Sorry I have not posted in a while -- work has gotten the best of me! But, I am going to try to catch up for the posts I missed in January in the next few weeks. So, this post should have been for the week of January 14th. When I was in New Orleans the first weekend of January, I was chatting with my husband's uncle, who is a serious world traveler, about his travels and mine. We discovered that we had one "favorite" in common -- L'Ambassade d'Auvergne restaurant in Paris.
L'Ambassade focuses on food from the Auvergne region of France, which is situated pretty much in the middle of France. Its specialty is aligot, which is basically the cheesiest mashed potatoes you will ever eat. When they are served, the waiter pulls them from a big pot and basically stretches them as far as he can and plops them on your plate. It is pretty funny to watch and very delicious to eat. The other food is as hardy and tasty as the aligot -- green lentil salad, sausage, duck and various stews. Not a light meal to say the least! The highlight of the meal though, especially for chocolate lovers, is the chocolate mousse. This is not the chocolate mousse you think of from Jello boxes and cafeterias. This is basically a giant bowl of chocolate ganache and yes, it is as good and rich as it sounds. It does in fact get served to you in a giant bowl. They bring out The Bowl and serve you a normal portion of mousse. And then...THEY LEAVE THE BOWL! Oh my goodness...it took all of my willpower (not that I have that much to begin with) to not eat the entire bowl. It was that good and that rich. I would go back just for the mousse alone!
The restaurant itself reminds me of a country house. All dark woods and textiles. It feels very homey and comforting just like the food.
One thing you will notice is that this restaurant is spoken of quite a bit in the various tour books, and yes, it is a bit touristy. Like many places in Europe, we sat in the "English-speaking section." But the food is so good and the atmosphere so quaint, that I would still highly recommend stopping by.
TIP: Ok, so I usually try to give a helpful tip here, but my only real tip is, ORDER THE CHOCOLATE MOUSSE!!!
L'Ambassade d'Auvergne
22, rue du Grenier Saint-Lazare
75003 Paris
Tel. +33 (0)1 42 72 31 22
