French Michelin tour day 2: birds and Burgundies

Breakfast was taken this morning near our hotel, and we quickly began our shopping excursion on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

We took lunch at L'Angle du Faubourg, the casual restaurant run by the famed Taillevent. I chose this place because of their selections of wines by the glass, and I had a glass of 1997 Gevrey-Chambertin.

I didn't take the menu d'un jour, but instead started with some gelée de crustaces.

Then I had magret de canard.

Shopping continued at Galerie Lafeyette, before going back to hit Angelina for le chocolat chaud à l'ancienne, using a mix of three different chocolates from Africa.

Dinner tonight was at Arpège, which by now serves primarily vegetables and no red meat. The decor with Lalique crystal panels was truly beautiful.

I started with consommé de carottes à la verveine.

Dragée de pigeonneau à l'hydromel - I couldn't resist when I saw pigeon on the menu, and rejoiced that I didn't have to go vegetarian all the way for the meal. This was pretty nice with a crunchy crust.

Ile flottante moka-mélisse

I'm on a Burgundy kick this trip and was determined to have some nice bottles from older vintages.

1988 Armand Rousseau Chambertin

At the end of dinner I asked the restaurant to remove the beautiful wine label for me so that I could take it home. This seemed to take a long time, I was getting a little pissed off. When they finally presented it to me, they told me that it had to be removed by soaking the label in butter(!) or something like that. No wonder it took so long... but I had never heard to using this method.