If bread were a boy and cheese a girl I would be extremely sexually confused. Fortunately for me, the two met in perfect harmony in Paris last week. Parisian women are always praised for not being fat, and the only reason they aren’t WHALES is because they smoke 5,000 cigarettes a day and pretend they aren’t hungry. Basically, French women are bitches. I, on the other hand, am not a bitch. In fact, I’m probably the nicest, prettiest, skinniest, and funniest person you know, and if you don’t agree, then YOU are the bitch. Anyways, I went to Paris with my mom (a cougar), and my three sisters (all equally enticed by gourmet food as me, just lacking the compositional skills that I possess). We (or most of us) had three goals: eating, drinking, and shopping. Side note—shopping after 2 baguettes and 2 bottles of wine either makes you spend more or cry more because nothing fits. Anyways, on to the food.
The best thing about French food is that they expect you to order a starter, an entrée and a dessert. They also think it is weird to not have champagne as soon as you sit down. I have found my perfect world.
Z Kitchen Gallery: This place was supposed to be “French-Asian” Cuisine. Well, I left hungry and my little sisters noodles tasted like soap. I can’t remember what I got, but I remember several baguettes. Long story short, keep the Asian in Asia, and focus on breads, cheeses and meats.
Les Violon d’Ingres: BY FAR THE GREATEST PLACE IN PARIS. You walk in and your table setting is set up so that you can drink red wine, white wine, champagne and water without being judged.
Sheer perfection. They also greet you with a giant bread basket that included hot baguettes, cheese puffs-think donut holes but savory with melted cheese. Literally almost took my clothes off at the table (but I was wearing spanks, and that would not be pretty…). Adriane and I started off with a light dish of 2 soft boiled eggs served with truffled toast, lardons (thick cut bacon that puts American bacon to shame), and mixed greens. I honestly ate more as a starter at every meal than the average breakfast. Chunky.
Anyways, I could have gotten the sea bass, but get real; there was a rack of lamb served with thinly cut potatoes right below the fish. I know, I know, I’m so dainty, you’d never expect me to get MEAT, but I splurged… By dessert I think I’d had enough champagne that I’d have eaten a worm, but I got crème brulee because I am a child and like the hard shell—it reminds me of that hardening chocolate sauce that makes a shell on your ice cream. Besides that, crème brulee is weird and tastes like pudding gone wrong. After our 3 (or 4th?) bottle of Tattinger, we decided we needed to leave. Sadly, the only pictures I have from this meal are ones of empty plates…
Frenchie: The Asian and the Frenchman sitting next to us put their menu up as a partition so that they could whisper about us. You know how I feel about the mixing of those two cultures; see the tidbit about Z Kitchen Gallery. This place was okay, really more cute than good. It was a set menu, and you either ordered an antipasto salad or pea soup, then chicken or gnocchi, then cheese or a pastry. The entire menu was in French, and I whiffed—I ordered the gnocchi thinking it’d be like a meat sauce, but there were little chunks of unidentified white fish in there, just floatin around with the bones still in them. The cheese was delicious, but it smelled really weird. My stomach hurt after I ate it.
Les Coquettes: Les Coquettes basically means little cast iron pots, so everything is served in one. I had a salad with bacon and eggs (seeing a pattern here), and then some vegetable coquette. I was imagining a veggie pot-pie, and there was no bread. No bread + My Meal = Unhappy me. Fortunately, there were baguettes on the table and my jeans were already too tight, so I really didn’t need a thing.
Le Reminent: We went here the last night, and I didn’t really get to eat since I got stomach flu while we were there. I ordered the steak and couldn’t eat it because I was sick—we skipped dessert so that I could go home and die. I also just realized that the table of people behind us were from Jersey and kept talking to us all throughout dinner. I bet they gave me the stomach flu. I wonder if they know Snooki?
Rech: Long story short, seafood bar. I watched my little sister eat 36 crabs and we had a 4 hour lunch. My sea bass sucked and tasted like a foot. Was jealous of everyone else’s meal. Hate when that happens. I felt like an outcast and wanted to leave, secretly cried in the bathroom (though I think that had more to do with my emotional morning of watching Coach Carter and Remember the Titans). They didn’t have Coca Cola light. The menu was only in French. The Frenchmen next to us spent their entire meal watching Mary try to shell her crab and making fun of how tacky we were. Good bread though.
Restaurant who's name I can't remember but had good bread: Appetizer I ordered mozzerella. There was a flower in my salad. I wanted to eat it.
Main course I ordered the Merlin. I’m pretty sure they meant Marlin, but I thought it would be cool to try since Merlin is a powerful wizard and by eating Merlin, I would get magical powers. The only magical power I got was the ability to eat more bread. F.
There was also a meal that involved rice pudding, 5 lbs of meat and spitting up at the table. That will come shortly
Summary of my trip
1) Baguettes rule, all other bread can suck it.
2) African American sports movies are so relatable to my life.
3) Ashanti is annoying.
4) Paris rocks, I love cheese.
5) I wonder if Gary Bertier and Julius Campbell are friends in real life?
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