Randoms

The next day, we went for a brunch at a mildly touristic cafe which you will be familiar with if you have watched the highly acclaimed French film Amelie! Came here thanks to Groupon again. Food was surprisingly decent and reasonably priced. Not bad for an experience and you get to see a small Amelie "shrine" ironically displayed in the toilet.

Name: Café des Deux Moulins

Location: 15 Rue Lepic, 75018 Paris, France
Expenditure: ~45€ for 2

After that, we headed to an Art & Design exhibition held at the Tuileries Garden (love the vibrant spring colors). Interesting but we didn't stay long. And yea I didn't get to verify but I think that's a real porcupine in the lamp! Talk about art.

On a separate day, Anne and Roger invited us to their house for an awesome Indian dinner. Look at the home-cooked spread. Roger really inspires me!! Can't wait for our next meal together.

Le Pré Catelan

I need to rush this post to clear my backlog because I just returned from a trip to the South of France where I took a bunch of beautiful photos and it's going to take forever to showcase them all!

One fine day we went for a 3-star lunch at a restaurant situated in the middle of a huge and famous park (called Bois de Boulogne) west of Paris. Such a lovely place with abundant natural light shining through their tall glass windows. Exceptional food and in my opinion the best value-for-money lunch menu around (among the 3 Michelin-starred restaurants of course). We took the Un Déjeuner au Pré Catelan menu (unfortunately you have to ask for it) with wine pairing which cost only an additional 35€. I highly recommend this over a bottle of wine especially since the wines they served were excellent. Food wise, the amuse-bouche was so-so but the rest blew me away. I loveee the scallop starter (cooked in 3 different styles) and the lamb dish which consisted of 5 parts of the lamb from head to toe! My favourite part was the brain. Serious! Only for the adventurous :D S' main was good too - deep fried langoustines with risotto and ravioli. Much to our surprise, we absolutely adored the Le Paris Brest dessert (the one that looks like an eclair). I really want to go back there again. A word of advice though - the restaurant is extremely hard to find if you rely on the GPS because many roads in the park are closed. We detoured and went round & round for a good half hour before arriving just in time before the kitchen closed. It's safer to enter from 'Porte Maillot' and follow the signs from there.

Name: Le Pré Catelan

Location: Route de la Porte des Sablons à la Porte Maillot, 75116 Paris, France

Expenditure: 120€ pp (85€ pp for lunch menu, 35€ additional for wine pairing)

Okay I love this place so much I think it should be given one post on its own ;)

To conclude the month of March

Some updates to my blog: I removed a couple of sections in the sidebar and added a list of my Google maps as well as a list of Michelin-starred restaurants I've been to. The list of restaurants is in no way meant to brag about my dining experiences. It is created purely for personal record, as with everything I post on this blog (which is what an online diary is supposed to be in the first place, right?)

Anyway, I mentioned previously about buying coupons on Groupon and here's one of the better restaurants we ate at. Generous portions with above-average quality. Extremely good value with the Groupon promotion but I guess it's still not so bad without. Located in a hip area with numerous crowded bars (mostly gay) on weekends!

Name: Le Passage Obligé

Location: 29 Rue du Bourg Tibourg, 75004 Paris

Expenditure: ~25€ pp w/o promotion

Found a gem in the 8th arrondissement - a rare one that opens on Sundays (everyday in fact). It offers a fixed "Menu of the Day" at 35€ per person. According to the waiter, the menu changes everyday. Perfect place to go back again & again! Of course, this runs the risk of inconsistency. You can love it one day and hate the other depending the kind of food they serve. We loved ours that day, so let's see how it goes the next time we return. I highly recommend this.

Name: Bar Le Passage (the bar section of a 2-star restaurant called Senderens)

Location: 9 place de la Madeleine, 75008 Paris

Expenditure: 35€ pp excl. drinks

Because Hongxi and I love truffles, I picked this tiny place that specializes in just that. We liked the entrées more than the mains, especially the iberico ham and beef carpaccio. We also loved the truffle-infused olive oil that came with the bread. The velouté de cèpes tasted disappointingly bland. The risotto and pastas (with seasonal truffles) were not bad, while the egg cocotte was simply too small for its price! Fortunately the pasta was substantial enough for sharing. I think the sauce goes best tagliatelle, albeit a tad dry. Hence, this place recommended only for serious mushroom lovers :) Reservations necessary since the restaurants sits only 20 people. The corner shelves stock a great number of truffle-related products which I suppose they use in their recipes. Nice.

Name: Truffes Folies

Location: 37 Rue Malar, 75007 Paris

Expenditure: 150€ for 4 incl. a bot of wine (after 30% discount by booking through toptable.com)

Trip to West of France (part 3)

26 Mars 2011 - Roiffé

3 hours east and we reached somewhere in the middle of nowhere - Domaine Saint-Hilaire hotel which is right beside a 18-hole golf course. There are also other sport facilities and outdoor activities you can do at and around the hotel. According to their website, the hotel has "eight detached stone-built houses in the typical Loire Valley Style of the early 19th century and contains 64** rooms." We were a lil worried when we arrived as the houses looked really old, but the rooms turned out surprisingly pleasant save for a dusty floor. Regrettably, we did not bring our golf clubs so we ventured out to a wine chateau recommended by the hotel.

Le Château de Targé wasn't easy to find but we still managed after a few u-turns. Charming place up a small slope. The wine tasting room can be found on the 2nd level up the stairs as u can see in the photo below. We met an interesting Parisian couple who had also driven out for a weekend vacation. After the session, our friendly host showed us to a room (we were led through a cave-hole!) that he had done up for rent. It was lovely with an awesome view at only 300€ a week! But we figured there aren't many things you can do there to make up a week's stay.

27 Mars 2011 - Roiffé

The Parisian couple whom we met suggested that we visit the Abbaye de Fontevraud in the town center. We were surprised to know that it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site which was founded in 1100! You can read more about it here (in French). There's apparently a very good restaurant in the hotel called Le Saint-Lazare.

1) View from the outside
2) Cloister of the Grand Moûtier
3) Nave of the Abbey church
4) Royal tombs
5) Random exhibitions can be found throughout the Abbey
6) Small museum dedicated to a time when the Abbey was transformed to a prison
7) The Romanesque kitchens
8) View from the backyard

Trip to West of France (part 2)

25 Mars 2011 - La Baule

Drove further west to a seaside place at the southern edge of Brittany. According to wiki, La Baule "boasts a 12 km-long beach which is the longest in Europe". Cool. We reached the Hôtel Saint Christophe first which is further inland, then walked out to the beach from there. When you don't expect anything and something like that greets you, you can't help but feel that it is vastly beautiful.. The weather was almost summer-like which explains the sunny photos. T'was cold still but I think the French take to it very well; just look at them sunning themselves on the beach!

Strolled along the sidewalk and veered towards the town center halfway through. Couldn't possibly walk all 12 km :) Pleasant-looking town which we felt resembles Deauville, another seaside place up north. A little touristic (by that I mean the French themselves as tourists instead of people of other nationalities) save for a number of local designer boutiques which we always prefer to the good ol' brands..

Went back to the hotel to bring Tasha for another stroll in the other direction. Then we started spotting weird old skinny houses squashed between big squarish buildings like the one in the photo!

Here's our charming hotel and the church opposite which looks good lighted up even though it's under renovation.