A cool bday

The weekend is almost over and I can say it's been quite a good one, and I'm not only saying this because it happened to be my bday.

On Friday my boss surprised me with a box of chocolates from my favorite "chocolaterie" in Paris: La maison du chocolat. In the afternoon, I came back to my office after a meeting to find a funny looking package on my desk. It turned out to be a bag of mini Financiers which is a pastry I had never really tasted before. The present was from my coworkers.

When I got home all giddy with my sugary loot, there was hubby waiting for me. I had already known there wouldn't be much in the way of a present this year as our finances need a little mending after the holidays, but nonetheless when I got home, hubby had a bottle of champagne waiting in the fridge. It was so nice to be greeted with a chilling glass of bubbly after a long day (week) of work. When the last of the champagne had been drank, hubby announced he had another surprise coming. He was taking me out to dinner to a surprise restaurant. I hadn't expected this at all so I was really excited. We took the metro downtown and at every metro stop I'd look at him asking with my eyes if this was the station we were getting off at. Each time he would smile and nod his head and finally at Place Monge he smiled, got up real quick and we jumped off the wagon just as the doors were closing!!

It turns out someone from work had recommended him a vegetarian restaurant in the area. I was touched that hubby would go through all the trouble of asking around for a vegetarian place to take me when I know how much he loves meat. However, when we finally got to the place, for some reason the restaurant looked like it wanted to scare business away instead of entice it to come in!!! We both agreed the place didn't look appetizing and so we decided to try and find some other place.

We walked around for a while without finding anything interesting (a lot of business are still closed for the holidays) and just when we were starting to get REALLY hungry we suddenly coming upon the reason Paris is one of the best cities to eat in the world.

A minuscule wine cellar/restaurant/épicerie half hidden on a side street. The place looked really small (10 tables max) and no visible menu on the outside (a usual in parisian restaurants). We could see one wall inside was completely covered in wine racks and next to the other wall stood the bar. All the tables squeezed in between seemed to be taken. We shrugged our shoulders and decided to check out the menu by asking inside. The fella at the bar told us there was no such thing as a menu per se. Instead, there was a fixed menu based on the arrivals from the market each morning. That night they were serving an entrée of Gazpacho soup w/bacon, Magret de Canard as main course, a Fourme d'Ambert cheese course and a Panacotta & Strawberry dessert. André asked if they had anything that could fit a vegetarian and the guy said they could hold the bacon on the entree and switch the duck for tuna for the main course (to understand the French definition of "vegetarian" see here). I decided to let it go this once because the place simply looked too enticing to pass it up.

The best thing about it was that it being a wine cellar, we got to get up and look at all the bottles they had on the walls and choose the one we wanted with our dinner. We immediately narrowed it down to a Burgundy wine and after several minutes of consideration settled for a Vosne-Romanée 2005, a red wine we'd been wanting to taste for quite some time now.

The other interesting thing of the evening was that they had no tables left so we had to sit at the bar. This was actually cooler than I thought it would be. It all seemed so... "french". I can't put it in words. In that place, in that instant I realized that this is why I moved to France all those years ago. To be able to eat in places just like this one. To live experiences just like this one. Casually coming upon a small noisy french restaurant away from all the touristy ones on the big avenues, a good wine selected by us based on what we wanted to taste and not simply upon a guessing game or a price index, sitting at the bar watching the waiter deal with orders of 10 tables and making sure every one was being well taken care of.

Dinner was incredible of course. The Gazpacho soup came in an oversized soup plate and we each had a bowl with cut up fresh raw veggies and spices in which we poured the soup to our hearts' desire (and our stomach's capacity) with the help of a ladle. André's Magret de Canard looked incredible and from the look on his face upon his first taste it probably tasted incredible too. My tuna was amazing. Spicy and crunchy on the outside, tender and melting in the inside. Cooked veggies were also brought in a copper side plate and you could tell they were freshly out of the market crate. Cheese and Dessert didn't dissapoint us either. But the best was the wine. It was so good that when we were through with dinner and since we still had some wine left, the waiter re-corked our bottle and put it in a "doggie bag" for us so to take home (NO WAY it was going to waste). Besides, I'm saving that wine label for future references.

I cannot think of having dinner at a restaurant better than this one in a long time.

It really was a lovely birthday and the weekend is not over yet. Later today, my PIL are coming for dinner and hubby is making us his (my) famous mushroom risotto...

Looks like this gastronomical weekend is not over yet! Yum!

Fned.