Great food at Les Cocottes and they open on Monday
Before I talk about the wonderful meal that Steph and I had at Les Cocottes, I want to talk about a new feature that consumer camera makers should add to their point-and-shoot cameras. Plainly, they should add a feature where you click a button, and it'll tell you whether or not the picture is printable to a 5x7 or 4x6 picture based on clarity/sharpness. I just wish that sometimes after you ask a fellow tourist to take your picture, that instead of picture review, the camera shows the helper a message like, "Good job!" or "It's fucking 2011, and you don't know how to do the half-shutter press and take a good picture for other people on vacation? What are you, fucking stupid?" Like one day we asked this nice looking older Italian woman to take a picture for us, and she was playing hot potato with the camera. And then she handed the camera back and ran away looking scared like I'm Amanda Knox or some shit. WTF YO?! But as I was saying, the food at Les Cocottes is superb and great for vacationers because they open on Mondays! gasp!
For the uninitiated, Mondays in France are like Sabbath days for the French. And the French love days off. I'd say maybe half of the stores and restaurants are closed on Sundays. So that's mini-Sabbath. But Mondays? Shit, like 90% of the stores are closed on Mondays. You know the phrase, "Case of the Mondays?" Shiiiiiit, you want Mondays in France. I think the whole nation takes off to lick butter lollipops at home, leaving tourists stranded for food options. Oh and the month of August? That shit is like the holy month of rest. Them French people? They know how to take it easy.
So it's just awesome that Les Cocottes is open on Mondays, and even more great that the food is pretty fly. Steph had this appetizer that was langostine ravioli with some sort of cheesy frothy broth. One could easily down a whole bowl of that. That went too fast.
I had the Terrine de Campagne which is just country pate. It's pretty awesome for those who like this kind of stuff. You wouldn't think cold meat mashed up and formed into a mold would be delicious, but it's quite so. We need more of this kind of stuff stateside.
Another cool thing was the pigs feet. Unlike Asian cuisine, where if you order pigs feet, you pretty much get something that looks like a pig got it's foot cut off. No, in France and at Les Cocottes, they're classier than that. They chop up the foot for you, form it into a meatball looking thing, stuff the pigs feet meatball into a potato and brown it in an oven. Blam! Amaaaazing, of course. I mean it's pigs feet, it's born to be delicious.
Since I'm going to wrap up my French restaurant posts, I just want to take a minute to talk about the tipping policy. Tip is included in the price of the meal and this does two things for you... One, it makes it easy at the end of the meal. Two, sometimes, you get service that's just like, "Oh you good, aight. I'mma go chill out and do whatever because my tip is included in the price of the meal." It was easy at Les Cocottes because we sat at the counter, and the service was good, but there were times when we couldn't even get a server to give us the check. Really? We wanna pay you and you don't want our money? Sometimes, having them give you the menu to start a meal is even a challenge. I'm pretty sure the U.S. system is better, because servers here mistakenly believe that their good/bad service has an effect on tips. When in reality, studies have shown that in large part, people tip how they tip despite the service. So I like this because it helps me out since the server is more likely to be attentive and tipping strategies like double the tax or 15% or 20% are easy to calculate. Tomorrow I'll close the France posts with pictures of macarons, but that's all for now.
Les Cocottes
139 Rue Saint-Dominique.
Paris, FR 75007
01 47 53 73 34
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"It's fucking 2011, and you don't know how to do the half-shutter press and take a good picture for other people on vacation? What are you, fucking stupid?"
BINGO.
Adam
October 12, 2011 10:17 pm
@Adam,
Totally frustrating at times. I swear, people can just pretend they didn't understand my English if they didn't want to take a picture!
Danny
October 13, 2011 1:22 pm
I don't know how to take pictures with iPhones
Ang
October 13, 2011 8:08 pm
@Ang,
haha yea but this was like a Canon point and shoot. It's basically the easiest camera to use!
Danny
October 14, 2011 10:13 am
Oo they were sold out of the pig's feet when we went (just before closing), but that looks amazing. Les Cocottes also made me want to go out and buy a ton of Staub cast irons for the apartment hahah.
Kathy
October 14, 2011 11:53 am