Fat Kid Abroad- Paris Day Five: Cheesy Breakfast & Snails

Day five was yet another epic food adventure day.

Started it off right with a home cooked breakfast- monte cristos (left) and croque monsieur (right).  Made by yours truly.  Not bad, eh? 

I came down with a bit of a head cold, so I stayed home for most of the day.  Towards the end of the day, I started to feel better, so I headed out with the rest of the group for dinner.

We tried to go to pub recommended to me by a friend from law school called "The Pure Malt" (link to come)...but alas, it was closed.  We arrived around typical late American happy hour (7pm-ish).  Either they are closed on Tuesdays or people get drinks after dinner (which is pretty late- earliest you can eat at a restaurant is 8pm).  We stumbled into another random brassiere and got super cheap beer with complimentary potatoes.  (Pictures to come.)

We then went on to Chez Papa (link to come)- this place was really, really, REALLY good.  For now I will just post the pictures with limited description, but just take my word: it was DE-LIC-IOUS.  Delicious.  Two stubby, fat kid thumbs up on this place.

Escargot (snails)!!!! It was awesome!

Foie gras.  I'm going to hell for eating this, but god it was so good.  Three different varieties.  

My dish: Rump steak with a blue cheese sauce and potatoes on the side.  

Nick's dish: (need to get the French name) beef stew amazingness with potatoes.  

Caitlin's Dish (Clint ordered the same thing): sirloin with pepper sauce.  

Billy's Dish: "salad" is a loose term for this.  It mostly consisted of meat, bread, and cheese.  

Dessert: creme caramel.  

Fat Kid Abroad- Paris Day 4: Family Breakfast

Our team coach finally arrived! To celebrate, we cooked an amazing family breakfast.

I cannot explain how flipping cute our little apartment is....so we needed to have a legit breakfast to celebrate family style.

Scrambled eggs, oranges, orange juice, sausage, bread, brie, jam, coffee, and breakfast potatoes.

Afterwards, we wandered around for a bit before Clint took us to a somewhat bizarre pig themed restaurant (name to come shortly).

As you can expect, they serve a lot of pork.  Including this "plate of pork," quite literally.

My favorite part was the free cookies:

(Note: more commentary and links to come.)

Paris Day Three: Sunday Sweets & Soup

I'm continuing to have a great time exploring Paris, especially the food.  Seriously considering abandoning the whole law school thing and simply attending cooking school here in France.  I have a few more days until I need to decide whether I come home or not. In the meantime, here are the quickly accumulating backlog of pictures documenting my food adventures.

(Note: For the sake of time, I'm simply throwing up the pictures with limited commentary.  Will go back through and edit more once I have a bit more time.)

Macaroons! My first ever legitimate macaroons!  They were delicious!

I got them from this lovely little pastry shop in the Montmarte neighborhood.  The most adorable French young woman waited on me.

I also got a madeline and another pastry (I can't remember the name right now!)- also fabulous. 

Caitlin ordered this yummy quiche- also delicious. 

Most of Paris shuts down on Sunday nights, so we had slim pickings for dinner.  We are staying in a pseudo-Japanese neighborhood (at least a neighborhood with a very high concentration of Japanese restaurants), so we got noodle soup for dinner- cold weather = soup.  Very tasty. 

Fat Kid Abroad- Paris Day 2: Chocolate Goodness

Paris adventures continue!  Jet lag took a toll on the group today, so we had a bit of a late start.  Despite this delay, we had many more food adventures as we wandered around Paris.

We started the day out right...by having lunch for breakfast.

Caitlin's cappuccino.  Looked delicious.

My shot of espresso.  Totally legit.

Tartine with goat cheese and apple butter.  Smelled it before I saw it coming- yep, it was super tasty.

Caitlin's quiche lorraine.  Had a nibble- confirmed that it was very good.

Nick's omelet.  I didn't try this, but he didn't leave a scrap of food on the plate, which means it must have been good.

Billy's Tartine Parisienne.  Salad with ham, cheese and tomato tartine.  Also very good.

While this was a great start to the day, the absolute favorite was the hot chocolate.

Heaven.  I'm guessing they simply melted a chocolate bar and served it in a mug.  I nearly licked every last drop out of the cup.  If you are ever in Paris, you need to check this place out.  They also served fantastic tea, but after the hot chocolate, it was difficult to remember anything else that came before or after we drank this pure goodness.

Spent the remainder of the day wandering around, stopping occasionally to grab a glass of wine to keep us powering through.  Still feels a bit surreal that I'm here in Paris.  Feel so lucky!

Fat Kid Abroad- Paris Day 1: Soup & Salad

Being a student is hard work, but it has it's perks.  Like when your school is willing to foot the bill for a trip to Paris.  For the purposes of representing the school in a legitimate international competition of course.  I can think of no better way to break a six month plus hiatus from blogging than for the purpose of bragging about sharing my food adventures abroad.

After a long travel day, we were relieved to finally arrive and get some grub into our bellies.  We weren't particularly discriminating when we chose Le Bis Repetita, but it was a lucky score.  

First up: soup 

Funny thing- French Onion Soup is also called French Onion Soup in France.  They probably called it another thing on the French menu, but at least on the English menu, they referred to it by this name.  No matter what you call it, it was delicious.  Exactly what I wanted and need- crusted over with a nice seal of cheese, a big thick slice of bread, and oh-so-wonderful caramelized onions.  So flippin' good.  

Next course: salad

They called this Fried Goat Cheese Salad.  They wrapped goat cheese in phyllo dough and fried it.  The salad came with three of these cheesy triangles of goodness.  The salad greens themselves were relatively basic, but very fresh.  Topped off with a simple vinaigrette. 

   

All so good.  It's ok to be jealous. 

I'll be in Paris for the next two weeks, spending a few days in Portugal before heading back to 'merica.  Any suggestions on places to try or specific kinds of food to eat?  

And Then I Got Pie....

I love me some pie. Particularly apple and berry pie. So when I heard about Chile Pies & Ice Cream on one of the food channels, I put it on my "to eat" list.  Some people have "to do" lists or bucket lists- this girl has a "to eat" list. Because this place is a little bit off the beaten path, it took me awhile to get to this item on my prized list.

Thanks to my roomie renting a car for the weekend, I finally got a chance to try this place...and it was worth the wait.

Here are the deets: this place is known for putting unique ingredients in otherwise traditional flavors of pie.  For example, they put green chili and cheddar cheese in the crust of their apple pie.  Might sound weird, but these unique ingredients really compliment the traditional flavors of the pie.

Here's the apple pie with a scoop of Three Twins Organic Vanilla Ice Cream.  Fabulous- absolutely exceeded my expectations.  Great crumble topping, nice flaky crust with a pit of a kick of spice from the chili (not spicy by any means, just a little bite of flavor).

The ice cream was super tasty.  You can tell they make the ice cream from real vanilla beans.  Super creamy.  I have heard rave reviews of Three Twins before, but have never had a chance to actually try them.  Added them to my "to eat" list.  A little pricey at $8, but the portion size is very generous, so you can split with a friend and still walk away happy.

Chile Pies has both sweet and savory pies.  I figured I had to try both varieties...you know, for my blog.  

Somewhat blindly, I ordered the frito chili pie.  There was a bit of a crowd in the store at the time, everyone seemed a bit confused and there was no clear line.  Caught up in the chaos, I started to panic that I wasn't going to get food.  When I finally caught the staff member's eye, I desperately pointed to the frito pie on the menu without really knowing what I was ordering, afraid that if I didn't order now, I was never going to eat.  Ever.  I'm a bit over-dramatic, but hey, I was super excited about this pie adventure and didn't want anything to screw it up.  

Back to the frito pie...

  

The ingredients were pretty simple.  They simply opened up a bag of frito chips, poured some vegetarian chili on top (they have meat chili available too), topped it will yummy ingredients and you are good to go.  Simple but very good.  My only complaint is that it was pretty pricey for what it is.  At $6 a pop, I expected something more (organic, locally sourced corn chips...I don't know).  

One of my friends ordered a chicken pot pie...

She cleaned her plate, so I am guessing that it was good.  Again, great crust, yummy insides and a nice serving of gravy on the side.  Perfect for a cool fall afternoon. 

In addition to pie, they had two varieties chili and stew available by the cup or the bowl.  If you order by the bowl, you get a yummy looking corn muffin.  Looked and smelled good, so I plan to order this next time. 

You can order a whole pie or by the slice.  Each day, the selection of pie changes, but I think they always have their signature green chile apple pie.  

Overall, definitely worth checking out.  Two chubby thumbs up from this fat kid.  

FK Lunch Adventures: Rico's Diner

Rico's Diner, a photo by bbarneclo on Flickr.

Although I am proud of my gastronomic identity, it sometimes takes me a little while to come out.  You never know how a person might react.  Case in point: it took me eight weeks out of my ten week summer internship to disclose that I was a Fat Kid to my fellow interns.  They were deeply offended by my lack of trust, but were immediately supportive of my lifestyle.  I suspect that a few also identify as a Fat Kid, but aren't quite ready to come out publicly.  Some seem a bit nervous about using the label Fat Kid in particular and, out of an abundance of caution, avoid this seemingly pejorative term and instead refer to our joint lunch-time food adventures as FK outings.

For our first official FK outing, we ventured a few blocks over to Rico's Diner.  The place is your typical greasy spoon diner, but with a unique twist.  They offer a substantial vegan/vegetarian menu with a wide variety of traditional diner dishes.

They are probably most known for their vegan pulled pork.  Honestly, if I didn't know it was vegan, I would have thought it was regular pulled pork.  Pretty tasty and incredibly convincing.

I went the opposite direction and had a bacon cheeseburger.  Substituted the beef burger for a turkey one instead.  In the moment, I felt like this decision made dish slightly more healthy.  It's all relative, right? Good bacon, nice and crispy.  Turkey burger was also good- flavorful and moist.  Sometimes turkey burgers are dry and have no taste, but Rico's seemed to get it right.  I just wish they offered blue cheese instead of cheddar- goes better with bacon.  On the bottom right hand corner of the picture, you see the hit of the whole lunch- SWEET POTATO TATER TOTS!!!!! A-maz-ing.  Seriously, it was worth going there just for these.  Dipped in a little bit of ranch dressing- fat kid heaven.

Last dish, traditional burger with sweet potato fries.  I didn't try this dish, but my coworker gave the thumbs up.  Sweet potato fries were a hit.  (If you can't tell, I'm a sucker for sweet potato fried goodness.)

Rico's also has legendary milkshakes.  We didn't try them, but I plan on going back for dessert (and tater tots) sometimes soon.  Will update when I do.

Not my pictures (grabbed it from flickr) but you can see what you might expect.  Similar to the food menu, they offer both regular and vegan shakes.  When we were there, I saw a blueberry shake offered- must try.

In addition to lunch options, Rico's also offers traditional diner breakfast dishes.

Country fried stake and eggs.

Biscuits and gravy.


French toast sticks, ham, potatoes and fried eggs.


Tofu scramble.

In addition to the food, the place is super cute.






Love the cartoons on the windows.








If you are in Downtown Oakland and/or are vegan/vegetarian, this place is definitely worth a try.