Food Review (Appetizer - Main Course - Dessert)

[This post is dedicated for the food review assignment]

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There will be a total of 3 different dishes from 3 different brasseries at France – around Paris to Toulouse areas, which will be the main food objects in this review. To be exact, the first dish is a plate of appetizer from Versailles, second will be main course from Toulouse, and the last dish is a dessert from Paris. Well, Enjoy the food tour!

Appetizer from Versailles

The 1st food that of this review is no other than the appetizer from:

La Flottille Brasserie, Parc du Château de Versailles (http://www.laflottille.fr/)

La Flottille's Menu Book

with their: Salé Crêpe avec L'oeuf et Salade (Savory Pancake with Egg and Salad)

Savoury Pancake with Egg and Salad

When I decided to order this, I was in the state of hungry but I did not felt like eating pastas or steaks, so I went with this savory pancake.. – and yes, I ordered some appetizer as my main course and it is not strange, it was just me and my appetite. LOL! – Anyway.. thus, since this is the first pancake/crepe that I ordered in France (it was just during our 3rd day in France), I was expecting something more similar like many other savory crepe that I ate before back in Indonesia and Malaysia where they usually put all the fillings inside the crepe and roll it together.

So, when the server bring me this crepe I was kind of surprise and excited to see something different and new! Yeah, I know you guys probably be thinking about "it just the matter of how they plated it, what is to be excited about?" – Okay.. maybe I was just hungry back then or maybe to be able to see the fillings 'un-wrapped' or 'un-folded' by the crepe really boost up our appetite?

Well, but I cannot deny that I was having a concern that it might be a bit tasteless since crepe skin is usually not so rich in taste and the egg itself cannot be more salty, cause then it will be categorized as too salty and those will not compliment each other! Moreover, what to expect from a salad rather than its normal taste? you know.. Oh, but they did gave me a bottle of cheese powder anyway, so..

Then, I was still so eager to taste it and prove my concerns and because my stomach starts to grumbling! So I cut through the crepe without expecting anything else other than chewing it right away, but I was really amazed that I found something else folded inside the crepe! It was some delicious mozzarella cheese with jambon (ham)!!

I was stunned because it was so eyes-openingly out of my expectation! Sure enough, it proven that my concerns is no longer valid because it taste just heavenly! The crepe's skin and the mozzarella was so delicate with the ham and the egg yolk! Oh and did I mention that when I cut the egg and the yolk was half-cooked and so it just perfectly flow down to covers my mozzarella and ham? It was beyond good! – or it was just me and my hungriness again? Nah!

Unfortunately, although even the salads were also beyond my expectation.. where it did not taste as normal as what I expected, but it did not taste as good as my fancy too. For my liking, they mixed too much mustard inside, I could not taste anything else rather than the strong-offensive smell of mustard running up through my nose! I thought it was a joke because we are Asian at first – anyway to my shame.. I thought they put wasabi inside. Excuse me, it was my first time to taste a real mustard and for me it just tasted so much alike with wasabi so.. I kind of mixed up! Sorry.. *LOL*

For another twist, turns out, the cheese powder were actually for my friend's pasta and do not worry the servers are all good and friendly! Definitely, no racism I promise. Cheers!

Main Course from Toulouse

The 2nd dish came from:

Le Bristol Hôtel et Braserrie, 75 Rue Bayard, Toulouse City Center, Toulouse, France 31000

Menu Sheet of Le Bristol

 with their special dish: 1/2 Magret du Canard (1/2 Duck Breast)

Half of Duck Breast

Alright, so this dish craved a quite deep memory in my mind. This was eaten during our last day in Toulouse right before we depart back to Paris. So, we are all hungry and wanted to stocked up our stomach because we knew from experience that the 10 hours bus rarely stop by to a proper dining place and we happened to came across this restaurant where they actually offered heavy food already and for your information in France, as long as I observed when it is breakfast time, it will be kind of hard to find a restaurant that serves heavy food (like the food for lunch) some restaurant even only open during lunch time and close back until dinner time.

Back to topic.. – I ordered this 1/2 magret du canard (half duck breast) because one of my friend said that they ate it somewhere else before and it was nice. So, there I went to order my duck breast. But sadly, due to my poor french and the waitress was unable to speak English too so when they asked how I want my duck (the rare-medium rare-medium-medium well-well done things) I get confused how to said that I wanted it to be medium well.. so with the help of a barely helpful dictionary and some body language and crossed my fingers, I hope that they get it right!

When, the food arrived on the table, I was kind of excited again because finally I saw a different kind of fries from what we usually get these past few days. They actually gave potato wedges rather than a normal fries and it was in a perfect golden brown color and very crisps!! It was the most delicious fries I ate during my trip I would say..

Well the duck seems promising too with the fresh herbs sprinkled on top to make a perfect blend of color palette with the duck's fat on both side of the duck breast's meat, I have never seen anything like this.. poor me! – and the sauce seems perfect too, not split or anything.. also from outside, the duck smells as nice! Some grilled meat smell..

The problem came after that though.. when I cut through the duck, I saw a reddish pink color from inside of the meat and I realized it was not a medium-well but more like a medium-rare.. At that moment I was worried that I could not finish it because I know medium-rare most of the time will smells fishy – or in this case, smells-ducky – when eaten. Sure enough my concern was right. It smells! I hardly chew it.. The texture of the meat was good actually only the smells that I could not take. It feels okay the first time you chew it but the after-taste was horrible for me. I was forcing myself to swallow it because it will be such a waste if I'm not. So by eating it together with the delicious potato wedges, I found that it was kind of blurring the smells out, and it helps!

After I almost done (finally!) there is this part of the meat near the end that actually a medium-well, so I ate it without the fries and it actually taste.. very parfait (perfect)! The meat was still tender, not too not hard and most amazingly no stinks at all! In facts, it has that very fragrant grilled meat smell and a hint of herbs smell dance through your nose while you chews.. heaven! It taste so good completed by a bit of crunchiness in it, which I suspect came from the fat.

I think if the waitress get my broken-'message' correctly, or if I could speak more proper French, I would be more than satisfied with the meal! I still wanted to went back there and order it correctly in the future though.. it was actually so delicious! But, if you do not mind with the smells and a fan of medium-rare, or can speak French and able to order it well, I would recommend to check out that place..

Dessert from Paris

The last but not least, is a dessert from one of the brasserie in Paris nearby Musée de Louvre;

Le Carrousel Bar et Brasserie, 194 Rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris

Le Carrousel's Menu Book

with their dessert du jour or dessert of the day: Pâte Brisée - Tarte aux Baies (Shortcrust Pastry - Berry Pie)

Tarte Aux Baies

Not too difference with the second dish.. I ate this dessert during my last day in France before we flew back to Malaysia. It was after our visit to Musée de Louvre (The Louvre Museum), so we are randomly walking around the Rue de Rivoli (Rivoli Street) searching for some souvenirs shop and we found this restaurant just 2 stores away from the souvenirs shop. So, we decided to stop by and had our lunch. I was ordering the 'main course+dessert' set meal back then. The main course that I ordered, it was poulet (chicken) and it was very satisfying and my friends foods taste very good too according to them.

Then, when the super friendly waiter came and ask for our choice of dessert of either some Tiramisu or their special dessert du jour - Tarte Aux Baies (dessert of the day) in which is no other than the Berry Tart/Pie. I picked the berry tart!

When this beauty arrive in our table, it looks so delicious that I could not refused to snap some pictures of it. It looks gorgeous too on the camera! Also they actually sprinkled some icing sugar too if you look closely. Such a simple yet chic plating, yes?

I wonder how it will taste at that time. So the moment I secured my barely-able-to-relax camera back into its place, I start to work with this dessert. I cut through it with the spoon and the De-excitetement came. Cutting through the berries? No problem. Cutting through the custard filling? Good. Cutting through the pie's skin? Failed! Yep. there I unloading the flaw. The pie's skin was so hard that I barely able to cut it apart without worrying that it will flew away to the next table!

Still with the hope in mind, I ate it to taste if it is good. But, I was disappointed again. The berries smells a bit like alcohol which is okay maybe it was the rum, no concerns. The problem is, it taste no good, not fresh, it was like a canned berry which had been opened and made into this pie and stand for too long in the chiller! So I removes the berry and ate the custard instead since the custard is the only part which taste good with the rich milk and vanilla smell. As for the pie's skin, it left un-eaten too since it was too risky to cut it and I thought it was just a matter of time and luck before it flew to the next table!

Well, what "a way" to eat some pie..

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Reviewed without offense to any parties :) There are still so many other delicious meals in France so don't worry to visit and try the foods! It was a very gorgeous country too anyway..

This is not the end of the story. This is just the end of another pieces of stories. So brew your tea, bake your cookies, be back later and flip the page--

Enjoy the little treat,

Angelina, xx

Restaurant Review - La Taverne du Château, Carcassonne, France

[This post is dedicated for the restaurant review assignment]

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La Taverne du Château

– The Tavern Castle

2 Rue Cros-Mayrevieille, 11000 Carcassonne, France

Main Entrance of La Taverne

Being located at the heart of the medieval La Cite in Carcassone – right at the corner of the first square – this brasserie is a total hungry tourists captor (having said so, it included me and my friends then)!  In another case of mine, I was captured by those beautiful classic design of their entrance! I mean, look at those mini shabby traffic light and the vintage looking vine on the wall which creep across the top of the door, curved at the very right angle, not too up high not too low down, just parfait! Simple yet artistic in a way.. I would obviously stop by and snap a picture, in which I apparently did of course.. Ha'!

Menu Placed Outside the Brasserie

There are 2 types of full menu being displayed at outside of the restaurant for information purposes for their potential customer. Both menu is basically the same, it just the matter of the design.

 

Entering the brasserie.. our first sight was a full house restaurant, it was lunch hour and the first floor was packed! Soon, after greeted by one of the waiter, we are directed to the second floor through a small wooden staircase at the opposite side of the exit door. Referring to the photo below, there are a small bar area at the corner, and it's hard to not noticing that most of the furniture and decoration display (sculptures, the board and else) in the restaurant are dominantly made of wood. The yellow and warm orange tone on the wall is painted to compliment the wood. But, with the wall almost fully covered by so many decorations here and there together with the full house guests, the first floor was looking kind of messy and too overloaded.

A Glimpse of The 1st Floor

Moving up to the second floor.. we took the corner seating area as there are not much choice left considering the second floor was also quite packed.Surprisingly, the second floor's bright yellow wall was more simple with not too much wall decorations and a good natural lighting coming from the classic window panels. On one side of the wall, there is a huge and gorgeous eye-catching painting that covered almost the entire side of the orange wall. I think, the castle in the painting is the beautiful scenery of Carcassone Château. The clean white ceiling is decorated with a wood panel to bring out the modern medieval brasserie ambiance. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that the medieval ambiance is not really captured well in the photos below, but I promise that in real, it was really felt like I was being in one of the brasserie in the medieval time – or in this case, a modern medieval!

 

Apparently, the seating is close to each other just like many other brasserie in France. Also, it might be because of the small space of the dining area.

Table Setting

The table setting was very basic, only couples of glasses layed on top of the napkins and bottles of salt and pepper. I was expecting something more like the set of cutleries might be included too, but rethink about it maybe for the hygiene purpose, the cutleries was excluded in the setting – well, fair enough then.

The menu was presented by the server soon after we are comfortable in our seat. Just like at many other busy restaurant, the waitress was not waiting at the side of our table for us to read through the menu but impressively came by to check frequently if we are ready to order in the middle of her busyness.

La Taverne is well-known by its wine and they are serving many choices of foods from light to heavy for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or tea time like crepes, dessert, pizza, salad, cheese, meats for main course and so on. They are also having an a la carte menu and set menu, as for the set menu, there are 2 types of set menu offered;

*The 12,90 euro meal, which consist of:

- Appetizer (Onion Soup or Goat Salad or Gizzard Salad)

- Main Course (Cassoulet Languedocien or Grilled Beef or Lasagna)

- Dessert of the day

*The 17,00 euro meal, include:

- Before meal (Biscuit/Cracker or Coffee)

- Appetizer (Smoked Salmon Salad or Gourmet Salad)

- Main Course (Salmon Steak or Cassoulet Languedocien or Duck with Olives)

- Dessert (Dessert of The Day or Cheese)

Unfortunately, the menu was all in French and it did not come with the English translation nor the English version menu like some other restaurants had. So, we have to ask the waitress for some English translation. Having said about translation, the waiters in La Taverne are willing to communicate in English with us even-though they are having a limited English vocabularies and was seems to having a hard time trying to translate the menu into English for us. Furthermore, the waitress have done a good job by providing a quick services even during the busy hour and she did not seems to get annoyed or angry when requested frequently to refill the water even during the busy period. For your information, some of the servers in other restaurants, especially in Paris were easily upset about this kind of things (no offense thought, I still love Paris!).

The Waitress

As for the food.. I was ordering the 12,90 euro set meal with Gizzard Salad (The waitress did not say that it is a gizzard, she said it was something to do with chicken. If I knew it was a gizzard, I might reconsider my option! Well, blame the language barrier!) – Cassoulet Languedocien for the main course and the dessert of the day (Lemon Pie). In addition, like most of the brasserie in France, they always provides botomless or refillable baguette and water for free!

The Complimentary Baguette and Water

Salade de Gésiers

Well, surprisingly the gizzard was beyond my expectation! It was delicious! Not chewy, in fact it was perfectly tender and smell like smoked meat and then I was expecting the salad to taste like a whole bottle of mustard is being poured in to the salad again like my previous experiences in Paris, but again I was wrong. It does have a taste of mustard but not too heavy, just enough to add some fragrance along with the olive oil grease. The portion was big and the plating was neat. Food rate out of  the 3 dish, 7 over 10.

Cassoulet Languedocien

The Cassoulet (a rich and slow-cooked casserole) in the other hand, comes with duck confit and Toulouse sausage. The portion is fair but if you ate appetizer before, it is enough to make you full. As for the taste, I would say, it was too salty for my taste-bud. I was able to endure it for the first couples of spoons but as I continue, I can feel my throat start to reject it, so at the end, I did not finish it. I'm not sure maybe it is originally suppose to taste like that and I'm just not used to it or maybe the Chef was accidentally drop too much salt into it. I think, if it taste lest salty,it will be very nice! Well, food rate among 3 dishes, 5.5 over 10.

Dessert (Lemon Pie)

For the dessert, I ordered a lemon pie from their dessert du jour's options. It served in a plain basic platting, side by side very neatly with vanilla whipped cream. But I think the plating was good, after all simplicity is sometimes the new more. Then, here is the the twist, I remember correctly that I ordered a lemon pie, because I thought I needed a touch of citrus from being nauseated from eating too salty before. But, on my first bites to the pie.. it taste more like almond. Not a baked almond nuts, more like an almond powder or almond essence and I'm not in fancy for that almond! It taste just weird for me, something to do with the medicine-like taste. Ugh! I barely taste the lemon flavor, only a tint of the fragrance. But, since it will be such a waste if it is not eaten, so I was trying to eat it with the whipped cream and to my surprise, the whipped cream was really good! It smell and taste so rich in vanilla! At the end, I finish the whipped cream instead and left the pie half finished. Well.. food rate our of 3 dishes, 5 over 10.

Overall, I would say, it kind of worth the money, though. Because the portion is quite big and maybe for some people the almond pie is delicious and the cassoulet is not too salty, because again, maybe it was just me and my taste preferences, not the foods problem. One of my friend ordered Lasagna said it was good though.. Also, many has reviewed that the wine provided in Taverne is very good and are varies from many regions, so it is a good place for a wine lover to stop by and taste the wine then! Thus, the in-house service was after all very good too, no wrong bill, no cynicism, average amount of smile from the busy waiters and most importantly, no need to wait for long even when in the busy time! So, we can finish quick and continue to explore and snapping pictures of the gorgeous Carcassone Château and of course.. shop around! Furthermore, they also have their own restaurant's special designed website (http://www.blasco.fr/version_flash/taverne.htm) which is very medieval-rustic looking but easy access and in which allows their potential customer to even do a reservation before-hand and completed with a medieval looking map explaining the way to the brasserie and as well photos of the brasserie. Another additional marks for La Taverne du Château then!

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Reviewed without offense to any parties :)

This is not the end of the story. This is just the end of another pieces of stories. So brew your tea, bake your cookies, be back later and flip the page--

Enjoy the little treat,

Angelina, xx