My Top Five Favorite Foods of Paris
My Dear Polite Traveler,
The
streets of Paris are lined with food vendors, which as a small business owner
always looking for the best bang for my small-budget buck appreciates greatly. Most offer excellent food at amazingly
affordable prices, especially my favorites.
Those who love chocolate,
butter, and ham – not necessarily at the same time – should appreciate my list
of favorites as well. Get ready to
drool.
#5 Croque Monsieur
As Paris is the land of ham and
cheese, it's a no-brainer they would have a killer grilled ham and cheese
sandwich. Jambon, French for ham,
appears on almost all menus in one form or another and of course, cheese
is...well, everywhere.
My favorite Croque Monsieur is
the less heavy open face version. This
is a piece of toasted dense bread coated with a slight touch of mustard, crumbled
cheese—such as gruyere—followed with a slice of ham and
finished with the cheesy béchamel sauce. These are typically €
7.
More often, this is a closed
sandwich beginning with a slice of bread, the mustard, cheese, ham, topped with
another slice of bread and finished off with the cheesy béchamel.
Both sandwiches are set under the
broiler until golden brown.
#4
Explore the Salads
Ooh
la la, French chefs make the absolute best salads. During my last visit to Paris, I was looking
for a quick and inexpensive meal. So, I chose
a salad from the menu—about € 10. The
ingredients intrigued me: salad greens, aged ham, walnuts, pommes frites, olives , and warm camembert. Even so, I still
expected to receive a small salad
with a few chunks of warmed cheese and bits of ham. What arrived exceeded all expectations.
The
tantalizing salad was huge! It was
topped with an inch-thick, four-inch-round of warm camembert, filled with a
generous amount of aged ham – what we would call prosciutto – and the pommes
frites were thinly sliced potatoes fried quickly in extremely hot oil, so the
pieces puff up. This is just one
example. Every salad I ordered was a
delicious adventure.
#3 Crepes
Street food! Crepes are most often street food that is cooked per order right in front of
each lucky, drooling diner. Crepes can
be filled with just about anything, but commonly many order their crepes filled
with yummy Nutella. Still, my favorite
is ham and cheese—approximately € 6.
Notice a trend here?
#2 Croissants,
Pain de Chocolate and Pastries
In
my opinion, the French make the absolute best pastries, especially croissants
and tarts. With Patisseries dotting the Paris landscape, there's no end of
choices or waist expanding opportunities.
My favorite is pain de chocolate, which is a crisp croissant filled with
chocolate—less than € 2.
#1 Cheese, Wine, and a Baguette
Most
grocery stores in Paris sell a variety of excellent cheeses for an unbelievably
low price. As for wine,
I found the crémant from Burgundy to be delicious and a great buy. Grab a baguette from the
neighborhood boulangerie and dinner is perfection.
Summing it All Up
Of course, there are fancier,
more elaborate meal choices, but sometimes simple is best. And, simple in Paris is stupéfiant (amazing)!
More by The Polite Traveler
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to Do When Visiting Paris
How I Save Money When Visiting Paris, France
Three Top Traditional Foods of Beaune
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