ooh-la-blah

i know i may hear it from my foodie friends, but i can say without hesitation that the only part of our paris weekend that disappointed us was the food.

apparently we just don't care for french cuisine. going out to eat was the only part of the day we dreaded and each meal was as disappointing as the previous.

the only thing i did love was the ice cream scoop (salted butter caramel) i had at the royal garden. it was probably the best ice cream i've ever had and that is saying a lot since we just went to the "land of gelato" last weekend.

listen, we've been to fancy french restaurants all the way down to the crepe we ate by the eiffel tower...our obviously unsophisticated palates were just not impressed.

i'm not sure anyone can go to paris and not fantasize about living there, but each time my daydream began i kept asking myself if i could really live off croissants and ice cream alone.

let them eat cake? okay, because the rest of it isn't very good anyway.

mangia!

We were perusing a menu at a restaurant near Trevi Fountain when the waiter came up and encouraged us to eat there. I asked him "Is it good?" but to guilt him into an honest answer also said "Seriously, though because this is my very first meal in Italy, is it good?". He later told me that he really took that to heart and that if we'd asked him last year when he worked at another restaurant that he would have told us to go somewhere else. He didn't want my first taste of his country's cuisine to be sub-par...and it wasn't. We started with a lovely bruschetta and a warm sheep's cheese that we ate with honey. It was divine.



We both had pasta for dinner that night...Jules had a tagliatelle with wild mushrooms and I had something he said was very typical and good. I can't remember the name but it was a tomato sauce and it had parma (ham) in it. Both were delicious...so delicious I forgot about photos until we had already eaten everything.

After our first dinner we had our first gelato at Trevi Fountain. Jules made poor choices but I loved both my latte and tiramisu.



We grabbed a quick lunch the next day...ordering pizzas we thought would be small and personal sized...




Jules and I stuck to our previous mushroom and pork (prosciutto) choices...they were thin crust and so, so good.

Our last night we headed to the Pantheon where we grabbed dinner just outside its doors...the waiters were wonderful, the atmosphere couldn't be beat and the food was impeccable. We had the best bruschetta I've ever put in my mouth, a great Shiraz and my Penne Arriabiata (spicy tomato sauce) was shear perfection.



We ended our night with another gelato for our walk back through Rome...



a sweet ending to a very sweet weekend.

hip to be square

since i've banned any further ordering of tzatzki which the greeks put so much garlic in it takes 3 days to rid your breath of its smell this is by far our favorite greek appetizer.



called "saganaki" it's a flat square version of a breaded and fried cheese stick.

you can get sagankis made with different cheeses but we usually order the traditional hard cheese variety. it isn't as melty as a mozzarella stick but i think it tastes much better. no need to gunk it up with marinara sauce...just squeeze some lemon on top and enjoy.

favorite "greek" restaurant...

okay, so it is a little weird but our favorite place to eat dinner thus far is a korean bbq restaurant.

we just happened upon it one night while trying to find somewhere to eat. we had been to a japanese place the week before but were sorely disappointed. the sushi was really pricey and not very good. but, you don't see a lot of restaurants outside of cafes and tavernas so we decided to give it a try.

it's called Dosirak which i think is the korean word for bento box (kinda like a lunch box meal) and it serves these, rice and noodle dishes, bbq meats and even has sushi too. from what i've seen from other tables it all looks pretty good. but, in truth neither of us has eaten anything other than the bbq beef. we both got it on our first visit and both refuse to order anything else.

eating a nice greek meal can easily take you up to 3 hours. we tend to be pretty lame during the week so it is nice to have a fairly healthy (not fast food) and fairly quick (less than 2 hours) place to get dinner.

we've already eaten at this place 4 times and i'm sure it will continue to be on heavy rotation for the next 5 weeks. i'm also sure when we go to asia i'm going to be kicking myself for not eating more meat and potatoes!