CarlaVisitAgain Day 3: Falafels, Walking, and Walking

I went in to work today, but arranged to leave early. At around noon, I met up with Carla, who was just coming out of the Centre Pompidou. From there, we walked across the river to the Latin Quarter for some falafels. Now, I know what you're thinking: the only good falafel is one that is bought in the Marais (in the old Jewish quarter). While I don't necessarily disagree, I had heard of a falafel stand in the middle of the Huchette/Harpe area of the Latin Quarter (i.e., the crappy tourist-trap restaurant area), which was compared favourably to the falafels of the Marais. This I had to see.

So we headed over to Maoz, which is one of what is apparently a Pan-European chain of falafel joints. Although the presentation was kinda ghetto (which is in keeping with the food, really), the falafels themselves were surprisinly tasty. Especially good was the "Salad Box" combo, which gave you a drink along with a plastic box with 3 falafel balls, that you fill with veggies from a self-service salad bar. It was actually a perfect, light midday meal for a hot day like today. That it only cost 3.50€ was even better.

We headed over to Ile Saint-Louis to shop for soap and skin products at l'Occitane, and took the opportunity to stop for some Berthillon ice cream (again). This time, I had their coriander-praline ice cream, which was surprisingly delicious.

From there, we wandered over through the Marais, stopped for coffee and tea at Place des Vosges, and then continued on past our old apartment on rue Filles de Calvaire, and eventually back home from République. After a couple of hours of downtime, we headed back out for dinner to Le Marsangy (previously visited here), joined by DJ (recovering from a head cold, the poor thing).

Although Carla didn't have an entrée, DJ started out with some marinated sardines, and I ordered the crevettes grises vivantes, poêlée en beurre salé--in other words, live shrimp fried in salted butter. Yes, I know it's not nice, but I had never tried it before and I was thinking that it might be tasty. Anyway, the shrimps came to me as a pile of somewhat dry grey little creatures, with their legs, heads, tails, eyes and even shells still on. Pretty much, they had been pulled out of the water and put into the frying pan. While I'll admit that I've never eaten anything so shrimpy and tasty, the mouth-feel of chewing on shrimp exoskeleton and antennae was pretty damn disgusting. Nonetheless, I ate most of them like a good trooper (although I left the heads).

Both DJ and I had the sesame-encrusted salmon, while Carla had the roasted eggplant stuffed with seared lamb. Both were very tasty, although I was really impressed with the lamb preparation in Carla's dish. For dessert, DJ had the berry crumble, while Carla had a poached pear in caramel sauce and I had apple and mango slices stuffed in phyllo dough and baked until crusty. Very tasty!

Throughout the meal, our server was this very nice but also odd young woman whose manner of speaking was very much like a French Marilyn Monroe. Add to this her tendency to smile (which I liked) and her tendency to utter only sentence fragments (which I didn't like), and you had a rather odd dining experience. Nonetheless, the food was great and I'd happily eat there again.

As has become a bit of a repeating trope of the last few weeks, we all left stuffed, a bit tipsy (again, I had to drink the bulk of the wine), and rather tired. After an amusing ride on the métro (man-boobs and plunging v-neck shirts...WTF?!), we landed at home and crashed out for the night.