table well spaced on either side of the main entrance.

We arrived at 7:45. There were two occupied tables and two Tuxedoed waiters. The first water was very offhanded, possibly due to limited English, to give him the benefit of the doubt. Could we have a table? Well... yes ... can't you see there are plenty of empty ones. We picked a table.

Menus were produced and were they extensive. An amazing choice of dishes and we settled on Tripe Soup with Sour Cream & Green Chile and Pork with red pepper sauce (and more sour cream) while Ches had Caviar de Aubergin (smokey roasted eggplant pureed) and Lamb Pastrami with Polenta. All were massive serves and made the meal in Bonnieux pale into the insignificance it was. The second waiter waxed lyrical about the cafe and its history.

Apparently King Frederick loved the place so much, they built a staircase in the middle of the cafe leading up to his private dining room. As the palace is just up the street I guess he just used to duck out for a bite at his favorite cafe. It also used to be frequented by the literati.
Originally built in 1852, it really hit it's straps in the early 1900's and one unkind critic writes that what the communists couldn't achieve the current owner has ... reduced it to a shadow of its glorious past.

Our waiter, the gregarious one, felt that the main problem was that in a drab city, it looked too lush and expensive and scared people from even coming in. I understood what he meant as it does look very expensive. It could be that the restaurant is more expensive however the cafe was amazingly inexpensive.

Even though we were absolutely stuffed to the gills, and very mellow after absolutely filled to the brim glasses of the house red wine.(which was amazingly good), our waiter insisted we had to have the two famous deserts; the Joffre Cake and Chifle Albe Buc (Capsa Cake). Oh dear!!!!!!! Have a look at the recipe and background below.

The meal cost 167.90 lei (or RON), at 4 lei to the Euro, that's 42E. That's close to $AUD59.00. Ridiculous. We'll be going back. At least on Monday night when our waiter returns from his one day off for Easter Sunday.

We staggered home for a long nights sleep.




Ion Barbu, a well known Romanian writer, was the one who said that, this café is his cabinet work: "Capsa was the great Venetian mirror in which, the century had a look from head to toe. Capsa was the most notorious cafe in the process. Others were only as periscopes, designed to locate something of the performance period. Simple weather umbrellas ".

Capsa Cafe or Capsa House with its list of "gems ", giving to you strange and sweet thrills, makes you to dream of a long past history, history of a famous bakery and cafe which gathered both, aristocrats, merchants and bohemian.

The house was founded by Dumitru Capsa, a Macedonian confectioner from Moscopole, who arrived in Bucharest after destroying of his hometown by the Ottoman artillery in 1788.

This job has been transmitted from one generation to another, passing on to Constantin (youngest son of Dumitru Capsa) and 4 of his sons (Vasile, Anton, Constantin and Grigore). But, half a century away, the glory and the reputation of the house will bear only the signature of Grigore. For the first time, in 1860, Grigore Capsa brings "The Green Fairy", the absinth, to the Bucharest's bohemian delight. A Parisian bohemian absinth with striking effects (the famous Van Gogh cutting off his ear to make it as a gift for his lover) do not seem to frighten the "gentlemen from Capsa" who was speaking in French about horses, women and wine, wore monocles, flower in the buttonholes and weren't afraid to offer compliments to young milliners (who were walking on Mogosoaia Bridge). Grigore Capsa also was the one who brought the Romanian wines on the European market, winning several Gran-Prix with local wine varieties.

Learning the art of confectionery in Paris-France, at the famous Boissier House, Grigore Capsa became so famous that, he was the only one foreigner who had the right to participate at the Exhibition from Paris, where his sweets were tasted and had impressed crowned heads of Europe.Thus,Capsa House will have an absolute monopoly on the delivery of sweets to the Royal House of Romania.

Refined and ultrasecrets books with recipes of famous confectioner"Gregoire"Capsa speak very well for themselves and about that one who was an innovator but a visionary too. Bringing in Romania, western finesse of combinations and chocolate also, as the supreme expression of the sweet sin, he has limited the control of East and the Balkans over the Romanian confectionery traditions. Educating the costumer's choice and taste, he just did to mold and adapt a future (that would confirm his visionary ideas), on the roots of too sweet and Orientals recipes and so deeply embedded in Romanians tastes.

It was a rule of Capsa House that, every important event or official visit to be marked by ... 'something sweet '. The 1920's wasn't apart from this rule when, the famous French Marshall Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre, known as Papa Joffre, arrived in Bucharest at the invitation of Royal Family(King Ferdinand and Queen Mary). He is also known in history as the one who defeated the German resistance in the first battle of the Marne (September 1914).

To honoring the visit of distinguished France guest, Grigore Capsa created a chocolate cake with a cylindrical shape that suggests the French military helmets. And because of the Marshall diabetes, the master confectioner educated in Paris, prepared a cake not too small or too large , only good to be consumed without any risk by the honored guest. The cake, which was named after Marshall's name, was made from butter, sugar, eggs, flour, flavors and the highest quality cocoa......all and everything covered by a delicious chocolate coating.

The result? A cake (Joffre cake) with a strong cocoa flavor that just melted into the mouth. After that, it has gone around the world, being taken over by French cuisine in which tradition it was inspired.

Paul Morand (the ambassador of France in Romania between 1943 and 1944) said: "Capsa is the heart of the city, topographic and ethics (...). Capsa is the tympanum of the big ear that's Bucharest."

What can I say more about a Romanian cake filled by/with history ... in each gram of its deepest cocoa heart ?

You need :

1). Cookies -LANGUES DES CHATS ("Cat's tongues")

I bought them and I chose a variety that had a glazed base with chocolate (you'll understand why). If you'll not buy them, you just bake simple "penny" made from:

-3 white eggs very well mixed with 120 gr powdered sugar till foam or doubled the size; add the egg yolks, a pinch of salt and 100 g flour (you may need an extra amount(1tbs) of flour, depending on the eggs size or the moisture content of the flour.

- with a spoon, put small quantities of mixture in a pan, bake at 200 C until cookies are slightly golden; let them cool. Fill them, 2 by 2 with cream, trying to give a cylinder appearance to the final product

2). Ganache cream

The original recipe only Grigore Capsa knows. But, what we have inherited from his disciples were:

-make a thick syrup: boil 100g cocoa powder, 500 g sugar and 125 ml of water. Let it cool and then mixed all with 500 grams soft butter, cocoa 2-3 tbs, 2-3 tbs sugar, vanilla extract, rum and all you wish .... it's more on your own inspiration and taste.

I didn't tried it and I just made this ganache as a truffle cream, melting 200 g chocolate(70% cocoa) in 200 ml whipped cream and a pinch of salt. I let it cool, then I filled cookies.

3). Icing

100 gr cocoa, powdered sugar 1-2 tbs, 3 tbs water, all boiled until has some consistency then, mix it with 1 tbs of butter.

I don't applied this method either and I used the same chocolate melted in a tablespoon of whipping cream. I rolled then the 'towers' in. Left all on a rack to cool and .... that was all.