are you sure you are in France?

Yep, he is... but he's american...

cheers, Thomas

guess how many of those things you can get in England?

Degustation de fruits de mer,
Stop it, I won't get to France for at least six months!
-and how can the lowliest chef in any corner of France get his steak just like that: a pointe, when the average British establishment is only in the business of drumming up work for the dentist! - are they on a fee!

Moose Nose.

'nuff said.

Edit: There's something just not right about my avatar and this post!

-and how can the lowliest chef in any corner of France get his steak just like that: a pointe, when the average British establishment is only in the business of drumming up work for the dentist! - are they on a fee!

I suspect it's not the chefs but the butchers...

Peter

Moose nose

...with a generous side of poutine!

-Zeke

No, not a troll at all and I am in France, Pau to be precise. Unfortunately most of my exposure to French food has been in hotel restaurants which may not be the best sampling of French food. I will say the magret de canard is damn good.

My point was more that now that I'm where I can't get the things that were common in other locations, that's the food I want. I'm sure when I'm off to my next job, I'll miss the coffee and the pastries.

As Speedy pointed out, I'm an american in country for about a year. Maybe I'm just going to the wrong places and eating the wrong things. Please enlighten me if you have a recommendation in Paris or the South of France.

Alvin

Best meal I had last time round, was the restaurant to the left of the facade on the other side of the street from the Gare Du Nord, I can't find the bill, as I speak - we had a fair wait for Eurostar and got stuck into the gourmet meal - it may just have been greed having three bowls of "soupe de poisson", but I had to finish the tureen: If you're a boarding school boy, you learn never to leave any food - the trio of sorbets was just pure indulgence: We slept the whole way to Waterloo!

N.B. Avoid the meals on the Bateau Mouche, I think gourmet means something different when you're on water!!

Good Grief, I just became an "Old Hand", that'll do me for the day, I'm off to the pub!

Please enlighten me if you have a recommendation in Paris or the South of France.

I don't know Paris well, but in a previous job a company I was doing some work for took me to a place called Les Sans-Culottes, 27 rue de Lappe, in the 11eme near the site of the Bastille. I had duck-breast and raspberry vinegar salad and it was superb.

You're dead right, though, that finding the good non-touristy places to eat in a big city you don't know is always difficult.

Looking at Pau on the map, wouldn't it have all sorts of exciting Basque and Catalan cookery going on?

Peter

Here in North Carolina, we also have our own peculiar brand of barbecue.

Dangit! The thing I miss the most from North Carolina (aside from Bojangles, trees, the beach, and my beloved Tarheels) is the BBQ. People out here in Colorado freak out when I tell them I put coleslaw on my BBQ sandwich. They do have a Red, Hot, And Blue in Colorado Springs, though.

Another regional food from the South is fried bologna sandwiches. Good stuff!!

Reminds me, I'm due for another Cheerwine trip.

Mmm.. Cheerwine. My NC roots are calling. My sister-in-law (also from NC) took it back to Chicago by the case whenever she visited home.

-jk

Oh yeah, my wife keeps getting odd looks when she asks for slaw on her hot dogs. Is that a NC thing, too?

I have family members that do that but we're all from the New York metro area. Aside from them, I have never seen people eat hot dogs that way, so I'm not sure where they got the idea from.

Blenheim Ginger Ale... Mmmmm. One of my favorite things about South Carolina. I also learned to love grits while I was there. My favorite way to eat grits was with butter, salt, crumbled bacon, and cheddar cheese. The odd thing about them is the number of ways people eat grits. I've heard of sugar and jelly; salt and butter; with red eye gravy; and with a tomato slice.

Cel-Ray Celery Soda. It's not bad.

The odd thing about them is the number of ways people eat grits. I've heard of sugar and jelly; salt and butter; with red eye gravy; and with a tomato slice.

Perhaps this should be a Big Hint that grits themselves are completely without taste and are merely a way to eat cheese and seasonings (or whatever) without feeling guilty about just eating cheese with seasonings on it...? Much like those expensive jars of Italian artichokes in basil and olive oil are just an excuse for eating lots of olive oil with basil in?

Peter

I can't believe no one's mentioned "Lutefisk" yet...

Ahh yes, my favorite egg/potato/bacon taco, the ideal start to the day.

Should I rather worthlesly point out that for those on the west side of the Atlantic, a "Mars bar" is a "Milky Way".
Don't even get started that a UK "Milky Way" is a "Muskateer" or a "Bounty" is an "Almond Joy" or "Mound".

I can't believe no one's mentioned "Lutefisk" yet...

Or, the horror, "surströmming"... (fermented herring)

/Michael

And we probably don't have any Icelanders to mention hakarl.

Thanks for the tip. I'm back in Paris this weekend. I'll look it up.

I haven't encountered any Catalan food but it does have Basque influences. I'm planning to move here in January so I'll have a chance to explore more. Right now its 12 hr days at the client site and then another couple hours for dinner at the hotel. Not much time to sample.

Thanks, I'll give it a go the next time that I'm heading through Gare du Nord. Maybe in a couple of weeks.

So grits are just a medium for conveyance of other evils?

My parents have a damn good butcher close to them i sadly have not found a good one up here yet.

For a computer based forum these food threads get damn big very quick

Rocky Mountain Oysters

Haven't tried them yet. I'll let someone else post what they are...

I think we've all seen Fear Factor enough times to know.

I think we've all seen Fear Factor enough times to know.

Ahh, didn't know that show featured them. It's been something I have known about for a long time.

I only just noticed this thread, yet it's probably one of my favorite topics. *sigh*

When I first showed up in Houston, I quickly fell in love with all the Cajun regional foods, most notably boiled crawfish, but also things like fried oyster po-boys, chicken and sausage gumbo, turducken, etc, etc. I also fell in love with all the weird Central and South American oddities that can be found here: Cuban and Argentinian empanadas (fried dumplings with all manner of stuffings, comparable to what might show up in crepes), El Salvadoran pupusas (thick corn tortillas, grilled, sliced in half, stuffed with various bits and pieces, then covered in cole slaw), and just about anything with fried sweet plantains.

I guess the only difference between "regional" and "ethnic" food is how widely it's spread from its home. You can now get sushi anywhere, but you'll have a harder time finding cooked, marinated sauerkraut dishes outside of the right parts of Germany or France.

Regional drinks are just as fascinating. Iced tea, in Texas, is always served without sugar. In pretty much everywhere else in the South, it's loaded with sugar unless you specifically ask for it to be otherwise. I've always been a fan of Dr. Brown's Cream Soda, but it's tough to find outside of New York unless you've got a Jewish deli nearby. Ditto for a chocolate egg cream (which is just seltzer and chocolate syrup, maybe with milk -- no idea how "egg" got into the name).

I love some of the Mexican drinks. Tamarindo soda has a nice flavor, although I've never gotten into horchata (a rice-based drink). Micheladas (beer + lime juice + hot sauce) are one of my favorites, although sometimes you stumble into some confused soul of a bartender who puts V-8 juice in their michelada. I'm sorry, but celery and beer are two flavors that just don't belong together. There's also a Mexican variation on hot chocolate called atole. It's made with corn flour masa, chocolate, brown sugar, and anise. It's thick and filling stuff but very tasty.

but you'll have a harder time finding cooked, marinated sauerkraut dishes outside of the right parts of Germany or France

If you're ever in central British Columbia be sure to check out Weezie's Borscht Hut, just a few km's north of Trail for some damn fine 'kraut.

-Zeke

Oh, go on, for all of us not in the know on the other side of the water, what Rocky Mountain Oysters? (I'll probalby regret asking this....)

BTW, Scrapple sounds very similar to a local dish here (the Netherlands, in the south) called "Balkenbrij". It's actually very good but I can see it may be an aquired taste...