Us Eat Out In Paris? Nah!
Paris is a food paradise to us. Most everything we like to eat originated in either France or the Orient. You'd think that we'd be going nuts to eat at all of the fantastic places here. Actually, it's more complicated than that. We also cook. Meriko and Russell (our friends and apartment mates in Paris) do so as well. In fact, Meriko and I often cook together. Therefore, our first mission was to stock the apartment with everything we'd need if we were forced to not go out and eat...in case of burning cars, riots, restaurant strikes and so on.
Since Janet and Russell are both sick (Jan still, and Russell just getting...and I think I'm coming down with something), Meriko and I walked down to Rue des Martyrs. Rue des Martyrs is a "market" street with all manner of shops selling food: prepared, fresh, baked, and so on. No mega-mart here, just local proprietors serving the needs of the locals (and now, us).
There is some serious food on this street. As we walked slack-jawed, we were stuck with the notion that we could live off this street for a really, really long time. Bakeries (Patisseries), Fish Mongers (Poissieires), Butchers (Boucheries) and Charcuteries.
We had planned to make our respective spouses a Sunday dinner of a Blanquette du Veau (White Veal Stew) and intended to get ingredients for that but ended up getting about 5-6 meals worth of food. Well, 5-6 or six lunches and dinners...since one can get fresh bread every day (right down on the corner!), breakfast means just a quick jaunt to buy croissants, brioche, baguettes and other treats.
For the noon trip our shopping bags were loaded up with:
vegetables, fruit, fresh bread, mushrooms, bottled water, flour, coffee, rice, thyme, bay leaf, parsley...
and later that evening we went again (this time with Janet too, she's feeling better) and got:
wine, whisky, veal, fresh creme, fresh yogurt, pate de foie gras, spinach, lentil salad and cheese quiche...
We may have been the only tourists in Paris who, in the first 24 hours being here, spent 100 Euro on food only to prepare and/or serve it to ourselves. We snacked, munched, quaffed and moaned our way through a bunch of this food tonight...