Food Experiences

Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral died in 1914, and during his time the seasonal farm workers hired by his family to help with the wheat harvest ate five meals a day. Breakfast began the day at seven

Outdoor dining in Montpellier. There are hundreds of
restaurants. Don't take my recommendations, make your
own discoveries!

o'clock with bread dipped in oil and vinegar, anchovy paste, and a hot, red onion. Next came the "big drink" at ten o'clock, which consisted of a hard-boiled egg and a chunk of cheese. A "dinner" of soup and boiled vegetables was served at one in the afternoon. Tea time was at four and came with a salad and garlic-rubbed bread. The final meal of the day, supper, came with meat or an omelette and beer.

My thought on reading this was "How human!" The three-meal day doesn't work for me,

My first restaurant meal: salmon carpaccio

mainly because if I eat enough food to last until the next meal, I fall asleep. If I don't eat enough, I need to snack between meals, and then the snack becomes the meal, which isn't healthy. I feel we've lost the wisdom of French farmers.

A typical day for me was four meals, beginning with coffee, buttered bread, and yogurt with museli. For lunch, I made a salad of sardines, olives, and shredded cheese on a bed of roquette or salad greens. Afternoon snack around 3:30 consisted of cheese, bread and fresh fruit. Evening meal happened anywhere between 8:00 and 9:30 p.m., when the sun finally set. 

The last thing I wanted to do was gain weight on vacation. French food is notoriously rich, and eating out every night with three-course, wine-accompanied dinners was a surefire way to put on

Cheese selection at La Fine Mouche

pounds. Unless I was on a day trip to another city, I ate mostly at my flat, by myself, which means I ate light. When I did eat at restaurants, I noticed some pleasant differences between French and American dining. Here are three important ones:

Servers in France don't ask if everything is okay two minutes after delivering your plate of food. If something is wrong, it is expected you will get the server's attention. Otherwise, your food is perfect, so enjoy it, the wine, and the wonderful people accompanying you.

Servers in France don't ask, as you take a pause from your entrée, if you're "still working on that." Equating eating with working is absurd to me. I go to restaurants to get away from work, unless it's a "working lunch," which is generally a bad idea anyway.

Finally, there's less (no?) focus on customer turnover, which is a measurement of the number of seatings per night. When you sit for a meal, in even a mediocre French establishment, it is expected you're there for the balance of the evening, unless you have another engagement demanding your immediate attendance following the repast.

11 restaurants in 18 days.

I don't know why I expected every restaurant meal in France to be mind-expanding. One time, I had lunch at a restaurant on Mother's Day (Mother's Day in France falls on a different day than in the US), and I ordered Côte de Veau from the brunch menu. The beef was chewy and the sauce was nondescript. A local told me in confidence that 80% of restaurants use microwave ovens to heat their food. Ugh.

Despite this, I enjoyed sumptuous, inky wines, creamy, musty raw milk cheeses, and mouth-melting breads -- all from the Occitanie

Charcuterie and wine at La Fine Mouche

region. In Sète, I had tasty fish soup and a savory slice of grilled fish. In Nîmes, I enjoyed my first homemade pâté. In general, the food baseline is higher in France than in the States, and for that I am grateful.