Paris Food

The French eat better than we do.
There is just no two ways about it.  We had some wonderful meals, saw some exquisite shops, and each of us, Mary and I, also had some truly memorable experiences...come along and bring your appetite!

Our first stop after checking into our hotel was Angelina's, a tea shop where Coco Chanel and Audrey Hepburn used to go on the Rue de Rivoli across from the Louvre.

The African hot chocolate was truly to die for.

Mary is here having her first crepe.  The Nutella ones were good, but here she was really hungry and ordered one with egg and cheese.  Just scrumptious, and cheap too.

 For our first restaurant experience, this little place looked so quintessentially French!  In we went...but alas...

Mary ordered brains by mistake.  Before we left on our trip, it was the one thing she had said she would not eat in France.

I thought it was hysterical, as only an older sister can.  But my turn was next.

Chartier was highly recommended as a landmark restaurant, not fancy, but venerably serving the working classes with great food for over 100 years.

You had to walk through a little courtyard to find it.  We were so excited!

The waiters scrawl the orders on the paper table cloth..

Our starters were fine, hard boiled eggs with rich homemade mayonnaise, leeks en vinaigrette, and pate.

The grilled anduille sausage, not pictured because it looked SO GROSS, was next to the fries here.  Three bites was all I could manage.  Mary got even with me for laughing at her!

We saw this shop window on our walk home from Chartier, and wished we had eaten here.

The food at the humble sidewalk brasseries was much better.  Salad du Nord and Crock au Madame, yum yum, yum!

We loved going into the little shops, just to see how they have their food arranged so beautifully. (But then, everything is beautiful in Paris.) Fruit on one side, vegetables on the other.

This was a greek "deli".  Everything looked so good, but we were just window shopping.

This little table of pasta was in the Italian deli next door to the Greek one.

The French onion soup was truly the best we ever tasted, the real deal.

Our favorite meals were picnics.  Here is a typical boulangerie where we bought bread and pain au chocolat.

The peaches straight off the shelves were juicy and perfumed...real fruit, not bred for shipping with no flavor like ours.  ;-(  The cheese was brie and glorious.

 The evening picnics on the Seine are our favorite memory....

 For our last picnic we found this extraordinary cheese shop in St. Germain des Pres.

I was not supposed to take pictures in there, but I did anyways.  We found the most incredible Camembert  that just defies description.  We got drunk on it.

And where else to go for a late night desert than a chocolate shop?

We walked so many miles every day that we didn't gain any weight....and agreed that the cheese was our favorite food...I need to go back and do some serious study of the pastry!

In my next post I'll write about trim shopping in Montmartre....
Adieu!