Eating in France

Picture 1: The fruit section, or half of it, at Carrefoure.
Picture 2: The veggie section, or one half of it, at Carrefoure.
Picture 3: The seafood counter at Carrefoure, a WalMart like place. The counter extends to the end of the building. Prepared packaged seafood is to the right in a cold counter out of sight in the photo.

Take a dictionary to dinner with you. It will eliminate some of the mystery of what you are ordering for dinner. But if you can't find your food in the dictionary, order it anyway. Part of the fun of traveling is enjoying new experiences, right. The French have six different names for chicken, depending on age, size, sex, or lack of sex. That doesn't count the term "poultry." Duck is almost as complicated.

We left Chatel Censoir, and the boat, on the 16th and took the train to Auxerre. We rented a car, did laundry for the first time, and drove to the upscale village of Chablis, same name as the wine growing area. Laundries are hard to find in the country. We ate dinner there at a "nice" restaurant the inn keeper recommended. It was the only disappointing meal we had. We drove from there the next day to our hotel in Avignon.

We ate lunch at a truck stop in Lyon. There were only two "plats" on the menu. At a French food establishment the entree is the first course: the salad, pate, small serving of something. The "plat" is the main dish, the meat, chicken or fish, accompanied by a veggie or starch. The truck stop offered what I later translated to be ring-neck dove. We arrived late in the normal 2 hour lunch period they were out of that. The second plat was filet of loup with berre blanc sauce. Now I know the French word for loup. It's wolf. I thought we ordered that. I didn't really believe it would be wolf. It wasn't. Maybe they were out of the wolf as well but we got a nice little steak. It was a tough cut that had been prepared very well. The truck stop ranked just behind the country inns and the best food so far.

We have eaten at country inns, nice restaurants, snack bars, cafes, truck stops and taverns. By far the 3 best meals we had were at the 3 country inns in Burgundy, and I do mean country. These were all in the Burgundy region, specifically in the department of the Yonne, and in the general area of Chablis. We are in Provence now but haven't eaten out as much. The town of Gurgy in Burgundy is the snail raising capitol of the country. Personally, I think that good butter, garlic, & parsley sauce is best without those tasteless chewy nuggets in it but Mike and George liked them. Burgundians also like eggs. You are likely to find a very soft poached or fried egg on top of your salad, your galette, or anything else.

Eating hours at restaurants are pretty rigid. Most restaurants only seat between 7 and 8:30 or 9 and often require reservations. Lunch is between 12 and 2. Yesterday we went Roman ruin sight seeing and stopped in the town of Uzes for lunch. It was 3 pm. It was almost impossible to find a place serving food, although most places were open for drinks. We finally got lunch at a snack bar. They only thing they were serving was bruschetta. It isn't like our, or Italian bruschetta. The owner was describing it and I said it sounded like pizza. Non, non, pizza is with a dough. This is with a bread. Oops, my mistake. It was a 8x10" oval of a light, crisp, buttery bread with your choice of pizza stuff on top. Good.

We don't always eat out. We cooked many meals on the boat and our room in Provence has a small kitchen so we generally make dinner here. But that requires food shopping, which is a treat. There are many grocery stores, most smaller. But you can also get your food at an open air market held once or twice a week in many towns, a roadside fruit stands, at the butcher shop, the bakery, or the bread maker.

There are a few equivalents to WalMart. Carrefoure is near our hotel and we have been doing our grocery, and wine shopping there. But you can tell from the photos above, Walmart has a long way to go to challenge the food section of Carrefoure. The pictures are just of the fresh sections. The frozen and refrigerated "frommage" and "saucisson" sections are just as large. The wine section... well, it is France.

Baguette, cheese and pate have become staples of our lunch or breakfast. This blog won't let me type an accent mark over the e in pate. With the accent part it is the constructed meat dish cooked in a terrine. Without the accent it is pasta. We were reminded of this at lunch two days ago when we stopped at a winery with restaurant in the Rhone hill country north of Avignon.

But so far the greatest food discovery I have made is something called mirabelles. A grocery told me he didn't know the name of them in English. He didn't think they were plums but I believe they are in that family. They are only 1 1/2" in diameter with a free stone and they taste like honey. Wonderful.

Bon Appetit.