Manger pour vivre et vivre pour manger
Trip dates: January 27, 2017 - February 3, 2017
Eat to live and live to eat - a good motto to have in Paris.
I’ll cover some of our more memorable meals here and then you can find our general food gallery (with comments in the pics) at the bottom.
Given we are foodies, we wanted to try a Michelin dining experience in Paris. We chose lunch because it’s cheaper and because we didn’t exactly have haute cuisine dining clothes. Lishan had brought a versatile black dress and flats, but I only had what she politely terms ‘hiker chic’. Lishan did a bunch of research into some of the 1 and 2 star restaurants; there were quite a few options! We ended up picking a 1 star Michelin restaurant called “La Table D’Eugene” because it seemed like an elegant casual place that had really great reviews.
Overall, it didn’t disappoint. We had a choice between a 3 course menu and a 5 or 8 course "carte blanche”, and we chose to do the 5 course. Looking back, we might have been happier with the 3 course in terms of value, but the 5 had a few more courses to play with and we got to try some different things, so can’t really complain. Service was also top notch - our main server spoke great English and was very hospitable, and the dishes were mostly translated for us as they were brought out.
Another meal highlight was when we dined in and got incredibly unexpectedly stuffed. We used one of our days in Paris as a homeworking day - we went to the train station to make some future trip bookings, we wrote blog posts, made hotel reservations, etc. For dinner that night, we bought fresh baguettes with accoutrements to make our own little dinner in the hotel room while binge-watching the rest of Westworld. We got baguettes from a bakery near our hotel and also went out of our way to go to an Eric Kayser for a more fancy, well-known baguette, to compare the two. Turns out, there is only a very slight difference with the fancy baguette but if there’s a next time, we might get two warm baguettes just to have the experience of eating a warm one on the go!
We also grabbed camembert from a local supermarket along with some peppered salami, some olives, and smoked salmon spread. Add in a cheap Marks and Spencer red wine for 7 euro that didn’t taste bad at all, and you have a full meal (and then some)! It was really really filling, and I wasn't quite as excited for meat and cheese afterwards for a few days.
We also went macaron hunting! It’s a lot like truffle hunting, except it’s not in the forest, and we don’t use dogs or pigs, and… ok, so it’s nothing like truffle hunting. I read a bunch of blogs that spoke of Laduree and Pierre Herme as the top ones to try, along with a lot of other top shops. We ended up eating ones that our hotel gave us on check in (mini ones that we don’t know where they were from!), a free one on the street (I was just buying one as a snack and the shop owner just gave it to me - sweet!), Laduree, and Carette.
Laduree’s fillings were some of our favorite, though the rest of the macaron missed some of the chewiness that we both prefer in our macarons. We went to the shop on Rue Bonaparte, not the most popular one on Champs-Élysées, and it worked out well since we were the only ones in the shop. The craziest thing from Laduree was a Szechuan peppercorn macaron - it really had the taste of the numbing peppers and was actually pretty good initially, but that was all ruined when the metallic aftertaste kicked in. I asked the lady who was taking our order what she thought about it, and she just gave an answer to the effect of ’they are particular’.
Carette had a really good raspberry and pistachio, with a little more chew, but the ambience of the shop and workers' lack of friendliness was a bit of a downer.
Crazily enough, the mini-macarons we got for free on checkin from our hotel might’ve been our favorites! The pistachio filling was really, really good and the chewiness of each macaron was top notch. Ah well, forgot to ask where they were from but maybe next time, we’ll have to stay at the same hotel then!
On our last night after seeing the Eiffel Tower, we went to a well-known restaurant that specializes in foie gras called Au Petit Sud Ouest. We had lots of duck and rich, pan fried foie gras with truffle, which was a nice way to end our Paris trip. I actually thought we’d have more duck and foie during our time there, but looking back, it’s probably better we only ate it as much as we did.
Here’s a collection of other dishes we ate during our time in Paris. We are definitely feeling the effects of Paris on the wallet and on our bodies, but c’est la vie!
We also both drank more wine than we have in a while, since it was generally pretty cheap to get a glass of wine to go with a meal along with a carafe of tap water. Lishan drank wine too, which usually doesn't happen! We found that the rosés were generally pretty light and flavorful, so it was a good alternative.
After Paris, we spent a little more time in Southern France, so this isn’t the end of our French food. Next up: Marseille and Provence!
