Carnet de Voyage: Foodie Favourites

Travel notes from the real France. Carnet de Voyage is a weekly personal travel story in France sent in by readers. If you’d like to write a story for Carnet de Voyage, head here for details on how to submit.

This letter originally appeared in issue 202 of France Today magazine – now on sale!

We very much enjoyed the 200 French favourites item in the 200th edition (April/May) and there was much nodding in agreement to selections. For example, prix-fixe lunches: we’ve had many best experiences during those, enjoying the food of course, but also the ‘cabaret’ of those around us, the conversations and the joking. Particular foods like kouign-amann, our first experience of real choucroute, fruit and other foods from markets, île flottante, croque-monsieur… the list just goes on.

Then all the wonderful places, some humble, others world famous. However, we must take friendly issue with the word ‘idiosyncrasies’ in conjunction
with département registrations on vehicles. We called it ‘département bingo’ – although it had no relation to bingo – and on long journeys we would work on spotting as many different ones as we could, complete with a sheet to tick them off on. It was a good way of maintaining alertness.

There is so much more one could say about all the favourites but we’ve aimed for succinctness. For example, the small village café where another patron was happily feeding our dog snippets, a bowl of water was brought out for her, and the disappointment when the general agreement was to turn off the Inspector Derrick programme on the TV – we were enjoying it but it wasn’t for us to spoil the decision!

Read our other Carnet de Voyage entries here.