Le Menu-I

Tortiere de Gascogne
Pear tart with pastry gathered up at the top like a little purse.
Purchased: Bern train station, about the only thing that was open that day.

Cheese Fonde with Mushrooms (in orange pot), served with boiled potatoes and (somewhat) stale bread, and Rocky Mountain: Rosti potatoes with bits of ham and mushrooms in a tomato-based sauce. I think they cook up golden potatoes then treat them like hash browns.

This was at a sidewalk cafe in Bern--Le Mozot--which apparently is the house up on stilts so they can have animals underneath. Our rosti and fondue is a traditional Swiss meal.

We kept seeing dishes with "dry meats." It didn't dawn on us until later that this meant salamis, etc. Here's the local market man with his dry meats all stacked up like a child's game.

Salad fixings at the early morning Bern market.

Bakeries that Deliver. I wish it would catch on in the states, but I really think this van was just delivering our breakfast breads to the hotel.

At the Baeren Bern Hotel's buffet table, there was a basket lined with a paper doily. We put in two soft round rolls, one hard roll, a whole-wheat croissant (light and not greasy). I picked up a soft-boiled egg, jams (blueberry and raspberry) in a little dish and pats of butter shaped like flowers. Plus juice. Dave had yogurt with granola mixed in with it. They brought us hot chocolate, which turned out to be lukewarm chocolate. Dave also tried their cheeses.

These little sandwiches are the best. One slice of ham on a soft pretzel-tasting roll. I don't know how they do it, but if I could find a shop that sold these, I might take out stock. They sold these at the local five-and-dime on the way to the train station. At the train station, Dave chose the white dessert, which was creamy with raspberries. I had the same thing as before: a pear tart. We bought the raspberries that morning at the Farmer's Market.

We went to dinner with Rogene and her granddaughter Catherine, who is holding up her dessert. Now that's a Creme Brulee!

Dave had three profiteroles, filled with vanilla ice cream sitting in a pool of chocolate sauce. I had an apple tart with the teensiest scoop of vanilla ice cream. You can see the name of the restaurant: Des Bistros des Cuisiniers. There's about seven of them that are linked and they are all over the city. This one was on Rue Merciere. One of our friends said he had never had a bad meal in Lyon. Then he had tripe the next night. (Okay, maybe stay away from Lyon specialties.)


Pumpkin Tomatoes
Lyon, France
June 2007
(They just look like pumpkins.)

First night at Le Sud. This was a dish of tomatoes with ribbons of basil, drizzled in a vinaigrette. Sometimes the simplest things are the best. I also realize that looking at food from above isn't the most appealing. I'll work on that. I love these plates! My entree was salmon on a bed of spinach with red and yellow bell pepper strips, and Dave had a tajine with roast beef and couscous.

To quote from a website: "In Arabic, the word tajine is used to describe the meal as well as the container in which it is prepared. The term tajine is also used to describe both the decorative serving tajine as well as the cookable version." Photo of a tajine:






Cooking right along, here's my lunch from Wednesday at Le Petite Moment (her husband runs Momento, a restaurant up the street). I had tiny raviolis tossed with olive oil and halved grape tomatoes with fresh hot rolls.

We liked Le Sud so well we went back the second night. This time my tajine (which turned out to be a white ceramic version of the pot) had roast chicken with couscous. Dave had cod over three piped petals of mashed potatoes. For dessert we had cloutis, which is known to be a cherry cake. (I guess you have to be French to know this.) We've been trying to eat off the Menu du Jour--a good way to watch your budget as well as eat well. I like it because I think the chef tries to balance the flavors. The restaurant on Thursday night proved me wrong.


Thursday lunch I went back to Le Petite Moment, and had gazpacho and a Quiche Provencal, which is very different than our quiches.

This "pie" (there, with the server underneath it) has a layer of chopped olives, herbs and maybe a bit of eggplant for body over which is layered thinly sliced tomatoes alternating with zucchini. Amazing.

Gazpacho To Go
Lyon, France
June 2007

Wednesday's dinner was at a traditional Lyon restaurant. They served us a plate with four slices of salami and what looked like walnuts tossed with a coating then cooked. Wrong. It was, as the waitress pointed out on her own throat, little glands from the "peeg" (pig), sliced, battered and fried. I could tell from Dave's face that it was not a pleasant little snack. I also noticed that most of the other diners didn't touch theirs either.
He dived into the bread right afterwards to try and get rid of the taste, because they don't bring you water until you order. He warned me not to eat them. I didn't.

This Menu du Jour was wierd. A really really good mesclun salad, however slightly wilted (been in the fridge for a while?). The dressing was wonderful, but she said it was a secret and wouldn't tell the ingredients. I guessed a bit of curry and worcestershire or soy. Who knows? Then macaroni and cheese in a side dish, coupled with a chicken leg in a creamy vinegar sauce. Those two didn't go together at all, in my mind, although separately they were interesting.

Dessert is below: chocolate macaroons with vanilla ice cream, all on a vanilla sauce; chocolate cake on a pistachio sauce; tuiles on the side. This was a bookend meal: better on each end than in the middle.