paris – the food
the best part of any of my trips I’ve taken before has always been the food. like I said, you can forget the ins and outs of your day, but you never forget what you ate for dinner that night. or at least I never do.
I was pretty lucky that a good friend of mine gave me some recommendations of places to go and eat at, as well as good places for coffee. considering he’s a chef I could trust his judgement.
I just so happened to stumble over a few food markets on my many wanderings. the first, near république I think, was mind blowing. charcuterie, fromagerie, boulangerie, patisserie, seafooderie (clearly that’s not french, I just can’t remember)… clothes, flowers, everything. it felt so french, yet at the same time so very much vic market. lunch on this day was half a baguette, some sort of cheese and some prosciutto-like meat. dessert was a punnet of strawberries.
the cheeses selections from one of the fromageries at the market
a memorable experience would have to be sitting at café de flore for lunch and having soupe à l’oignon and a glass of chablis. actually by the end of my lunch, I’d had three or four glasses of wine – I can’t remember, and forgot all about the pain in my feet (open blisters are never fun, remember that).
a few fantastic cafés I did go to were kb caféshop in south pigalle. as well as coutume café near hôtel des invalides. amazing coffee, and I needed a fix. melbourne would be proud. they were so good I went to each twice, just to get my fill.
kb caféshop, with my favourite book
coutume café with bio granola, yogurt and roast apricot for breakfast
le garde robe was another recommendation. a bar that serves only natural wine, as well as delicious cheeses and meats. I rocked up and sat at the bar (which has to be my favourite place to sit in a restaurant, usually), and chatted to the bar staff about their wines.. when I say chat, that makes it sound easy, effortless. in my broken french, and their broken english, we definitely didn’t ‘chat’, but converse? yes.
then comes the time when I try to ask for the charcuterie assortment. not difficult to say in french, considering it sounds the same as it looks, but somehow I ended up with a beautiful plate of cucumber, salmon, fennel, rocket, dried beetroot and fennel seeds. I’m so not a salmon fan but I was kinda thinking, “either this is my phucking horrid french or she has no idea what I’ve been saying to her for the past 30 minutes and I don’t want to embarrass her” so I ate it. bravo me. but when I say salmon, I don’t mean those pathetic scrapings called smoked salmon (which if it had’ve been smoked salmon, I definitely couldn’t eat it) but the most silky smooth fat slices of raw salmon ever known to mankind. and I usually hate salmon. But the combination was amazing, even though I phucking hate salmon!
then came the time for cheese. I told her I don’t like blue cheese and then out comes this wooden platter with four different cheese on it. one was a cheddar with fresh pepper on top, another was a firm cheese washed w walnut (I think), another had ash through the centre and the last had fig leaves throughout. so so so good, but couldn’t finish – needed meagan with me to finish them for me!
then all of a sudden it was my last night in paris, and mid way through the phucking horrid task of re-packing my pack, I decided it was time to eat. so I got this, steak, chips, béarnaise, salad, bread and a jug of wine.
an excellent last supper in paris.
travelling alone 