Foods Ola Bartek Has Tried

Created during a cocoa shortage, the grain-based “chocolate” bar became an Estonian classic.

Like the famed composer himself, this Mozart-homage bonbon originated in Salzburg, Austria.

These saffron buns are eaten on Lucia Day in Sweden.

The candy is huge with Norwegian hikers and skiers.

This Polish Easter tradition artfully assembles symbolic foods, from bread to lamb-shaped butter.

These Polish pre-Lent doughnuts have taken on a life (and an eating contest) of their own in the United States.

The washed and dried root of the licorice plant was once a popular natural “candy.”

You can find authentic versions of this sour Slavic brew at street stalls and monasteries.

This sweet symbolic figurine is a Sicilian holiday tradition.

Growing this sweet, tropical fruit sometimes requires careful hand-pollination with a paint brush.

This Swedish holiday soda outsells Coca-Cola during the Christmas season.

Chocolate-covered cheese curds make sweet Estonian energy bars.

Some families keep their holiday meal fresh by letting it live in their bathtub.

The sweet-and-sour soda almost disappeared with the collapse of communist rule in then-Czechoslovakia.

The world's least practical and most delicious edible straw.

This bird comes with a brew inside.

The aroma of this mulled wine has been compared to “a warmed-up bowl of Froot Loops.”

The same grass that feeds massive European bison adds notes of vanilla and lavender to this unique Polish vodka.

This Hungarian fried dough can make a rich breakfast or trusty hangover cure.

You can roast your potatoes in this rendered fat, or just spread it on bread and eat it cold.

The fiery fruit brandy of the Balkans.

Hungary's favorite chocolate bar is filled with cheese curd.

This “brown cheese” tastes like caramel.

The dessert that's also a meal.