Tag Archives: France

Le Coq Hardi – Ales, France

18 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by in France, Gastronomy, Oversea Restaurants, Travel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

I walked pass this little restaurant many times in the past, but was never tempted to check it out. The bright red deco and outside frame of the restaurant felt a little too pub-like to me. Hence, I pre-judge this little guy and refuse to even look at their menu.

I’m so glad hub and I decided to give this restaurant a try this round. More like an interesting encounter which made us stop right in front of this restaurant, giving me the reason to scan thru their menu. I was instantly hooked. They serve quite a number of interesting traditional French / almost home cook type dishes.

The restaurant was pretty pack even at 6.45pm (which was relatively early for French to start dining). This is surely a good sign. The waitress speaks almost no English but luckily she is happy to help as much as she could and bear with my lousy French. LOL.

Hubby ordered escargot for starter to share. It was so delicious and I was so glad that it was a huge plate pack with escargots (I think there’s easily 2 dozens of escargots on that plate!). The sauce was absolutely fantastic and compliments the escargots really well.Escargot

For mains, hubby ordered duck. He loves the French way of cooking duck. This is the traditional Magret de Canard with apricot sauce. Simple common dish but done really well. The duck meat was pan-fried well, leaving it juicy and tender. It was a very generous portion plate fill with assortment of sides.

Canard à l'Orange As for me, I am in love with my Sole meunière. Such a simple dish of pan frying the sole with butter, and yet, the taste was anything but simple. The texture of the fish combine with the butter almost has a melt-like quality once in your mouth.

Sole meunièreEach bite is almost as amazing as the first, making me want to savor each bite slowly and making the meal last forever. Now, I truly understand why French takes 3-4 hours for dinner. When you have food this good, who would want their dinner to end?!

I would have loved to try their dessert. But, we were super full by then. I can’t wait to come back again to try their other dishes.

 

Address: 7 Rue Mandajors, 30100 Alès, France
Phone:+33 4 66 52 15 75

Les Charlottes en Ville – Lille, France

09 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by in France, Gastronomy, Oversea Restaurants, Travel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

While strolling around the quaint town of Lille, hub and I stumble upon this little café / restaurant. It’s a bar / restaurant specialises in potato! Interesting.

I’m not a big fan of potato myself. To me, potato has always been like a supporting actor in a plate. Most of the time, I’ll leave them untouched (and hubby will finish it). Since it was close to lunch time, we decided to hop in and give this a try.

The waitress was a really sweet girl and she helped translate the menu for us.

As I was not very hungry, I went with the Entrecôte grillé, sauce poivre (pepper), crème ciboulette (abit like sour cream but, it’s made with Crème Fraiche drizzled with chives). As you can see, the portion of potato is more than the meat itself.

The steak was done to my liking (Medium Rare) but it was nothing spectacular. As for the star of the plate – the potato, it was sublime indeed. The potato is baked so well that each bite melts in my mouth. It’s almost like eating mash. The taste was so good even without the crème ciboulette. Yumz. This time, I finished up my potato…but, i was kind enough to share some with hub. hehehe…

Hubby had the Salade de Chevre (Goat’s Cheese Salad). The Goat’s Cheese was surprising light, and the citrus sauce went really well together. Aside from the slightly burned toast on the side, it is quite delicious.

For main, hub had the La Montagnarde which was basically, mountain ham with baked potato oozing with melted cheese (similar to raclette). Not a fan of the ham but again the potato was done really well… yum yum.

If you are a potato fan, give this little restaurant a try. It seriously open up my eyes about making potato the main star on the plate.

Caudalie Paris Vine Body Butter

29 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by in Cosmetics, France, Pampering, Shopping, Travel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

How many of you hate moisturizing your body? I know I do. Why?

1)     I am just plain lazy. It’s a lot of work to moisturize the whole body, ok! (At least a solid 15mins if you want to do a proper job)

2)     It’s normally so thick and creamy that it takes damn a lot of effort to evenly apply it. Or, you leave white streaks and patches around.

3)     The sticky feeling you get after moisturizing. Yucks.

4)     My fingers are so oily after I finish that I need to wash it off with soap before I can do anything else.

So thankfully, I’ve been blessed with relatively ok body skin.

Unfortunately during my early this month trip to France, my body skin starts to rebel against me. Sob sob… it got really dried and itchy. My once smooth skin starts looking like tree bark. As I have never had need to moisturize my body, I didn’t pack any lotion with me.

I made a quick visit to a local pharmacy (I think it was in Lille town centre) to try and get something for it. The pharmacist proposes I give Caudalie Body butter a try. She told me it was superb. I bought it on the spot, ran back to the hotel and start using it.

When I squeeze out the thick cream, my heart sank. It’s going to be one of those really oily ones. Ahhhh….. (I guess I really need it to be oily to drown my skin and bring it back to life)

When I spread it across my leg, I was shocked. It had not only glided smoothly across my skin, the body butter absorbs immediately leaving behind smooth silky finish. It was amazing how light the texture felt on my finger and the best part is it didn’t feel oily or sticky at all. It was so easy and effortless to apply.

The best part, my skin was back to its original condition (before I travel), after a mere 2-3 applications (about 2 days). It was really a good product.

I was so in loved with this body butter that I bought back home with 2 more tube… hehehe. The smell of the body butter is really nice too. (It’s like grape…mainly because their main ingredient is suppose to be the extract from grape vine)