Photos of Food in Paris; A First-Hand Experience with French Cuisine

This summer during my language camp I really did experience the culinary expertise in Paris.  No, not the cafeteria food silly, the street food!  As a true Instagirl without an Instagram, I did my best to take pictures of all of the food I ate so that I could show you my firsthand experience with Paris’s culinary grandeur.   (For the record, all of these adventures happened with my friends Ana, Erika, and Sydney except the first two.  Hana was in some of them.  Shout out:  YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME, I MISS YOU ALL!!!!!)

Read on for pictures and descriptions of the French food I experienced.

Mille-Feuille:

Mille Feuille is a delicious pastry that I happened to get at a little shop in Paris on the second day of camp.  Mille Feuille means “thousand papers” in French.  It is made of very thin, flaky philo layers all stacked on top of each other with two layers of yellow custard and frosting on top.  It tasted so good and so sweet and I’m sure I gained five pounds just eating that, but hey, it was totally worth it.

Coq au Vin:

Coq au Vin is literally translated as “Rooster with Wine.” Whether what I had was actual rooster or normal chicken, I have not the faintest idea, but it was spectacular.  This dish was really filling and delicious and I enjoyed it a lot, although it was too much for me to finish.

Strawberry Juice:

While we had free time, my friends and I all went to a café and sat down outside to enjoy a beverage.  Unfortunately in Europe, there is no such thing as “iced coffee” or even ice in general.  Rather than getting hot coffee on a hot and humid day, my friends and I got cold juices instead.  I chose to get strawberry juice which consisted of sweet, red syrup with semi-sparkling water put on top.  Fortunately, I had friends to tell me to stir my drink together before I started to drink it.  If they hadn’t warned me, I’m sure the drink would have been less refreshing than it was.  Look, it even has ice!

Japonais:

While in France, my friends and I tried to avoid the cafeteria food as much as possible, so one night we all went together and bought a bunch of sushi at a Japanese(Japonais) restaurant and brought it back to our rooms to eat.  It was delicious, but I had a traumatizing experience with miso soup in which someone made me laugh (I think it was either Erika or Hana) and I snorted really salty soup out of my nose.  They laughed at me and wouldn’t let me forget about it, but my nose will never be the same again.  During that same meal, Erika spilled soy sauce on the table and it dripped off onto her best friend Ana’s suitcase.  It was an eventful meal, to say the very least.

Picnics:

Picnics were an ever present fear in all of our lives.  We had one almost every day, if not every day, we were in Paris.  No, I’m sure you can’t imagine the horror of these picnics because food is food, right?  WRONG.  Imagine every day getting the same, soggy loaf of nasty white bread trying to pass off as a baguette smeared with awful mayo and egg and chicken that has been sitting in your backpack or purse for the past 4 hours getting warm and gross in the hot Paris weather.  Not to mention that the rest of the meal was always the same: applesauce, greasy potato chips, and a very dried out lemon cake patty thing that tasted like sawdust.  So we held a rebellion and they let us go to the grocery to buy things to go with our picnics.  Usually my friends and I all went in together, buying extra drinks, chips, cheese, croissants, and candy to go with our applesauce.  These self-made-picnics were the best things ever because we could eat what we wanted to eat.

Crêpes:

Let me just say right now that the crêpes you can get at the fair are nothing like the ones that you can get in Paris.  Throughout my trip I ate at least three crêpes that I remember:  one with sugar and butter, one with bananas, Chantilly cream, and Nutella, and one with ice cream while we were at Disney.  Let me tell you, these crêpes are like nothing I have had, and probably nothing I will have again.

Ice Cream:

The only gelato place I went to was this chain called “Amorino”.  They had super delicious flavors and if you wanted multiple flavors, they would take the cone or bowl and turn it into a flower.  It was so cute!  In this picture, I am holding a coffee, spekulatius, and chocolate flower.  It was delicious!  (For the uninformed citizen, spekulatius is a German cookie that tastes a tiny bit like gingerbread cookies.  It’s really good.)

Caffeine:

During our time in Paris, it was rarely cold enough to get coffee, but sometimes we did it anyway.  I had two coffee items while in Paris:  a “café au lait” on the Champs-Elysees and an espresso at a little café in some scenic district of Paris.  Both of these tasted surprisingly good, considering the fact that I am not a rock hard coffee addict.  The espresso I tasted in Paris was my first espresso ever and I had to order it in order to sit down with my friends at a café.  They recorded a video of me trying it and laughed at me while I was deciding if I liked it or not.  But joke’s on them!  I love espresso now and I have had two more since that one.

Starbucks:

First day out in Paris, I went into a white-girl-withdraw and I went to Starbucks.  I didn’t get coffee, I got an iced chai tea latte and it was delicious.  The only bad thing: Starbucks spelled my name wrong.

And that is all of the food adventures I had in Paris!  If you have never considered Paris as an option for vacation or language camp, do it for the food.  Seriously.