Oui mademoiselle, I will have some foie gras. Escargot, no problemo. On our little trip to one of the gastronomic capitals of the world I devoured everything I could get my mitts on: duck, snails, chicken, sea bass, liver, pastries, pies, stinky cheese, not-so-stinky cheese, and baguettes. The city was cool too.
Day 1
We stayed at an AirBnB apartment in the Republique area of Paris. The apartment was very small, even by Barcelona standards, but was apparently fairly well sized for Paris. The place overlooked canal St. Martin, had a bar on the ground floor and a few small restaurants and eateries next to it. We got in to the city at around 10 a.m. and stopped at Cafe Republique for my first French baguette sandwich, some coffee, and wifi.
We met up with our close friend and Paris spirit guide Lindsay Poulin after breakfast and quickly dropped our stuff at the apartment. Lindsay gave us a mini-tour of the city, her favorite train stop, places to shop, and most importantly places to eat. After we dined under the tower then headed home and took a much needed nap, which lasted all night (I had been running on 3 hours sleep for the past 36 hours).
Day 2
The culinary adventure begins. We had a late breakfast, or early brunch, at a a little restaurant next to the apartment. I ate liver. It was the only meal I didn't love in Paris. The listless organ was well cooked but severely in need of salt and seasoning. I did see a lot of the restaurant ordering and devouring the same plate so maybe my liver had a bad diet or I'm just not a liver guy. I also witnessed a Parisian woman putting mayonnaise on toast, like buttering her toast with mayo (gross). On the plus side everything else we ate at this place was incredible. Toni's chicken was the second best chicken dish I've ever tasted. My first plate of thinly sliced beets and a seasoned ricotta cheese was fantastic. And we got a decadent chocolate cake to finish all for around 20 euros. I got my food, so after lunch we went shopping.
Toni bought some stuff. I stood around. There was a very pretty salesclerk who almost convinced Toni to buy a gigantic (and expensive) bag. It started raining and, being used to the Barcelona weather, I started freezing my... toes off. We went back to the apartment, bought an umbrella left to meet Lindsay for dinner.
Restaurant Polidor has been serving customers since 1845 so the food has got to be pretty solid. It also happens to be one of the shooting locations for the movie Midnight in Paris (a favorite of mine). I dropped 35 euro for my meal plus 18 for Toni's making it our most expensive meal of the trip but hey how many times are you going to find yourself in Paris. The food there is like your mother's comfort food on steroids. Good ol' fashioned meat (or fish) and some silken mashed potatoes. Very simple, very well done, and very delicious.
I couldn't resist trying foie gras for the first time (unimpressed, guess liver really isn't my thing). I got the chicken in a velvety mushroom gravy sitting on top some of mashed taters. Toni got the steak and steak frites. Both the ladies also had pumpkin puree soup, which they loved. If that wasn't enough we also had lemon pie, apple pie, and tarte tatin (for an english speaker this is a very difficult dish to pronounce). I have to say this was the best chicken I've ever had in my life. I'm sorry Dad you're jerk chicken has been replaced. This place was so thoroughly decadent I tried to plan our entire last day around getting back here so I could have the beef bourguignon, alas it was not meant to be.
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