Fresh mussels in Brittany
One thing I have to say about small towns in France is that they look cooler than small towns in the United States. A lot of the buildings look sturdy and solid. The houses in the country side seem to use a lot of stones and concrete, instead of wood. As for the buildings in the center of town, they look way prettier. I like a slice of old Americana every now and then, but there's something about those old European towns. Just look at the city hall. Seriously, do city halls in the U.S. look like that? WTF, America?! Anyway, the trip into the city on Day 2 was to get some bread at the bakery and then some mussels. Can we say, sea food for dinner?
In this area of Brittany, there's a lot of sea food to be had, and lots of fishermen. The area is pretty flat and it used to be covered by ocean water a long long time ago. Now a days, you have this area surrounding the coast where high tide and low tide will cover and uncover large swaths of sand. So to work around this, many of the fishing boats here have wheels. Yup, these boats DRIVE on land too. Pretty awesome. The mussels fishermen use boats like these.
After they come back from the ocean with mornings bounty, they gotta unload it and clean it. I guess normally you'd have to figure out a way to see this up close, but since Steph's parents know this guy, Robert, who is a mussel fisherman, it made my life easier. We got to see them do this up close. There's a guy who unloads the mussels off of the boat into this conveyor belt and then it goes to another fisherman who pulls out the bad ones. Pretty simple process.
Then they just put these things into large plastic baskets before they get bagged up. Gotta love fresh seafood!
See, bagged up and ready to go. I guess mussels are one of those things that gets AOC designation. The French do this so they can protect the quality of certain products like wine and cheese. I didn't know they did it with mussels too until I saw the bag. Pretty cool though, since the bag looks pimp.
And the very best part of the whole thing is that we get to eat the mussels. Pretty sweet. They pull them in in the morning and by nighttime, they're on our plates ready to be devoured. Probably doesn't get any fresher than that. These days chefs like to say they want to know who their suppliers are, and I've never gotten to experience that myself, where I see the product right after it's procured, and then it's in my belly the very same day. This is fairly easy to do with sea food here in Brittany by the coast. How much fresher can it get!? Our mussels were steamed with white wine, bay leaves, thyme, onions, garlic, and of course, butter. Perfect way to end the night for sure.
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Buildings in France are generally built of masonry as they do not have a lot of trees to cut. If you note, most power poles are concrete also.
Harvey
Harvey Fishman
September 11, 2011 9:57 pm
Where in Brittany? My wife and I went on our honeymoon as a walking tour on the Baie du Mont-Saint-Michel. I think we ate mussels almost every day and then oysters when we got to Cancale. It's ruined both for me. Nothing has been as good since.
"WTF, America" indeed. I saw on one of your other France posts that you mention Paul in CDG. We didn't try Paul, but the first thing we ate in France were baguette sandwiches from Brioche Dorée in the RER train station at the airport. It's a fast-food-type place. Maybe something akin to Au Bon Pain here or Cosi. But OMG. The sandwiches in A TRAIN STATION DELI were so much better 90% of the sandwiches I've had in NYC. That was my first visit to France. Before this, I used to just think people who talked about the food being so much better ... well, I just used to think those people liked to lord it over other people that they had been to France. But, no, they are right. The food is A MILLION TIMES BETTER in France. It makes me a little angry at America for sucking so hard overall in the food department.
Adam
September 11, 2011 10:55 pm
@Harvey,
That's a good point, I didn't think about that we have more land for harvesting trees in the U.S. The stone built house just have a better look than a wooden house plus vinyl sidings that I'm used to.
@Adam,
We're in a small town that's like 15 minutes from Cancale. We're in agreement about the oysters and mussels... First, the oysters here are like elephants. Crazy big and delicious. Why can't they do that in the U.S.?
And Brioche Doree and Paul are kinda the same things I think. Your comparison to Au Bon Pain is a good one, but it's funny since ABP is from Europe too, right? So the Paul is at the train station in CDG, which is the same as the RER station I think. It's easy to miss and since it's not on the same level as the ticketing kiosks, a lot of people don't see it. But yea, airport food that's good! Amazing. It's easy to fall in love with this country and the food...
BTW, if you ever fly Delta and connect in Detroit, there's a Brioche Doree in there. I haven't tried it yet though... No clue how it is... for a closer one, there's also a BD on some highway rest stop in upstate NY. They mentioned it on This American Life once when talking about foreign students working fast food jobs in the U.S.
Danny
September 12, 2011 4:10 am
I love this post! it's like No Reservations in writing. I also recall eating gigantic creamy oysters in France. Although I think the oysters in the US are more briny (at least east coast ones).
Ang
September 12, 2011 11:50 am
@Ang,
Totally, France is the land of ginormous oysters. I love it. Maybe next time I can go out on the boat with them. haha. It's supposed to take six hours though.
Danny
September 12, 2011 12:52 pm