Sweets and Other Eats: The Cravings Begin!

You move to a new place, everything is going well then BAM! you suddenly get a craving so bad for something you didn't even eat that much to begin with back home. Chinese and Mexican food! Ok so I am always craving Mexican food but Soner and I have made it our new obsession to try to find a great Chinese and Mexican restaurant in France but we have not been very successful. In Chicago, we were always on that quest for a great Mexican restaurant but there was only one that we knew of so while it was good, we did not frequent it more than once every two months or so and we NEVER ate Chinese! So we have traveled to Besancon (about an hour away), we have traveled to Zurich (about an hour and a half away), to Strasbourg (about 1 and a half hours), to Mulhouse (30 minutes) and all the way to Lyon (3 hours away!) and what do all these places have in common?? The quest for Chinese and Mexican food! At times, it has seemed we simply visited these places just to check out the food and it was not your traditional French cuisine we were checking out even though we should have as each place seems to have their own speciality food. We spent much of our 2 day weekend in Lyon looking for a Mexican and Chinese restaurant. Before we left Belfort, I actually looked up Asian grocery stores so we could buy chopsticks and maybe a little food as Soner kept stocking up on noodles and soy sauce in Belfort and it was never resulting in an actual meal.

So off we go to Lyon with an address in hand for an Asian super market and voila, there is one and several around it! We are in the Chinatown of Lyon it seems! It is all Asian restaurants, stores, markets, etc. It is amazing. Who would have thought all the way in France, they would have a Chinatown in the large cities also. We bought chopsticks, noodles, sake and little packages for mixing up some good Chinese food... it was all in English! As I have always imagined, Asian food seems to be only near and dear to those in the United States and in actual Asia as evidenced by the English labels on everything in every supermarket we went to in a very large French city.

We did find ourselves a little Tex-Mex restaurant, actually called El Tex-Mex and while it wasn't wonderful but how many Mexican restaurants have you actually eaten at that have been? So I would say it was about right on par with some of the Mexican places I like to eat at... it was lacking in the mandatory, must have section though... we did not have chips and salsa on our table! And we ordered "guacamole" and what we got was a big blob of green stuff (it looked like the stuff we got out of the jar from the grocery store...in fact, Soner swears it is) and about 10 chips (also appeared to be from the Doritos chips you can buy at the grocery store that are lightly dusted with chili powder). It was a bit disappointing but at least we sort of quenched our craving for Mexican a little. Sunday, we continued our quest for great Asian food, specifically Spicy Kung Pao Chicken! We had a recommendation from the hotel concierge but it turned out to actually be a Moroccan restaurant and we passed by a really great looking Mexican restaurant but restaurants close around 2 or 2:30 after lunch so we were turned away.

This is what we found ourselves doing in Lyon, on our great weekend excursion away, not looking at the huge cathedrals built as early as the 14th century or even shopping (although I did convince Soner to take me some place to buy a yoga mat and its not really even a yoga mat..we do not have one in Belfort). The entire time we were in Lyon, we searched for great non-French food! We took a few great photos of staircases and tourists which by the way, all the way from South Louisiana we met a large group of... LSU Law Students! (Soner thought it would be funny to take a photo of the big group of tourists looking all about and then we heard them speak and I commented about their great southern accent then we saw the Purple!.. the shirts and hats and jackets! You will always know LSU fans, they love to always have at least one item on them that shouts to the world we are LSU Tigers, hear us roar! So that was exciting.) It was a great trip that I will always remember for its food!

Which brings me back to last night. I made Soner the Chinese food he had been craving and it was absolutely delicious! I chopped up broccoli, carrots, threw in some baby corn with some chopped up chicken, threw in the syrupy brown sauce from the Asian supermarket and we had a wonderful Chinese meal complete with noodles and chopsticks. I only wish all my meals would turn out so perfect. So anyway, thats that! Sorry I am a bit long winded in all of my posts! I'll add pictures to this post this afternoon or tomorrow!

"Place des Terreaux"
Another place that was built by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi. France seems to be covered by places built by this guy or maybe it is just where I live. He built the Lion in Belfort and this statue as well as...what we all know and love and see as one of the great United States symbols, The Statue of Libery!