Kitchens I Have Seen

In case you’re wondering what I’ve been up to for the last few weeks, apart from eating tacos, I’ve been looking for an apartment.  Again?  Yes.  I haven’t mentioned it here because I was kind of in denial, and then I hoped that if I just shut up and buckled down it would all be over faster, but that has unfortunately not been the case.  This has been, by far, the most painful and grueling of my Parisian apartment-hunts to date.  And it is ongoing.  As in, we still haven’t found a place that we both like and is willing to rent to a couple of itinerant immigrants steadily-employed thirtysomethings.  It is, quite frankly, baffling.  And extremely frustrating.  And a little scary, because we’re supposed to be out of this place in mid-April and are facing the very real possibility that we won’t find a place to rent before then and will have to put all our stuff in storage or sell it and sleep on someone’s couch until we find a place of our own.  It is an unsavory thought.*

From time to time I wonder if we’re being too picky.  But the conclusion I come to every time is no.  A kitchen meant to reheat soup and frozen dinners from Picard is not going to cut it.  An apartment that requires me to commute for an hour won’t either, because the Métro doesn’t run that early in the morning.  And is it really so much to ask, in this, the supposed culinary capital of the world, that the kitchen accommodate someone who likes to cook and entertain?  I think not.

Towards the end of our last apartment search, only a year ago, Nick suggested that it would have been interesting if I’d photographed the kitchens of the apartments we looked at to show people the gamut of Parisian apartment kitchens from the ghastly to the glorious.  (By glorious I mean containing cupboards and/or shelves for storage of cooking equipment and food, a stove, oven, and refrigerator, and a bit of counter space.  That is to say, a usable kitchen.)  It didn’t happen then, but this time I was prepared.  So without further ado, allow me to present to you the kitchens I’ve seen so far.

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Candelaria

Tired of mediocre Mexican fare in Paris? So was Luis. He came to the conclusion that the only way he was going to get a good taco in Paris was to open up his own taqueria. Fortunately for the rest of us, he did just that.

The storefront at 52 rue Saintonge in Paris’ 3rd arrondissement, conveniently located between the République and Filles du Calvaire Métro stops, is decidedly unassuming.  Rustic, mostly white with brightly colored shelves and fresh flowers livening up the décor, it does have a bit of that taco-shack-on-the-beach feel.

But that is far from the best part.

Choucroute, Simplified

It’s no secret that I love me some choucroute garnie.  Sometimes, though, the laundry list of pork products required to make it feels both too heavy to eat and too time-consuming to make.  So I cheat: I braise some red cabbage with smoky sausage and call it dinner.

I’ve written up my recipe for this shortcut choucroute, which is a favorite in my kitchen for busy weeknights when I still want something hearty.  Check it out on Girls’ Guide to Paris.

On this day in 2009: Rendez-Vous Bars (a recipe for one of my favorite treats)

Originally published on Croque-Camille.

Borssó Bistro, Budapest

Just as soon as I’d snapped the photos of the lángos we ate for lunch on our first full day in Budapest, Nick noted that my camera was flashing a low battery warning.  D’oh!  I took no more pictures for the rest of the day, and I left my camera in the hotel the next day.*  But the day after that, we woke up to see Budapest covered in a light dusting of snow, with a few tiny flakes fluttering through the air.  We had already planned to warm ourselves up in the sauna before heading out, and the weather only confirmed our decision.  Once we were warmed through, showered, and bundled up, we set out to explore Budapest’s answer to Père Lachaise: Kerepesi Temetó.  (That o is supposed to have two accents, but I can’t figure out how to make my keyboard type that.)

The cemetery was especially silent and still with the snow falling gently on the graves.  I was surprised at how far apart the plots were spaced, and at the sheer size of some of the monuments.  The biggest ones belonged to people who had streets or metro stops named after them, but beyond that, the names were unfamiliar.  I was also taken with how organic this cemetery felt.  Many of the graves had live plants incorporated into their design, and the trees, though bare, were plentiful.  I can only imagine this place in the summer – I’m sure there are flowers blooming everywhere.

We wandered through the cemetery for about an hour, enough time to chill us down to the bone.  A big, leisurely lunch was in order.  Borssó Bistro sounded like the right place for such a lunch.  Listed as “Hungarian with a hint of French influence” by our French guidebook, and as “French” by the restaurant guide I picked up at the Tourist information desk at the airport, we took a look at the menu and decided the former description was probably more accurate.

We sat down in the cozy, warm restaurant and noted the décor – it was  interesting to see the Hungarian interpretation of a French bistro, complete with tiled bar (where’s the zinc?), chalkboard menus (they got that one right), and faux-parquet floor.  I thought I might have had enough foie gras for one weekend, so I started with the paprika cream soup.

The bright color and mildly spicy flavor were immensely cheerful, and the roulade of roasted eggplant strips around a center of fresh goat cheese made this soup a substantial appetizer, perfect for warming a cold, hungry traveler like myself.

Speaking of substantial appetizers, Nick got what is probably the best preparation of foie gras I have ever seen:

Central Market Hall, Budapest

I could have entitled this post “Központi Vásárcsarnok,” but I was afraid that might have been a little off-putting.  To quote from my phrasebook, “Hungarian, or Magyar, is distantly related to Finnish and Estonian, but is utterly unlike the languages of the other main linguistic groups of Europe.”  No kidding.  What that means in real life is that if your main language experiences have been with, say, Romance or Germanic languages, none of the words in Hungarian will look even remotely familiar.  Which made the long weekend Nick and I recently spent in Budapest something of an adventure.

Budapest was once two towns, Buda on the hilly West bank of the Danube River, and Pest on the flat East side.  We stayed in Pest, in the Józsefváros neighborhood, which seemed to have a pretty good dining scene as well as plenty of cool bars for later on.  There was a bit of trouble with the hotel we had originally booked, but since it resulted in a free upgrade to the Hotel Palazzo Zichy, we weren’t complaining.  The first night we dined in a nearby restaurant, Alföldi Kisvendéglö, which served inexpensive, old-school Hungarian classics like paprikás csirke (chicken paprikash – chicken braised in a paprika-laced gravy) and töltött káposzta (stuffed cabbage).  The food was hearty and flavorful, though less than photogenic.  We washed it down with a bottle of Hungarian red wine, which was surprisingly good, especially considering the price – about $18 US.

The next morning, I was itching to check out the Central Market Hall, conveniently located only ten minutes’ walk from our hotel.  (I swear I didn’t plan it that way, I just got lucky.)  It’s an impressive building, with elaborate patterns in the bricks and a colorful tiled roof.  Inside, the market spans three levels.