Baby Bottles of Wine

Yep, you read that right. The day after our Fontainebleau/Vaux-le-Vicomte excursion, a group of us went to Le Refuge des Fondues in Montmartre to celebrate Y.'s birthday.

At this point in my stay here in France, I've gotten pretty good at sifting through restaurant reviews. It's not uncommon to find wildly conflicting reviews about the same restaurant, with some patrons touting an establishment as "the highlight of their Paris vacation," and others saying it was the most over-rated tourist trap they'd ever fallen for, with bad service to boot.

First things first - ignore American complaints about poor service. In the States we're used to charismatic unemployed actors grinning at us as they regale us with descriptions of the day's specials and fastidiously note all our special orders - all in the hopes of getting a big fat tip. Here in France, service is compris, and leaving a tip is completely optional - a reward for truly outstanding service. Since I'm an obviously a poor foreign student, no Parisian waiter expects me to leave a tip, and the service usually reflects that. Mais, tant pis! I'm just here for the food, anyways.

Alors, I could tell by the reviews online that Le Refuge des Fondues was going to be fun. The people who wrote negative reviews online sounded like old farts. The people who wrote positive reviews sounded like they were young, adventurous, and had a good sense of humor.

Although Y. claimed she had called the restaurant and made a 6:30 reservation for us, they restaurant refused to seat us until 7:00, claiming they they didn't even open until then. Oh well - we strolled around Montmartre for a bit. We were finally seated at a long table against the wooden walls, which are covered in scribbles and carved signatures of past patrons.

The meal was prix fixe at 21€ per person, which got us all apéritifs, a plate of hors d'œuvres (head cheese, cheese, pickles, olives, and spicy potatoes), a choice of cheese or meat fondue, and - of course - the famous biberons (baby bottles) of wine (choice of red or white).

I think the wine has to come before the fondue to help you numb the guilt that comes with consuming ridiculous quantities of bread and molten cheese.

On nights like tonight, calories don't exist...

As one review aptly put it, it's neither the best wine in Paris, nor is it the best fondue in Paris - but it's one of the best quirky Parisian experiences you could ask for as a hungry/thirsty study abroad student!

Ornate Ceilings (Fontainebleau et Vaux-le-Vicomte)

On October 15th we ventured outside of Paris by bus to the châteaux of Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Vicomte. It was our last CUPA excursion organized by CUPA, and I commemorated it for posterity by taking far too many pictures.

But the thing about historic châteaux is that when they're filled with ogling tourists, the rooms - grand as they may be - actually feel quite small. Sometimes the only thing you can get a good picture of is the highly ornate ceilings.

Here are the highlights from Fontainebleau...

(The king of France meant for the ceiling of this chapel to rival that of the Sistine. I've never been there, but what do you think?)

We dined in the town of Fontainebleau, then headed back to the bus for Vaux-le-Vicomte.

Vaux-le-Vicomte inspired such a jealousy in King Louis XIV that it prompted him to build Versailles! Unfortunately, our time there was cut a bit short, but here's what I managed to snap of the ceilings...

But my favorite part of Vaux-le-Vicomte was actually the gardens. I had a sudden urge to run and frolic with Beethoven's 6th symphony playing in the background, as if I were some pastel creature from Disney's "Fantasia." But French people don't really frolic, so I contained myself.

Although, when I saw these stone tigers, I just couldn't resist a pose in honor of my dear

Old Nassau!

MacDo

If you were wondering what the fast food in France is like, here's your answer: McDonald's (or MacDo, as it's not-so-fondly called here in France) brand-new goat cheese wrap!

These ads just went up in all the métro stations. Weirdly enough, the picture doesn't make it look that bad - but as we all know with fast food, what you see is rarely what you get...

On the other hand, I did go to a Quick - that's France's home-grown response to McDonald's. I think I heard it's now owned by the company that owns Burger King. Anyways, a few weekends ago, partway into sharing a bottle of rosé with a friend, I decided that I had not eaten enough that day. So we "quickly" (ha ha...so witty) found a Quick, and I picked up a vanilla milkshake with a shot of espresso in it for 1€. Yep, you read that right: one euro. Now, if it's just a once-in-a-while kind of thing, that's a fast food deal I can certainly live with!

Speculoos, aka My Kryptonite

The first step is admitting you have a problem. And I have a real problem, folks: I'm addicted to Speculoos paste.

What's that? you ask. Well, it's actually quite strange. Speculoos refers to "a type of shortcrust biscuit, traditionally baked for consumption on St. Nicholas' Eve in the Netherlands and Belgium." The thin, cinnamon-y cookies are now often served with coffee at restaurants year-round. You may also know them if you've ever been served one with your coffee on a Delta Airlines flight. The most common brand of Speculoos cookies is Lotus.

You're probably thinking, "A cookie? That's it? You're addicted to a regular old cookie?"

Just wait, dear readers.

Three years ago, a woman on a reality show had a strange, but brilliant idea: to make these cookies into a spread. Now, this would almost seem contrary to the order of nature: for example, we use peanut butter (a paste-like spread) to make peanut butter cookies, not the other way around! But this visionary woman defied the laws of nature and created a heaven in a jar, sparking some legal controversy along the way.

I'll be honest, I don't even really like the cookies that much. They're pretty ho-hum, even when you dip them in coffee. But when you pulverize them with oil into the consistency of Skippy peanut butter, that's when the magic happens.

Confession time: I bought this jar on Wednesday. By the end of the day Wednesday, half the jar was gone. By the end of the day Thursday, the whole jar was gone. There's just something about it that makes it impervious to my "just one spoonful" rule...

Unlike peanut butter (where you can argue a case for protein), Speculoos has no redeeming qualities other than having "good fat" (aka, not trans fat). So no excuses here: I just plain love the stuff, and I'm not ashamed to admit it!

I'm pretty sure a jar or two will stow away in my suitcase when I return to the US...

Coffee Connoisseurs Continue their Quest at Café Coutume

I ran into P. at CUPA the other day (we were both there straightening out some class logistics), and we decided to grab lunch together - and coffee. P. is a barista in Portland, so he knows his java - he's one of the friends who put his seal of approval on La Caféothèque a few weeks ago. So I knew I was in for a treat when he suggested a nearby café in the 7eme arrondissement.

When you walk into Café Coutume, you feel like you've stepped out of Paris and into some trendy little place in Brooklyn or LA. The décor is done in a soothing color palette; minimalist, but with some charming quirks. Plants grow out of stainless steel sinks, and there are rolling office chairs at a little side bar. There's a diagram of the human tongue on the wall.

Once seated, we were brought the menus (attached to clipboards) and a carafe d'eau. But this wasn't just any carafe d'eau - it was a test tube!

P. ordered a regular black coffee, while I opted for a café crème. FYI, that's what you have to order if you want coffee with cream in France - and it always costs extra. No free little containers of non-dairy creamer here! But no matter, I was quite hungry and didn't feel like subjecting my empty stomach to the burn of black coffee (albeit black coffee made from single-origin beans roasted on the premises). Usually when you order a café crème, you get a shot of espresso with the milk already mixed in, or on the side. But at Café Coutume, I got a lovely surprise:

Remember, I ordered a café crème, not a cappuccino! And it was as delicious as it was pretty!

Then came lunch. I ordered their Lebanese offering, which came impeccably presented on one of those trendy square plates:

An elegant presentation of tabouleh, flanked by succuluent roasted eggplant, a blob of creamy goat cheese, and some baby greens drizzled with lemon oil. Everything lightly sprinkled with sesame seeds. You could tell just by looking (and by tasting!) that these were high-quality ingredients. So high quality, in fact, that I think the 8,50€ price tag was well-justified.

I also noted as we were leaving that Café Coutume sells small bundles of vanilla beans from Madagascar. There were perhaps 7-10 bean pods in each bundle, which went for about 7,50€ each - though nothing compared to the deals I got in Madagascar, it's still the best price I've seen since leaving the island.

We then strolled up to Invalides...

...then across the Seine into the 8eme arrondissement - the part that's filled with high-end couture shopping (aka, nowhere near my appartment!) - where we gawked into the windows purportedly selling "stylish" clothes. Is it just me, or do "designer" stores often sell a lot of ugly things, too?

Then it was off to the metro to catch line 14 for class at INALCO!

"First Day of School" - A False Start

Monday, October 3rd was my first day of school. Well, sort of...

French universities start late. The earliest I heard of anyone starting this year was the last week in September (at Paris-IV Sorbonne); everyone else started the week of October 3rd. Including INALCO, the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (also referred to fondly as "Langues' O"), where I am taking most of my classes.

So, swallowing my nerves, I boarded a Paris city bus and somehow found my way to the INALCO building in the 13 arrondissement (not far from where I stayed when I first arrived in Paris in August). It's a very new building - in fact, they just moved in for this semester, and things are still a bit chaotic as a result. C'est le bordel, as they would say in French. Students standing in long lines, waiting to sign up for classes (yes, they still do this ON PAPER here in France), a broken elevator - and my class was on the 5th floor (that's 6th floor if you count the American way!).

No matter, I somehow found the classroom, and my fellow classmates for beginning Malagasy written language : a middle-aged couple who are leaving in January to do humanitarian work in Madagascar, and an elderly woman who wants to do ethnography in Madagascar. So much for the intimidating Parisian university-age students I had been imagining!

Voilà la salle de classe,

clearly indicating the start of Malagasy language on Monday, October 3rd!

So the four of us chatted while we waited for our professor to arrive...and waited...and waited...

An hour went by.

One half of the middle-aged couple went downstairs to see if any of the secretaries had word on the location of our professor. In typical French university secretary fashion, none of them did.

So we waited some more.

It was supposed to be a three-hour class.

We waited three hours for a professor who never showed up.

Then we were supposed to have a half-hour break before our next class (Malagasy oral language practice), which was also supposed to be three hours long.

Now, quite frustrated myself, I went downstairs to see what news I could find. I found a table marked "Information." That seemed promising. I waited patiently in line to ask a lady at the table. She told me that since she had seen the head of the Malagasy department that morning, she assumed that classes were supposed to start today...

Thanks. Real helpful.

So while the elderly woman gave up, the middle-aged couple and I decided to wait one half-hour into our second three-hour class to see if a professor showed up, before calling it quits.

No professor.

Disappointed to have worked myself up for nothing and wasted an entire afternoon (the building doesn't have wi-fi!), but happy to get to go home early, I rode the metro home and bought myself a jar of organic fair-trade imitation Nutella to console myself.

It was only a few days later (after one of the lovely academic support people at CUPA went to INALCO in person the next day on my behalf, made several phone calls, and sent several e-mails) that the mystery of the missing prof was solved. Turns out, all the professors in the African studies departments just decided not to start class with everyone else and to wait a week. Go figure.

Welcome to the French university system, petite américaine!

So this meant an extra week of "vacation" for me, which gave me plenty of time to work on fellowship apps, thesis, and continue my "Couch to 5K" running program. And it gave me the perfect excuse to spend the weekend in Normandy - my first time back since I interned their through Princeton in France in 2009!

Although my internship in Normandy was only two years ago, it feels like much more time has passed since then. That summer feels like a part of my childhood, when I was a person very different from who I am today. But I felt my heart beat fast and I couldn't suppress a smile on my face as I watched Paris melt into emerald green hills dotted with spotted Norman cows...and by the time the train stopped in Lisieux, and I looked up at the Basilique de Ste. Thérèse, I was positively beaming.

This is where my spoken French became what it is today, this is where I lived on my own for the very first time, this is where I first got a chance to learn about myself away from everything and everyone that was familiar.

The weather gray and blustery, the food rich and hearty, the people warm and friendly...Paris, je t'aime, but Basse Normandie will always be my first French love!

Eureka! I have found it!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the French love their little individual plastic dessert cups. Be it chocolate mousse, crême caramel, fromage blanc, or yogurt, a French person will almost always take the time after a meal to indulge in some sort of creamy single-serving dessert (or at least a fruit purée like applesauce). As one might imagine, French supermarkets devote a remarkable amount of shelf space to these items, which usually come in two or four-packs, sometimes in glass or ceramic pots instead of plastic.

But despite the French love of creamy sweets, I found myself wanting when it came to Greek-style yogurt. While the battle for Greek-style yogurt market supremacy continues to rage between FAGE, Chobani, and Oikos in the US, the French seem disinterested. I asked the French about it: they said it wasn't popular here by any means. I couldn't even find a lonely attempt at Greek yogurt on a dairy aisle shelf.

Until now!

There, mixed in with all the boring regular yogurts, I saw it! Eureka! I found it! FAGE in France! At 1,50€ a pop, it wasn't cheap, but I was willing to consider it if I was desperate for that creamy, tangy, protein-rich filling that I sometimes just crave...

But then, more delight - Monoprix makes it own Greek-style yogurt! A four-pack for 1,61€ is a no-brainer!

The catch-phrase under the title instructed me to "make my spoon into an airplane and fly to Greece" - so that's just what I did!

I'll never go hungry for want of a creamy, sugar-free, protein-rich dessert again!

Lebanese Food: Au Taverne du Nil

Life for a vegetarian in France can sometimes be rough. Luckily, there's more to Parisian cuisine than meaty, fatty traditional French staples. For example, Paris boasts a large population of Lebanese residents, and hence, some deliciously authentic Lebanese cuisine!

We had asked our CUPA methodology (who is Lebanese) where he gets his fix, and recommended Au Taverne du Nil on the Île-St-Louis (home of Notre Dame cathedral, too!). Despite the somewhat confusing name (the Nile is not, nor has it ever been in Lebanon), the restaurant delivered on its promise to be the "Best Lebanese Dining in Paris" (or so proclaimed many positive reviews on various Yelp-like sites).

I had never had Lebanese food before (or at least not explicitly titled as such), but I found the menu to be very Mediterranean: many items would just have easily been found on a menu at a Greek or Israeli restaurant. But hey, no complaints here!

Instead of troubling ourselves over the many, many appealing options on the menu, we asked our server to bring us what he thought was best. The assortment of entrées (remember, this is France, where "entrée" refers to the first course - not the main course!) all happened to be vegetarian, so I really got to enjoy myself!

Pictured here (clockwise from front left) : tabouleh, moussaka, hummus, baba ganoush,and stuffed grape leaves.

Not pictured: warm fava beans [they arrived a bit later]

After scarfing down this spread, it took all my willpower to resist digging into my vegetarian plate, which arrived well in advance of the meaty platter the table's omnivores had ordered.

Green beans, another eggplant-y thing, more baba ganoush, more hummus, a spinakopita-type thing, another savory cheese pastry, and a falafel ball sitting on tahini in the middle!

As we finished eating, a belly-dancer jumped out and eventually coaxed two of our group to get up and dance with her. Not me - I was too full of delicious food to even consider ruining it by attempting to gyrate in any way!

Grom Gelato : Slow Food = Delicious Food

Long days of class at CUPA never fails to help us work up and appetite AND make us feel entitled to a sweet treat. We most recently indulged at Grom, the Italian slow-food gelateria, at its Paris location in the 6eme arrondissement.

It was one of the hottest days of this strange Indian summer we've been having here in Paris (over eighty degrees in October?!), so the line at Grom was out the door. By the time we got there, they had already run out of many flavors. No matter, there were still plenty of options and thus many painstaking decisions to be made: small or medium? cup or cone? if I'm dead-set on the hazelnut, what second flavor will pair best with it?

Sadly, I've been so behind in my blogging that I've actually forgotten what flavors we got! But they look lovely, no? They tasted even more delicious!

It should be noted that Grom has an admirable philosophy, with a commitment to using the finest ingredients from around the world (Syrian pistachios, lemons from the Amalfi coast, spring water from Lurisia, and vanilla beans from Madagascar of course!). They recently launched an eco-friendly project called "Grom Loves World," and all their utensils and cups are biodegradable! They are also sensitive to those with wheat allergies and celiac disease, clearly marking their products if they contain wheat.

And guess what, friends! They have store locations in New York City AND Malibu! So my nearest and dearest on both coasts can enjoy, too!

Post-Alasace Detox in the Park : Lundi au Jardin du Luxembourg

After returning from Alsace, S. and I both agreed : we felt gross. Those multi-course meals of white flour, heavy cream, butter had taken their toll, and it wasn't just the psychological impact of knowing how many calories we had consumed. We felt lethargic and blah...

So we swore upon our return to Paris to treat our bodies right. How did we do it? With some good old fashioned hippie food and an afternoon in the park.

First we stopped by the Naturalia closest to the CUPA office and picked up some picnic supplies. Then we walked to the Jardin du Luxembourg (also just down the street from CUPA) and found ourselves a lovely patch of grass, partial sun, and spread out our feast:

Behold (clockwise from left): quinoa salad, an assortment of sprouts and grated carrots, fresh tomatoes, a yellow bell pepper (in the plastic bag), and caviar d'aubergine (eggplant caviar - aka super-delicious savory spread).

We finished this feast just in time for the park police to chase us off the grass! Apparently, like so many things in France, it's interdit...

But, bodies nourished, we decided to absorb the last of summer's golden rays and nourish our minds en même temps. We found a pair of unoccupied chairs, and like good little Parisians, whipped out our paperbacks (La Création des Identités Nationales in my case; Dr. Faustus in S.'s case).

Nothing takes away guilt like a little "light" reading!

Un Week-end en Alsace: Haut-Kœnigsbourg and Obernai

The morning after our Academie des Bières excursion, we awoke painfully early, packed up our things in our surprisingly nice hotel rooms (have I mentioned CUPA spoils us? Because they do), scarfed down one of those typical hotel continental breakfasts, and loaded up into the bus. Where were we off to? Well, at that point we weren't entirely sure, but a quick consultation of our itineraries informed us that we were headed to the château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg and to the town of Obernai.

The Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg - "Bien plus qu'un monument," as its brochure promised - was built in the 12th century, restored under the direction of Emperor Wilhelm II at the beginning of the 20th (obviously before France got Alsace back), and was everything a medieval castle should be!

Here are a few glimpses why, taken as I wandered up and down curving stone steps, long hallways, and peered over turret ledges...

If I had been in the mood, I might have tried to capture these steps in a way that paid homage to Frederick Evans' well-known photograph "A Sea of Steps"...

Medieval Starbucks? Granddad, I thought of you...

Ceiling of the great hall...

Exactly the kind of chandelier you would expect Teutonic knights to eat under...

I named this area off the great hall "the breakfast nook"...

Why, of course I have a large stuffed dragon hanging over my breakfast nook - don't you?

The classic and obligatory wild boar's head:

Trophy wall! It was actually much more extensive than I could even capture with my camera...

View from the top:

Pious, and the perfect shape for shooting arrow without getting hit by incoming ones...

Then it was back to the buses for the last stop on our journey: the town of Obernai, where we would have our dégustation and initiation aux vins d'Alsace (wine tasting and introduction to the wines of Alsace).

Obernai was a quaint French-German mix, like a tiny Strasbourg, but otherwise unremarkable. My stomach growled as we passed countless bakeries tempting me with authentic bretzels, and I hoped I would be able to survive wine tasting on an empty stomach...

Our sommelier for the afternoon was quite the character: well-dressed, fastidious, well-versed in both history and geology, passionate about protecting the authenticity of wines (he's the kind of person you never mention a California champagne to!), and profoundly poetic in his descriptions of the white wines we had the pleasure of encountering that day.

Okay, time to reveal one of my goals for my time here in France: become a wine snob. Since I'm 21 now, I can return to the US and put this newfound knowledge to good use, and forever eschew classless American college-style drinking.

So though I felt rather ridiculous holding my glass by the foot (not the stem), tipping the glass to watch how the legs (larmes, or "tears" in French) dripped, sniffing, swirling, and sucking the wine into my mouth with a strange sound (this is meant to further aerate the wine and bring out more flavors)...I did all those things. And though it may have been totally psychological, I really do think I could taste and differentiate the lemon, grapefruit, passionfruit, pineapple, black tea, jasmine, and sea salt that the sommelier identified in each of the three wines we sampled.

We then proceeded into the restaurant, where a lovely menu awaited us:

Once again, the decision was pretty much made for me (other than dessert), but no complaints here! Still, I snapped a picture of S.'s foie gras with mango chutney for you (since my mesclun salad, though delicious, was less photogenic):

The vegetarian main course at this restaurant was much more normal: a delicate arrangement of vegetables, mushrooms, and potato purée:

(the green vegetable in the middle was like a cross between broccoli and cauliflower - yum!)

Oh, and did I mention that the sommelier personally came around to each table and poured each of us a different wine for each of the three courses? Here's one of them:

When it came to dessert, we were all expecting the kougelhofpf glacé to be a glazed kougelhopf, or a kougelhopf filled with ice cream. What were not expecting was ice cream shaped like a kougelhopf, and filled with rum!

I love ice cream, I love rum, and I love raspberry sauce, but this was not my cup of tea!

Luckily, I had switched orders with someone so that I could get the assiette tout chocolat, which I was expecting to be an assortment of truffles. Once again, we were surprized:

Chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, and chocolate ice cream - now that, I can live with!

We finished off the meal with coffee and a dish of smaller, humbler sweets - including marshmallows and fruit pâté (the gelly, sugar-encrusted squared in the middle).

Then it was back to the bus and back to Strasbourg to catch the train back to Paris. Au revoir, Alsace!