About food, culture and the Eiffel Tower…

Food is really something you grow up with.  You do not suddenly develop a taste for snails or avocado at the age of forty.  You gradually start eating those “strange” foods while you are a toddler because your mother constantly asks you to try at least one bite.  I remember giving my daughter Isabelle a coffee spoon of avocado and she did not really like it; but she did not gag, so it was OK.  My mother used to say that if they gag, you have to stop making them eat; but if they do not like it, then you can try again the next time.  To make a long story short, Isabelle now loves avocado, and other “strange” Southeast Asian foods.

I originally come from Laos from a Colonial French family and I was raised to be French, but unfortunately, and to my mother’s dismay, I am very American.  Nevertheless I am an American with an intensive background in cultures and culinary.  I gave my grandchildren escargots, mussels, crabs (all kind of seafood), different vegetables I find in the Asian markets, etc.  We used to take them to eat sushi or Vietnamese food as soon as they had teeth.  My granddaughter Emile now eats Kimchee for breakfast; OK, even I don’t go that far, I still try to have my café au lait and croissant if I can for breakfast.

Back to why I am talking about food.  Barnett and I took our granddaughters Emile and Reine to visit their great grandmother in Luxemburg in 2006.  It was not the first time the girls went to Europe, but it was the first time they really experienced the European life; and we also “played” tourists.  We took the girls to the Tour Eiffel before dinner, and then we came down to the famous Jules Verne Restaurant for our feast.  Of course we had to reserve first, and even so we had to wait for our table.  We had a drink while we were waiting and we were looking at Paris, it was spectacular.

Reine, my second granddaughter was about six years old then, and ordered a platter of seafood, and escargots.  The waiter was so impressed, he spent the entire evening waiting on her; and she liked the fact that he kept on calling her Mademoiselle.  To end the story, had I known how much Barnett had to pay for six people to eat at the Jules Verne, I would have thought about it for a second or two.  Nah, I would still have done it; and again it was a lifetime experience for the girls.

I truly love Paris.