RIGA Christmas Market FOOD TOUR 🇱🇻 Is $50 Enough in LATVIA!?!?

Welcome to Riga. We have 50 euros and we're going to show you the best way to spend it at the Riga Christmas Market. You guys already know the drill. We've already been to Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich, and Prague, and we are so excited to get into this old-school snowy Christmas market here in Riga, Latvia. It's freezing outside and I saw something that might be spicy. Vodka with chili and some sort of hot wine, so we're going to give that a shot. So I think that this is definitely going to warm me up. I saw the menu a little bit further and the Spicy Riga is a spicy chili vodka and I saw important. It actually had dried chilies marinating in that vodka and he put an entire shot and then he topped it with mead. And mead is like a honey beer that's been made for thousands of years and it's usually overproofed and pretty strong. I'm excited. This is definitely going to warm me up. That is super spicy, like at least the level of a Bloody Mary. The heat makes it even hotter. You get immediately a kick of chili in the back of the throat. It's very, very strong. This will definitely get your day started. This is probably the strongest drink I think that we've had at any Christmas market to date. So the cups here are like a thick plastic and they do do a deposit system like they did in Germany. If you saw our last video from Prague, they were all paper cups, so I'm glad to have like a real cup back. It is a heavy-duty plastic though, so it's capable if you'd like and the deposit's only two euros. They do have a deposit stand that you take these back to. You don't return them to the stall that you get them from. What an amazing spicy hot beverage to kick off this Christmas market. That'll warm you up for sure. This Christmas market is by far the smallest that we've been to on our trip this season, but it is so cute. All of the stalls are unique. It's got more of like a local neighborhood feel to it and there's tons of cozy places to sit and drink your hot drinks. There's also the most variety of drinks I've seen at any Christmas market this season. Something that is totally unique about this market is so many of the stalls are branded. Like there's Bailey's, Tullamore Dew, Jameson, Jägermeister. All of these have actual branded stalls and they're all serving unique drinks. There's not too much food. This is like the bar crawl of Christmas markets. It is such a cool vibe. I think that we're gonna end up drinking a lot more than we planned to. What what is it in these? So no it's empty. Okay we have officially found the coolest thing that we could possibly drink at any Christmas market in Europe. It's called Apple in the Woods and it's 10 euros. This is apple gin and it's definitely worth the 10 euros. And it's in an ice cup. How cool is this? Wow it's so cold. I don't know why we're drinking an ice drink. It's freaking snowing out. This is delicious. Tastes like icy apple juice. It's like an apple slushy. This is such a rad Christmas drink. It's got a mini Christmas tree, a little dry ice that's smoking over, this icy glass that they've obviously made right here, and then it's served on a little hunk of wood. This is so cool. He's making the cups to order and if you're nice he'll let you screw your own cup. We bought it before we talked to him so he made ours but if you want to you can do your own. Super interactive. Worth 10 euros for sure. This is awesome. What a cool Christmas drink. I think it's time we get some food. We've only had drinks so far. Yeah we should. I feel warmer though. These two disco balls and they make it all shimmery as you walk through the market. This is just so crazy. After being in Prague and Nuremberg where we were shoulder to shoulder with people the entire time, this one is completely empty. Like you can cruise around with your drinks. Like I can't believe how mellow it is tonight. It is a Thursday and it was just snowing so I wonder if that has something to do with how chill it is tonight. While we're looking for food we found some animals. This is the first market we've been to that we've seen live animals. There's some lambs over here. How cute. They got disco balls setting the tone. There really is only like seven or eight stalls in the Christmas market but we did find this pelmeni restaurant which is like Russian pierogies. They are seven euros. We just have to decide if we want vegetarian or meat. I'm starving after those two drinks so let's get some food. All right so we put our order in. We got one order of the lamb and beef dumplings. There's all kinds of toppings. There's parsley, dill, there's green onions and he tops everything with sour cream. Salt here, dill, spring onion, parsley and vinegar. I would recommend put a little bit of salt, vinegar, dill, the spring onion but not spicy because it's already a little bit spicy. Oh great thanks. Thank you. Enjoy. It's kind of a lot in here. Look there's like 15 freaking dumplings in there. I put everything. I went suicide on it. I got dill, I got onions, I got parsley, I got salt, I got chili, I got sour cream. I'm so excited. I love all the toppings on here. The Baltics take their dumpling game very seriously. Pelmeni I believe is of like Russian origin so I'm interested to see how these are compared to some of the pierogies we've had in Poland because they look kind of similar. All right so high praise. These are better than any pierogi I've ever had. Whoa. I love the dill and the sour cream is always so much better than we have in America. The wrapper is super thin and it's a little bouncy but the star is that lamb and beef filling. It's seasoned so so well. Alyssa added a little spice to the top of it. There's actually a good amount of heat in these dumplings just on their own. Lamb is one of my favorite proteins and we don't eat it that much in the states so whenever I can get it when I'm traveling I love it. This is an amazing Christmas snack and I'm excited for Alyssa to finally get something other than alcohol in her system right now. Only seven euros. Look how much there is. We've eaten like six of them already. Wow. So many flavors everywhere. Dill, parsley, onion, sour cream, vinegar, spicy beef. This is great. All right ten, six, plus seven. Pelmeni that puts us at something. That's probably a number. 23 euros. We're about halfway down. I just can't believe how empty it is. The most chill market ever. It's like made just for us. Us and seven other people. And all the food is fresh because this guy told us it's gonna be seven minutes for our dumplings because he has to make them fresh. I'll always wait for fresh food. So cool. So empty. Come to Riga. It's crazy. I feel like we've been here for a couple days now and we've been wandering the streets. I swear the city is built for two million people and maybe half a dozen live here because every street we walk down we're like the only ones. It's such an interesting vibe. It's like classical architecture but it looks straight out of a Disney like theme park. It's such a cool place. And there's no one on the streets and it's really not that cold. It's not as cold as it looks for it to be this empty. Yeah. Okay so when you're in Riga you do have to try their local drink which is called balsams and it's similar to like a or a Fernet but not as sweet. So we are gonna try a hot one here at the Christmas market. Another drink. Let's go. I saw that she also had some cloves and cinnamon sticks so I grabbed a couple of those and threw it in here too. She said it's also blackcurrant and apple cider mixed into the hot mixture and then she pours some of that balsam right on top of it. Alright so this is definitely the coldest Christmas market we've been to. I'm not sure what the temperature is my toes are frozen. This is supposed to warm me up. Let's go. Oh it's nice. You get a little bit of apple but what shines is for sure that balsam. Balsam is like a botanical based black liqueur. Almost medicinal kind of flavors to it. But with the sweet apple juice and the blackcurrant it works really really well. The temperature is great. I'm not sure how strong this stuff is but it tastes amazing. It's delicious. Balsams is the national drink of Latvia so you definitely have to try this when you come to the Christmas market. It is a bit diluted with that apple juice and that punch in there but it is delicious. The little huts have like red and white striped awnings and there's a little bit of snow cover on them right now. This is like the magical Christmas market moment we've been waiting for this entire trip. It's nice standing in line because you can warm up over their fire. Okay so I think the soup is five euros and the sausage is eight. So I think we're gonna get a soup and a sausage. May I have one of these round ones? And one soup. Only sausage? Just one. Okay so I meant to get only the sausage and the soup for 12 euros but it came out to 17 because they added the cabbage to it and dang did he give me a lot of sauerkraut to go with that. Whoops. So 17 euros for all of this but this is a ton of food. It's meat and vegetable soup. He put sour cream on top. I got a circular sausage and a heaping pile of sauerkraut. I also put some pickled cabbage on it. There's a little mustard and some green sauce which I'm hoping is dill sauce. There was a ton of condiments up there. It looks amazing and it's nice and warm here next to the fire. You're just getting the heat from the fire that your food's cooking on. It's so nice to warm up a little bit. I don't have my mittens on right now. All right let's eat more. Nice. It looks extra snappy. The outside looks good. He dug from the bottom to get me this one so it was like sitting in all of the juices. So first of all it is round so tightly on there. It looks like the world's meatiest lollipop that you could ever have. The flavor is super snappy. It is packed full. Nice and lean. It reminds me of like a kielbasa. Going right in. I don't think that's how you're supposed to eat it. Oh there's a double. There's a cross. They're right skewered between it so it's got two sticks. It's so good like that though. That is the way you're supposed to eat it. So even though it was five euros for all of that sauerkraut, it is pretty much mandatory. I've got my sausage and my chaser. Let's get on that. It's so snappy. I like the mustard up here because it's like Chinese mustard so it's super spicy. I think I'm the only person eating it like this. It's cool dude. It's more fun that way. It's Christmas. This is a judgment-free zone. The sauerkraut is definitely worth it though. That is a victory for sure. I'm glad that he had us get that. Okay I'm gonna go in for some of this soup. It's way different than I was expecting the taste to be. Usually a meat and vegetable soup is like a beef stew for me. This is like a tomato based. It kind of tastes like a SpaghettiOs tomato base with a hint of like a baked bean maple flavor. Those are like the two flavors that come to mind when I taste it. Interesting. So it's sweet. Yeah. It's good. It's warm and there is like really thin pieces of sausage cut up in there and it's a pretty large bowl here so this would fill you up for five bucks for sure. This sausage is definitely the play at this stand. They had maybe six or seven different kinds of sausage so you don't only have to get the round sausage. There was a ton of options for you. I think I'm ready for another drink. Yeah finally. It's funny we started off with no food and now we've had too much food. We were looking for something sweet but there is not a ton of sweets at this market and we are freezing right now so I think we are going to head inside this little hut here that's a Toulamordu. If you haven't yet watched our other videos from Germany and Prague we are pretty bad at keeping track of how much money we have so I think we're down to like six euros left. Hopefully we can get a sweet drink to finish the night. So we came inside this warm Toulamordu tent and we found ourselves with an Irish coffee and some gingerbread cookies. This is the perfect end to the night. I think we went a little bit over. This was eight and this was one so I think we're more at like 55 euros but let's call it 50. This is a great Christmas market if you want to avoid the crowds and Riga is a really cool city. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you're enjoying our Christmas series and we can't wait to see you from the next one in Tallinn. Cheers. Merry Christmas. Oh you mind erased it. Yeah it's gone. I need some food. We got a lamb and beef. Lamb and beef? Yep. Lamb and beef pelmeni. Pelmeni. Lamb and beef pelmeni. Pelmeni. Oh man she's butchering this one. I had two drinks.