It’s our first night in Paris. We arrived earlier today, and we’ve managed to stay awake long enough to take a walk, see the immediate neighborhood, and settle into the restaurant we’re in now. The restaurant, Aux Crus de Bougogne, specializes in Burgundian cuisine, so my beautiful and demure Better Half ordered beef bourguignon. I ordered tagliatelle carbonara.
We were waiting for our dinners to arrive, enjoying the atmosphere inside this very comfortable restaurant. It was still early for dinner here, so the restaurant wasn’t very busy. Everything was peaceful and quiet, except for some giggling coming from a table close to ours.
When you hear giggling like that, you can’t help but glance over to see what’s so funny. The giggling was coming from two Asian girls seated at the table. They spoke English. We all started talking, and came to discover that the giggling was about them reading the menu and trying to pronounce “fois gras.” The next thing we knew, we were engaged in a french lesson, trying to teach them how to say “fois gras.”
“Fois gras” isn’t the most difficult french expression to pronounce, but I suppose it isn’t the easiest, either. The pronunciation sounds like “fwa-grah,” which is close enough for us tourist types. When the French say it, though, they do something special with the “gr” sound. I don’t how to capture it in print, but it sounds like it must come from way in the back of the tongue, like maybe halfway down to your stomach. (We’re not going to try it now because we might hurt ourselves).
I was just shooting for getting them to be able to say “fois gras” the tourist way, but apparently there was no way in the world they could make the right sounds. Everything that came out of their mouths sounded very far eastern. It was pretty hilarious, and after awhile we all had the giggles.
Dinner is Served!
When our dinners arrived, my wife’s beef bourguignon looked awesome, but I’m sure I did a double-take when I saw my tagliatelle carbonara.
It’s really easy to make pasta carbonara. First, cook some pasta – tagliatelle, spaghetti, whatever – in a pot of boiling water. Drain it and set it aside. While you’re doing that, chop up some bacon or pancetta and fry it up. When it’s ready, take the bacon or pancetta out and pour most of the grease out of the pan. Put the pasta into the pan you fried the bacon in. Add the bacon back in. Mix it all up. Turn off the burner.
Then add a raw egg, or maybe just the yolk, on top of the pasta and bacon in the pan, and mix it all around. The heat from the pasta will cook the egg in no time. No fire needed under the pan. Then toss in a good-sized handful of grated parmesan cheese and mix it in with the pasta, bacon, and egg. Bing bang boom – that’s it. Put it on a plate and eat it up.
The interesting thing about the tagliatelle carbonara that I ordered was the presentation. It arrived at the table as a plate full of tagliatelle and pancetta with an egg yolk sitting in a half-egg shell on top, waiting for someone to come along and mix it in. A container of grated parmesan was also provided, so the final mixing of the dish is done by you, adding the parmesan to your liking. It was so good!
I’ll bet they’ve figured out that with pasta carbonara, the sooner you eat it after the egg and parmesan are mixed in, the better it tastes. They pay attention to stuff like that in this neck of the woods. So they’ve optimized it accordingly by having the customer mix it themselves and then eat it immediately. Plus, this way you can put in more or less parmesan as you like. Serving it this way also has a good “wow!” effect when it shows up at the table.
When it was time for dessert, we were too full and too tired to order anything, but the two Asian girls weren’t going to miss out. However, it appeared that they were going to need some assistance once again.
They pointed to what they wanted to order – “mille feuille.” “Mille feuille!?” Couldn’t they find anything on the menu that was harder to pronounce? We all laughed, because there was no way they were ever going to come close to being able to pronounce “mille feuille.”
We could have had some fun with that one, but by this time my beautiful and demure better half and I had hit the wall, and the only other thing we could think of was hitting was the sack, so I advised them to just hold up the menu, point to the mille feuille, and say “bring us this thing right here!”
When the mille feuille showed up, it was a thing of beauty – a work of dessert art. “Mille feuille” means “thousand layers” in english. It’s a pastry that might have just a few, or sometimes quite a few layers. The layers alternate between puff pastry or cake, then pastry cream, whipped cream, or maybe some kind of jam, or maybe chocolate. Layer after layer… pastry, chocolate, pastry, chocolate, pastry, chocolate, pastry, chocolate… Mmmmm!
To be continued…
For more detailed information about Montorgueil or the Aux Crus de Bourgogne restaurant, see the Travel Notes, Montorgueil page.
Photo Credits: Aux Crus de Bourgogne restaurant featured image: http://parismissives.blogspot.com/2016_05_01_archive.html
