A good friend from Melbourne was very insistent that I go to Marché des enfant rouge. It is the oldest covered market in Paris in a little section of Le Marais. It is named after the children from the orphanage that roamed the streets in their red orphanage “uniform”. It is only small but it breaths so much life. Well some of the produce looked like they had seen better days but the food on sale was YUM. A glass of cask wine was 3 euro   ( thank you Celia).There was a hustle and bustle about it that made it feel like you were the only non French person there. We went to a stand that sold middle eastern type of food. They had a tomato salad that looked delicious so I asked for some of that to be put on my plate with some couscous, a sausage , a stuffed eggplant and some “casserole”. The man serving me said in very broken English ” NO! you cannot have that. Too expensive you have this!” The gentlemen next to me in the queue and I were quite amused. It is lovely that he was thinking of my wallet but I was thinking about my taste buds. It was delicious and for 10.50 Euro I will be back. I am going back one day to get some tomato salad to bring home and have on toast like a bruschetta mmmmmm bruschetta. He will not deprive me of tomato salad.

Candelaria- we went to Candelaria for lunch it was rather hard to find as it is a very oddly shaped building. It is very small menu of modern mexican. The guacamole and salsa were yum . There was a little too much coriander on the tacos. Well any coriander is too much for my taste but so be it. A nicely dressed young girl squat and did a wee outside our window. OMG what the?? It was daylight! You are nicely dressed! don’t wee in the street! Maybe this is another French custom that I cannot quite find acceptable. I have heard that they hold on to the past and are very traditional. It was like a modern day version of a scene from Monty Python’s “Jabberwocky”

We went to La Barav for dinner. It was a tapas restaurant that was very hot and packed to the brim. We had cooked cheese with honey, a duo of yum tapenade and some meat and then a main course. Their bottle of wine policy is- you go next door to the cave next door to buy a marked up bottle of wine bring it back pay for it with your bill at the end of the meal. I asked the shop assistant at the cave whether many people come in say they are taking a bottle of wine next door but then run down the street. This was all said to him in improvised “interpretive dance” as he spoke very little English. He said that “In France people are good” .

I have generally been very pleasantly surprised by the meals I have bought at restaurants . Except for the spaghetti that I got from a cafe on rue de turenne. It had a great big clump of burnt spaghetti hidden down the bottom of the bowl that they must have been saving for an unassuming tourist. They can assume I will not be back to that cafe ( Cafe Turenne) 😉