Camden Market

Whew! This is the last post from Mike and my trip to London and Paris.  One of the places that we checked out in London was the Camden Market. Camden Market is a market filled with shops, food stalls, and music.

There are multiple sections of the Camden Market that are filled with food stalls.  There was Chinese, Mexican, Thai, Morrocan, Indian, and other types of cuisines.  After a while all the food stalls started blending together and I started tuning out all the cries of, "You want to sample chicken?"

Anyhoo, Mike was hungry, so we randomly selected one of the Chinese food booths and ordered a Chinese plate. I felt bad about eating Chinese food in London, but we were immersing ourselves in the culture of Camden Market. 

Paris Cooking/Food Stores~G.Detou

Another tip from David Lebovitz's website was to visit the G. Detou store, which contains many baking and cooking needs. This store was filled with all kinds of baking ingredients such as flavorings, candies, chocolates, and pastes. 

Yes, to Mike's bafflement I purchased 3kg (yup, 6.6 pounds) of Valrhona cocoa.  I have not opened the cocoa yet, but I plan on using it to make rich chocolate desserts.

 Here's a picture of a kitchenware store close to G. Detou. 

G . Detou-Baking Item Store and mustard. Edmond Dallot, Amora
58 rue Tiquetonne (2nd)
Tél: 01 42 36 54 67

French McDonald's~French Macarons

While we were walking down Champs-Elysees, I saw this sign in McDonald's, and decided to make a pit stop.  McDonald's offers six different flavors of macarons-chocolate, pistachio, strawberry, vanilla, caramel, and lemon (I think).

I tried a chocolate macaron at McDonald's. I am assuming that macarons produced for McDonald's in France must be mass produced. I thought that these macarons were similar to the macarons that I had tasted in the USA.   They were not as light in texture or as rich in flavor as Pierre Herme's or Laduree's macarons.  This macaron had a slight stale heavy texture.

Pistachio Frappe. These frappes were light and airy and nothing like the frappes that are currently sold at McDonald's.  Mike did not care for the pieces of pistachio in this drink.

The assortment of pastries and macarons sold at McDonald's.

Paris~Crepes

We enjoyed the customary French crepes in Paris.

We ate a ham and cheese savory crepe.

Then late one night, prior to dinner, we enjoyed a chocolate crepe. 

French "Touristy" Restaurant

There are a lot of tourists in Paris. That means that there are A LOT of restaurants that target tourists.  When we traveled to Italy in 2008, we tried to stay clear from restaurants that were too close to the major tourist attractions.
In Paris, this was slightly more difficult to do because most of  the tourist attractions were concentrated in a small radius of the city.
Mike and I were walking around the Latin Quarter and succumbed to eating at a touristy restaurant one night.   We also ordered from a menu geared towards tourists, and surprisingly we enjoyed the food. 

Extremely cheesy french onion soup-this was a really tasty french onion soup.

Escargot

Raclette Pan. Just think of it as a cousin to fondue.  Instead of dipping food into a pot of heat cheese, you heat the cheese on a pan, and then scrape it onto your plate.

Raclette is a type of semi-firm cow's milk cheese and also a dish originated from the Swiss.  Cheese is heated up and then scraped ("racler" means to "scrape" in French)  off the pan and served with potatoes, pickles, and cold cuts. 

A piece of my melted raclette cheese. I scraped the cheese of the pan and on to the vegetables and potatoes that were part of my meal.  Yummy!

 Steak in a Pepper Sauce and French Fries

Creme Caramel

Apple Galette

Dark Chocolate Mousse-Our server could tell that I did not enjoy the apple galette, so he brought out this extra chocolate mouse for me. 

I think the massive amount of cheese we ate during our dinner, made this an enjoyable meal. We normally do not eat a ton of cheese, so for my body's sake I was cautious and limited my intake of cheese (even though I ordered raclette).  Mike finished up the majority of the cheese in the french onion soup and my leftover raclette cheese. I warned him about consuming a large amount of cheese, but he brushed off my concerns.  Let's just say that at the end of the day, the cheese won the battle versus Mike's body and digestive system. 

Pompidou Center -Paris, France

I am in no way, shape, or form an "art buff." I appreciate art, but I cannot tell you why I enjoy a piece. Back in high school, I had quite a few amazing English teachers, and in my senior year, my teacher exposed us to art and poetry along with the normal English works.  We became familiar with stylistic elements in artwork (much like in literature), that we look at an art piece and make an educated guess on the artist. 

So that's the limited extent of my art background. 

One of my my favorite museums that we visited in Paris, was the Pompidou Center, which is famous for it's exoskeleton architectural design. The majority of the escalators and walkways are housed in the exterior of the building. 

Here are some of the pieces that I enjoyed viewing at the Pompidou Center in Paris. 

I remember my English teaching showing us a image of a blue painting and asking us it was art. But did you know that this is actually a patented blue color?  It's called "International Klein Blue" by Yves Klein.  This was not one of my favorite pieces, I just thought it was neat to see it in person.

"Woman in Blue" by Picasso. I did not necessarily enjoy this piece, but guessed that it was Picasso due to the stylistic elements.

If I had to sum up my favorite type of art, it would be a combination of modern art with architectural elements. I love Frank Lloyd Wright's work and think that he was a genius beyond his time. Visiting the Pompidou Center was a refreshing break from all the other museums that we visited. 

Pompidou Center

75004 Paris, France

Paris~Breads and Pastries

Pictures of various pastries in Paris.

Berthillon-Paris, France

I've concluded that if I continue at the rate of approximately one blog post a week, I will not be able to post about our trip back home to Hawaii until mid-May.  So, I've made the executive decision (since Mike hardly blogs anymore) to compile more pictorial posts of our trip to London and Paris. This trip occurred during the late November 2010.  Hopefully this will help me to keep on track with the blog posts this year.  

Berthillon is probably the most famous ice cream in France.  One of my friends told me that we had to stop by Berthillon during our trip to Paris. She told me that it was the best ice cream that she ever ate. Even though the weather was a bit nippy (~40F), Mike and I trekked over to the Berthillon shop. 

Look at all the different flavors! Lucky for us there was an English translation for all the different flavors. 

 

I settled for a two scoops of ice cream-cacao extra bitter, and the mango.  The flavors were amazing! The chocolate ice cream was a rich and had a really dark chocolate flavor-but I was warned with the descriptive name.  I'm not sure if this was the best ice cream that I've ever had in my life. But if I stop to think about it, I'm not sure that I could pinpoint the best ice cream that I have every eaten.

Mike opted to not order ice cream because on our walk over to the shop, he stopped and bought a gyro to tide himself over.  Isn't that strange? since the gyro is a grab and go "street food" the french fries are wrapped into the gyro. 

Berthillon
31 Rue St Louis en l'ile
75004 Paris, France
01 43 54 31 61