Eating French food in a house in Croydon Hills, Melbourne is just as good as eating it in a little restaurant in Paris, said no-one ever in the entire world.
But here’s the thing—we either eat it in Croydon Hills, or we don’t eat it all. So, with this in mind, the second Dinner Party Project (DPP) will recreate—to the best of our ability—three of the fabulous dishes we ate in the City of Lights last year.
Our entrée will be French onion soup, that deliciously sweet, rich broth topped with crusty bread and melted cheese. I haven’t eaten that since last April when we stopped for lunch at an outdoor cafe in Jardins Tuilieries, between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde.
We were on our way to see Monet’s water lilies at Musee de l’Orangerie at the other end of the gardens, but couldn’t go past the aroma of coffee and the promise of a cheap, warm meal to combat the brisk spring breeze.
For the DPP main course, I decided on boeuf bourguignon for two reasons. One, because it didn’t look too hard to cook (am I kidding myself?) and two, because we are it in a gorgeous little restaurant, the Crémerie-Restaurant Polidor near the Jardin du Luxembourg.
This quaint restaurant has remained basically unchanged for a century. A bustling, cheerful place with an unpretentious décor and menu, you sit at long wooden tables where you sharing your space, salt and pepper shakers and conversation with strangers.
The hearty boeuf bourguignon was simple, tasty fare, but it gained a certain romance when eaten in a century-old eatery that had seen people such as James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac sitting at those same tables.
One thing about the Polidor we won’t try to recreate, though, is its legendary bathroom. The toilet, like the restaurant, must be over a century old. OK, let’s state the facts—it’s basically a hole in the floor and the best advice one can give is just forget about it and ‘hang on’.
Our DPP dessert takes its inspiration from our meal at Brasserie Julien in the heart of Paris. What’s not to like about profiteroles with a rich warm chocolate sauce poured all over them? This dessert was the sublime end to a lovely evening at Julien’s which, with its Art Nouveau style, huge mirrors, mosaic floor, and delicate ‘Flower Ladies’ painted on glass paste panels, was as refined as Polidor was earthy.
So, with these great eateries to inspire us, we Dinner Party Project hosts will put on some French cafe music, practise our ‘bonjours’ and ‘mercis’ and prepare to create some Gallic ambiance at the Paris end of Croydon Hills. Bon apetit!
