I hadn’t made dinner plans for our first night in Paris because I thought that we may pass out before then, but it turned out that we had plenty of energy to walk to a very nice dinner at L’Affriole, which is in the 7th, near Les Invalides. With a charming, rather sunny interior thanks to an emphasis on yellow, L’Affriole was the perfect spot to settle into a casual meal of creative French cuisine with an emphasis on fresh produce; it’s also reasonably priced… for Paris, at least. Not every dish fit my taste, but something about the spirit of the restaurant tells me that I’d love to go back and explore the menu more.

I especially liked cleverly simple and functional plating of the dishes. For me, it’s important that a beautifully presented dish remain beautiful for its duration; if an arrangement of food collapses into a mess after the first bite, then why fuss over it in the first place? At L’Affriole, the food kept its integrity.

Olive butter, salt, radishes.

Cream of Fennel Soup with Mussels and Parmesan. The fennel flavor was a little too mild — overall, it was a rather muted dish, though probably accessible for fennel and mussel novices. I don’t like foams, so I didn’t appreciate the one on top of my soup. The slightly pepper-y parmesan crackers on the side were fantastic, especially dipped in the creamy soup.

Fried Blood Sausage with Caramelized Onions. These were excellent, even for the people at the table who hadn’t known what they were in for.

Btw, I also liked the mosaic table a lot.

Peppers Stuffed with Brandade and “Riboulette” (?). It’s a shame that this is out of focus, because I think it’s composed rather creatively while still having a clean eatability effect. The sauce is a little messy. A great combination of flavors, though, and even textures, within a certain range.

Veal Sweetbreads with Fava Beans and Bacon. I also like the sort of herb gauffre. The sweetbreads nicely caramelized and tender, and the cream sauce to dip them in was a nice touch, even if it was topped with foam. The fava beans and bacon were a little too sweet. And btw, “ris” means sweetbreads, and “riz” means rice. Lesson learned.

Roasted Monkfish with Tomatoes.

I translated this as a Tuna Risotto with Olives, which is pretty misleading, since the tuna is on top of the risotto. The tuna was amazing — seasoned like a steak, but still with the texture of a rather juicy tuna. The tomato salsa was another touch of brilliance.

This was sort of like a pie made with young rabbit (lapereau), and the spinach was just barely wilted with a warm vinaigrette. Fantastic.

Raspberry Crumble.

Beignets with Apples. Perfect.

Plate of Chocolate Hazelnut Cream, Chocolate Sorbet, and Chocolate Souffle. Perfect.

Vanilla, Chocolate, and Coffee Custards. We didn’t actually order this, and sightings were made of the server being corrected by another server after he put this on our table. It stayed nonetheless, and was very good.

We got a bowl of apricots after the meal, which would have been great if they hadn’t been mealy and bland.

And we had a very nice wine. We also happened to visit Chateauneuf-du-Pape while we were in Provence, but I’ll get to that later.

L’Affriole
17 rue Malar, 7th
Paris

01.44.18.31.33

I wonder if it’s possible to come back from France and not be incredibly inspired to immediately race to the market so that you can jump into the kitchen and start creating food that is even half as incredible as what you saw and ate. Further fueled by the four cookbooks that I brought with me, I have such plans and cravings for the rest of this summer…. sweet tarts, savory tarts, puff pastry, bread, tomatoes, cheese, peaches, plums, sorbets, ice creams, sandwiches, ice cream sandwiches…

We started out with a week in Paris. In addition to patisseries and boulangeries, I also wanted to visit restaurants that had interesting cuisine without ridiculous prices or too much formality. This led to a glimpse into the celebrity chef phenomenon in France, since many of the restaurants that we went to were the more casual restaurants of chef-owners like Alain Ducasse, Joel Robuchon, Alain Senderens, Guy Savoy, and Christian Constant. On the one hand, I didn’t want to be beholden to famous names, but on the other hand, why pass up a meal at a Joel Robuchon restaurant because of some vague reverse snobbery/mass commercialization ideas? And with two eligible mealtimes during the day, we also had time for restaurants without conspicuous headliners.

There were usually 7 of us at dinner, so I liked seeing all the variety of foods that restaurants, especially since I had something of an ordering jinx. So many times, my meal would be average while someone else’s would be amazing, as if we were at totally different restaurants. If only I could go back in time, I’d order so brilliantly…

We then went to Provence for a week, to a town between Aix-en-Provence and Marseilles, so we were able to spend time on the coast and inland, in villages, cities, farm stands, wineries… We also had the good fortune to be guided by wonderful friends of the family who helped show us just how special the region is.

And somehow, however much my weight may have fluctuated during the trip, I came home with only 1 pound gained (this is especially great b/c there’s a pork, chorizo, bacon, manchego, rouille, and romesco burger that I can’t wait to make very soon), but um… don’t mention the number “10″ to Chad.

With 6 other people taking pictures that can be easily shared, I focused on food pictures during the two weeks. I just imported about 700 photos from my camera… I have a lot of blogging to do.