Eating in Paris

What's one of the best things about vacationing?  Eating at good restaurants!  Yes, sometimes it's hit or miss. Yes, it can be quite expensive. But what is Paris supposed to be famous for besides scenic foods?  French food! 

I've made an attempt on this page to document our many food adventures - most of them for lunch since we found that to be a cheaper strategy. Most of the time, we ate in for breakfast (besides a pastry or two from one of the nearby bakeries) and we almost always ate in for dinner (most of us being tired out by then anyway). 

If we went out to a restaurant, I tried to grab a business card so you'll see snapshots of those cards. That is in case anyone who reads this and visits Paris in the future can then look up one of the restaurants to try on their own.  I also tried to take pictures but often forgot. I have quite a few pictures of half-eaten bowls or empty plates which is unfortunately often when I remembered to take a picture. I've spared you from viewing most of those pictures.

One of the great things of this apartment that we are renting is the outside patio.  We can sit and have our breakfast or read and drink tea, milk, coffee. It actually can get somewhat chilly especially due to the wind. And we're on the 10th floor (the 11th really since the French call the ground floor - floor 0.

 John made a great salmon the other day. The vegetables just seem to be more fresh here. Not picked months earlier and shipped via truck to the Giant Eagle.  Yesterday, we had spaghetti.  Another day, we picked up a roast chicken and potatoes.

Here are some of the restaurants we've tried so far:

6/30

Le Tabarin on rue Amelot. This one is near our apartment. Traditional french food but nothing special.

7/4

L'Auberge Avegronnaise on rue Gabriel-Lame in the 12th district was awesome.  Our waitress (who was also Asian) had lived in England for 5 years. This restaurant is near Parc de Bercy - one of the parks we visited. The special here is aligot which is a mashed potato dish with a raw cow's milk cheese called laguiole.  When the waitress was scooping out the aligot from a large pot, you could see streams of it stretching from the bowl to plate.  The portions here are big for French standards and the sauces excellent. We had a steak with pepper sauce, a chicken and mushroom stew, and the aligot with sausage.

Aargh!  I'm adding to this post today 7/5/2011.  We got snookered into eating rognon today. Look it up!  It's veal kidney.  The first time we were here, the word didn't come up in my dictionary on my phone or something and we ordered that plus some other local andoillete sausage. Both turned out to be the less eaten parts of the cow. Well, I was going to avoid having to eat that again now that I knew what rognon was, but no.... Today we ate a Cafe L'industrie. Our intention was to eat at an american BBQ on rue Sedaine but for some reason it was closed today, so we went to Cafe L'industrie a block away. I had written it down with a thumb's up from 2 years ago.  I think we really like the decor more than the food, that's what John remembers.  The place is somewhat like an old time speakeasy - old pics on the wall with themes of music, etc.  Our plan today was to order the special of the day which looked like chicken skewers. We thought that was the special - what they call the formula - where you get an appetizer and an entree or an entree and dessert or all 3 for a special price but only from a select menu.  So this is what we though we ordered:  appetizer of the day - goat cheese with figs. Entree of the day - chicken skewers. Add to that an entree of sea bass. John also wanted to try escargot (aka snails). Finished with a chocolate cake dessert.  What did we get?  Cucumber soup (tasted more like goat's milk with a some crushed basil but was pretty off-putting). White fish with sauteed vegetables. One skewer of chicken with a small fruit salad and rice. AND a bowl of rice with veal kidney and mushrooms in a brown cream sauce. Plus 6 small snails covered in butter. And a chocolate cake plus the special of the day - milk pudding (something like sugar-free yogurt with whip cream on top).  So we ended up getting much more than we ordered and a lot of what we did not want to order.  It was not a satisfying meal. I think they though we wanted one of each formula special of the day or something. I don't know. Asia ate most of the kidney. We didn't tell her what it was.  John also did eat most of the snails. At least the chocolate cake was pretty good.

7/6/2011

I had to get my steak tartare. Yes, you heard me - tartare as in raw meat!  And it really does look like a raw hamburger patty with spices. Everyone tried it and actually thought it was good, but there's only so much raw meat an American can take. Especially when it just looks too much like ground beef.

The food wasn't that great. The decor was really nice though. Dark wood floors, panelling, seemed very old folksy though. In contrast to some of the other restaurants down the street that were packed with young people.

Basserie Flo. 7 cour des petites ecuries. in the 10th district.

7/7/2011

Today for lunch we had Ethiopian. We were the only ones in the restaurant. John thinks perhaps the food is too spicy for the normal Parisian?  Anyway, we loved it. It reminded us of this great Ethiopian restaurant in Pflugerville, TX.  The restaurant in Paris is called Restaurant Ethiopia.  Original title!  Address 89 rue du Chemin Vert.  http://www.restaurant-ethiopia-paris.com/. Right in our neighborhood in the 11th district.  The kids especially like the fact that they can eat with their hands!  When we were ordering, the waitress made a point to ask if we were familiar with Ethopian food.  I wonder if she has to explain how to eat the food to most customers.

Just the layout itself is beautiful. And that's Zach's hand reaching for food and he's really picky!

7/8/2011

For lunch we returned to one of our favorites from last visit- L'ebauchoir, 43 rue Citeaux.  It's in the nice shopping district near our apartment.  The place was packed when we got there at around 1:30 PM but we were able to get a table way in the back. For appetizers, we got the white tuna tartare and the herring with sauted potatoes. They were delicious. Unfortuately I don't think they sat well with John and I because within 1/2 hour, I had to make a trip to the bathroom and it hit John maybe an hour later.  We shopped for a little bit and got Zach a haircut afterwards but basically had to spend the rest of the day in the apartment. The kids were unaffected but they only tried a bite or so of the appetizers.  The two entrees we got were lamb and chicken. 

Here's a picture of one of the desserts - ice cream with banana and chocolate. The other dessert was goat cheese with olive oil. 

  7/9/2011

Today, the food was mostly great Asian food.   For lunch, we went to China Town - near rue de Belleville.  We ate at Restaurant Asiatique.  We figured if you saw lots of Asians eating in the restaurant, it has to be good. And it was. We ordered a beef noodle soup, a pork rice noodle soup, and beef rice noodle dish and potstickers.

For dinner, we had Korean food. This was our second time to this restaurant - Tae Yang, Restaurant Coreen, 10 rue Alexandre Dumas near the Metro stop - Rue des Boulets.  It's actually only 2 train stops from our apartment. I see us going here quite often.  This is actually our second visit already. The first time, we had bulgogi we grilled at the table and cold bibimbop.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the food - bibimbop in a hot stone bowl with sizzling rice, bulgogi soup, vegetable tempura, and potstickers.  And wine comes with dinner!  We didn't know that until we heard the people next to us speaking some English and talking about the wine. John asked them if it came with the dinner and they said it depended on what menu you ordered. We confirmed with our waiter that our orders came with a 1/2 pichet.  We had no idea what a pichet was and it didn't come up on my downloaded French dictionary or the culinary dictionary I had.  I just looked it up online - a pichet is a jug.  So your dinner either came with a 1/2 jug of wine or 1/4 jug of wine. The jug was a little carafe of wine - enough for about 4 glasses of wine which was plenty. And there's a choice of red or white!  Great deal.  Clean plate club!  I ate all the kimchi sides too.

Along the way, the kids also had several snackes of crepes and corn on the cob!  In different street corners along Montmartre, you find these corn vendors - put a little metal pail with charcoal in a shopping cart and you're a corn vendor!

Oh and I can't forget dessert!  There's always lots of little places to stop for coffee and dessert. One secret I haven't let the kids in on yet is drinking hot chocolate!  Not like the powdered Swiss Miss we usually get!  We'll have to order hot chocolate for them as a special treat.

7/14

Chinese food again!  We seem to eat a lot of really good Asian food here in Paris. A great contrast to French food. And definitely not something I can easily get in Pittsburgh. 

Today was free entrance day to the Louvre. After visiting the museum, John wanted to eat as far away from tourists and touristy restaurants as possible.  We found a little Chinese restaurant down one of the alleys. Fusion Cuisine.  Why it was called this, I have no idea. I was thinking it would be more new age Chinese.  Here's a snapshot of the menu specials for the day.

We chose the dim sum sampler (which Zach ate most of), this great spare rib dish, fried rice, and beef with onions (also great but way too many onions). 

 

7/16

Today we went to the Clignancourt Flea Market in the 18th district.  We stopped at a Vietnamese restaurant for lunch just a short walk away from the Simplon exit on the Metro's line 4.   I had heard some good reviews of the place. 

I was a little hesitant when we first entered the restaurant because it wasn't in the best area and the restaurant didn't seem packed full of people.  Of course, perhaps Vietnamese food isn't that popular with the French?   We ordered a beef caramel dish, a vietnamese crepe, beef pho, and porc ravioli.  Everytime we've ordered ravioli at an Asian restaurant, it's been our faithful potstickers.  This time, not so much.  When the raviolis came, I thought perhaps it was there version of a crepe. It was a grayish color which turned out to be delicious ground pork and spouts wrapped in rice sheets with a sweet and sour dipping sauce.  We didn't know this wasn't the crepe until the crepe actually came. Here's the Vietnamese crepe. We ate everything else before I could get a good picture. The flavors were amazing. The beef dish didn't even look like it would be enough but it packed some much flavor into each bite that it was quite satisfying.  The pho broth was great though it missed the usual additions such as putting in your own sprouts, basil, sriracha and hoisin sauce.  The waitress did ask if I wanted hot sauce and instead brought these incredibly hot raw sliced red peppers. I ate one sliver and knew that if I ate any more of those peppers, I wouldn't be tasting any more of my meal.

The Markets

One of the things we like to do here in Paris is visit the many markets. Many of them are like flea markets or like the Maxwell Street Market in Chicago. Open air markets selling vegetables, meats, cheeses, plus clothes, trinkets, and then garage sale-type items or thrift store type items. There will be bins of clothes for 1 or 2 euros that you have to sift through to see if you can find something. Zach and Asia have both been given 100 euros to spend for the month.  Zach has spent maybe 9 euros so far, Asia has spent almost 30.  I've bought 2 skirts for 5 euros each, a dress for 5 euros, a belt for 5 euros, and 2 scarves plus some jewelry.  Asia's bought 2 hats, some figurines, a doll with no clothes on, a small eiffel tower, and a chinese fan. Zach bought a Marvel note book and markers and a miniature eiffel tower. One of our goals is to buy clothes for the kids for the school year. I don't think we'll find much of those at the market even though Parisian castoff's are probably still a few years ahead of regular Pittsburgh styles.

Here's Asia in 2 of the hats she bought.  The second picture is a ride that Asia had been waiting to go on since we got here. She remembers it fondly from the last time we were in Paris. The ride just goes around and around and is really for younger kids but she insists on riding on it. Gotta love them we're they're still young at heart.

Viva La Paris

We are back in Paris. Actually have been for a few days. We left Pittsburgh 6/27 and arrived in the early morning the next day. The flight wasn't bad, got all of our luggage on board including Zach's violin. Our flight from Charlotte, NC to Paris was delayed by an hour due to one of the runways being closed due to thunderstorms. We tried to get the kids to sleep some on the plane but they were too excited - free movies of your choice! Asia ended up getting sick on the arrival to Paris - not sure if it was the slight turbulence or the sugar from the breakfast pastry and the lollipop to suck on during the descent. I was a little worried about Zach too because of the lack of sleep possibly bringing on a seizure, but he was fine with the 1 1/2 hours of sleep he got on the plane. Another difficult part was the lugging our big suitcases on the train. I'm not sure how we're going to do that on the way home since we plan on having an extra suitcase. We actually nested one of our smaller suitcases in our biggest suitcase (we call it "Big Greenie"). So we had Big Greenie, plus our new silver Samsonite with the really smooth gliding wheels, a cute blue striped wheeled carryon that consisted mostly of food like a box of Cheerio's and instant noodle packages, my laptop case that also was a wheeled case, Zach's violin in a case that he could wear like a backpack, and an actual backpack. Again, the tough part was taking those suitcases up and down the stairs and trying to fit them on the trains. A few nice people would help me with one of the suitcases as I waited for John to come back up or down the stairs.

We're staying in the same apartment in the 11th district that we did 2 years ago. The owner has renovated the kitchen and the bathroom. He replaced the tub with a modern shower with a huge square rainbath showerhead. He also has a washer AND dryer. Last time, I had to hang the wash on a drying rack that took forever and gave you stiff underwear. He also got new appliances for the kitchen - stainless steel fridge, builtin microwave and oven. He left us a welcome note and mentioned that maybe one day, he'll redo his patio. So on this first day of arrival, we settled in and took a nap. So much for trying to get on to the Paris timezone. Even today, it's already 9 AM and everyone but me is still asleep. We usually get rolling around 11 AM for whatever we have planned for the day. Bedtime seems to be around 11 PM for the kids, midnight for John and me.

So far, we've visited our old park in the area where the kids played soccer 2 years ago. The pictures below are from what we call the Art Park.  It's basically a riverwalk with different statues on it. The kids were encouraged to climb most of them.

At the end was a little park, but as you can see, who needs a park when you have cement?

  



Dig It - The Musical

Today was the fourth grade musical play. Zach's grade performed Dig It! A Musical Tale of Ancient Civilization. Zach's role was Remus. Basically he had one of the more comedic roles in the play as you can see from this video:





He gets hit by a rock and has to die a dramatic death. He and Asia had fun practicing.

Here are some more pictures but you can't see Zach too much. He's in the last row in the middle.

May Dance Recital

Saturday May 14th was Asia's annual dance recital for West View Dance. This is a program sponsored by the PTA and held at the school. Asia loves it because it's fun and her friends are in it. It's not that challenging of a program but I'm beginning to see some promise in Asia's stage presence and considering putting her in additional dancing or theatre classes.

First up was ballet. The piece was called Music Box Dancer.

The tap dance piece was to the song Baby by Justin Bieber.

I was backstage as a parent helper so I didn't get that many great pictures or videos of the performance but from the side view, she sure looked good! During the tap number, Asia and her friend Lydia both slid and fell a little on stage, but they both just shook it off and kept going. Those darn tap shoes! :)

Asia and her friend Paige.

This is Asia's jazz outfit. The jazz piece was I'm Still Good by Hannah Montana.





This pose is what you get when you watch America's Next Top Model.

Here's a video of the dress rehearsal for the jazz piece. It's not the greatest video since I'm backstage and Asia is way over on the other side. You can see glimpses of her - 1st person on the front row on the other side of the stage.


The last number that Asia was in was for tumbling. The song was Walk Like An Egyptian. Here is the video from the dress rehearsal, the only one in which I actually sat in the audience.

In between numbers, the girls played Apples to Apples.

times quickly changing

When did these two adorable children


become these two rascals?

*sigh*

updates and more

Zach got his braces off last week! He is now wearing a retainer. I didn't realize a retainer is this big hunk a plastic that you put in between your upper and lower front teeth and you basically bite down on it. You can't talk with them on, you can't eat with them on. He has to wear them for 4 hours during the day (not consecutive) and then all night! I don't know how he does it. Zach is such a trooper. No complaint. He just puts that retainer on, slobbers away, mumbles, and goes on to whatever he's doing - playing Wii, playing computer games, practicing his violin.

Zach has been reading The Hunger Game series. He blew through the first two because they were so exciting. He's sort of stuck on the 3rd one. Not as much of a rush to get through it and see what happens. I think I was that way too. You don't want it to end. Well, now it's going to be a movie. I'm not sure if Zach will be mature enough to watch it with all the violence. We'll see whenever the movie comes out.

Asia is my little soccer star. She's at practice right now. She has a soccer practice (indoor) from 6-7:30 PM. Apparently she wanted to stay for the 2nd session too. She's going to be one tired girl. Good thing. She can eat a snack and then go to bed. She played an indoor match last weekend and she even got a chance to play goalie! All the girls were excited to try it out.

This weekend, Zach has his first chess tournament. I'll try to remember to update my blog on how he does. Asia and I am going to the Market District to see Aarti Sequeria. Hee hee! She won The Next Food Network Star two years or so ago. Asia and I watch her cooking show - Aarti Party. She makes Indian Food look easy. Another cooking show I'm hooked on is called Chinese Food Made Easy. And yes, the host, Ching, really does make it look so simple! She's British and she and Aarti actually sound very similar. I made a version of one of Ching's dishes tonight - mushu chicken. And sort of combined it with her Egg Fu yung which is actually a Chinese street dish. I always though it was some Americanized attempt at chinese food. http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/chefs/ching-he_huang

Of course, I never have on hand the ingredients I need so I used old corn tortillas that have been wrapped up in my fridge for about a month. No mold, so it's still good. You just lightly toast them over the stove burner and they're good to go. Then I marinated the chicken a little in soy sauce, black vinegar, and mirin (rice wine). Cooked up the chicken with some minced garlic. Spread a little hoisin on the tortilla, put in a few julienned carrots, onions (didn't have green onions, some fried leeks, a few drops of Sriracha sauce (vietnamese chili paste), and some slivers of egg omelet. Yum!

Romp N Roll

Today was the Girl Scouts Romp N Roll day where each girl scout in our area (West Perry) gets to bring a friend to roller skate. Asia brought Acacia this year. Last year we tried to go and Asia got the stomach flu a few minutes before we left. Literally - we were walking out the door with Asia and her friend Lydia. Asia says that she's not feeling well, and then she pukes all over the floor. I told her that it worked out right that we hadn't left yet. This time, all went well. My new GPS-enabled phone got us to the skating rink without any problem, even though it took us on a back road that seemed sketchy. Once we were there, it took Asia a few tries before she was comfortable with her skates. First it was a size 1 inline skate. That was too small. Then a size 2 inline skate, it was too wobbly. Then size 2 four-wheel skates - those made her fall all the time. Then back to size 2 inline skates -but one of them was defective so she wore two different types. A few mistarts. Luckily Acacia is a patient girl and waited each false start.

Asia actually skates pretty well (for not skating that often). I watched from the sidelines, debating on whether I should go talk with some other mom's or read or keep a vigilant eye. I get really paranoid. I told Asia that I could never take her sledding because if I did, I wouldn't let her have any fun. I'd probably end up yelling - don't sled that way, watch out for that kid, there's a bump there, veer left! I'd be the only mom out there yelling amongs a sea of dads.

Towards the end of the skating time, I was chatting with another mom, and then bam! Asia took a big spill. I could tell by the way she was slowly getting up that she was hurt. I helped her off the rink, gave her a few hugs, and then reminded her that Acacia was probably looking for her. Asia was a trooper. She dried off her tears and went back out on the rink. She's been getting a lot tougher these days. It used to be that she'd get hurt and then she was done for the day. Now she gets up and keeps going. That's my girl!