Lunchtime in Paris

Modern lunch

Another gloomy gray January day in Paris,

I can't take pictures at my desk anymore because there is no natural light so I unpacked my lunch on the terrace of the Museum of Modern Art (not the Pompidou center - this museum is run by the city of Paris). It's right down the street from my office. In the background you can see the Seine, the Eifel Tower and a footbridge leading to the Musée de quai Branly.

I had a roastbeef and Roquefort sandwich. Of all the delicious French cheeses Roquefort is my favorite. Someday I will make a weekend getaway to visit the cellars where it is aged.

A close up of this delicious sandwich. I've found an excellent boulangerie and their bread is really good.

I also had a rasberry tart, which unfortunately got a little smushed while I was transporting it to the photo location.

And since the lunch cost 7.60 euros and my lunch tickets are for 8, I made up the difference with two yummy chouquettes (scroll down to the bottom of this excellent link for a recipe in English).

So that was my lunch but I also made this interesting discovery,

See that weird green mobile-home like thing on the top of the building? It's called the Hotel Everland and although it's really complicated and expensive you can make reservations to spend the night in it.

Happy lunching from Paris!

Lunch from the market - Wednesday is Market Day

On a positive note, one of the benefits of my new workplace is that I can leave for lunch early on Wednesdays and go to the outdoor market which is right across the street from the new offices.

This is our street food here in Paris. And here is a LINK in English for the addresses and days of all the markets in Paris. My market is the President Wilson one.

A nice bag full of clementines...the weather was weird today, I managed to take this picture in the sun but it just kept coming in and out so some of the market pictures are rather dark as I suppose befits Paris in January...

Here is where I buy my fruit every week, delicious mangos, papayas, and clementines.

And I can't resist another photos of the clementines, they are so good!

You can buy plants and flowers in the market.

As well as fish and seafood,

and even sanwiches, there is a little sandwich stand in our market and that is where I bought my lunch today.

Anyway, I'll try to get back to the market. It's interesting because it changes with the seasons. Today I was a little shy about taking photos. It's weird because when I'm visiting foreign countries or off into the countryside for a weekend I'm a tourist and I don't care but somehow just leaving the office to take photos of the market across the street intimidates me...I will work on this.

And,  I also want to work on getting my links up to date. Several people have linked to me and I've not linked back. Not because I don't want to it's just that I'm trying to get a useful link organization system set up and it's really difficult.

What I would like to do is set it up by country in one long list, for example:

Australia (this would be the title in bold or whatever but would not be a lien)

and here would logically follow a clickable list to the various sites I like in that country.. such a

1.  this one  (particularly nice), or

2. this one  (which I also really like)....

Hopefully, I will figure this out or you will be able to help me get this going.

Happy Lunching!

Lunch in my new office

The place that I work for moved to new offices last month and so now every morning when I come out of the metro I see this guy:

Yup, it's George Washington conquering Paris!

And here he is again from a different perspective which is interesting because right behind him you will see the Musée Guimet (the Guimet Museum dedicated to Asian art) - link to the English version of the site.

And here's todays lunch: ham and cheese on a baguette, an apple tart, a diet coke, and a little macaroon that cost .60 euro cents (my restaurant tickets are for 8 euros, the lunch cost 7.50, and they don't give change so I had to get the macaron to make up the difference).

Parma ham and comté cheese on a baguette with some lettuce. (the comté link is in English if you are interested in learning more about this delicious cheese.)

An apple tart. I had to take the pictures outside because my new office doesn't get much natural light (and I'm not real happy about that either - if anybody's looking for a PA/assistant/secretary/translator in Paris please drop me a line, but only if I can have a nice bright office with a window and a mutuelle) -  when the nice weather comes I will eat outside by the Seine which is right close by too.

A chocolat macaron...

And here is the inside. So, that was an ok lunch (with some culture thrown in - who knew there was a giant statue of Geo Washington right in the heart of Paris). I'm still getting used to this new area, on the down side there are no Asian take out places (hence my foray into Belleville this past weekend - I was really missing my Chinese takeout fix) but on the positive side we have an outdoor market on Wednesdays so maybe I will take some pictures of that soon.

Happy lunching!

Lunches with dessert

I was really tired last night and so I didn't post. I had my Arabic class and then it is the "Semaine Culturelle " (culture week) here in Paris so at the Syrian Cultural Center where I'm taking my classes they showed a marvelous film by Mustapha Al-Akkad  called Lion of the Desert. This is a sad and tragic story which lasts for three hours so I got home really late (but still an excellent film and I'm glad to finally learn the story of Omar Al-Mokhtar).

So today you get two lunches for the price of one.

The first lunch is chicken and crudité (raw veg) on baguette with a delicious chocolate macaroon cake and a diet coke.

The second lunch is feuillité jambon champignons (feuillité is a kind of pastry dough, feuille is leaf and so since it has so many layers it's like saying "leafy"), an extra special chocolate mousse cake, and a diet coke.

A delicious chicken sandwich French style.

And the feuillité...this is typical of boulangerie food and only cost 2,20 EUR. Flaky pastry dough filled with succulent mushrooms and ham.

I'm experimenting with taking pictures in the sun...anyway, here is the first delicious cake called a craquant (meaning crispy or crunchy or crackling...). It is composed of two macaroons, some rasberries, and some creme patissiere (I really don't like this...it's like butter cream frosting).

And here is the most extraordinary and exquisite "trois mousses" (three chocolate mousse) cake, wow, what can I say, it glows and you should try and get your hands on one of these.

Inside the chocolate rasberry macaroons.

Inside the three chocolate mousse thing, oh please hit me again...

Just another lovely look for my chocolate loving friends out there.

And so, tomorrow's Friday and TGIF. I had originally planned to do something Mexican this weekend but my research has shown that there is a really complicated pepper situation there and so I'm going to need more time to sort that out from Paris.

But do not despair because there is an Eastern European shop in my neighbourhood and I can buy some real true Hungarian Paprika and that means that this weekend I'm going to do my utmost to make a very authentic Chicken Paprikash...

Stay tuned and happy lunching!

Ham and cheese and and Oranais for lunch

After my exciting cooking adventure this weekend, it's back to very normal (but still nice) lunches in the office.

Today I had a jambon (ham), gruyere (swiss cheese), and crudité (tomato and lettuce...although crudité actually means raw vegetables - cru is the French word for raw) sandwich on baguette with an Oranais and a diet coke.

If you are in a boulangerie in France and you want a sandwich like this you order "crudité, jambon, gruyere". The bread was really nice today and that's also one of the strange and marvellous things about buying food from places that make it fresh every day: it's never exactly the same. Some days the baguettes are crispier than others.

The pastry is called an Oranais. Oran is a city in Algeria and perhaps it got its name because of the apricots that grow there.

An Oranais is made from the same sort of dough they use for croissants and pain au chocolat so you could have one of these for breakfast too...or for a mid afternoon snack, or really any time you are in France.

Happy lunching!

Where do we lunch from here?

Hi everyone,

Today I had a very average lunch:



It started off being a fabulous idea: a tomato and mozzarella sandwich on good bread with a quetsch tart for desert...and of course a diet coke!



Unfortunately and, as you can see, the woman at the boulangerie did not heat the sandwich properly and so...the cheese was just not melty. I don't know about you but I would either have it hot or cold...I really hate it when some parts are melted and warm and the rest is sort of cool, yuck with a capital Y...guess next time I will have to be more insistent...



Quetsch are like really small yellow plums and are really delicious, the tart was lovely.



Here's another one, just yummy

And so that's it for today and here are some thoughts for the weekend...I just installed the new and v v cool noecounter thing on my sidebar. I really like this because it has flags! they are so cute. And so now I've decided that I must make a recipe for every flag that appears...starting with Malaysia.

I don't know why I picked Malaysia to start with, other than I have met some really friendly and pleasant people from this country but in any case, I am going to be making Laksa and since I've never actually eaten this before but just found it on an internet site I am having an Asian green herb crisis...Laksa leaf...what is it really? In any case I hope I pick the right one...

stay tuned for the Laksa lunch and I am counting on your input.

A sandwich and two cakes for lunch

Well no, I didn't actually have two cakes for lunch today. What has happened is that I've fallen in love with the wonderful Bayonne/Reblochon sandwich from the boulangerie and so I had it two days in a row...FYI Bayonne is a kind of ham and Reblochon is a wonderful French cheese.

The first lunch started like this: a bayonne and reblochon sandwich with a chocolate religieuse (a sort of cake, keep reading...)

Melty cheese and salty ham on fresh bread...great sandwich

Actually, a really great sandwich so it gets another photo

This is the religieuse (religieuse means "nun" in French and it is also the name of  a very typical cake that you can find in all the boulangeries), very delicious too. And this whole lunch cost 8 EUR.

The bottom layer of the religieuse

And the top

So, the next day I went back to the very same boulangerie and got the very same sandwich because it is so extra delicious but, I got a different kind of cake. This one is a millefeullle (thousand leaves...because of the flaky crust).

A fabulous millfeuille for 2.20 EUR, the religieuse is about the same price.

Once again, I do suggest that you look into the boulangeries in Paris for your lunching needs.

Shrimp and avocado sandwich for lunch

Today's lunch was particularly delicious. A shrimp and avocado sandwich on pain suedois (Swedish bread) and an orange tart.

This lunch cost 7.50 EUR at the boulangerie near  my office. The tart was 2.20, the diet coke was 1.30 and the sandwich was 4.00.

Close up on the sandwich, you can see the texture of the "pain suedois". I'm not sure this is really Swedish but that's what they call it here. It looks like a pita but it's much softer.

And here is the magnifique and very delicious orange tart.

I've been thinking that I don't eat enough desserts so I'm going to try and make up for that and post some more...how about a chocolate eclair tomorrow?

Lunchtime disappointment

I'm disappointed today (and yesterday as well, retroactively).

If you check out the post right before this one you will see a very delicious roast beef sandwich from the new takeout place that just opened across the street from where I work.

It was so good that I went back for more:

On Wednesday I ordered the smoked salmon (saumon fumée) and tarama sandwich with a diet coke and fromage blanc for dessert. Bad idea.

How could things go from excellent to beurk in such a short period of time? Slimy lettuce, mushy tomatoes and soggy bread...how long has this sandwich been sitting around? My guess, since they only opened yesterday, is since yesterday (gross).

And then I went back again today (not a smart move and I assume responsability for being that dumb but it would just have been  so convenient if the food was good...).

Ham and cheese panini, fruit salad, and a diet coke.

Some strange things were going on inside this panini...unmelted cold cheese and a very few, very small bits of ham. Why was I not warned about the current ham shortage in Paris?

But seriously there is no excuse for this, none at all. Perhaps I take it too personally but being served bad food is one of the most unpleasant experiences a person can have.

and finally the fruit salad (1/3 fresh and 2/3 fruit cocktail straight out of the can).

I will not be going back to this place in the near future. Perhaps I will never go back.

Still I just don't understand. I've never worked in the food business but it only seems logical that if you open a place you prepare for those first few difficult weeks when you don't exactly know how much business you'll be getting. You serve good fresh food (and give what's left over to the shelters at the end of the day), you build up some clientele, and you build up some knowledge on how much to order and prepare. Although I could be wrong.

Today I'm just hoping that your lunch was better than mine...

Roastbeef sandwich and chocolate mousse for lunch

Greetings fellow lunchers,

Today I tried the new sandwich place that just opened up across the street from us. All I have to do is step out the door and in 2 minutes I'm back at my desk with my lunch. This is very convenient for cold rainy days when I don't want to walk too far.

This lunch cost 6,50 for a sandwich, dessert, and beverage. I chose the roast beef sandwich on baguette, chocolate mousse and a diet coke. In the foreground you will see a little booklet of "Ticket Restaurant" (restaurant tickets). I get these every month from my employer.

Inside of the booklet there are 21 tickets and each one is worth 8 euros. There is some kind of law in France that employers have to finance part of their employee's lunches. Big companies will invest in cafeterias and offset part of the food costs while smaller companies use the very practical restaurant tickets.

For each 8 euro ticket I pay 3,20 and my employer pays 4,80. They are accepted in all the takeout places so if you're ever in Paris and you see people paying with these tickets you'll know what they are.

This was a magnificent sandwich so this place is off to a good start in my book. I really like the idea of using chunks of roast beef rather than slices...sometimes when it is sliced you can't really bite all the way through and you wind up pulling half of the roast beef out with the first bite...I hate that.

These were nice rare manageable chunks of roast beef with lettuce, tomato, herbs and some very delicious pickles.

And a chocolate mousse (mousse au chocolat). Not quite as wonderful as the sandwich but ok nonetheless.

I think I will go back to this place tomorrow to see what else they have to offer (perhaps I will have the smoked salmon sandwich; it looked delicious) and I'll be crossing my fingers and hoping that they withstand the test of time.

Happy lunching!