Did you know fluency in the language of country of residence can actually be a health hazard? For the past month it has been scary, difficult, humiliating, each time I walk into a bakery, a restaurant, a store, an anything. This does not prevent me from patronizing these places, but it slows me down a bit. Not so with my native French-speaker visiting. The past three days while Alain was here were spent testing out every possible bread, dessert, hot chocolate, tea...you name it (exception: we were too traumatized by our first attempt at coffee to try again).
Alain showed up with chewy, delicious, hot bread filled with chocolate from a bakery at Place D'Italie (a 10 minute walk from my house). We proceeded to lunch at the Luxembourg gardens (another 10 minute walk from my house -- did I say my house? I meant my closet). We made a bit of salad of an oak-leaf like lettuce, crunchy green beans, red belle pepper, a very dry, hard goat cheese, and some chewy bread. Dinner: Alain had ravioli with a buttery wine sauce and fois gras (why I ordered the saffron mussels after his loving description of this dish, I will never know.) We were tempted to order the ravioli for our main course as well, but decided on shark and steak instead. The potatoes were lovely with a maple flavor, the shark and steak just okay. As the menu is set up for you to order an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert, we decided the best course of action for next time would be to order the ravioli for all three.
Day two, thanks to Alain's planning and navigation skills, we managed to ride bikes all around town. This seemed to justify the bread with lardons, the orange flower water cake, the hot chocolate with cloves and cinnamon, the chocolate tart, and the roasted chicken. We discovered the most delicious drink for the hot hot day that it was: a smoothy made of passionfruit and milk. And this is all before we went to Ladurée and had Oolong tea with orange blossoms, kouign amann (if I have the name right), which I can't even describe but was good enough to momentarily make me forget the Italian marzipan-like cake mentioned earlier.
Pictured above: Alain, after a few too many good things to eat.
I'm sure we did something besides eat, but I can't quite think of it.
1 commentaire:
So true. When we went to Germany I lost a good deal of weight until I got comfortable buying food at cafes, restaurants, markets, and (most difficult of all) grocery stores. Then I gained it all back and then some. Though I must say the inexpensive beer was much more hazardous than the temptations of the cuisine :)
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