[UPDATE: The restaurant is no long an Alain Ducasse restaurant.] Uncharacteristically, I’ll spare you the specifics, but I need to catch up on about 147 hours of sleep. And while we’re at it, I could use a hug. And since the former isn’t necessarily easy to come by here, as is the latter, I was embrassé by dinner at Alain Ducasse restaurant. While it’s been…
When I moved to Paris, one of the kind people who took me under their wing (as in, the kind that takes you out to Ikea), said to me – “You’re not a real Parisian until you’ve had a merguez sandwich stuffed with frites inside, at 3am.”
It’s been a while since I’ve visited the jelly aisle of an American supermarket. But one thing I have etched in my memory from my childhood are the glasses with cartoon characters on them. Whatever marketing genius came up with the idea deserves more recognition than I can give here, but as a kid, we had to finish all our milk and “see Fred Flintstone”…
I was in the Indian quartier in Paris one day, exploring one of the many produce stores, and was thrilled to find what looked like tomatillos. My French friends could not believe how giddy I was to find them. But that giddiness ended when I got into the kitchen, split one open, and discovered by asking around online that they are actually some type of…
Patricia Wells has been writing about Paris for decades, and put a lot of bakeries, restaurants, and really…anything food-related—on the map for visitors. And when Patricia recently invited me and some friends over for lunch in her well-equipped Paris cooking school kitchen to celebrate her new book on salads, I jumped at the chance (okay, I didn’t jump because people would have looked at me…
I know the Swiss are famous for their discretion and secrecy, but this is getting ridiculous. When I first saw Malakoff on a menu, I thought it was for Charlotte Malakoff, a classic (and hardly made-anymore) French dessert which is a round of chocolate mousse held together by ladyfingers. When I saw it on several menus in Switzerland, I thought it odd that it was…
I hope for your sake that you’re nothing like me. If you are, you’ve probably saved every single glass jar that’s ever crossed your path. (Don’t even get me started on reusable plastic containers, which merit a whole separate post.) Once something lands in my apartment, it’s there for the duration. Someone once attempted to give me a smackdown for advising my favorite people in…
One assumption that I’m going to make about the French is that they’re not afraid to make things au pif, or “by the nose”. I don’t know if a precise recipe for sauce vinaigrette actually exists. But if there is, I bet few people follow it very closely. And Romain is no different from his compatriots when it comes to recipes, and rules. They are…
Way back when, after I arrived in France, I wanted to also be in the south of France, in Provence, and I did go off on the lookout in Paris for a large, sturdy mortar and pestle to make all those Provençal favorites, like garlic-laden aïoli and soupe au pistou. I didn’t know what a mortar and pestle were called in French at the time, so I went…
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