Fancy French Food

I was fortunate to have an exciting travel filled summer. Here are some really rich food we had in France! It was a marvelous trip!

Before we got on the train we ordered chocolate muffins, a caramel donut, and fruit juice. The chocolate muffins were more like mini chocolate cakes with a moist center and super sweet chocolate chunks on top. The donut was very sugary with a caramel filling and caramel swizzle on top of the white icing.

At the Café L’etincelle we ordered escargot (snails), tomato mozzarella, and trout with ratatouille. I cannot explain the taste of escargot…it’s a squishy center with flavors of butter and garlic then it ends a little salty. Once you get through the struggle of pulling it out of the shell it’s worth it. The tomato mozzarella had the most refreshing tomatoes I have ever eaten in my life with cheese that melted in your mouth. Adding a little bit of balsamic vinegar boosted the flavor. I think the trout was the best. The fish was cooked well and the ratatouille added a nice tomato flavor to the dish.

I started one day with jam and bread. The place where we were staying at had these cute tiny jars of jam. My favorite was the lingon berries jam on a Dutch crisp cake, which is similar to crackers.

We had ice cream from la Mon Berthillon. I ordered caramel and my sister got Dark chocolate. Mine tasted exactly like the gooey caramel inside chocolate but it was cold. My sister’s must have been really good cause she didn’t want to share.

We picked up a rotisserie chicken and a baguette to enjoy for dinner. It wasn’t as greasy as the ones here in the States. The pasta and salad…well it wasn’t anything super special. I tried a drink called Orangina. It tastes like the soda form of orange gummy candy. The Volvic Juicy was flavored water.

At the Ladureé macarón place we ordered a Saint-Honoré Fraise Pistache, a strawberry pistachio cake, a Religieuse Rose Framboise, a rose and raspberry pastry, and a hot chocolate. Everything was extremely good. I’m not really a fan of pistachio but the pistachio cream went very well with the strawberries. The rose and raspberry pastry had fresh raspberry with rose flavor added to it. Rose was an interesting taste. It tasted like the smell of a flower shop. (If that makes any sense…) The hot chocolate was like a bittersweet chocolate bar. I’m pretty sure its how Willy Wonka’s chocolate waterfall tastes like.

We had a sandwich break with ham and Munster cheese in sliced baguette. These were cheap and easy to make. It was all the French specialties into one.

After the Palace we bought pizza and a tomato mozzarella tart at this small bakery that smelled really good. The tart was fresh and even though the pizza doesn’t look good in the picture it had a lot of layers of tomato.

For dessert we each had a crêpe (crep like step with a c) from A La Cote Bretonne recommended from our travel book for the best. And it was. A crêpe is like a very flat pancake with toppings or fillings or both. The chocolate I each was very rich and delicious. The apples in mine made it extra sweet.

The octopus salad had a typical seafood taste and the texture was slightly rubbery which was interesting. The raspberry juice also had lemon in it that overpowered the raspberry flavor, which made it hard to finish.

For dinner we went to La Coincidence suggested to us by Yelp. We ordered Magret de canard, sauce au miel et a l’orange, purèe de pommes de terre or duck, chicken, and Filet de bœuf sauce aux cèpes et foie gras, gratin dauphinois or beef. The duck had a sweet orange sauce that was incredible. It was my favorite dish I’ve had on this trip. The beef had an interesting sauce that was like a sweeter ranch and the beef itself was very tender. The chicken had a teriyaki flavor but it wasn’t as unique as the other dishes.

For dessert we ordered crème brûlée and cookie crumble. The crème brûlée had a very good caramelized surface over vanilla pudding and the cookie crumble had pieces of cookie over peaches and topped with vanilla ice cream. The vanilla ice cream wasn’t plain it was more like extreme vanilla.

I’ll post tips since this trip taught me a lot!