Roland Parker's Profile
Baltimore: Looking for the Grit and Soul of the City
Working class Baltimore is nearly extinct so your quest is probably about 20 years too late. The old generation of Natty Boh beer and cheap crabs has largely died out but you may still find some remnants in Dundalk/Essex and Glen Burnie and there are other posters who can probably recommend "gritty" crabhouses down there.
Otherwise I don't really think there's much in the way of "gritty" food in Baltimore. The city and region are still fairly segregated places, both racially and socially, so there's little city-wide homegrown cuisine other than crabs and crabcakes. Fried lake trout is popular among working class black Baltimoreans but is rare in the "white" parts of town. Pit Beef is mostly found out in the white working class suburbs. If you're going to be based in the downtown vicinity without a car it may be difficult to access both without being intrepid. There's a pit beef stand at the downtown farmer's market on Sundays that may be your best bet.
Faidley's probably comes closest to what you're looking for. A true survivor. Jimmy's restaurant in Fells' Point does greasy breakfasts that are very popular but the clientele is predominately yuppies although the joint has been around for ages. If you're not opposed to hipsters there's a few restaurants in and around Mount Vernon that have the hipster vibe.
What are you baking these days? May 2012 [old]
Last week I made the blueberry boy bait from Smitten kitchen. Pleasant but not my favorite blueberry cake and the blueberry flavour didn't really come through. I much prefer the blueberry almond cake I made a few weeks back in April.
I made a batch of David Lebovitz fruitcake bars to take with us on a long camping trip in the Oman mountains this past weekend. Went down as a real treat.
Last night I made a plain rice pudding. In a few days I'll probably make another Victoria Sponge and will duly report back.
Kitchen remodel -- which comes first, granite or cabinets?
That's the downside, isn't it? We have granite countertops (speckled brown and white, not my choice) and dust and crumbs and dirt just disappear into the countertops. Until you run a wet cloth across and are prepared to be shocked.
When I do manage to get the kitchen I want, granite countertops will be low on the list. The cold surface is terrific for rolling out dough and pastries but I'd rather have a countertop that I know is actually clean.
Old fashioned chewy dense bagels in Baltimore?
Cream cheese with bacon bits isn't traditional either but it's still very good on a bagel. Preferably pumpernickel bagels. Or would that not be a bagel too?
need some inspired, healthy cauliflower ideas, beyond cauliflower cheese, roasted cauliflower and aloo gobi...
Steam cauliflower until just tender then process it in the processor. It won't turn into a puree but into something similar to couscous. Surprisingly good.
Steam cauliflower florets until tender then toss with homemade vinaigrette. Mine is standard French: blend 1-2 tablespoons of french mustard with equal measures of red wine vinegar and add several tablespoons of olive oil, salt & peper to taste, blend. Drizzle over just about any steamed vegetables while they're still warm so it'll absorb the flavors better. To add jazz to the dish add 1-2 diced boiled eggs.
What are you baking these days? April 2012 [old]
It was from scratch. The traditional gooey butter cake is made with a raised yeast base similar to a German kuchen yeast cake. The cake originated in the German bakeries of St. Louis.
However, I have to say that the gooey butter topping is overwhelming enough that it's almost irrelevant what the base is except perhaps that a butter cake base might be even sweeter (not a good idea!).
We finished the cake off yesterday. I have to admit that as much I don't care for intensely sweet desserts, there was something almost addictive about the gooey butter topping, as if it had woken a deeply buried psychological craving for intensely sweet, sugary products. It shocked me. Dangerous and I won't be making the cake again.
Help with a Baltimore favorite - the shrimp cheesesteak
I lived in Baltimore for a long time and still have family in the city and we return yearly. Have never heard of shrimp cheesesteaks. Cheesesteaks are not a Baltimore specialty and not necessarily commonly found.
What are you baking these days? April 2012 [old]
Gooey butter cake from Smitten Kitchen. The recipe had been in my file for ages, the quantity of butter, sugar and corn syrup put me off for a long time but I decided to buckle down and make it this weekend. I actually made it with Lyle's Golden Syrup as I couldn't find light corn syrup where I live (Dubai).
It's very good but very rich. We all enjoyed it, the boys more so than the adults, but I don't think I'll make it again as it's simply too rich for our tastes.
Traditional Ethnic Recipes
I'm not quite following you now.
You said you wanted "authentic recipes....that highlight traditional flavours."
Now you're implying you want to learn recipes that would be better than in their place of origin? If the gazpacho recipe kicks the tail of any gazpacho in Spain, then it probably isn't 100% "authentic."
I wouldn't worry too much about authenticity or even what constitutes the list of ingredients. Find recipes that appeal to you and learn how to make them well.
Traditional Ethnic Recipes
I do get where you're coming from but at the same time it isn't practical to make your own homemade soy, fish or oyster sauces. I've travelled throughout much of SE Asia and it did seem like that just about everyone, whether restaurants or home cooks, heavily relied on Maggi processed sauces, bullions and seasonings. "traditional flavours" and "the flavours a food conglomerate considers marketable" are not mutually exclusive. Just FYI.
Places to eat in Dubai: My Recommended Restaurants
I'd add another recent recommendation to the list:
Kabab BQ on Umm al Sheif next to Maria Bonita. We live in Umm Suqeim and have always meant to try this restaurant ever since it opened and finally did so. Excellent Pakistani food. Comparable to Barbecue Delight in Oud Metha but in our neighborhood. Very good kebabs, daals, rice and curries. Nothing exotic on the menu (that is, to anyone used to the Dubai food scene!). The four of us dined well for under 200 AED including several crushed ice/mint drinks. It's lovely to be able to sit outdoors while the weather is still good.
What are you baking these days? April 2012 [old]
I have Carole Walter's cookie cookbook, which is brilliant. Absolutely wonderful cookies and filled with hints on how to make them better. Oddly enough I do have her cake and pie cookbooks but have never cooked from them as the recipes didn't jump out and grab me the way the cookie recipes did, and they're buried in a box in a basement back in the US for the foreseeable future. Her coffee cake book has received good reviews, is it worth the buy?
Traditional Ethnic Recipes
There are food/cooking blogs for seemingly every possible cuisine variants in the world. Poke around the internet and see what you can find. Usually googling a phrase like "thai food blog" will be sufficient to find a couple of the top ranking blogs. These cooking blogs tend to feature fairly easy recipes commonly cooked at home by the practioners of the cuisine.
In recent years I've come to utilize a handful of food blogs that I trust for new recipes rather than buying new cookbooks.
Last but not least, home cooks across the world use processed seasoning including curry powders, soy and peanut sauces. It's nothing to be afraid of.
What are you baking these days? April 2012 [old]
After a hiatus from baking when we travelled over Easter, I've happily returned to flour, sugar and butter.
Last weekend I made a blueberry fruit cake from a recipe published in the British Daily Telegraph newspaper. It was surprisingly good, a simple buttery almond cake base that had blueberries folded into the batter. The berries sunk to the bottom of the cake during baking, and halfway through the top was sprinkled with sliced almonds. After taking the cake out of the oven I dusted the top with confectioner's sugar.
Like most British desserts it's not overly sweet so the flavors of the blueberries really stood out. The almond batter also kept the cake very moist. It's easily the best of the summer fruit based cakes I've ever made or ate as my experience is that most of these cakes end up being too dry.
This past weekend I made a simple Victoria sponge. Once again it's British baking at its finest: simple, uncomplicated, not overly sweet and very, very good when perfectly executed. The sponge was made with 5 eggs and their weight in sugar, butter and flour. That's all. The butter was whipped for a solid ten minutes before adding the sugar and eggs. This helped make the cake light and airy despite the absence of any leaveners. The two layers were sandwiched with a generous dose of raspberry perserves and dusted with confectioner's sugar. It had been a long time since I'd last had a proper Victoria sponge and I'd forgotten how marvelously good a simple butter cake is with raspberry jam and a light dusting of confectioner's sugar is.
Five Nights in Sharjah?
Are you restricting yourself to Sharjah only or is adjoining Dubai also in the picture?
Dubai's food scene is much larger and varied. Although Sharjah is a separate city and Emirate it primarily functions as a working class suburb of Dubai. A number of the popular Indian and Arabic Dubai "cheap eats" also have restaurants in Sharjah but the real action, so to speak, is in Dubai. I've lived in Dubai for five years now and have never met anyone who went to Sharjah just to eat at a certain restaurant.
A couple things to point out:
"Local" as in Emirati food is rare and when available is not remarkable. The default "local" food is Arabic/Lebanese. Very good selection of such places to pick from. Most of them taste the same but some are better than others. Al Mallah (locations both in Dubai and Sharjah) does excellent working class Lebanese fare and grilled meats. Al Reef (both in Dubai and Sharjah) does excellent Lebanese pastries, baked breats, manakishes (flatbreads with toppings). You will see corner "grills" all over the place with chicken roasting in outdoor rotisseries and with a large selection of fruit juices to select from. Cheap and fine for a quick lunch.
Indian and Pakistani food is stellar and many claim that it's better than in India or Pakistan.
Dubai is also a good place to try Persian food.
"Street" food just about doesn't exist other than food carts in the shopping malls.
For Dubai recommendations there's another thread in this forum.
Vegetarian invited to a BBQ - Should I offer to bring something for my entree?
If you eat shrimp can you really call yourself a vegetarian?
Technically, vegetarians would not only not eat shrimp but they also wouldn't offer to bring along vegs or veggie patties to grill on the same grill that meal will be grilling on.
Still, you sound like someone who's flexible. Just call the hostess and offer to bring a few veggie burgers. I'd be shocked if she nixed the idea so I wouldn't expend effort worrying over this.
New Delhi, Jaipur, Agra suggestions
The restaurants we ate at were:
Delhi:
Saranava Bhavan near Connaught Place. A chain of Indian thali places with branches in Dubai as well. It was packed and perfectly fine but not up to par with our favorite thali restaurant in Dubai. We were automatically served puris when I would have preferred rotis. It's still a good lunch option by CP and I believe we paid around $3 per person or $12 for the four of us. We'd gone to Saranava Bhavan after a failed expedition to Dilli Haat that had been recommended because of its large outdoor food court with stalls representing the various regions of India. The place was open but the food court was practically empty save for the billions of flies. By the way, I'd also say it's not worth visiting for the arts/crafts stalls as everything available there is also available in the West at ethnic shops.
Punjabi by Nature. A Punjabi restaurant highly recommended by various guidebooks, Delhi food magazines/blogs and tripadvisor. It was fine. Good food, the usual northwest Indian kebabs and daals. Just not spectacular and we preferred our favorite Punjabi joint in Dubai. Lovely setting. The bill came to between $25-30/head, affordable for us but what must be a ginormous fortune by Indian standards.
In Agra we had a quick lunch at an anonymous guesthouse cafe near the Taj Mahal. The sign said "Recommended by Lonely Planet." Food was unremarkable. Bland thali. We spotted a Costas on the way out of the city and had a perfectly pleasant cappucino in an oddly western setting amidst Indian chaos.
That night we arrived in Jaipur after a long drive that included a stop at Fatephur Sikri. Because of the late hour and that we were tired and dirty (the hired car's AC failed shortly into the drive) we showered and ate in Suvarna Mahal restaurant at the Rambagh, where we were staying. We ordered various Rajasthani dishes including lamb maal. Lovely setting, lovely service, well-prepared but not sublime food. Very expensive.
The next two nights we ate at the rooftop restaurant at the Pearl Palace guesthouse that had been recommended by several of our friends. The food was more or less of the same caliber as at the Rambagh but at a fraction of the price and more enjoyable in its own way. The Lamb maal was delicious as were the other curries, but not necessarily breathtaking.
We did stop at lassiwalla lassi stall just outside the old city of Jaipur and I did enjoy the lassi. The sweet lassi was just perfect, not very sweet and a hint of tanginess from the yoghurt.
In Jodhpur we took our lesson from the Rambagh and avoided the hotel restaurant and instead had most of our meals at Jhankar, a rooftop restaurant in the old city. It was very atmospheric and run by a Jain family, so the food was vegetarian and supposedly also didn't feature garlic or onions. It was cheap, pleasant but forgettable. The views of the fort was more impressive.
In Udaipur we ate one lunch at Natraj Lodge, a local thali joint buried in the modern part of the city. We were the only westerners in the place. The thali was fine and served with roti. Not as good as our favorite place in Dubai but it was a welcome change from the standard Rajasthani curries, dumplings and butter rich naans.
We ate one dinner at Jainwana Haveli rooftop restaurant. Perfectly pleasant standard Rajasthani food. Similar to the Pearl Palace in Jaipur but at twice the price. The bills still only came out to about $10 per head. We had another dinner at an adjoining hotel which was more or less the same.
Our last lunch and dinner in India were at a restaurant recommended to us by another tourist in Udaipur: Millets of Mewar. It's run by several vegetarian brothers serving modern and very fresh Indian food. They only use filtered water in their cooking so you can eat the salads. We very much enjoyed the light, refreshing dishes. It's certainly not what your average Indian eats given that we could actually taste the different ingredients used other than the spices, but I appreciated the new take on Indian ingredients.
On the whole Indian food seems to be boiled down to one principle: overcook it into mush and blast it with so many spices. It's certainly not a subtle school of cooking and the flavors of the raw ingredients are forsaken for the spices. An different philosophy of cooking and while I can enjoy Indian food it will never have a special place or appreciation from me that French, Italian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese or Japanese food do.
Places to eat in Dubai: My Recommended Restaurants
The French restaurant in DIFC is probably Le Petit Maison. My husband has lunch there often as he works in DIFC and praises both the food and value.
Another South Indian place I'd like to suggest is Calicut Paragon in Karama, facing the square. It specializes in Kerala food, especially seafood and has a selection of lovey fish curries. The dry fries are excellent and the biryanis among the moistest in the city. Very good value. We were there a month ago and the four of us dined for around 125 AED!
Places to eat in Dubai: My Recommended Restaurants
JBR walk is mostly popular with the non-western expatriates rather than tourists. At least that's how it looks to me given the place is packed with Arab families at night. But if you're happy with Paul or LPQ for a leisurely weekend breakfast or lunch, it's perfectly fine. There's also a Syrian restaurant somewhere along the walk where we once ate and it was surprisingly good.
Your list looks fairly comprehensive but let me add several suggestions:
Indian:
Gazebo. Several locations including in Bur Dubai and Internet City. Excellent North Indian/Punjabi restaurant with a mix of first rate kebabs, biryanis baked in clay pots and curries, as well as the usual naan and daal. The food is on the rich side but is hugely popular with the upper middle class Indian expatriate community and was recommended to us by several of our Indian friends. One can eat well for less than 100 AED per head (or even 50 AED/head).
Kamat is a South Indian restaurant with several locations throughout Dubai. Vegetarian, specialising in dosas and the lunchttime thali platter. I usually go to Kamat once a month for lunch and always get the thali platter. Very good and better than any thalis I've had in India. The platter is 20 AED and is served with a choice of roti or puri. Once again this place is popular with the Indian expatriates.
Thai:
Ban Khun Mae: In additon to what you already recommended, I'll confess that one of the best sources for Thai food in Dubai is actually a food stall called Ban Khun Mae in the upstairs food court at the Mall of Emirates. It's tucked in the far corner of the court, next to KFC. Cheap and wonderful Thai food, quite comparable to what we've eaten in Thailand. The secret is getting out and now they offer home delivery, so if you are at the mall and want a cheap and excellent Thai meal, check out Ban Khun Mae. They have a binder with pictures of the dishes on offer which includes a large selection of Thai salads, curries, noodle dishes and a couple other dishes I've never see at any other Thai place in Dubai. A family of four can eat well for 150 AED.
Pizza:
Hit or miss. Some very odd combinations are on offer. We generally order from the following places:
Pizza Connection in the Greens. Owned by a pair of Italian brothers. Decent Italian style pizzas with thin crust and light toppings.
NKD Pizza.
But Bussola at the Westin is certainly the best oven-fired pizza in Dubai and one of the few places where you can have a beer with the pizza or pork toppings. Average pizza is probably around 100 AED so it's not cheap by pizza standards.
Lebanese:
Al Mallah on Al Diyafah in Satwa offers excellent and cheap Lebanese fare, including all the usual mezze dishes and some of the best schwaramas in Dubai. Dirt cheap. Can sit outside when the weather is lovely. Diyafah Street doesn't bring in the crowds it once did but it's still one of the few places in Dubai that resembles a boulevard where you can leisurely stroll up and down after a meal.
Karam Beiruit at the Mall of Emirates (and also at the Dubai Mall) is another upscale Lebanese place that we were sent to by our Canadian-Lebanese neighours. Very good Lebanese food in a pleasant restaurant environment, and the restaurant at MoE overlooks the ski slope while the Dubai Mall location overlooks the water fountain. They feature a number of mezze dishes that aren't available at the cheaper Lebanese restaurants. Excellent hommous and baba ganoush.
Iranian/Persian:
Pars Iraniak Kitchen. Several locations. Quite decent.
Noon - o - Kabab. Several locations including at Times Square Centre and Ibn Battuta Mall. Excellent Persian kebabs and stews and quite cheap. Good choice if you're in a mall but they also do takeaways.
Western/Australian:
Lime Tree Cafe. Several locations. Very popular among Western expatriates. Great lunches with a modern "healthy" Australian/North American/UK approach to the food. One of the few places in Dubai where the dishes feature lots of vegetables. Excellent selection of cakes to follow including the best carrot cake I've ever had.
Other popular western (non alcoholic) brunch/lunch restaurants include More (several locations) and Jones the Grocer.
Brunch:
We rarely do brunch but I have enjoyed Saffron at the Atlantic.
Best Paris Restaurants
More traditional but less formal? Seems like a contradiction.
Read through this forum. Pretty much the same 10-15 restaurants are discussed over and over again and will give you a good idea of where to go.
New Delhi, Jaipur, Agra suggestions
Everything you say is perfectly valid enough although I'll point out that the Indian food we ate was very similar to comparable Indian food in Dubai, in restaurants packed with Indian familes in Indian communities.
It was frustrating to discover that after what was carefully done research to end up eating similar food on a night by night basis. But at the same time you probably also have to genuinely love Indian food to pursue and appreciate the more exotic in Indian cooking (and to risk eating street food). I simply don't have that.
New Delhi, Jaipur, Agra suggestions
We just returned from ten days in India - Delhi, Agra and the various cities of Rajasthan.
I must confess that unlike in SE Asia, I didn't find any of the street food appealing by sight. It all seemed to be fried doughs or potato filled patties and sitting in vast pools of grease and oil. Heavy looking stuff. Just not my thing.
I had done a fair amount of research beforehand and we went to a range of restaurants from Punjabi by Nature in New Delhi to a local thali joint in the back streets of Udaipur and I will say we didn't come back from the trip in love with Indian food. Nothing we had in India was better than anything we can get in Dubai (where we currently live and which has an enormous South Asian expatriate community). Almost all the meals were pleasantly enjoyable but frankly, there was a sameness to the food regardless of where we ate which is probably due to the similarity of spices used in multiple dishes. We didn't have any home cooking, which I'm sure is a different beast entirely.
On the whole, India was an enjoyable trip if, ahem, interesting and revealing, but food was not one of the highlights even though we ate decently enough and tolerably well. One exception, though, were the lassis. The mango lassi at a cafe in Udaipur was addictive and the lassiwalla shop in Jaipur was almost sublime.
Chez L'Ami Jean
I make my rice pudding with Calrose. That particular rice is very good for rice puddings.
The last batch of rice pudding I made involved coconut milk, whole milk, vanilla beans, a small amount of sugar and calrose rice. Then a cup of cream was whipped and folded into the pudding.
Not quite like CLJ's rice pudding. Cleaner tasting and nowhere nearly as sweet, but I could have folded in a batch of creme anglaise and gotten a fairly close approximation.
Just don't be hating the Calrose is all I'm saying...
fine foods shops, London
The local Waitroses will have a broad selection of good quality ingredients.
Most of the cheese at Neal's Yard Dairy is also available at Selfridge's food hall.
Paxton and Whitfield on Jermyn Street has an amazing selection of cheeses as well as other specialist food items.
There's also Carluccio's which is a restaurant/cafe but sells specialist gourmet Italian ingredients and baked goods on the side and they have a number of locations around London.
London is a huge city so I'd be careful about going all the way to one end of London just to buy a few ingredients and carrying it back to Camden. There's no need to go to Kensington to the Whole Foods when the local Waitrose will have just as good pasta.
Six Rules for Dining Out-The Atlantic
The "good food" in the strip malls are going to be ethnic restaurants catering to a recent immigrant population, certainly that's the case in suburban DC and California where often the best and most "authentic" Chinese or Mexican or Korean or Vietnamese are in suburban shopping centers and not at the mass-market Americanized places in the touristy areas of Los Angeles or downtown DC. so I completely understood where his argument was coming from, even though it doesn't apply to all cuisines and certainly not cutting edge American or European cuisines.
His generalization about Thai and Indian restaurants versus Vietnamese and Pakistani wasn't so much to directly compare the two cuisines and allege that they are similar enough but to make the claim that it's much easier to find mediocre Indian and mediocre Thai food due to their widespread popularity that is in part the result of "dumbing down" the food to satisfy American tastes, so it's either too sweet (Thai) or not spicy enough (Indian). By contrast the demand for Pakistani and Vietnamese food is restricted to a much smaller audience, usually chowhounders or Pakistani/Vietnamese immigrants and their descendants, so his claim that you're more likely to get a better or more authentic meal at a Pakistani or Vietnamese restaurant does have some recognizable merit to it.
I didn't agree with all his rules but I could see why he made some of them.
Cigarette smoke gets in your food
Hmm. I've travelled and eaten widely across the world, including countries where smoking in restaurants is still the norm and walks behind restaurants will show the cooks and servers puffing away ceaselessly, and can safely say I've never tasted the smell of cigarettes in the food, even when surrounding tables were full of smokers.
I don't think you're tasting the smell of cigarettes, but you're smelling the smell of the smoke that got trapped inside a package. I suppose if you pinched your nose and ate the food you'd find the flavors unaltered. But it's certainly not a comfortable way to eat.
ethnic markets
Yep. Ethnic markets can be fun to explore to see the exotic foods on offer but most ethnic markets were started to cater to a recent immigrant community. These communities generally tend to be very frugal and place greater emphasis on value for the dollar and quantity over quality.
When we lived in Maryland I occasionally stopped at the local H-Mart (Korean-Asian supermarket chain). The range of produce could be impressive, but it always quickly spoiled after a few days and the bins of fruits were always filled with slightly bruised fruit. The meats were certainly not prime meat and the chickens always smelled slightly off. You're not getting organic, free-range chickens or good quality cuts of beef and lamb at most ethnic markets for the simple reason that good quality meat is rarely, if ever, cheap. The advantage of the ethnic markets is selling cuts of meat that aren't available in a mainstream supermarket, and Asian cooking especially features very different cuts of meat than the western/European butchers offer.
I usually ended up only buying the packaged/frozen goods but having lived overseas in both Asia, Europe and the Middle East, I know fully well the frozen/packaged food sold at most American ethnic markets are often the cheaper ones from the home country and rarely the better quality versions, and pumped full of preservatives and MSG and over chemical additives common in mass produced Asian foodstuff. That said, the H-Mart still had an impressive range of kimchee and frozen pork dumplings which I miss badly.
Best Wedding Mains
Take my word for it when I say you won't remember the food at the wedding. Oh, you may remember the menu but you won't remember the taste of the food. Every single married couple I know say the same thing. For the bride and groom the day is simply too hectic and rushed and despite that I agonized over the wedding menu I think I may have had barely a quarter of a plate of food at my reception.
I also don't remember what I ate at pretty much every other wedding I've attended even though several of them featured well-known caterers. No one goes to weddings expecting to have a wonderful feast unless the reception is at a very small gathering at a well-regarded restaurant.
People will remember the cake if it has a knockout appearance but most guests won't care if it's only a basic yellow/white cake as long as the decoration is nice. At my wedding we went for a very expensive cake by the most highly regarded French bakery in the region, featuring multiple layers of genoise and flavored (real) buttercream and my mother later commented that many guests only nibbled at their cake slices and many left their plates unfinished. It was a sheer waste of money although it made for a pretty photograph.
My suggestion: spend the money on good quality alcohol and provide an excellent selection of wines. People will remember how wonderful the wines were long after the wedding but never the food. Just serve roast beef and shrimp and a pasta dish for the vegetarians. Have platters of canapes and cheese and fruit on standby. Caterers tend to have an easier time churning out good canapes/appetizers than mains.
If you're having a small dinner the night beforehand for the wedding party following the rehearsal, that's the one opportunity to have a truly special meal.
Paris with two 16 year old girls
I enjoyed Les Papilles very much. Laid back vibe and with excellent high quality bistro style food. You eat what the chef's cooked that night so there's no ordering off a menu. The setting is lovely with walls lined with the owner's extensive wine collection. It's near the Luxembourg Gardens and within easy reach of public transportation and the metro. The restaurant has a website that's easily found by googling the name.
For a more classic Parisian experience you may want to consider Les Regalades. The food is excellent and the restaurant fits very much what one expects of a stereotypical high quality neighborhood restaurant in Paris. As a bonus the chatter from the surrounding tables will actualy be in French. The restaurant has a second location at St. Honore and is perhaps a bit more touristy.
America's 25 most hated foods
No one mentioned kale because is far from common and most Americans don't know of it.
