Le Food

And now for that post that some of you have been waiting for. A quick story about the food of Paris. Ah, but not just any food. I am of course talking about McDonald's, Starbucks, and Subways ... all three found in abundance in Paris.

I kid, I kid. I have not eaten at any of them. Promise. But now feast your eyes on the following. In a normal day's adventure you walk past many shop windows that look much like this one.

We went to a small cafe not too far from our apartment (l'Heure Gourmande). It's a wonderful and quiet place. The first thing I noticed, of course, was this table of pasteries.

For lunch we had salads. Shannon got something with tuna on it (strips of cooked tuna) and I got a Ceasar's with thinly sliced cuts of chicken. Both were pretty good. But then for dessert, Shannon got the chocolate cake in creme anglaise. The "cake" was a very rich dark chocolate that had almost the consistency of fudge, which of course went well with the creme anglaise.

I got the chocolate torte with whipped cream. Both desserts were dotted with pistachios. The torte was also a dark chocolate with a velvety texture and a crisp shortbread-like crust. We plan on coming back to this cafe for the apple cinnamon torte.

On another day, at the famous Cafe de Flore (the hangout for Sartre and Simone du Beauvoir), Shannon had a salad with ham and I had an omelette with ham and cheese. For dessert, she had Le Cafe de Flore (which was really spumoni with strawberry, pistachio, and chocolate ice cream).

I had the profiteroles. This was covered in a real chocolate ganache (served warm - no freakin' Hershey's syrup like most places in Denver), with freshly baked puff pastry that was quite crispy and stuffed with vanilla ice cream (yes, French vanilla). The sauce was so rich that I almost had to force myself to finish all three. One puff pastry and ice cream is more than enough.

This next one if pretty much unrelated, but we went to an open market that had this table of candy that looked cool.