Austria has no vegetables except for potatoes. If you define potato as a vegetable. The colder climates in Europe have shorter growing seasons, so root vegetables are the go-to for restaurant meals.

To make up for that deprivation, Austrians are known for their outstanding pastries. Surely, a fresh apple strudel can make up for missing out on asparagus, tomatoes and salad greens.

Yes, vegetables can be found in the grocery stores. But I don’t know why they’re so rare on restaurant menus. You’d think the chef could just walk down the street and pick up a few eggplants or zucchini for tonight’s meal. But no, it’s endless potatoes.

Not that they aren’t nicely prepared. You can find potato croquettes, several varieties of potato salad, fried potatoes, boiled potatoes and dumplings made with potato flour. I suppose the folks in northern Europe would have the same complaint about Italian food. “There’s so much pasta!”

Pork seems to be the primary meat. It ends up on your plate as sausage, wieners, schnitzel, bacon, chops and cutlets. Gary describes the cutlets as, “Meat that’s been pounded into submission, breaded and fried.” Chicken and turkey are also turned into cutlets. The food is good, mind you. But the flavors aren’t nearly as complex as they are in countries with warmer climates.

That’s probably why some of my favorite foods come from India, Greece, Morocco, Mexico, Italy and the Caribbean. Being of German and Welsh extraction, Gary finds comfort in meat and potatoes. It’s how his mother cooked. (I finally understand why he’s addicted to Tater Tots. As I write this, we have five bags waiting at home in the freezer.)

On our last evening, we dined at a neighborhood Austrian restaurant that was completely packed with a noisy crowd. It was a great indication that this was a good place. I ordered a non-alcoholic beer that came in a bottle so large I couldn’t finish it.

The pumpkin soup looked good, so we shared that, along with a salad. The soup was quite tasty, made with a rich chicken stock in addition to the pureed pumpkin and a bit of cloves. The salad was surprisingly good, a combination of field greens, goat cheese, pickled pumpkin chunks, toasted pumpkin seeds and a dressing made with pumpkin seed oil. Pickled pumpkin was a new one on me, but it was actually quite good, with a lightly tart flavor.

Gary ordered the schnitzel with cranberry relish and a side of potato salad topped with a few greens. I chose the chicken breast stuffed with ham and cheese, accompanied by “cream dumplings.”

These were pinches of dough simmered in a thickened chicken broth. The chicken breast was rather small, but there were plenty of those dumplings! In fact, so many that I couldn’t finish them. They reminded me of the chicken and dumplings I used to enjoy in the southern U.S.

Then on to France

Strasbourg, being on the German border, offers a combination of German and French dishes. But boy, the French can cook. And they can bake bread that becomes the stuff of your dreams.

We had one starter at a restaurant called L’Oignon (The Onion) that will remain in memory. It was a base of delicate, crispy puff pastry piled high with caramelized onions (with a bit of tang from vinegar) and topped with a Gruyere cheese sauce. This, I must try at home.

Once we’d settled in Paris, it was just a short walk down the street to a small but excellent café that was so unspoiled that the owner didn’t even speak English. We tried an appetizer of paper-thin duck breast with onion jam and lots of crispy French bread. Gary dared to try a veal gelée. This was a new one on us. You boiled a calf head until all the collagen was extracted from the bones and cartilage. Then you cooled it to a jelly, cut it into cubes, and tossed it in seasoned breadcrumbs.

Gary loved it. I took a taste and decided it wasn’t my cup of tea — or collagen. Instead, my beef filet was perfectly rare and sliced thin, like a deck of cards that I could pull apart piece by piece. Yup. My dish was the winner, although Gary did clean his plate.

The next night, we walked to a nearby café that was rather empty. Had we chosen the wrong place? No. We’d simply arrived before the dinner rush. Not long after we were seated, the tables were jammed, mostly with young people out for a Friday evening with friends. The two young men next to us, obviously American, said they were from Chicago, where Gary used to live, and just outside of my home city of Syracuse, N.Y.

For dinner, Gary started with a serving of escargot in garlic butter, while I had the roasted Camembert with baguette. That would have been enough for both of us, if we’d realized the servings would be so large. But we still had to make our way through my chicken done up in Basque style — with tomatoes, onions and bell peppers — plus a load of thin-sliced fried potatoes. And a salad.

Gary dined on veal “mountain style”— roasted and served on a bed of fried potato slices and topped with brown gravy and melted cheese. No, we did not finish, nor did we ask for dessert. However, the Basque cake did look pretty tempting.

Our big winner was a Moroccan restaurant a few blocks from our condo. It was called L’Homme Bleu (The Blue Man), and Mohammad the owner was delightfully friendly and helpful. Did we know about Moroccan food? Well, yes we did. We had housed young man (also named Mohammad), a Moroccan student from Cabrillo College. In his year with us, we learned all about tagines, flatbreads, spices that his mother had sent to us, and other specialties.

For a starter, we had a phyllo-wrapped mixture of minced chicken, dried fruit and cinnamon. It was a new one for us, and we loved it. A combination of sweet and savory. Gary had the mixed plate of several Moroccan condiments with a hard sausage, lamb chop, beef meatballs, chicken, and several simmered vegetables. All were seasoned with Moroccan spices — cinnamon, cloves, and cayenne.

My tagine (a stew cooked in a clay pot) came to the table still boiling! It included a lamb shank, huge artichoke crowns, several vegetables, and a rich broth seasoned with and a spice mixture called ras el hanout. A side of couscous completed it. My iced mint tea was a refresher with sugared mint leaves on top. Mohammad treated us to after-dinner liqueurs made from honey. We left well-fed and happy.

And the sights!

Everything in our five-country trek was not about food, although that was a primary focus. We hit all our goals — visited two palaces in Vienna, attended a performance of “Carmen” at the Vienna Opera House, found my grandfather’s childhood home in southern Italy, enjoyed a beach day on the Ionian Sea, attended a patron saint’s festival, enjoyed a few fine days with my Italian cousins, tossed coins into the Trevi Fountain (again), visited cathedrals everywhere, marveled at the stained glass windows in Sainte-Chapelle, enjoyed archaeological sites, gawked at the art in the Louvre, walked two hours through Versailles hallways just to see Marie Antoinette’s bedroom, went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and took a bazillion photographs that I hope to turn into a complete exhibition.

It’s been an intense few weeks of travel. But Gary and I are reaching the age at which I think cruises will be in our future plans. Someday.

No recipe again?

My recipes will return in my next column, when I’m back home. Right now, it’s all about the restaurants and cafes while we’re in Europe. Meanwhile, I’ve been staying away from any kind of cooking.