more french food please

I had such a French day today! After spending a whopping 20 minutes in the Musée d’Orsay, Grace and I got bored and decided to go find lunch somewhere. We found a decently priced bistro and sat down to eat. I hadn’t had a croque monsieur yet, so of course I ordered that and a French onion soup. Which is just onion soup in France. And French fries are just fries here too. And hotdogs here are apparently “American hotdogs”, so we can feel better about that I guess...except I’m pretty sure the French are just trying to clarify that hotdogs are definitely not a spawn of their culture.

Anyway, the croque monsieur was alright, but nothing to go back there for in particular. Same with the soup...honestly, I think I make a better one myself back in the US of A. But ten points for the ambience! Here is my attempt at looking cool while eating soup:

After my super heavy meal we split dessert, which happened to be on my list of top ten things I wanted to try in Paris: Ile Flottante. I’ve wanted to try Ile Flottante ever since I saw my soulmate, aka Barefoot Contessa, make it on TV, but it looked just complicated enough to where I was too lazy to ever try to make it. Overall, it wasn’t bad.  A little too sweet for my taste I think, and I’m not a huge meringue fan. And now I’m wondering why it was ever even on my top ten list. Oh well. Atleast I can tell Barefoot now that I’ve tried it when we meet at the Seine later in my imagination. 

For dinner, my eating buddy Grace and I went to Tastevin, recommended by her mother. It was conveniently located right next to our hostel, but it took us about an hour to make it there because we went the complete opposite direction first to go to Glou, recommended by my dad. We’d gotten to Glou and they didn’t serve dinner until 8, so we left to go to Tastevin, only momentarily distracted by L’As du Falafel as we walked by it, but we had promised to try this place so we kept moving. So difficult. I’m obsessed with falafels from there.

Anyway, we arrived at Tastevin with 3 minutes to go before the dinner shift started. We thought it would be embarrassing and very touristy of us to just walk in there, so we circled the block and saw this really disturbing butcher shop with chickens and ducks with feathers and heads still attached. I’ve added un-beheaded chickens to the list of things I will never cook with. Number one is live lobster. Too scary.

We made it back to the restaurant at the fashionably late hour of 7:02, and were seated. This place was so cute and French looking on the inside...it looked like you were eating from inside someone’s fairytale cottage. 

I started out with a salad of watercress with Roquefort cheese and walnuts, which reminded me of Nick’s mom because she made me a bleu cheese believer. The cheese here was super pungent, but I ate it all. Well almost all. There was just so much cheese! There’s only so much I can handle...

Grace, being the adventurous poultry-innards eater that she is, ordered the chicken terrine. It had an interesting flavor...kind of like a cold hotdog. I’m sure that’s like the worst description of terrine ever...

My main course was amazing...I ordered the Sole Meunière, and got their last one. Grace was glaring at me for that one. The sole was wonderful though…it was swimming in butter and lemon juice, and the tomato one the side gave it a really good fresh flavor. The rice on the side soaked up all the juice and it tasted like nutty brown butter. I’m surprised my arteries aren’t completely clogged right now, but that was so worth it.

Grace got the red roulet fish, which was covered in a pesto sauce. Very delicious...I’d never had red roulet and I’m wondering why it’s called red roulet when it was white fleshed fish. The best part of it was the pesto though, because I’m pretty sure it had thyme in it as well as basil, and those are the best two herbs on the planet.

For dessert we decided to share a scoop of pistachio ice cream. The restaurant served Berthillion’s ice cream, whose store is located across the street. Since we had been planning on going there after dinner (but saw it was closed), we were totally up for killing two birds with one stone. It was awesome ice cream of course. Tasted like someone had mixed a pistachio with sugar and frozen it. 

So that was the end of our French food day! I had basically every French classic I could think of, all in one day. I need to do this more often. And there should be no more eating at McDonald’s just because they have free internet. So shameful.