Our First Dinner Date! And Rue Montorgueil

After things had started to settle down a bit after the move and me starting work Lindsey and I finally decided to go out and explore places to eat. Since I was working 80+ hours a week and Lindsey was focusing on learning French, it left her with some extra time to explore Paris. She had done a bit more research than me about areas of Paris and had discover Rue Montorgueil, which is a really nice area near Les Halles in the 2nd Arr. She end up making reservations for us at L’Hédoniste. The dinner was almost a year ago now so I don’t remember everything we had but I do remember it being really good! It seems to be easier to find bad restaurants in Paris than good ones so I was pretty excited to have a nice meal! The space is great, romantic with the type of decor that makes you feel like you really are in Paris. I had just received my first paycheck from L’Arpege too so we decided to splurge on the wine a little. All in all it was great fun and I really recommend checking out the restaurant. They offer a formule for lunch and the menu is pocketbook friendly.

Lindsey at L’Hedoniste

Desert at L’Hedoniste

Everywhere

The L’Arpege Team

Rue Montorgueil is a great area for walking around. Lined with restaurants, cafés, bakeries, fish stores, cheese shops, wine shops, produce stands and flower shops you really can find it all. I also love it because it’s really close to the best Kitchen supply stores in Paris! E. Dehillerin, La Bovida, A. Simon! These are MY favorite places. Granted, they can be on the pricey side for kitchen ware, they do have some some really great stuff! There’s also some other cool stores around there, Kilawatch being one of my wife’s favorites! You could easily spend a great afternoon in this fun part of Paris!

Here’s some links to the places I mentioned.

http://www.lhedoniste.com

http://www.e-dehillerin.fr/en/index.php

http://www.labovida.com

http://espacekiliwatch.fr

Modernist Cuisine in Paris

So a while back I purchased the Modernist Cuisine series thinking that I would have a lot of time to try out and cook through many of the recipes in the books. Little did I know how daunting of a task that could be. After all, I don’t have an oven in my apartment…

Modernist Cuisine

I’ve tried a couple recipes from the book and through working at Arpege and Agape have seen some of the other recipes come together in one form or another. Once Modernist Cuisine at Home came out, I quickly ordered it. I figured I would try to go through that book first while I accumulate more of the tools needed for some of the bigger projects.

Caramelized Carrot Soup

Modernist Cuisine

Chicken stock on the stove

Finished chicken stock

My wife likes to make soups at home since she can make them in big batches and have something to eat for a few days so I decided to help her out and make a double batch of the Pressure Cooked Chicken Stock. I was amazed at how beautiful it turned out after only an hour and half. Especially since I am used to simmering chicken stock for around 6-8 hours. Then, this morning my wife received a call from some friends we were planning to have dinner with asking if we would be up for just doing a dinner at their place instead. I’ve made the Caramelized Carrot Soup recipe a couple of times before and since my Mom happens to be in town visiting I figured that I would make that for the dinner and swap out some of the carrot juice for some chicken stock. Both recipes are really great go-to’s! The carrot soup is quick to put together and although the chicken stock can get expensive, especially here in France where chicken is more expensive than in the states, it really does make a great stock!

Caramelized Carrot Soup

I’m not going to be posting the recipes for these since they’re not mine and can be found in the books.

Justin

P.S. I’m going to change things around once I figure out how to edit these posts better. Thanks for your patience:)

We Have Arrived!

My wife!!

The Eiffel Tower

On September 9th of 2011 my wife and I and our dog Oliver arrived in Paris. We had decide to spend at least 1 year in Paris after we got married to spend some time with my family over here as well as travel around Europe and see the site and to see if we might find something that we would really enjoy. We took a taxi to the apartment that we are renting from a friend of my mothers to drop our things off and begin to get situated. Pascal, our landlord, was at the apartment waiting for us. He showed us around the place and was sure to point out the view of the Effiel Tower from our balcony! After that we went to lunch. We were pretty excited that Oliver was allowed to come with us so things were so far, going great! I’ll always remember that first meal we had in France after our move hear. Lindsey ordered Steak Frites and ended up sending it back, twice, for being undercooked. We went back to our apartment and got in touch with family and started to settle in.

Since some of my family couldn’t make it to our wedding in the states we were having a wedding celebration at my grandmother’s country home up north near Le Touquet. My mom, my sister and her family, Lindsey’s brother Greg and a his friend Sloan as well as our friend Chris were all flying in for the event.

Once we were all together up north preperations were under way for the party. My grandmother has an amazing dish that’s she has prepared on numerous occasions where she cooks whole legs of lamb in the fireplace. It’s a beautiful dish and makes the house smell fantastic! After the party Chris, Greg and my sister Jess left and Lindsey, my mother and I headed back to Paris because I had a meeting set up with Alain Passard of the famous 3 Michelin star L’Arpege!

I ended up getting the job and would be starting a couple of weeks later! Lindsey and I ended up spending some more time with my family in the meantime. Our first couple of weeks had flown by and already I had a full time job and Lindsey was signed up for French classes! Not a bad start!

Hello world! Welcome to my blog!

This here is going to be my blog about my life here in Paris. I’ve got a lot of stories and photos so far since I’ve been living here for over a year now. I’m looking forward to sharing these stories with you as well as using this blog as a reason to go out and do things that I’ve been wanting to do since my wife and I moved here. Tomorrow, a post about my amazing family and the wedding celebration that we had at my grandmother’s amazing house in the country!

Welcome to a modern man’s take on the city of lights!

Happy reading!