My family isn’t one too try new types of food. Strike that. My Mom and Dad aren’t so hip to trying “strange” cuisine. Although I wouldn’t classify French food as inherently “strange,” unless it’s a grilled chicken salad (my Mom), or is sausage-based (my Dad), my parents won’t touch it. I’m actually writing this as I’m in the car while traveling with them in France, and they aren’t too pleased after I just now read that sentence aloud. But for the most part, it’s pretty true. So before we began our trip to France, I knew we wouldn’t be eating too much authentic French food… little did I know just how bad we’d be. As the title suggests, I was in France for four whole days, and didn't even have a bite of anything remotely French. As I though about it, I realized how sad that truly is. So now I will attempt to dissect and justify this lack of authentic food in order to make myself feel better:
Meal 1: McDonald's. I can kind of defend this one. We had been driving for a long time as we went from Madrid up into France and it was late, so we just needed to get something quickly. My brother did try the “Le M,” a special French McDonalds hamburger, but it still doesn’t count. I wasn’t too discouraged after this one…
Meal 2: McDonald's… again. This one I can justify too. We needed to use some Wifi to book a hotel for the night, and most of the McDonalds here have free Internet. I was getting a little discouraged after this one, but I knew we didn’t have much of a choice.
Meal 3: Chinese. Believe it or not, this I can rationalize too. It was Christmas Eve, and not much was open. Plus, I don’t think we’d be a good half-Jewish family (can you be a half a religion?) if we didn’t eat Chinese on either Christmas Eve or Christmas day. No... we didn't see a movie (none had films in English), but we sure as heck tried hard to find one.
Meal 4: Supermarket. I suppose this one could be considered somewhat “French,” as we did buy some croissants. But when you make peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches out of them, I think it pretty much nullifies all French cultural value. We also bought Coco Crispies and Honey Nut Cheerios; not even the French brands, they were straight up American boxes of sugary cereal! Though we did do this because restaurants weren't open Christmas day, so I suppose this is justifiable too.
Meal 5: Italian. Now this one, I just can’t justify at all. It was our first real shot at eating some French food, as we had just gotten to Paris and most every restaurant was open. After about 20 minutes of looking at menus and not seeing stuff everyone in the family would eat, we got frustrated and went to an Italian restaurant. At this point, I started to become truly worried we wouldn’t have a single bite of French food in France.
Meal 6: Sorta half French food? We had some crepes!!! This was a step in the right direction, but I wouldn’t be satisfied until I had some snails sitting in front of me…
Meal 7: Tex-Mex. Picking restaurants is somewhat of a problem with my family. We can never find somewhere where everyone will be happy, so we eventually decide that we’ll just take turns picking the restaurant. This one, my dad chose. We had just gotten out of the Lourve, and I was ready for some French onion soup, escargot, wine and foie gras… but alas, tacos it was.
Meal 8: French food… finally! It wasn’t until five days into France that we sat down at a real French restaurant. I know, eight meals in five days doesn’t really add up, but I think I may have missed a few McDonalds meals somewhere in there. My brother and I finally dragged my parents to “Le Tango du Chat” (which, I believe translates into “Authentic French Restaurant"). I finally tried a snail (even though I’m a vegetarian, I couldn’t not at least try escargot in France), and had some tasty French cheese. We had finally had French food, and I was content.
Meal 9: McDonald's:( Yes, I we left McDonalds again. I can feel the fries in my belly as I type. Terrible right? Here, they just call them “Frites,” so I can’t even try and argue that we ate “French Fries.” Oh well, at least we had French food once…
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.