After kicking up our feet and soaking in the sun next to the pond in the Tulleries, we completed the trek down the length of the garden to the Orangerie, the museum that was designed specifically to show off Monet’s enormous waterlily paintings.
The ceiling is a skylight covered by a sheer curtain. The paintings are always changing depending on the amount of light available. Paris annoyance number 1: the number of people taking selfies with iconic works of art. A year ago people weren’t allowed to take photos in this museum and while I’m sure all these folks are happy to go home with their own copy of the lilies, it made the viewing of them in person much less enjoyable.
Yeah, yeah. I took one too. Not cause I really wanted to, but when I wrote about this museum last year I had to find a photo of it on google images and this time I can actually use my own. I’ll probably go back and delete it now to save space on my hard drive . . .
After we finished at the museum we decided it was time to head back to our apartment to rest for a few hours before dinner. We were both working on only a few hours of sleep from the plane ride and though we felt fine, we didn’t want be too tired to enjoy the special chef’s table dinner that I had booked ahead of time.
This was our first time trying out the Paris public bike system, the Velib (Vuh-LEEB). The name is a cute play on words combining “Velo” (bike) and “liberte” (freedom). It’s an apt name. Flying along Parisian streets on a bicycle felt incredibly freeing. There are stations all over the place with racks of bikes like in the above photo. We purchased a week-long pass for $8 each. We would type in our code, select an available bike, and be off. We could use the bike for up to 30 minutes free of charge before dropping it at any available spot at any of the stations. If we wanted a bike for longer than 30 minutes we could stop at a station, quickly switch bikes and the 30 minute clock would reset.
We rode all over the right bank, passing landmarks like the Pompidou modern art museum (which has an exterior as crazy as the works of art it houses in its interior), along the river Seine, and in and out of traffic until we finally made our way to the Velib stop closest to our apartment.
Then I fell into a sleep so deep it made me glad that I set my alarm to wake up for dinner.
We headed up to the hills above Paris, the Montemart area (which is pronounced more like Mo-mar than what you’d naturally assume from its spelling). For dinner we were going to a class/event at a cooking school. We arrived in the area a few minutes early so I showed Josh the bakery that we found last year that had the best French macarons. We bought a few to eat later — didn’t want to ruin our appetite for the amazing meal that was ahead of us.
This is the class I took with my friends last year. They had just come back from the market and were learning how to prepare their fresh finds. When I was looking at the schedule of classes to take for this trip (cause I knew we had to do some kind of cooking experience together) the chef’s table class was exactly what I wanted. A chance for us to sit and eat together, try wines that have been picked to go with each dish (since I’m a terrible wine drinker — I always think food makes the wine taste bad so I’ll have a sip until my first bite and then quit), and relax. Especially for the first night of our vacation.
We headed past this classroom and down a set of narrow wooden stairs to a wine cellar type room where the chef and a sommelier were waiting. We were seated at the table, met our dinner partners and examined the menu for the evening. We were a group of 4 (I like this particular school because they max out at 6 instead of 10-12 like other places) and the other two women were traveling solo, one on a repeat vacation to Paris from Quebec and another from LA. They were both
Hydrate or die.
I’m not a foodie photo taker so I refrain from taking pictures of my food — I don’t want to be that person. Even on this night, I only took two and Josh took one, but in hindsight, I wish I had sucked it up and taken photos of all of the courses because it would have been easier to describe how heavenly each dish was.
First course was baby asparagus tips (newly in season) bathed in a velvety cream soup. Paired with champagne. Pro-tip: asparagus is notably difficult to pair with wine, but everything goes with champagne (according to Preston, our sommelier).
A pile of truffles, meaty whitefish, and a buttery sauce. Earthy and rich. And expensive. And now I know I love turbot. The chef would start each course by explaining what he had prepared while doing final preparations and plating. Meanwhile the sommelier, Preston, would pour the wine he had chosen to go with the dish and explain where it was from, what properties made it a good pairing, and then we would eat and drink.
I thought I had tasted truffles before, but I clearly have not. The chef had several on a small plate and said that he was holding about 80E worth of truffles and then proceeded to take one and shave an abundance of it on each of our plates. This might have been my favorite dish of the night.
My only experience with a sommelier was the guy on Top Chef who thought he was the Best Chef Ever because he had also been to wine school, but after tasting Preston’s wine parings, I have to give the sommelier thing some credit. The wine served with this course was crisp and tart, almost like a green apple, and it didn’t give me the wine shudders (when a wine tastes ok up front, but then the aftertaste is either too dry or too sweet and I have to shake it off. This happens often. Josh thinks it’s hilarious.)
I said the turbot and truffles was my favorite, but this third course is a close call. I’ve never had Foie Gras before, but I always thought it was a cold, liverwursty thing. Our chef explained that the best Foie Gras is fresh and that the stuff we were eating came from ducks that had been killed the day before. I don’t know that I’ll ever have Foie Gras again because I doubt anything else will be able to compare. First he seared it to caramelize the surface, then finished it off in the oven. It was served with pearl onions in a balsamic glaze. The FG melted in my mouth — firm edges, soft in the middle. It was buttery, rich, and like nothing else that I’ve ever had. It was earthy, but more like a truffle than a mushroom.
Darn us for being too busy having a good time and eating to take a photo of the duck and cheese courses. All I’ve got is a photo of Josh eating Foie Gras. So the foie gras was served with a sweeter white wine (not super sweet) that cut through the richness the dish. It totally worked. Chef Alex’s food was divine, but I was even more impressed that Preston could pick wines that I actually enjoyed drinking with my food. It’s a Paris miracle.
The next two courses were duck and then cheese. The duck breast was from the same geese that “grew” the foie gras so they had an extra layer of fat on them which the chef managed to get perfectly crispy. The duck breast itself was like steak, like a fillet wrapped in bacon with the salty, crispy skin on the outside. It was served with a pepper infused butter and now I can’t remember what else — darn my prideful refusal to take out my camera. Oh yeah, the wine. This one was a smoky red, which is totally Josh’s favorite kind, but not mine. It was fine, but I passed it off to Josh after a few sips so I could focus on my duck.
But the wine that went with the cheese course was a sweetish red and mixed with the blue cheese — taste explosion! I don’t even remember what else was on that cheese plate, only that the blue and the wine was a marriage that I was fully in support of.
And finally dessert. Raspberries and chocolate are my two favorite things in the world. It’s like Chef Alex knew I was coming. The chocolate cream/mousse is made from this top of the line brand of chocolate that in its purest form, starts as a 10lb brick (he pulled it out to show it to us) that all the finest restaurants and bakeries use. God bless the French and their love of dark chocolate.
I know we had a red wine with this course too, but I didn’t take a mental note of it. Who needs wine with dessert when there’s coffee to drink? The exception to that is when Josh and I were in Bodega Bay and the chef sent out an incredible blue cheese cheesecake with a red muscato wine that was the only perfect food/wine paring I had had up until today. (Again, the blue cheese and sweet red works! Try it sometime.)
It was a perfect evening. In between courses we chatted with the women at our table and the one who had been to Paris many times gave us recommendations on what to see and do and the woman from Los Angeles turned out to be a writer and entertained us with stories from the different TV shows she has worked on (Mad Men and Heart of Dixie). We headed home to our Parisian apartment, happy we still had four days ahead of us.
