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!

What's in a name?

The original name of this blog "What's for Lunch" has been bothering me for a while. I really like the name but when I first chose it in March 2006 I hadn't done a proper search to see if anyone else was using it and also some of the people who were had not been blogging long and so they were perhaps not in the search engines. Now, I've been aware for a while that at least three other bloggers have "what's for lunch" in the titles of their blogs:

The Original What's for Lunch has been around since 2005

What's for Lunch Honey? came into existence in February of 2006

What's for Lunch is a French site that was also started in February 2006

and who knows how many more of them there are out there? It would be really helpful if there was a good search tool to avoid this happening.

Therefore, I am changing the name to Lunchtime in Paris. Unfortunately I can't change the name in the URL because I will lose all my links and photos (if someone knows how I can change without losing anything please let me know) but at least on this site the title will appear as "Lunchtime in Paris" - as far as I know no one else is using this and I really searched a lot.

Malaysian Lunch in La Chapelle

First we went to the movies at MK2 where we saw Into the Wild - I'm still deciding whether I liked it or not. It was kind of depressing - tragic waste of a life, etc....and the pop pyschologyphilosophy bits (the sister voice overs) were rather annoyingly trite but there were some good moments too.

And of course, you can't go the movies without -

Popcorn and candy (really expensive - the popcorn, kitkat balls, iced tea, and one soda came to over 11 euros...and the movie was expensive too 9,90 euros for one adult ticket, my daughter's tickets were 7,70 because they are students).

MK2 is located on the Bassin de la Villette in the 19th (link to wiki in French - some good photos) and the closest metro is Stalingrad. There is a movie theater on either side of the canal and a little boat goes between the two. It's fun.

After the movie we decided to have a late lunch at the Malaysian in La Chapelle (the South Indian neighborhood in the 10th arrondissement of Paris). I saw this place last weekend and we decided to give it a try.

We started off with samosas and rolls. (check out the link for a complete history of the samosa!)

Delicious and not expensive (1 euro a piece).

My daughter had the Shrimp Sambal with rice for 7 euros.

And I had the Mee Goreng Udang which was also 7 euros. Very tasty.

We also ordered an onion parotha because we'd never had one before and we were curious. It was very good.

And here is the desert the offered us at the end of the meal - a coconut jelly. It was refreshing after all the spicy food we'd eaten.

Malaysian is located 15, rue de Cail - 75010 Paris. The closest metro is La Chapelle. The service is friendly, the food is good, and it's inexpensive. Our meal came to 22.50 for everything above plus an iced tea and a regular tea.

I've had a tip that I should check out Krishna Bhavan (also rue de Cail) a South Indian vegetarian restaurant. I walked by today and it looks interesting so perhaps next weekend I'll give it a try. Until then...

Happy lunching!

Indian Lunch

I'm still trying to figure this out. I really want to keep this three column layout but I am so not sure about the butterfly and I'd really like a warmer red....(if you typepad people are listening could you please offer a larger choice of templates).

Anyway, today we went for Sunday lunch in La Chapelle (metro station La Chapelle). There is a large Tamil population leaving in this area and I've posted about it before but since I've decided to go to India this summer I'm going to go frequently to get accustomed.

We had lunch here at Café Bharath (67, rue Louis Blanc - no site). It's a really nice place, lots of Indians eating there, service is good and the music was nice too.

Mango lassis with fruit.

MIxed pakora. Unfortunately all the seats by the window were taken so these photos are not the best (the flash was too bright).

Shrimp Vindaloo with rice. I've been doing my research and apparently Vindaloo is a Goan dish but I wanted to try it and it was really spicy (the waiter did warn me beforehand which was kind of him).

My daughter had the Chilly Chicken which was served with a cheese nan. Most of the Indian people eating there seemed to have ordered the Biryani, which looked excellent, so perhaps next time we will try that.

Wandering around the neighborhood after lunch I noticed this cool flower shop where they sell flower garlands. And I also noticed a lot of new excellent looking restaurants that I cannot wait to try out. I'm going to try and get back there next weekend.

Happy lunching from La Chapelle!

Experiencing Technical Difficulties sorry

Hi everyone, I'm trying to change the look a little and it's not easy. Somehow this piment 3 columns is stuck and I and trying to figure out how to deal with it.

I want the middle column bigger because otherwise the photos get cut off......

Anyway, hopefully things will be back in order on Monday

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!

Lunch from Tang Gourmet - Paris Belleville

First of all, Happy New Year and  Bonne Année 2008, I hope you all had a wonderful holiday.
Today I went to Belleville to have some soup,

This is a Soupe Phnom Penh and costs 5.80 euros. It was pretty good but I think I still prefer pho (which they also serve) - soup is much more fun when served with a bunch of greeenery and sprouts to mix in.

I got the soup here at Da Lat. I've been eating here for years. And then, after my soup I was wandering around and discovered:

Tang Gourmet in Belleville! Hurray, I will no longer have to go all the way to the 13th arrondissement. Now Tang Gourmet is only two metro stops away. There is a lot of take out stuff and they also have tables inside where you can have a very inexpensive lunch. Sandwich (banh mi) fries and a beverage for 4.20 euros. That is cheap for Paris and there are a bunch of other different combos that won't cost you more than 6 euros.

Here are some of the interesting things I bought:

Mini nems - 10 for a euro. I've never seen mini nems before and these we really cute and delicious.

Check out the size - this 10 cent euro coin is 19.75 millemetres in diameter.

I also got this white radish paté. I'd never tried or even seen  this before. This slice cost 0.60 euros.

Here is the inside, and it was really pretty good. I just think perhaps it should have been accompanied by something. Next time I will ask for suggestions on what to serve it with.

Here is the lotus flower cake which cost 2.10 euros. I had to take the photo while it was still in the bag because it was a fragile thing and somehow started to come apart during the metro ride home.

This is a close up and I'm sure it is some kind of fried pastry because it reminded me of those Swedish rosettes my grammy made...mmmm. I'll try to get another one sometime and I'll be more careful bringing it home because it was a beautiful thing.

And so all was going well and I was getting along quite inexpensively until I saw the barbecue counter...and so I splurged for 500 grams of échine de porc (pork something - the cuts are different here).

Delicious, succulent, and much much better than salad. The 500 grams cost 6.50 euros and it was well worth it.  So I suggest that you check out Tang Gourmet the next time you are in Paris.  Nice friendly service, good food,  and the price is right.

Happy lunching 2008!