What do people in Slovakia eat in a day?
Slovaks eat their hot main meal at lunch, nearly always starting with soup, keep breakfast and supper simple with bread, cheese and cold cuts, and call bryndzové halušky the national dish.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
Raňajky are simple: a rožok, a soft white roll, or bread with butter, ham, cheese or eggs, with tea or coffee. Many people spread bryndza, the soft salted sheep cheese, or a cheese spread on bread. Coffee is usually strong and black.
Lunch
Obed is the main meal of the day. On workdays many people order the denné menu, a cheap fixed lunch of soup and a main course that restaurants serve from late morning to about 14:00. Typical mains are pork with dumplings or potatoes, chicken schnitzel, goulash, or vyprážaný syr, fried cheese with fries and tartar sauce.
Dinner
Večera, around 18:00 to 19:00, is often lighter and cold: bread with cheese, salami, butter, peppers and tomato. Families also eat what is left from lunch or something quick like palacinky. On Christmas Eve dinner is the big meal: kapustnica, fried carp and potato salad.
Starters
Soup, polievka, comes before nearly every lunch. Kapustnica is a sauerkraut soup with smoked meat, sausage and dried mushrooms, about 250 kcal a bowl, and also the Christmas soup. Cesnačka is a garlic soup with cheese and croutons, sometimes served in a hollowed loaf. Bean soup with a frankfurter is another regular.
Desserts
Buchty, soft yeast buns filled with jam, curd or poppy seeds, and štrúdľa, strudel with apple, poppy seeds or cottage cheese, are the classics. Palacinky, thin pancakes with jam or chocolate, are on most menus. Skalický trdelník is a rolled pastry baked on a spit, about 350 kcal a piece.
Drinks
Kofola, a herbal cola first sold in 1960 in Czechoslovakia, is poured on tap in many pubs. Beer such as Zlatý Bažant is the usual alcohol, the east makes Tokaj wine and the west has Frankovka red. A shot of borovička, a juniper spirit, or slivovica, plum brandy, often opens a celebration.
Street food
Langoš is fried dough rubbed with garlic and topped with sour cream, ketchup and grated cheese, about 550 kcal, sold at markets, swimming pools and festivals. At Christmas markets people buy lokše, thin potato flatbreads with goose fat or poppy seeds. In the mountains smoked cheeses like oštiepok and the braided korbáčik are sold by the road.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
A sweet dish can be lunch: šúľance, potato dumplings with poppy seeds and sugar, or buchty with vanilla sauce are eaten as a main course, not as dessert. At a salaš, a mountain sheep farm, bryndzové halušky comes with žinčica, a sour sheep whey to drink. Before Christmas some families keep the carp alive in the bathtub.