Eating in Paris

We just back from a fabulous trip to Paris. I'm overwhelmed with gratitude that we get to live here, enabling us to take family trips like this. I had a hard time deciding where to start talking about our trip, until it occurred to me that when traveling to France, you can never go wrong beginning by talking about the food.

My number one priority for eating on this trip was trying the bread at Poilane. I'd heard it highly recommended on various blogs and travel sites, including Ina Garten's, who apparently has it flown over for special occasions. I wondered, could it really be that good?

Yes, it could! We ate a ridiculous amount of this bread on our trip, coated with French sea salt butter, which I swear tastes better than butter anywhere else.

Poilane is mostly about the bread, but they did have a few other treats that we felt were important to try as well. Very good.

When out walking around one day we came across this Italian gelato chain Amorino. Not only was the gelato most delicious, they scoop it into this pretty flower shape. We really needed to come back and get one with multiple flavors, because then the flower is even prettier. 

They also have a macaron slash gelato treat that is well worth eating.

Another day - we really didn't eat ice cream multiple times a day - we had to find Berthillon, which supposedly has the best ice cream in Paris. The actual Berthillon was closed, but luckily many places along the same street in Ile Saint-Louis (the little island behind Notre Dame) serve it also. We decided it deserved all its praise. 

Our second night in Paris Mike and I ate at Creperie Bretonne, which was for sure our favorite dinner. Not only was the food good, it brought back many nostalgic memories of our time living in Nantes. The style of crepes they serve at Creperie Bretonne is a specialty in Nantes, so we ate them a lot when we lived there. The food, the restaurant decor, even the dishes were exactly like we remember. We would have gone back a second time if circumstances didn't prevent us.

This picture is from a restaurant near Champs de Mars. I don't remember what it was called. That's fine, because our meals were good, but not amazing, life-transformingly good.

I also was on a mission to try the dark chocolate bar with carmelized hazelnuts at Jean-Charles Rochoux's. Sadly, it wasn't my favorite. Mike loved it though, so it wasn't a total wasted mission.

We did not even begin to sample all the good things available to eat in Paris, but still enough that I'm kind of scared to step on the scale.