Comments for David Lebovitz

Comment on Flat Bagels by Rae

Rae — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:50:47 +0000

This looks suspiciously like a Montreal bagel to me…

Comment on Lausanne, Switzerland by David

David — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:53:03 +0000

Nicole + Barbara: Although they look pretty similar, they are different (unless someone knows otherwise.) I bought some parsley root in Paris once, which were smaller & they were somewhat spicy rather than sweet, like panais (parsnips), which go by a different name.

And thanks for pointing out the small typo : )

Céleste: I don’t recall the exact location of the folks selling kale, but I did see it at at least 2 stand.

Didier: Sometimes in France is you buy tickets online, they ask for your birthday. In fact, I bought one yesterday for just a short trip (1 hour) from Paris and they asked for my birthdate for the ticket. Sometimes if you get a ‘deal’, they’ll require that so you can’t resell it.

suedoise: That’s a nice pastry shop but I really like their bread bakery, Boulangerie 140, just around the corner.

NYC Girl: I don”t believe they’re for sale. They were a museum!

Jennifer: There’s plenty of walking on my tours to guard against that. Well, somewhat..

Comment on Bouillon Chartier by David

David — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:06:31 +0000

Hi Lawrence: Unfortunately the frozen food (and bad food) issue is plaguing many restaurants in Paris these days. I wrote another post about it at Bistro Bummer) where I had a truly awful meal and experience at one of the “old-fashioned” Paris bistros.

A lot of the classic brasseries have been taken over by corporations and I gave up on them after too many really dreadful meals. I guess tourists still go to them which keeps them in business, though. And I wish they would just go back to serving good food. It’s seems like a much more sustainable (and ethical) formula for success.

Chartier is likely guilty of taking similar shortcuts however I find it often filled with plenty of locals (as well as tourists). I do recommend folks who go to stick with basics: roast chicken or steak, radishes with butter, frisée salad with bacon & similar items which really do have to be freshly prepared.

Comment on Lausanne, Switzerland by Nicole

Nicole — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 11:25:40 +0000

Parsley root is also called Parsnip, is that correct?
Wonderful post- you have a small typo under the market veg photo (live not like) just wanted to point that out. Hope you don’t mind.

Comment on Lausanne, Switzerland by Kiki

Kiki — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 11:19:35 +0000

@ Georgia…. lol :)
Fully agree with you….. coming originally from the ‘world town’ Zurich I considered Lausanne the ‘comble’ of lovely provinciality… – a statement ‘well founded’ by the arrival of several boys (young men) from Lausanne who didn’t know ANYTHING about life, women, fashion and what have you!!!! My belief that Lausanne was charming but backwards was cemented by my getting in contact with ex ‘Suisse Allemaniques’ who – after years and years in that corner – still spoke French and behaved like they had just jumped from the shrubs…. But I also already half-heartedly LOVED Lausanne at that time and I used to say that I would go and live there once I would have my pension ahead of me – because by then I’d have settled into that slow mode of life!
Everything changed when I lived with my (Suisse Romand) husband in a quaint corner of Southern England for over eight years and my favourite sigh was: NOW I would be ready to live in Lausanne…. :))) And then, after returning from UK to CH, I lived for 2 1/2 happy years in LUTRY and I will now always pine for Lausanne…
And I DO want to apologize for teasing Geneva people; I thought of removing that remark because I felt it could be missunderstood…. but helas and luckily, everybody got the teasing remark as what it was, a teaser… we do love each other after all. And I let you have David for his hopefully upcoming trip to Geneva! OK?! :)

Comment on Lausanne, Switzerland by NYC Girl

NYC Girl — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 11:06:25 +0000

OH wow, I absolutely adore the signs… can I buy them? What a fab array of photos you allowed us to look at. Happy Holidays.

Comment on Lausanne, Switzerland by Barbara

Barbara — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 10:41:24 +0000

You need to come to Holland for kale–it’s just about the national vegetable. Known as boerenkool (farmers cabbage). In supermarkets you can buy it in bags already washed and chopped up for use in the boerendkool met worst, which is basically potatoes and kale mashed up together and served with a smoked beef sausage.

By the way, your parsley root looks to me like parsnips. So for people looking for recipes, that’s another keyword to search on.

Comment on Bouillon Chartier by Lawrence Bohme

Lawrence Bohme — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 09:33:22 +0000

Last night I saw a documentary on France 2 about ready-made food served in Parisian brasseries and one of the culprits was Chartier. Even the waitress confessed, before the hidden camera, that almost none of the food is cooked in the kitchen anymore, but that most of the customers are foreigners who think it’s great, especially because they love the décor and the friendly atmosphere – “On rigole pas mal”. I went there often 30 years ago and loved it, didn’t like it at all when I went back ten years later because the food was too hastily cooked and there were SO many American and Japanese back-packers there. Now it seems that success has spoiled it definitively, by managers who realize that their customers are there for the experience rather than the food and enjoy anything with a bit of bechamel on it. Many expensive restaurants were shown doing the same thing in the programme – the reporters even went through their garbage containers at night and found them to be full of plastic packages marked BOEUF BOURGUIGNON, ready for the microwave.

Comment on Lausanne, Switzerland by Didier

Didier — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 08:47:50 +0000

Yep, Lavaux wines, and Epesses among them, are great, reasonnably priced (considering the value), and barely exported. Switzerland best kept secret…

“on a train to Lyon and the birth date on my ticket was wrong”…hmmm, that’s an amazing case of parallel universe.
In my own universe, I have been travelling to Lyon twice a month for the past 20 years, and no birth date has ever been displayed on any of my tickets… :-)

Comment on Lausanne, Switzerland by Jeniffer Paxton

Jeniffer Paxton — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 06:45:32 +0000

I think this email I just received from my best friend sums up today’s post perfectly…

“Reading David Lebovitz blog today – think we should go to Switzerland, sounds nice and we could get really fat.”