Êtes-vous prêts ? (Are you all ready?) This marks the third installment of my series of blogs about my French immersion trip to Bordeaux, following part one, and part two, which I previously published.
On weekday afternoons when our French classes were out, we Oberlin students would rush to the buses or trams (we were all provided weekly free transit passes) or go by foot as quick as we could to plunge into Bordeaux’s vibrant restaurant culture, for it was high time that we ate—bon appétit ! (literally "good appetite," famously used to say "time to eat" or "enjoy your meal"). There were beaucoup de boulangeries (many bakeries) to pick from, but lots of other options too. More than once I enjoyed chocolate pistachio bread alongside a savory baguette sandwich or a pesto and ham open-faced one. There was a surprising trend of kebab and taco shops in Bordeaux too, and my friends and I would often eat at these, enjoying large pitas stuffed with meat, cheese, and vegetables all in a tangy sauce to help fuel our busy days (and with that meal you’d even get a serving of fries—which really were never from France at all but have come from America to be served there). We had pizza for lunch at one point with the group of friends I formed, and at another split off to grab food from various locations and met up for a picnic. At another instance of a picnic lunch, we even had crêpes using the leftovers one of my friends' hosts had provided, and filled them with meat, cheese, and arugula we went to the grocery store for ourselves.
At every turn in the restaurants and other establishments we attended, we were given the opportunity to practice our French. I became skilled at saying “I would like…” (“Je voudrais…”) and, in particular in the bakeries and pastry shops (the later is called the same as a pastry itself, a “pâtisserie”), I practiced ordering a lot of chocolate croissants, which in French are called “pain au chocolat” (literally “bread to the chocolate”). I didn’t say “pain au chocolat” exactly while in Bordeaux though, because the city, unlike anywhere else in France, called their pastries of that nature by the name “chocolatine” instead. And my, were the chocolatines like heaven! I had one from a grocery first, and quickly discovered how these simply could not compare with the pâtisserie delicacies. I tried eight different locations, and carefully ranked the chocolatines from each. Though I loved them all, those from a bakery called Louis Lamour, recommended by my French teacher, won out as having the most incredible blend of punchy, rich chocolate flavor, with a soft and crumbly pastry coating. Among delicious bread creations, my consumption of that chocolatine was perhaps unmatched in wonder… unless you count when I had a fresh, warm baguette only a few days later, which I considered a transformative experience. Chocolatines will remain a specialty in my heart for a breakfast treat, but that baguette I tasted showed me, as though I were an infant again, how impeccable even just bread alone could be for the palate. If you, too, go to France, a fresh bakery baguette is an absolute non-negotiable. And this is all without mentioning the other pastries I enjoyed! Pain au raisin (raisin bread), l’escargot chocolat pistache (a chocolate pistachio snail), and a divine sampling of the single product sold at Dune Blanche (a “dune blanche” or white dune), which was an exquisite, cream-filled ball with crisp icing on top. Like the dune blanche in being sold from specialized shops, canelés cakes were yet another delectable item I quite enjoyed, whose swirl of apple and rum flavors felt apt for a Bordeaux specialty.
Outside of the restaurants we lunched at and the bakeries I’d get my daily dose of chocolatine from (alongside other pastries, even many I don’t have the space to mention here) whenever I could, there was great food I had at dinner restaurants and over the weekends. I tried (of course) some escargot (snails) with my friends at Le 1925, a chic restaurant near the city center where we went on my friend’s birthday. We had fois gras (fattened duck liver of a dubious moral nature you can research if you’re curious) at a restaurant in Saint-Émilion and I tasted wonderful smoked salmon with a view on my day in Paris, the trips to both those cities being things I intend to discuss in the last and final part of this blog series. We tasted wine (which I always spit out when I had it), bread, cheese, and an excellent strawberry jam at L’Accord Parfait (the perfect agreement), truly fresh oysters on a trip to Arcachon, and incredible chocolate at Saunion chocolate factory (all visits which I’ll explain further in the next post too).
All in all, my tastebuds ached to have to leave Bordeaux and France on the whole. I took with me a bottle of the jam I’d tried, but otherwise had to leave behind the tasty pastries which had become dear to my daily routine in just a few weeks. I would miss the cuisine wholeheartedly once back in the states indeed, but still not as much as I’d miss the beautiful place and the people which I found, and which I will finish by writing about in this series’ fourth and final post.
