Strange and novel flavors

I take pictures of pretty much everything I eat except for the spontaneous sandwiches and ice cream, but now that I’m so far behind in posting, it seems overly ambitious to try to tell the stories associated with all those pictures. So I’ve pared the stack down to just a few.

Last Wednesday, while I was in the Marais doing (or at least halfheartedly trying to do) research for a paper, I found myself craving something more substantial than a sandwich and stopped at a café for lunch. The thing that attracted me to that café in particular was that the choices its 13-euro lunch menu offered included a couple of things I’d been wanting to try for years.

Snails and frog legs!

In which I follow people’s recommendations

One day last week I realized that I’d been in Paris for three weeks, and my total croissant intake amounted to a single disappointing one from a bakery near Reid Hall. This seemed like a problem.

“But what can I do to ensure that my next croissant is less disappointing?” I asked myself. In theory I approve of gastronomical risk-taking, but, as usual, my time and money were limited. And so I did what I always do when it seems imperative that I eat something delicious as soon as possible: I consulted The Girl Who Ate Everything.

The ensemble of her posts on Paris suggested that someplace called Poujauran in the seventh arrondissement was likely to answer my needs, so I headed out and across the Seine to the address she had listed. There were several bakeries and little restaurants in that block, but I passed them all by, since none of them was the destination I had in mind. And then I reached the end of the street. Poujauran was nowhere in sight.

I had known the blog posts were several years old, but it had never occurred to me that such a catastrophic change could have occurred in the meantime. Robyn’s favorite Paris bakery, closed? The enormity of the crime was beyond belief. Dubiously, I went into the bakery that seemed to be occupying Poujauran’s old spot. The array behind their class counter was attractive enough, and I decided it was safe to taste. Since I couldn’t find the croissants on first glance, I ordered a pain au chocolat.

Kind of reminds me of a turtle withdrawn into its shell.

A whole lot of macarons

Well, I promised I’d post about macarons at some point. I’d been putting it off because there were just SO DAMN MANY, but since I haven’t eaten any in a while, I think it’s high time I shared my macaron stories, which accumulated over the course of about two weeks.

I’m not sure about the order in which these experiences happened, so I’m going to group the pictures by bakery instead.

Art Macaron, right by Reid Hall:

Salted caramel.

Peppermint.

Lemon.

Almond.

All over

The last five or six days contained an unusual number of noteworthy meals. Actually, I guess one of them wasn’t a full meal, but it was filling enough to count as one.

I ate with Jake, one of my principal fooding partners from home, on a couple of different occasions last week. I consider it a great stroke of luck that he happened to be studying at Reid Hall while I was, because while I’m thankful for the chance to eat in France even by myself, having company triples the fun of eating: you get to appreciate the food, the company and the other person’s (or people’s) appreciation of the food, all at once. Thursday night I had dinner with him, a friend of his named Emma, and another girl from their theater class named Katherine. (Katherine, if you ever read this and find I’ve misspelled your name, I apologize.)

L’Agrume, plus some extraneous pictures

So here I am in Paris! I’ve been here for around a week and a half, actually, and I’ve eaten many delicious things in that time. But I wasn’t going to sit at my host family’s dinner table snapping pictures, now, was I?

The other day I stumbled on a New York Times article that listed supposedly inexpensive but still relatively fancy restaurants. Some of the lunch deals they mention cost more than I have ever paid for a single meal, but a couple of them looked genuinely manageable. Yesterday I decided to try L’Agrume’s 16€ menu, which comprises three appetizers and a main dish. The main dish you pick, the appetizers you don’t.

Cake overload

I don’t know how it happened, but ever since school ended three weeks ago, all the pictures I’ve taken have been of some kind of cake. I don’t even like cake a lot of the time, since it often turns out to be dry or flavorless or too sweet. But I’ll always take a picture of a noteworthy dessert.

Or a noteworthy breakfast, as the case may be. A couple of weeks ago I went back to New York to have brunch at Community Food and Juice with Claudia. At her recommendation, I ordered the blueberry pancakes with maple butter, and I didn’t regret it. (Okay, I realize pancakes are not actually cake, but I figured their name was enough justification for slipping them into this post.)

The weird shadows are from tree branches.

Motorino

Last weekend, after spending a few hours studying for an exam (and by studying I mean doing the reading I didn’t get around to two weeks ago), I decided it was time to make a trip I’d been thinking of making for months. When Motorino opened in Manhattan, I promised myself I’d go as soon as I had some spare time. Its deliciousness was legendary! I wouldn’t have to go all the way to Brooklyn for it! As it turned out, though, I usually chose to spend my spare time sitting around doing nothing.

All of a sudden it was the last weekend of the year, and I’d made hardly any of the journeys I’d meant to make. Since my next exam wasn’t for a couple of days, I gave myself permission to go eat something delicious, and the first thing that entered my mind was Motorino’s pizza.

Even though it was small and crowded, the service was incredibly fast. I think it took a total of twenty minutes for them to seat me, take my order and bring me my pizza.

brussels sprouts, pancetta, mozzarella, pecorino

A guy I knew by sight from the Spectator and from a poli sci class last semester is having surgery tomorrow as part of treatment for cancer. I’ve been finding myself thinking about him a lot lately. If you’ve got a few minutes to spare, check out his blog—it’s a really interesting read.

Five Points

We don’t eat out much in my family, maybe two or three times a year, and usually at some run-of-the-mill Indian place a few exits down the highway. Now that I live in a city where people sell food worth dreaming about, my birthday seems to have attained the status of a restaurant-worthy occasion. I found this place in New York Magazine’s online restaurant listings.

My mom had—wait, let me consult the menu I brought home—“shaved purple asparagus salad with arugula, red onion, black olives and lemon vinaigrette.”

Artopolis

While sifting through the files I’ve been too lazy to move from my desktop to their rightful folders, I found this picture and realized the outing in question was probably worth a mention, even though it happened like a month and a half ago.

Is it not awesome that the tiramisù is labeled in chocolate?

This was from an impromptu birthday celebration for Claudia’s boyfriend, Gonzalo. The strawberry mousse was his, the tiramisù mine, the raspberry thing Claudia’s. I think it was called a regina. They all seemed to consist of concentric cylinders of pastry and fluffy, creamy stuff. Mine didn’t taste as strongly of coffee or liqueur as I would have liked, but it was still delicious. Drinking coffee there is always fun in that you get a miniature cookie and a free refill.

They lost a couple of points in the presentation category for serving the desserts with the protective plastic strip still on, but overall, I was better than satisfied.

Artopolis Café
1090 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10025-1737
(212) 666-3744