If this were your last trip to France, what area(s) would you recommend for enjoying the best of French food? It's my husband's favorite.
We are contemplating a two- or three-week stay in one place to steep ourselves in the culture--and particularly the wine, cheese, pastries, entrées.
Thanks for any suggestions
I've been to several different cities in France, and I can only recall one disappointing meal. (It was at a bistro in Paris. We could hear the microwave beeping in the kitchen! Our dishes were still cold in the center.)
What does your husband specifically like about French cuisine? Does he have a favorite dish? If yes, you could visit the region this dish is originally from.
My favorite experiences are going to markets. There is so much to choose from and sample, and it's easy to see which booths are the most popular (and presumably have the tastiest food). We gather our purchases and either have a picnic lunch or a dinnertime feast in our hotel room.
On my most recent trip to Paris, we enjoyed a wine and cheese tasting here.
Stop into a patisserie and buy a couple of desserts. You and your husband can share them and then take turns ranking your favorites.
French food is a collection of regional cuisines, so the specialities in Normandy and Brittany are very different from those in Alcase or Burdundy. Perhaps Google French regional cuisines and decide which most appeals to you. I can't really say that I prefer any one area over another as far as food goes. I love a good paté or escargot. Wouldn't turn up my nose at a good boeuf bourguignon or a cassoulet. I suppose you could sample many regional specialties in a large center like Paris. You just need to know which restaurants serve a particular regional cuisine.
sheilacatterall,
This is really hard to choose. I am a carnivore, so I like the food of northern and northeastern France. I am not a seafood lover but a meat, pate and produce lover. If I had to choose one area of France to spend a long time in, I would say Provence (or all of southern France from Spain to Italy.) The fruits and vegetables outshine everything else there. (Yes, I know the seafood is great as well, but that is not a consideration for me.) i love to see them growing in the fields and orchards. I love to smell them and touch them. I love to prepare and eat them. Give me some eggs and some red meat or poultry to round out a meal, even a small amount, and I am content. Of course, the bread goes without saying.
If you can stay three weeks. Give Brittany (with or without a Normandy component) a try for cider, cheese, seafood (esp. shellfish) and the agneau sale from the Mont St Michel area. Spend a week in the southwest (Bordeaux, the Dordogne, Toulouse...) for pate, wine, more seafood, mountain trout, mushrooms and truffles, and the cassoulet(!) Take a week for Provence and the Riviera for the above-mentioned produce and seafood (salad Nicoise and bouillabaisse). Burgundy...more wine and beef and pork and poulet de Bresse. Alsace for German style...sausages and winter vegetables.
And everything can be found in Paris. Maybe you should try to take a 6-8 week trip (Ha!). I am getting hungry now, so will go fix lunch.
Bon voyage et bon appetit!
I agree with the other posters. I would also add that it depends on when you plan to go. Most Europeans eat seasonally. Here is just one site that talks about this: https://www.french-waterways.com/best-seasonal-foods-in-france/
I’m hardly an expert, but LaurieC brings up a key attraction: the markets! In that spirit, I’d recommend Provence and its markets. Every town does it a bit differently, so all of them feel special. You really get to experience some of that French culture and passion for food there. Vaison-la-Romaine was my favorite, where the market takes over half the town’s streets. I was buying a corkscrew, and the vendor wouldn’t let me leave without explaining in excited French why this was perfect for wines from nearby Vacqueyras and their long corks. It was awesome.
Lyon provides an excellent stop (and launchpad) for French cuisine. Cuisine is a true pastime there. It’s also a very enjoyable place besides. Lyon is kind of like the Paris for French people. Connecting Paris, Provence, and Lyon is pretty easy and you could throw in time in Burgandy for good measure.
I live in the south, but for what you are requesting, I say go to Burgundy for the wine sauces, cream sauces, cheeses, pastry, eggs, even the honey. The whole area, sweeping east to west from the Jura across Burgundy to the Loire Valley has the quintessential dishes and many, many interesting wines.
When you write entrées, you mean main dishes because in France an entrée is the first course.
Good ripe fruits, vegetables can be found nearly anywhere. In the south, we use tomato base, olive oil and wine for our sauces, while it’s the cream, butter and wine in the north. For two or three weeks, that rich cuisine is a special indulgence.
Lyon is mentioned above. You have to be careful there because it’s known not only for Paul Bocuse, but also a cuisine specializing in organ meats, and a hearty unrefined cooking. You seem to be asking about finer cuisine, not regional dishes sold locally in every tourist restaurant.
Edit: I agree throughly with KGC just below. It's the small places where a whiz of a cook is in the kitchen and few guidebook writers have visited. We had several like that within 20 kilometers of my in-laws' village in Burgundy. However, be careful if the menu is too diversified with most of the choices in sauces and you don't smell anything coming from the kitchen. Chances are the main courses come frozen from restaurant wholesalers. We had a restaurant like that in my in-laws' village next to the local chateau.
As I slowly explore France I am constantly amazed by how regional the food can be. And there is a very noticeable difference between Germany and France that in many cases stops at the border (although in the Alsace-Lorraine the border seems to still be in contention.) The upscale "French" cooking I saw in the US is not something I encounter here, and, while I do frequent the occasional Michelin restaurant, the best meals I've had have all been in smaller towns and cities not on the normal tourist's list. I had a fantastic lunch in Sedan a couple weeks ago, cheese, Quiche Lorraine, pickled salad, mussels, and apple tart, served with a nice white wine and fresh bread, for less than $25. All of that in a place with less than 20 tables, and I was probably the only American they saw that month. This past Saturday some friends and I spent the day wandering along the Mosel and it was wine and cheese, fresh breads and sausages, and all local stuff. I can tell you where to spend $100/plate in Strasbourg and it won't be that good.
For your plan, just my suggestion, pick a region you like the wine from. Then rent a place near a patisserie, in a town with a café or two on the main square, where they have a Saturday market, and where you have train or bus service to a bigger city. Then just get up, get coffee and a croissant, sit in the sun, go see a museum, have a late dinner, walk in the country, and sleep well.
To enjoy French cuisine, it's very easy: plan a two-month stay and visit all the French regions.
There are more "official" cheeses than days in the year, more pastry wines, and more dishes than you could ever taste in a lifetime.
And indeed, as Elizabeth says, many restaurants offer pre-cooked, semi-industrial frozen meals purchased from restaurant wholesalers (the well-known: Métro) that are designed to look "homemade."
My advice: stop at "Routiers" restaurants with the blue and red logo, a legendary part of French gastronomic history for almost a century.
Guaranteed homemade family cooking, no fuss, a truly local vibe, minimalist prices, a whole meal with wine and coffee for less than €20.
They are used to customers from all European countries (truck drivers), so they speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, etc..
The official website with a map:
Excellent map JoLui. Thank you.
Whatever region(s) you select, here are some tips
*. Any restaurant with a menu larger than two pages is suspect as serving factory-made, industrial dishes. A five page, multi-language menu is a red flag that much of the food is industrial. A short menu of daily specials may or may be a good sign, but usually it is an indicator (as is an open kitchen). There have been exposes on French TV in the past where a seafood restaurant had no fresh fish on site, just those on displays, while all the dishes came from the freezer in ready to heat packs.
* An initiative to identify restaurants "fait maison" flopped after a debut 2014-2015. It was also filled with loopholes that allowed too much industrialized content. It was reformed and relaunched, so you may see the logo used more (like a stick figure saute pan, with a pyramid and chimney on top). But it remains somewhat problematic. There was an effort to get industrial, premade dishes labeled but I don't have any info on its status.
* The Michelin Guide and Gault Millau despite controversy, are usually pretty reliable. The Bib Gourmand category highlights well-made, well-priced restaurants.
Lyon has been called the stomach of France, and for good reason. But the regions all have differences --- and while the big cities may have regional cuisine restaurants, not every specialty is reproduced correctly. For example, I saw a video from Le Parisien newspaper that went looking for true Pan Bagnat (a nicoise sandwich) and found some pretty terrible versions in Paris (they had been readapted over time).
