25 April: At Least I Didn't Eat a Whole Plate of Meat, Too
That was uttered by my wife, Mrs. Facade, tonight as we finished a fine dinner in our neighborhood/arrondisment, the Latin Quarter, spent at a fondue/raclette establishment. You probably have a concept of what fondue is, but if you're not familiar with raclette, it's a French variation on fondue where you warm a thick slab of cheese on some kind of platform elevated over heat, then tip the melted goo over a boiled potato that you've just cut up yourself. It's kind of like the gastronomic version of tilting boiling oil over a Medievel castle wall onto an encroaching enemy.

So, Mrs. F and I had plans to go to a fine dining establishment on a street lined with gourmet shops on the Ille St. Louis. Unfortunately, it was closed, so we resorted to our second choice of raclette. I will say for the record that Mrs. F kept trying to sway our attentions to other restaurants on the way back to the Latin Quarter. But once the idea of raclette entered my noggin, there was no going back.

Now, having melted cheese isn't so bad a meal, especially if you mix it, say, with a salad. But if you combine a raclette with, oh, I dunno, a fondue of goat cheese, you're just asking for trouble. And don't forget that the fondue comes with a plate of hams and sausages (which were left all to me by my vegetarian wife). Should I have a myocardial infarction someday, I'll be able to look back on this evening fondly as the tipping point to the strangulation of my arteriers.

Tonight's dining experience follows last night's dinner at Le Reminet, which was one of the best dinners we've had in a long, long time last night. A perfect example of a truly French bistro with wonderfully white table cloths and helpful, attending wait staff, it features traditional French meat and fish dishes. I had the steak with camembert and extra large frites nicely built up on my plate like building blocks, while Mrs. F had an absolutely delightful piece of pan-fried salmon. This and the bottle of Pinot Noir would have made this a meal to remember, but we put the gastric pedal to the metal to get the true French experience of the meal. So we followed up our main courses with a cheese course, and the dessert, which brought possibly the Greatest Creme Brulee I've Ever Tasted. When it was gone, I wanted to weep. I'm not kidding.

Postscript: As I enter this post at one of our wi-fi outposts, we've just finished off a lunch of salads, ordered in an attempt to regain some healthy equilibrium to our systems. Unfortunately, I could not entirely get away from the cheese in my salad, which was chock full of small pieces of emmental cheese. Might be time for a gelato, now.