P I C N I C

So I’m in Paris for a week with my sister and cousin. I flew out from Brooklyn on an overnight Air France flight. The meal was pretty good for a plane, they had Tillamook cheddar and I got a 1/4 bottle of Vielle Ferme, an excellent wine made by the same guy who does Vieux Telegraphe. I had the chicken with tarragon cream sauce.

I went to Le Grande Epicene at Bon Marche, which is down the street from where we’re staying, to stock up on some essentials. I love how they butcher their fowl. For dinner on Saturday some of my cousins friends are coming over and I want to roast a Bresse chicken.

My sister texted me mid morning, ‘we have something special for you!!’ Turns out it was a foie gras sandwich.

For dinner we all went out to Allard, a classic french bistro. On the wall were various certificates the chef had been presented with, including a ‘knighthood’ from the Chevaliers du Taste Vin and one from ‘The society of philosophical gourmands’. To begin with we got boletes sauteed in butter, green beans with a cream and horseradish sauce topped with a slice of coppa or prosciutto, and oysters. The women split a dish of delicious, medium rare scallops with a very crisp beurre blanc sauce, (I might almost say soup). I got the cote de beuf with a morel sauce, steamed spinach, beets sauteed in butter, and a very, very rich potato tart with cream and gruyere. The potato tart was exactly as my mother makes it, except that even though she adds nothing but cream, this one was even richer! Perhaps this one had triple cream?

Dessert was ‘orange soup with oranges and preserved oranges’, as the menu said. The slices of orange are preserved like a marmalade, and they sit in a pool of fresh orange juice.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Paris. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.