Parisians Don't Understand BBQ

Other than my daughter Autumn the thing I miss most about the United States is cooking outside over fire and smoke. Americans didn't invent BBQ but you could certainly argue that we perfected the art.

Before I continue I have to explain something that even a lot of folks in the U.S. don't understand. When you take a nice piece of steak and cook it directly over hot coals, you are NOT barbecuing, you are "grilling".  And that piece of cookware you find in almost every backyard is not a BBQ it's a GRILL. (It's sometimes referred to as a "Barbecue Grill" which is probably okay because it's possible to cook barbecue on a grill. You just have to put your coals on one side and your meat on the other...)

This steak is being grilled on a charcoal grill (not being BBQed on a BBQ)

So if cooking steak, chicken, and other meats and vegetables over direct heat is grilling, you ask, then what is barbecuing?  Basically, it's taking a big hunk of tough meat and cooking it over indirect heat for many hours until it gets tender and juicy.  If you've never had real barbecue you don't know what you are missing!

It's unclear where the term "barbecue" originated, but it is generally believed that when the Spanish landed in the Caribbean back in the 1400's they used the word "barbacoa" to describe the native's method of slow-cooking meat hung over wood platforms.

Some believe that southern U.S. slaves perfected barbecue because they were only given the worst/toughest cuts of meat by their masters.  The slaves discovered that slow cooking these cuts of meat over wood fires not only made it tender, the meat took on a delicious smoky flavor.

When you cook a brisket for 16 to 18 hours it will almost fall apart in your hands.

Recently, we took my parents to a restaurant called "Terroir Parisian" for dinner.  While we were there we noticed that, on sunny days, customers can choose a "BBQ" option where they get to cook their meat outside at special tables.  Like any annoying "expert", who is always way too eager to show everyone how much he knows about some obscure subject, I just shook my head and said knowingly, "That's GRILLING and not BBQing... but whatever."

It was beautiful here on Friday so Melanie and I decided to give French BBQ a try.  We anticipated something like this:

A table with a charcoal grill built into it

Instead, we were seated at a small round table with a... well... a big electric hot plate in the middle. We assumed we'd be cooking our food on the hot plate, but no.  The waiter brought out a metal frying pan to put on the hot plate.

So not only was it not BBQing... it wasn't even grilling.  It was more like... outdoor frying.

French BBQ

Melanie and I sort of laughed about the whole thing, but honestly it was hard to complain too much. It was a beautiful night and the duck, chicken and steak were seasoned perfectly, and so tender we could cut everything with our forks.  Was it grilled?  No.  Was it smoky?  No.  Was it delicious?  Absolutely!

NOTE:  My buddy Steve told me that Paris has a very good BBQ joint called "The Beast". We're going to check it out later this summer and I'll report back!

More Pictures from Ventimiglia

Italy is such a beautiful country I decided to post a few more pics from last weekend's visit:

Ventimiglia. ("Old Town" is up on the hillside)

Before we left Old Town we saw a family eating lunch here, at a long table in the street

Some believe that Julius Caesar once stayed in Ventimiglia

I held my iPhone up to my sunglasses and took this shot of the beach near our hotel room

Imagine the stories these walls could tell...

Oratorio dei Neri was constructed in 1650. It was the headquarters of the Society of Mercy.

I took this shot while on an early morning walk near our hotel

So much history and atmosphere...

I took a lot of pictures of the narrow pathways... They were fascinating!

We loved our brief taste of Italy and we're anxious to return soon!

Italy for the Weekend!

One huge perk about living and working in Europe is that there are ample opportunities to travel. Not only do employees in France get 5 or more weeks of vacation time, but nearby countries like England, Belgium, Germany, and Spain are a relatively short (and inexpensive) train or plane ride away.

A few days after my parents left Paris, my wife suddenly blurted out, "We have always wanted to see Italy -- let's go...  next weekend".

Now, traveling to another country... for the weekend... is an incredibly strange concept for us Americans. Unless you live really close to Mexico or Canada NO ONE does that. And even if you live close, crossing the border and back is such a hassle that it's just not a very common occurrence. (And besides, no one wants to go to the border towns in Mexico.  And Canada is so much like the U.S. what's the point?)

I couldn't think of a single reason NOT to go to Italy for the weekend, so I said, "Yeah, let's do it!"

It's amazing how often impetuous decisions get derailed. Something happens, or you start to get cold feet, or you need more time to plan, and suddenly that thing you were going do next weekend becomes that thing you are going to do in a few months.  Or that thing you never actually wind up doing.  Well, I didn't want that to happen this time so the next day I started researching.

After browsing the web, and talking to some friends at work, I created a list of amazing looking Italian cities to visit. Melanie wanted to take a train and when I charted out the routes I realized that some of the places were going to require five or six transfers! Not ideal for a long weekend.

The first stop for most of the routes was an Italian coastal town called "Ventimiglia", so I decided we should just go there.  A travel website said "Hotel Kaly" was one of the best hotels so I found a room with an ocean view and booked it.

When I got home that night I nervously told Melanie what I had done and she replied, "Well... I guess we're going to Italy for the weekend."

I said, "Yep".  And that was that.

A few days before our scheduled departure we started to get nervous.  Melanie texted me at work to let me know that Ventimiglia has a huge pickpocket problem.  Then I read some bad reviews about the hotel, including one that said, "We were promised a room with an ocean view and we didn't get one.  The hotel didn't even comp us, they just kind of shrugged and said, 'Well, watta ya gonna do?'" Other reviews and friends said, "Don't go to Ventimiglia, it's terrible."

We were starting to think we had messed up our dream trip to Italy; but we already had our tickets and a room reservation, so it was too late to change our minds.

On Friday morning we took an Uber car to the train station and apprehensively began our adventure.

The Gare de Lyon train station handles over 90 million passengers a year!

After a 6 hour train ride, at speeds up to 300 km per hour, we arrived in Nice, France.

France is a very beautiful country. We saw lots of quaint villages from the train.

Stupidly, we didn't think to bring water or snacks, so we were both dehydrated, starving, and cranky by the time we got off the train.  Naturally, life likes to pick those moments to mess with you.

We only had a 15 minute layover before our next train but the monitors didn't have a gate listed and there was no one in the terminal to tell us where to go next.  We could see the letters "t e r" on the monitors, so we slogged our way to the T gate on the other side of the station -- but it clearly wasn't in use any more.

At long last we found a young guy who worked at the station and we tried to ask him for assistance. He was totally disinterested in helping us and kept shrugging his shoulders and saying, "I don't know."  We persisted so he stomped over to a monitor and said in broken English, "No gate!"

We eventually found someone else and he told us to go to gate "G".  So we dragged our stuff over to gate G and waited.  And waited.  There was another passenger there too and we asked her, "Ventimiglia"?  She said, "Yes, but the train should have been here by now."  We watched her bag while she headed off to look for help.  When she returned she was shaking her head, "They just told me to go to "D".  So we loaded up our stuff, went back into the tunnel and found the "D" gate.  There was a train there when we arrived and Melanie and I started to get on it, but the woman called after us, "NO!  NO!  Wrong train!"  Apparently, the monitor was now saying gate "B" was correct.  (I wonder where we would've ended up if that woman hadn't said something?)

So we trudged off to B, hungry, dehydrated, and even crankier than before.  A few minutes later a train pulled up behind us and fortunately Melanie looked up at one of the monitors nearby because it was OUR train... at gate C.  They had moved it AGAIN.

About 40 minutes later we arrived at Vintimille station.  We were in Italy!

We found a cab and directed the driver to take us to our hotel.  We held our breath when we opened the door...  YES!  As promised, our room had a wonderful view of the ocean.

The view from our balcony.

I had made dinner reservations at a highly rated restaurant called "Il Giardino del Gusto".  It was delightful, and we had a fantastic meal.  (Though we both admitted later that nothing really blew our socks off... except the wine.  The wine was incredible!!)

We arrived at 9:00 PM and the restaurant was empty. (Really elegant, right?) 

Cantaloupe and nasturtium sorbet over goat cheese.

Liver terrine and solid gazpacho over a white wine gelée, with herbed crackers

Squid ink pasta with caramelized squid meat

We had about 4 appetizers, 2 main dishes, and a dessert, and I took careful notes on each and every one.  However, remember when I said how good the wine was?  Yeah, it was so good we ordered another bottle.  So my notes go from really detailed to completely indecipherable.  (Unless we really DID eat "eggplat witch potatoor moonshine" and "rabbi olfal ard mashrons".)

Saturday morning was a bit of a blur (literally) but we apparently took a walk down to the beach.

It was a gorgeous day! (That's Monaco, France on the left.)

Melanie loved this little wading pool.

We ate at a restaurant on the beach and I had my first taste of true Italian pizza.  It was divine.

Here's a custom I'll never understand... Europeans eat their pizza with a knife and fork!

Every pizzeria we saw had its own wood fueled pizza oven!

Saturday night we had dinner at a restaurant called "Pasta e Basta".  It was amazing.  First, you choose the kind of fresh pasta you want, then you get to pick from a very large number of different sauces and ingredients.

Hand rolled strazzapreti pasta with tomatoes, bacon, and chopped basil 

I woke up early Sunday morning and went for a walk on the beach.

The beaches along the French and Italian coastline are rocky, and don't have much sand.  People lay on them anyway.

I managed to take this picture just as a wave crashed into the rocks

I got back to the room and told Melanie that I wanted to visit the old part of Ventimiglia, up on the hillside.  She was NOT enthusiastic about that idea and told me later that the only reason she didn't try to talk me out of it was because it was Father's Day.

What an amazing place!  We were both super glad we came.

We felt like we had been transported back in time.

Parts of Ventimiglia are more than 1000 years old!

At one point I saw a small tunnel with a path, leading up a hill. We decided to follow it.

The tunnel opened up and we had a breathtaking view of the ocean, and a door (right).

Melanie took this picture of the door at the end of the path.

What a weekend!  Melanie and I feel so fortunate right now.  A year ago we had a bunch of debt, an overwhelming amount of work that needed to be done on the house and yard, and we spent most of our time watching TV while sitting on the couch.  Now we're free of all that... and taking weekend trips to Italy!

We're both afraid we're going to wake up back in Seattle and realize that this has all been a really nice dream.  Well, if it's just a dream I hope I don't wake up any time soon...

They Fought to Liberate

Dad has always wanted to see the site of the allied invasion of Normandy during World War II, so I booked a bus tour for all four of us, that left early in the morning on May 31st. We thought we would be able to find a cab, and we didn't expect it to be raining; unfortunately, we were wrong on both counts, so by the time we got to the bus stop we were all drenched... especially Melanie who didn't have a coat.

When they finally let us board the bus we noticed a young man trying to get off.  He wouldn't speak to anyone and he seemed a little agitated, but none of us thought anything about it.  A few minutes later our tour guide got on the bus and almost immediately realized that her purse was missing. We all felt bad for her, but I almost had to smile when I heard her repeatedly mutter, "Oooh la la" and "Mon dieu..."  (Just seemed like such a stereotypical thing to say -- didn't realize that real French people actually talked like that.)

The original tour guide couldn't take us to Normandy so the company had to bring in someone else. Took awhile for the new guide to arrive, and when he did you could tell he wasn't very happy. Fortunately, he was VERY knowledgeable and after he resigned himself to his new assignment he proved a very good guide.

This map, at the Normandy American Cemetery, shows the beach landings and the development of the beachead

CAEN MUSEUM
Our first stop was a museum in the town of Caen. They had a lot of interesting WWII artifacts on display and we got to see an interesting split-screen documentary.  (One side showed the allied invasion, and the other showed the same thing, only from the German side.)

Included with our tickets was a pretty tasty lunch featuring regional cuisine.  (They even had a free bottle of wine at every table!)

Mom and Dad having lunch at the museum. Dad's hat reflects his status as a veteran of the Korean war.

POINTE DU HOC
Our first stop after the museum was Pointe du Hoc, a promontory with a 100 ft (30 m) cliff overlooking the English Channel. During World War II it was the highest point between Utah Beach to the west and Omaha Beach to the east. The German army fortified the area with concrete casements and gun pits. On D-Day (6 June 1944) the United States Army Ranger Assault Group assaulted and captured Pointe du Hoc after scaling the cliffs.

The plan called for the three companies of Rangers to be landed by sea at the foot of the cliffs, scale them
using ropes, ladders, and grapples whilst under enemy fire, and engage the enemy at the top of the cliff.

It was hard to imagine the bravery that took place here...

As we were walking back to the bus I noticed some small children rolling down the sides of a large grassy hole. It wasn't until the tour guide talked about the extensive aerial bombing at Pointe du Hoc that I realized I had been looking at a bomb crater!  Made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

OMAHA BEACH
According to wikipedia: Omaha was the code name for one of the five sectors of the Allied invasion. Omaha is 8 kilometers (5 mi) long, from east of Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes to west of Vierville-sur-Mer on the right bank of the Douve River estuary.

2,000 men were killed here, and another 1000 were injured.

Many soldiers drowned at Omaha when they got off the boats in deep water wearing heavy backpacks

JUNO BEACH
Juno beach was defended by two battalions of the German 716th Infantry Division, with elements of the 21st Panzer Division held in reserve near Caen.

340 dead
574 wounded
47 captured

The objectives at Juno were to seize the Carpiquet airport west of Caen, and form a
link between the two British beaches of Gold and Sword on either side of the beach here.

NORMANDY AMERICAN CEMETERY
The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial is a World War II cemetery and memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, that honors American troops who died in Europe during World War II.  

It's a truly remarkable and obviously very sobering place to visit.

The grounds were impeccably well maintained

 The cemetery covers 172 acres and contains the remains of 9,387 American military dead

Unidentified soldiers received tombstones like this one

Rest in peace, gentlemen.

A Visit from the Folks

I've been trying to put up one or two blog posts every weekend, but I missed the last couple of opportunities because my parents were visiting from Colorado.  They left on Tuesday so I'm hopefully going to return to my former rhythm, starting today!

(My Dad kissed a French guy -- but more on that in a bit...)

My parents have been to Paris before, with a big tour group, and to be honest I don't think they were overly impressed.  In fact, when I broke the news that Melanie and I were moving here Dad was excited for us, but he admitted that he found the people cold, arrogant, and frequently rude. That, of course, hasn't been our experience at all, so we were excited to show them the Paris we know.

Here are some fun moments from the last few weeks:

Trip to the Louvre

Melanie's knees have been bothering her, so she skipped this outing.  We focused mainly on the Egyptian exhibit, but I was also keen to show them some of the beautiful sculpture gardens.  I think they had a great time, though we were all pretty tired by the time we left.

Of note that day was a change to the famous pyramid!  A street artist who goes by the name "JR" was allowed to put a mural on the front of the pyramid:

When we arrived at the Louvre, the famous pyramid was covered with a black and white mural.

Here's how it looked from the middle of the square. Pretty cool, huh?

Eat, Eat, Eat

We had some amazingly delicious meals while Mom and Dad were here, including a couple that Melanie cooked at home!  We even found some new favorite restaurants, including:

PHILOU

This modern bistro in the 10th district always seems to get great reviews and Melanie and I have been meaning to try it for ages.  We were not disappointed!  The food was outstanding, and the young woman who waited on us was infectiously bubbly and jaunty.  (No arrogance or rudeness here!)

We might have to become regulars at this place

TERROIR PARISIEN

This Yannick Alléno bistro is only a few blocks from our apartment, and we had a really delicious dinner here.  (Mr. Alléno is a 3 Michelin star chef!)  Melanie and I both had steak and they were some of the best we've had in Paris!  For dessert we ordered a French dish called pain perdu which is basically just a gourmet version of French Toast, only in this case made with brioche and served with ice cream. Yum!!

Terroir Parisien is at the base of Palais Brongniart, otherwise known as Bourse, the historic Paris stock exchange!

LE MESTURET
This was another local bistro which Melanie and I discovered while out walking one day.  She kept urging me to go there and I'm glad I finally listened to her.  The food was very good and it must be popular because it was packed on a Sunday night.  (In fact, an orchestra or band came in at one point, carrying their instruments.  Apparently, they play at the restaurant sometimes.)

The "Mobile Food Guide" wrote:

Situated in the heart of Paris not far from the Louvre museum is a charming classic Parisian bistro called Le Mesturet where Alain Fontaine the owner, together with his head chef Pascal Brot have created a delightful place for lunch and dinner. The interior is warmly decorated in an old Paris style with treasures gleaned from the local flea markets and it is a popular destination for both locals and tourists.

My sweetbread salad, with tomato and cilantro mousse, was delicious!

Here is a picture of Melanie's chilled zucchini soup with fresh mint and garlic croutons

Drink, Drink, Drink

Naturally, there was a fair amount of drinking while Mom and Dad were visiting.  (Though I should note that, after having some stomach issues a few years ago, my Mom rarely drinks alcohol anymore.)  

Highlights include:

SUZE

After a little cajoling we were able to get Mom to try a taste of Suze, a famous French aperitif.  If you've never tried it, Suze is a really strange experience.  When you take your first sip it seems quite sweet, but after a few seconds it gets pretty bitter, like some kind of wood polish.  Needless to say, Mom didn't like it... which is always kind of entertaining because she always gets this look on her face like a little kid eating something sour for the first time:

Mom always gets this look on her face when she tastes something she doesn't like

HARRY'S AMERICAN BAR
Melanie and I recently discovered an historic Paris bar pretty close to our house, so I took my folks there one afternoon.  Mom just had water but Dad wanted to try a Bloody Mary, as this drink was apparently invented by Harry himself.  It was good, so he ordered another one.  Next thing I know, Dad is introducing himself to a French businessman at the counter and when the guy tried to shake his hand my conservative engineer father announced, "Let's do it the Paris way!" And he promptly leaned over and kissed the guy on both cheeks!

GRABBING A BEER WITH DAD
After a long day of sightseeing we all headed back to the apartment.  Melanie was cooking dinner that night so I invited Dad down to the corner bistro to have a beer.  We had a great time watching the people walk by and he told me some great stories about when he was a young man.

Hearing Dad's stories was a nice bonding moment, and it made me realize that kids, even as adults, are often kind of self-centered.  In my 20's almost all my phone calls home centered on MY accomplishments, and the things going on in MY life.  (Conversely, most of the conversations with my daughter are about the things going on in HER life.)  I think that's just the natural order of things... but now that I'm older I'm asking more questions and I'm genuinely excited to learn more about my parents, especially the things they did and thought about when they were younger.

* * *

I think Mom and Dad had a really nice visit, and I hope we gave them insight into a different side of Paris than the one they glimpsed before.

It was hard to say goodbye (Melanie cried), and we're already excited for them to come back soon for another visit!