Weekend of Food and Photos

We had some great food this weekend.

Saturday we went to a nearby seafood place for lunch. Sarah started with a creme of pumkin soup with shrimp that was amazing. Seriously, it was one of the best soups I've ever had. The French *really* know how to do pureed soups. I had shrimp ravioli in a very flavorful sauce. For our main courses we both had grilled fish, with a tasty butter sauce. The fish was very fresh, and the sauce went very well with it. Yum.

November is "Photography Month" in Paris, there are exhibits all over the city. We went to the Museum of European Photography, where they were having an exhibit on Vu magazine. Vu was a weekly french magazine from the late 1920s to 1939. It had stunning photography.

Saturday night we found a new drug dealer. Just kidding. One of the things we miss about Texas is mexican food. Sometimes I just really need a fix of mexican food. Saturday night we found a place that is run by people from Mexico, and has things on the menu that look and taste like mexican food in Texas. We have tried another place in Paris claiming to serve mexican food, and it was *aweful*. This place is really good, and requires reservations several days in advance for Saturday night. The trouble is the price. Mexican food and margaritas for 4 people just shouldn't cost over $200. But it does in Paris, and we'll be going back to this place again. Because it's still a lot cheaper than flying to Austin for dinner.

Sunday we went to a huge photography expo. Dozens of photography galleries from around the globe descend on Paris for a very trendy photography expo. A large portion of it was totally bizarre, some of it was people who get a little too carried away with Photoshop. It was all very expensive. I saw an Ansel Adams print for sale for 44,500 euros, and some Brassai prints up in the 40-50k price range as well. A boring picture of ugly office furniture (fits very nicely in the "bizarre" catagory) was 1,800 euros. One gallery specialized in photos from the 1800s, it was very interesting. People attending the event ranged from people in the photography industry to some college art students and some gaggles of self important jet setting trendy type.

After the expo we went to the new enclave of Japanese restaurants we discovered, and had lovely noodle soup and gyoza.

I also made my first tarte on Sunday afternoon. Since our neighborhood is packed with bakeries, there isn't much of an incentive to bake. But I wanted to see how hard it was. We made a poire-chocolate tarte, and it is really good. Damn, the dark chocolate here is just so good, it's hard to screw up any recipe that has dark chocolate in it.