Marseille

I am starting to like it here. It happened yesterday when the weather really started getting terrible. It's been raining on and off for days and this morning I checked WebMD for symptoms of pneumonia. But yesterday, I was in front of a statue of the artist Delacroix, whose museum I haven't even been to yet. And I realized that fall suits Paris better and that Paris and I are going to get along just fine. Ah, l'amour.

Eating well has only somewhat to do with my nascent love affair. The pace here is fast, Paris has foul pockets that smell of euphemistic filth, and my French professor is a trou de cul (the Google results are unexpected, maybe). But, I have had wonderful moments of culinary and cultural revelation. One of those moments was Marseille.

I left Saturday morning on the TGV (the high-speed train) and arrived in time for a walk around the Vieux (old) port, a bit of shopping, an adorable little train ride around the city and up one of Marseille's inclines to see the beautiful church, Notre Dame de la Garde.

The church, Notre Dame de la Garde:

And from a slightly different view:

The boats:

The view from the tour boat:

And from back in the Vieux port:

My visit was centered around dinner at a place on the Vieux Port called Miramar. I went there with the explicit purpose of eating Bouillabaisse, what I understood to be the whole point of eating in Marseille anyway.

Miramar, the next day:

Vocabulary word of that night was "copieux," a synonym for "abondant" in French. I ordered a glass of wine, an appetizer, and Bouillabaisse..and dessert before I actually received any of this because they do pre-orders for dessert, "because they take so long to prepare." The reasoning I think has more to do with the aforementioned vocabulary lesson.

Dinner began with black truffle toast. Quelle chance.

Then the "real" amuse-bouche. I think the toast was called a surprise. I had a charming waitress, but between her joint Chinese and accents, all I got was olive bread and something about marscapone. Amateur food critic indeed.

My waiter (I think there were about 7 total) told me that by ordering Bouillabaisse, there was no need to order anything else unless I wanted to. I confidently nodded my head and said I wanted the entree du jour, calamars. With parsley, garlic, lemon and pesto. And an adorable little baguette.

I could have stopped there. This place was not created for women who dine solo. For further proof, see my dinner.

And that's dinner part one, the Bouillabaisse broth, accompanied by garlic cloves, roux (spicy mayonnaise), and croutons (little baguette toasts). You eat this before you actually get the motherlode of fish, seasoning it your liking while the waitress debones your fish. In my case, four types of fish. At this point, quelle horreur.

One dinner quickly becomes two dinners:

Remember, I had already ordered dessert too. With this dessert, I received two other plates of desserts. Another surprise! In additions to my own dessert (red fruits with a basil-infused pastry cream), I had little madaleines, chocolate-dipped cereal cookies, shortbread cookies with raspberry jam, homemade caramels, caramel lollipops, raspberry Turkish delights, and candied almonds.

In case you don't believe me:

Here's a bit more of Marseille:

View from my hotel room window (I had to hang out a bit):

The fish market:

Nougat at the Marseille fair:

Des coquillages:

Carbohydrates

My French lessons of late have been focusing heavily on verb tenses: plus-que-parfait, past tense, conditional, imperfect, future, near future, and then of course how they fit together to make an impossibly complicated and non-intuitively-constructed sentence. Nonetheless, when I can craft a seemingly complicated but easily assembled verb tense in my own language, I have a sort of unearned but still delightful sense of accomplishment.

So, I can say, confidently and correctly that as of today, I will have been in Paris for three weeks and one day. Further, I would like to think that I have learned or observed the following things and/or compulsions.

1. It is nearly impossible for me to accidentally eat 5-7 servings of fruits and vegetables per day. The only exception to this I have found is that might be achievable if baguettes count as grains and toppings on tarts count as fruits. Wednesday's menu may be illustrative: for "brunch" I had an Orangina (mix between orange juice and orange Crush), a ham/butter sandwich, and an apricot tart.





But I was in the Place de Vosges, which seems it should make it more nutritious.



Later, I had two bottles of water in the afternoon, and for dinner, a croque monsieur sandwich (nearly the same thing as brunch but it was open faced and had melted cheese) that came with one 7-bite salad, and a beer.



And I'm slightly ashamed that afterwards, I had a Coke and small fries at McDonald's, from where I wrote the above, where I had hoped to access their wifi (unsuccessfully; only got the bathroom code). Somehow, my pants fit better. I love this diet!



At least there is a picture of a vegetable.

2. I often feel compelled to not brush my hair, wear clothes that don't match, wear dangling earrings, frequently contort my face, and drink lots of little espressos to feel more French.

3. I at some point acquired an irresistible urge to have something sweet after each meal or in place of a meal. I eat pains au chocolate for breakfast, have decided it would be prudent to eat macarons and palmiers as much as is sustainable to determine my favorite boulangeries and patisseries, and almost always take dessert when I dine out as it seems the only responsible way to learn about France.

But, I have been feeding my soul in other ways. Here are recent photos of Claude Monet's gardens and house at Giverny.

Fauchon and Liza

Where I am, capitulation jokes are too easy. So, instead, I'll merely state that I waved the white flag to eating consistently French food. Not because it's not delicious or innovative or awe-inspiring or a tribute to what man can do with food. It's just too damn much. Small plates are consistently just too much for an American stomach to digest. I'm a hearty eater, but take one recent night. A friend and I went to L'AOC, a charming restaurant in the 5th arrondissement on Rue des Fossés-Saint-Bernard. We both took the menu, which was nearly all meat, which is fine. But examine:I don't remember what this was called, but it was pork ribs, served a bit cold. Note that while it appears to be white meat, there are large sections of deliciously salted, congealed fat on these ribs. There is no way to eat this entire dish and still have hope to attack the two subsequent dishes.

The second dish was beef tongue, two large pieces with a rich (had to have been composed of red wine) red sauce. That was an undertaking.

To conclude, I had a cherry-mousse-ish dessert. It was entirely unnecessary and to say I was speechless upon receiving it seems sort of crass when I did eat a cow's tongue for dinner.

Anyway, the first way I corrected for it was accidentally finding a vegan place in my neighborhood, Le Potager du Marais, fortuitously albeit accidentally. I hadn't deliberately had a vegetable in days (despite eating oil-soaked mini green salads) and here I had a carrot/yogurt smoothie and a (ok, fried) quinoa burger with a califlower (chou fleur) gratin and a green salad with nothing but vegetables!

More deliberately, yesterday I sought out Fauchon, a place I had only heard described as a "high-end delicatessen." If I had only read its website more carefully, I would have realized that to start, it was a "référence du luxe alimentaire et de l'épicerie fine."

That essentially means they take beautiful food items and put them together for you so you can lustily soak them in visually, liberate them from their carefully arrayed display, and eat them while overlooking the beautiful and sophisticated Place de la Madeleine, which itself envelops the massive yet delicately-mosaic-ed L'Eglise de la Madeleine.

I had a ficelle with raisins and a shrimp/mango salad with mint leaves and a mango vinaigrette (in American terms; I think French vinaigrette has to have mustard). And I had gold plastic silverware!

Interior of l'Eglise de la Madeleine, where I saw a Vivaldi concert later that evening.

That night, after the concert, I went to Liza on 14 rue de la Banque just near La Bourse. It was in one of my books and former-French-protectorate food seemed as germane as French. I arrived around 9:30. Ah, the beauty of French dining times. Liza serves "la cuisine libanaise contemporaine" so while being homey and familiar, there was sufficient innovation where I didn't feel entirely unoriginal ordering some of my favorites.

So romantic.

In place of my ubiquitous Ricard (which they don't carry), I had arak, a Lebanese anisette.

I started with fattouche, sucrine (bib lettuce), persil (parsley), menthe (mint), radis (radish), tomates cerise (cherry tomatoes), cébettes (green onions), concombre (cucumber), croûtons au sumac (pita croutons with sumac). My only critique of the evening is that it could have had more pita. I love that that's what troubles me now.

Here's the rest of the ensemble: a glass of red wine; halloumi (or in French-Lebanese, halloum: fromage (de vache) poêlé (seared cow's milk cheese) et confiture de tomate (tomato jam); and in the thin boat-like dish above the arak, kébbé héloué, which is kébbé de boeuf sucrée-salée, sauce au miel et basilic (beef kibbeh with a honey/basil sauce). It was a remarkable combination.

For dessert, I tried the kataef, which in Greek is something entirely different. The apricots and almonds and the apricot sorbet were delicious, but the rest... perhaps an almond-studded cream in a thin dessert-y pancake...wasn't nearly as remarkable as its predecessors, all balancing a fine line between sweet and savory. How did I get so lucky.

Just for kicks, here's Notre Dame from the garden just east of it:

More photos from the jardin du luxembourg:

And my walk home from school:

Chez Georges

I'm becoming intolerably spoiled. Fresh bread, solely al fresco dining, with the most vexing decision of the day being what type of viande (meat) I want and how I want it prepared (à point or medium my typical response). This is not a real life and yet another day passed with only a hint of reality: today was my first day of class so I was rebaptized into the word of direct and indirect objects (and I can't relay what a relief it was to think about grammar, really).

I began the day with corn flakes, my 4.50 euro purchase from a local epicerie (the French version of 7-11). The past few days I have been too anxious to settle and eat something close to home so wander until blinded by hunger, I pick a random place for a sandwich. I am beginning to approach something akin to an eating strategy. After an unexpectedly short registration at school, I found myself wandering again. I wandered to one of my new favorite places, Rue Mouffetard. It's an oasis of a street, enclosed and small, with beautifully adorned tables and window displays. I made a classic error I have warned others again multiple times: never eat at a restaurant that publicly displays its menu in the local language and English. I'm still refining this theory, but today, in retrospect, it was a dead give away for the superlative title this restaurant gets: the worst restaurant I have yet been to in Paris.

L'Atlantide seemed charming and I was especially attracted to the 11 euro menu. I thought I was being clever and frugal. The waiter seemed charming and earnest and as his second customer, I was treated very well. I ordered a bit of (seemingly watered down) white wine and was served tarama (a Greek fish roe spread).

Anyway, the devolution included a ridiculous imitation of salade de chevre chaud (teeny slices of chevre cheese on top of a salad reminiscent of all-you-can-eat buffets):


Grilled trout with fries and seemingly canned green beans doused in butter (gross all around). I used the old I'm-anorexic-slash-mom-I-hate-brussells-sprouts-see-I-ate-enough trick and just moved the food around on my plate until it seemed sufficiently eaten:

And a tarte aux pommes that took 30 minutes to deliver (I was hungry and ate it, ok, but didn't like it):
Things began to look up when I wandered east toward La Grande Mosquée de Paris, inconspicuously situated near the Jardin des Plantes.

It itself is situated Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, but as I don't have the patience yet with the nice weather to explore indoor things, I skipped it entirely.

After the jardin I doubled back to the mosque and had tea in its beautiful courtyard. Behind le jardin du Luxembourg, it's now my second-favorite place to study, with its tea menthe and cool interior courtyard.
I left from there directly for class, but prepared myself for the crime that could be committed if my stomach grumbled during the lecture. In doing so, I was reminded that despite Paris being Paris, not all food is good here (lunch being an obvious and humble reminder) and not all pastry is well-crafted. I stopped in at a local boulanger artisinal which I now take to mean "better than the nonsense I've been eating."

I ordered myself a tarte aux lardons, lardons being a type of ham-product that doesn't exist in the States but is delicious and rich and sort of like genuine, big Bacon Bits, but ham. With a legitimately good, flakey crust. I ate it on a park bench.

After class, I had my second real French dinner, one that I actually made reservations for over the phone. Chez Georges was my first real brasserie this trip. Chez Georges is cosily arranged at the end of a quiet block near but not immediately adjacent to a busy circle in the 2nd arrondissement. I walked in the front door, said I had an 8 o'clock reservation and the proprietor said in his prettiest French and solely by memory, "Julie?"

The restaurant is very intimate and while awkwardly arrayed, is charming. I ordered a Ricard, the ubiquitous aperitif on my table, and had radishes and bread with butter.

Pour commencer, I ordered la ratatouille niçoise froide. I was served a pound of ratatouille that I could take from at my leisure. Honestly.

I had ordered a léger red wine, a very nice word I looked up yesterday (something that does not have a lot of weight). It was a great complement to the ratatouille, with large chunks of chilled and flavorful aubergines (eggplant), courgettes (zucchini) and oignons.

Sometime while trying to resist eating an entire bowl of ratatouille, a beautiful woman named Natalia and eventually two men (all quite unattractive) sat immediately to my right. Slowly, words like those on flashcards became evident (even though they were speaking English): Los Angeles, movie, Harry Potter, London, costume design and from what I divined, I think it's possible I was sitting next to her and she was being courted for her next movie. Upon this realization, the fact that I had been wandering around all day and that my left stocking was slipping down to my ankle (old lady style) became more insupportable. Nothing ruins a girl's self-esteem like eating most of thick cut of beef next to a supermodel.

But oh, what a steak. I ordered the pavé de boeuf. Pavé in this case unsurpsingly means "a piece of red meat de grande dimension." The sauce was an exquisite mix of moutarde, cognac et crème. It was tender, flavorful, the sauce was appropriately rich but didn't hide the flfavor of the meal and it was juicy. Masterful.

For dessert (yes, I ordered it), I had rhum baba but it was disappointing. There was way too much rum, the cake was too brioche-y and light and it was just sort of... soggy. I'm spoiled because of that one in Vegas. But whatever, I had a steak brick for dinner.

Sorry, the lighting is bad but you can see the charming, quite surroundings and its warm inviting interior.