Food and a Story: The End is Near

Since I am leaving Paris soon, I want to show you the most tangible thing about Paris that I am going to miss when I reach the States again:  the food.  I may or may not be a little obsessed with food.  Most of the following pictures are of desserts.  Since I’m a vegetarian, I feel like I was able to rationalize eating a lot of dessert, since Parisians are not very good at understanding what kinds of foods vegetarians eat.  (My host family is an exception.  I have always had wonderful vegetarian dinners and I am grateful for that.)

Here is a fraction of all of the pastries I tried.  I usually had one for lunch each day.

On the pastry front, I have a little story.  While waiting in line for the catacombs, there were two Americans in line behind us looking for a place to get breakfast.  My friend and I suggested that one of them walk about five minutes to Rue Daguerre, which has a ton of patisseries where they could find coffee and pastries.  So one of them goes and gets some food.  Upon returning, he proceeds to tell his friend that he brought back a pastry with chocolate and pepper because “poivre means pepper, right?”  We of course agreed that poivre meant pepper, but that we had never heard of a chocolate and pepper pastry.  It was only after his friend mentioned that the pastry tasted like pears that we realized the guy had gotten confused between poivre and poire.  Moral of the story, know what you are buying before you buy it.  Or maybe it’s trust your local patisserie not to give you a chocolate and pepper pastry.

Everywhere you go in Paris, you are sure to see a restaurant serving Berthillon ice cream.  It is known as the best ice cream in Paris for a reason.

Crepes are like a staple food for an American in Paris, despite the fact that French people don’t really think of it as French food.  All the same, we found two different Creperies, Little Breizh and Breizh Café (despite the name, they are unrelated to each other) and if you ever get the chance to come to Paris, they are definitely worth going to.

Although I didn’t crave American food all that much, I did have a slight craving for spicy food, which led to eating at a Mexican restaurant.  It was a local Mexican restaurant, though, so I don’t feel that bad.  It was a little adventurous, too; this burrito had cactus in it.

And of course no food post is complete without some chocolate.  Here are some of the chocolate samples we got from the Choco Story chocolate museum in Paris.

All in all, I’ve loved my trip to Paris so much and I feel like I really did meet my goal as far as speaking in French is concerned.  I am a little sad to go, but I know that I’ll have more opportunities to visit again.