Christmas in Strasbourg: Jamikins and Bikerscott Celebrate the Festive Season in France
Dec 31st, 2008, 09:05 AM
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Christmas in Strasbourg: Jamikins and Bikerscott Celebrate the Festive Season in France
After having so much fun in Bruges last year at Christmas, we decided to go to another festively decorated town for our annual trip – this year was the self-declared Capital City of Christmas, Strasbourg France.
We post and read regularly, but we are 2 30 somethings (early 30 something ehm) from Vancouver Canada living in London. We love good food and travelling new places. Our budget is fairly modest (try to keep to no more than 100 GBP a night). This trip was 3 nights and 4 days.
We flew out of London City Airport, which is so much more convenient than any of the other London airports – just a few stops on the DLR. It’s actually a pretty small airport and mainly services the financial/business district of Canary Wharf, so there aren’t any queues and as they generally don’t have to deal with many tourists, the staff are all fairly pleasant.
The flight was uneventful, except that Air France provides snacks and drinks free of charge – it’s been a while since we’ve had that! Scott managed to stick to script and fell asleep almost immediately and thus found the flight impressively short.
We arrived at Strasbourg airport, and despite some initial confusion with the bags we made our way to the little train platform for our shuttle train to the city. Another city tram and a short walk through Christmas crowds from actual hell we found our hotel (Cardinal Rohan http://www.hotel-rohan.com) right across the street more or less from the massively lopsided Cathedral (it only has one tower, but looks as if it should have two). Lovely cathedral...but does anyone know why they didnt put up a 2nd tower??
We dropped our bags in our tiny but affordable room (only 75 euros) and headed back out into the crowds.
One of the problems, as we discovered, with the whole “going to a festive Christmas-y” type place at Christmas is that everyone else has the same idea. There were a LOT of people in Strasbourg – mostly French and Germans from what we could tell – very few English-speakers around at all.
We had our requisite over-price cup of Gluhwein (hot spiced wine – very tasty on a cold winters day) and found the place that Jamie wanted to have lunch – La Cloche du Fromage (the cheese bell, should have been called “Holy Crap, That’s A Lot Of Cheese”). http://www.cheese-gourmet.com/
Jamie ordered the cheese fondue, and I had the cheese plate. Her fondue arrived and it was enough to feed a small army (unless, apparently it was an Alsatian army – damn those people eat a lot), and mine was even bigger. I’d read on the menu that it was 15 cheeses but what that meant didn’t really sink in until the plate arrived. 15 pieces of cheese a LOT of cheese, I can tell you.
We were given our instructions by a very harsh-sounding Germanic looking French waitress and were a bit scared. Jamie got yelled at (with humour) for stirring her fondue while I was getting my descriptions. The French in Alsace are an odd group – they’ve switched back and forth between Germany and France so often that they’re sort of a mix of both. Even the language is different – not quite German, but certainly not entirely French either.
We didn’t even come close to finishing everything on our plates but nevertheless ate until we were slightly (and by slightly I mean severely) sick. We rolled out of the restaurant and wandered around a bit, trying to work off lunch. It didn’t work. We had some wine and some coffee but didn’t eat anything else for the rest of the day. Lunch was that big. I mean honestly, who needs that much cheese?!? (Ok, we do!!! YUM!!!)
The Christmas Markets in Strasbourg are really impressive. They have about a dozen scattered around central Strasbourg, ranging in size from just a half dozen or so stalls to the largest which covers an entire square. The booths sell everything from crap bulk Christmas tree decorations to gluhwein to candy and pastries to beautiful handmade crafts. Every street in the centre of town is strung with lights, every window has some sort of decorations, and all the restaurants have special Christmas menus. Strasbourg definitely puts London to shame in terms of sheer festive excess for the holidays.
Day 2 and pictures to come...
HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!
We post and read regularly, but we are 2 30 somethings (early 30 something ehm) from Vancouver Canada living in London. We love good food and travelling new places. Our budget is fairly modest (try to keep to no more than 100 GBP a night). This trip was 3 nights and 4 days.
We flew out of London City Airport, which is so much more convenient than any of the other London airports – just a few stops on the DLR. It’s actually a pretty small airport and mainly services the financial/business district of Canary Wharf, so there aren’t any queues and as they generally don’t have to deal with many tourists, the staff are all fairly pleasant.
The flight was uneventful, except that Air France provides snacks and drinks free of charge – it’s been a while since we’ve had that! Scott managed to stick to script and fell asleep almost immediately and thus found the flight impressively short.
We arrived at Strasbourg airport, and despite some initial confusion with the bags we made our way to the little train platform for our shuttle train to the city. Another city tram and a short walk through Christmas crowds from actual hell we found our hotel (Cardinal Rohan http://www.hotel-rohan.com) right across the street more or less from the massively lopsided Cathedral (it only has one tower, but looks as if it should have two). Lovely cathedral...but does anyone know why they didnt put up a 2nd tower??
We dropped our bags in our tiny but affordable room (only 75 euros) and headed back out into the crowds.
One of the problems, as we discovered, with the whole “going to a festive Christmas-y” type place at Christmas is that everyone else has the same idea. There were a LOT of people in Strasbourg – mostly French and Germans from what we could tell – very few English-speakers around at all.
We had our requisite over-price cup of Gluhwein (hot spiced wine – very tasty on a cold winters day) and found the place that Jamie wanted to have lunch – La Cloche du Fromage (the cheese bell, should have been called “Holy Crap, That’s A Lot Of Cheese”). http://www.cheese-gourmet.com/
Jamie ordered the cheese fondue, and I had the cheese plate. Her fondue arrived and it was enough to feed a small army (unless, apparently it was an Alsatian army – damn those people eat a lot), and mine was even bigger. I’d read on the menu that it was 15 cheeses but what that meant didn’t really sink in until the plate arrived. 15 pieces of cheese a LOT of cheese, I can tell you.
We were given our instructions by a very harsh-sounding Germanic looking French waitress and were a bit scared. Jamie got yelled at (with humour) for stirring her fondue while I was getting my descriptions. The French in Alsace are an odd group – they’ve switched back and forth between Germany and France so often that they’re sort of a mix of both. Even the language is different – not quite German, but certainly not entirely French either.
We didn’t even come close to finishing everything on our plates but nevertheless ate until we were slightly (and by slightly I mean severely) sick. We rolled out of the restaurant and wandered around a bit, trying to work off lunch. It didn’t work. We had some wine and some coffee but didn’t eat anything else for the rest of the day. Lunch was that big. I mean honestly, who needs that much cheese?!? (Ok, we do!!! YUM!!!)
The Christmas Markets in Strasbourg are really impressive. They have about a dozen scattered around central Strasbourg, ranging in size from just a half dozen or so stalls to the largest which covers an entire square. The booths sell everything from crap bulk Christmas tree decorations to gluhwein to candy and pastries to beautiful handmade crafts. Every street in the centre of town is strung with lights, every window has some sort of decorations, and all the restaurants have special Christmas menus. Strasbourg definitely puts London to shame in terms of sheer festive excess for the holidays.
Day 2 and pictures to come...
HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!
Dec 31st, 2008, 09:25 AM
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Oops...forgot to mention that Bikerscott is the writer...I'm just posting, so I am not referring to myself in 3rd person hahahaha
And a link to our pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jamie.a....eat=directlink
And a link to our pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jamie.a....eat=directlink
Besides, after two or three glasses of gluhwein, it all starts to taste the same anyway
Dec 31st, 2008, 10:26 AM
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Sunday morning we were STILL full of cheese, so we only had a quick croissant for breakfast. The bed at the hotel was incredibly hard and it had actually made my back go into spasm, so we limped around for a bit, deciding to do a river cruise tour. The central part of Strasbourg is surrounded by the river Ill, and it used to power pretty much the entire city ¡V there are still a few of the old mill buildings and tanneries left in the ¡§Petite France¡¨ area of town.
After the cruise we were starting to feel a bit peckish again so we went to one of the many ¡§Winstubs¡¨ in the city ¡V basically old wine bars which have all been converted into little restaurants, Pfifferbriader. Jamie went for the onion soup and I thought that I¡¦d do something a bit lighter, still feeling the effects of yesterday¡¦s cheese. I¡¦m a big fan of having whatever the local cuisine is when I travel, so I went for the Salade Strasbourgoise. Jamie¡¦s soup arrived and looked really tasty.
I should¡¦ve known that mine wouldn¡¦t be exactly what I¡¦d expected ¡V this is the sort of thing that always happens to me, why should Strasbourg be any different. The waitress put down the plate containing my salad and my first reaction was confusion. I¡¦d never seen salad greens appear to be white and grated cheese-like. Nor had I ever seen food science devise the particular shade of glowing electric pink that they¡¦d managed to achieve with the two sausages on either side of the mound of cheese-coloured salad. Then I realized that it wasn¡¦t salad greens that they¡¦d managed to make look like grated cheese, it actually WAS grated cheese. A good half pound of nicely grated Munster with onions and dressing, Munster being a speciality of the area (evidently invented by Irish monks, didn¡¦t really catch why they were in Strasbourg inventing cheese, but this is the sort of thing that Irish monks used to get up to).
Re-reading the last paragraph, it occurs to me that you might think that we didn¡¦t enjoy our lunch. Jamie¡¦s soup was FANTASTIC ¡V one of the best onion soups we¡¦ve had, and my plate of cheese and nuclear-fallout-sausage was tastier than you¡¦d expect for a plate of cheese and nuclear-fallout-sausage, and on any day other than the one after I¡¦d almost been put into a cheese-induced coma, I woulda been all over that.
After lunch, we went to Cafe Rohan across the street to have some coffee and digest for a bit. Coffee was, as coffee almost always is, good. Jamie had made plans to meet up with some other Fodorites (KayF and her husband), which we did. They¡¦d scouted out a little cake and coffee shop on La Grande Rue which served a fantastic selection of delicious cakes. Unfortunately I¡¦d eaten my fill of cheese and so chose not to risk actual explosion so didn¡¦t have a cake of my own, however I did steal a few bites of Jamie¡¦s chocolate cake with chocolate icing and little bits of chocolate on top. She likes chocolate. I also had another cup of coffee, so I was basically a vibrating lump of Munster at this point. It was really fun to meet up with some other travel-addicts and we had a great time chatting with KayF and John.
Dinner turned out to be yet another culinary adventure, mostly down to my blinkered insistence on having the local delicacy. We¡¦d made reservations and one of the top restaurants in Strasbourg (according to literature which they have thoughtfully posted right outside the door) ¡V Le Tire Bouchon. http://www.letirebouchon.fr/ The doors opened at 6:30 precisely (this being an area with a huge German influence, when I say 6:30 precisely, I mean PRECISELY ƒº). Starting at about 6:15, the queue started to build, which we thought must be a good sign.
We both went with the set menus ¡V Jamie choose escargots to start (can never go wrong with snails swimming in gallons of garlic and butter) and some sort of white fish on choucroute (sauerkraut), which she enjoyed very much. I went with the foie gras to start (as much as you can¡¦t go wrong with snails, you can go even less wrong with foie gras ¡V makes me drool just thinking of it). For my main I went with the Choucroute Royale. At the time, I had no idea what that was, but I figured that if it¡¦s good enough for royalty, it¡¦s good enough for me.
My plate arrived and the entire table of authentic Alsatians besides us (there were 6 of them) looked at me, then my plate, then at me again, and all burst out laughing. This was to be a test of endurance and intestinal fortitude.
As it turns out, Choucroute Royale is a large plate of sauerkraut (yum) with boiled potatoes (yum), two types of tasty sausage (yum and yum), boiled bacon-type stuff (not as yum), boiled other fatty bits (less yum still), non-boiled mystery mince-like-but-not-mince meat (again, less yum), and a large, glistening, oily pile of something that had thicker coating of hair on it than I normally see on my dinner (I can¡¦t adequately describe how less yum this appeared) [http://tinyurl.com/9rwv4p]. This last item is what caused the hilarity at the table next door.
Being somewhat of an adventurer I dove in with enthusiasm and gusto. Everything was actually really tasty, even the hairy meat bit (which turned out to be thigh from the outside down to the middle, I think). I¡¦m not sure I¡¦d recommend this dish for the faint of heart, but if you¡¦re up for really getting a taste of local cuisine, this is the meal to have.
After the cruise we were starting to feel a bit peckish again so we went to one of the many ¡§Winstubs¡¨ in the city ¡V basically old wine bars which have all been converted into little restaurants, Pfifferbriader. Jamie went for the onion soup and I thought that I¡¦d do something a bit lighter, still feeling the effects of yesterday¡¦s cheese. I¡¦m a big fan of having whatever the local cuisine is when I travel, so I went for the Salade Strasbourgoise. Jamie¡¦s soup arrived and looked really tasty.
I should¡¦ve known that mine wouldn¡¦t be exactly what I¡¦d expected ¡V this is the sort of thing that always happens to me, why should Strasbourg be any different. The waitress put down the plate containing my salad and my first reaction was confusion. I¡¦d never seen salad greens appear to be white and grated cheese-like. Nor had I ever seen food science devise the particular shade of glowing electric pink that they¡¦d managed to achieve with the two sausages on either side of the mound of cheese-coloured salad. Then I realized that it wasn¡¦t salad greens that they¡¦d managed to make look like grated cheese, it actually WAS grated cheese. A good half pound of nicely grated Munster with onions and dressing, Munster being a speciality of the area (evidently invented by Irish monks, didn¡¦t really catch why they were in Strasbourg inventing cheese, but this is the sort of thing that Irish monks used to get up to).
Re-reading the last paragraph, it occurs to me that you might think that we didn¡¦t enjoy our lunch. Jamie¡¦s soup was FANTASTIC ¡V one of the best onion soups we¡¦ve had, and my plate of cheese and nuclear-fallout-sausage was tastier than you¡¦d expect for a plate of cheese and nuclear-fallout-sausage, and on any day other than the one after I¡¦d almost been put into a cheese-induced coma, I woulda been all over that.
After lunch, we went to Cafe Rohan across the street to have some coffee and digest for a bit. Coffee was, as coffee almost always is, good. Jamie had made plans to meet up with some other Fodorites (KayF and her husband), which we did. They¡¦d scouted out a little cake and coffee shop on La Grande Rue which served a fantastic selection of delicious cakes. Unfortunately I¡¦d eaten my fill of cheese and so chose not to risk actual explosion so didn¡¦t have a cake of my own, however I did steal a few bites of Jamie¡¦s chocolate cake with chocolate icing and little bits of chocolate on top. She likes chocolate. I also had another cup of coffee, so I was basically a vibrating lump of Munster at this point. It was really fun to meet up with some other travel-addicts and we had a great time chatting with KayF and John.
Dinner turned out to be yet another culinary adventure, mostly down to my blinkered insistence on having the local delicacy. We¡¦d made reservations and one of the top restaurants in Strasbourg (according to literature which they have thoughtfully posted right outside the door) ¡V Le Tire Bouchon. http://www.letirebouchon.fr/ The doors opened at 6:30 precisely (this being an area with a huge German influence, when I say 6:30 precisely, I mean PRECISELY ƒº). Starting at about 6:15, the queue started to build, which we thought must be a good sign.
We both went with the set menus ¡V Jamie choose escargots to start (can never go wrong with snails swimming in gallons of garlic and butter) and some sort of white fish on choucroute (sauerkraut), which she enjoyed very much. I went with the foie gras to start (as much as you can¡¦t go wrong with snails, you can go even less wrong with foie gras ¡V makes me drool just thinking of it). For my main I went with the Choucroute Royale. At the time, I had no idea what that was, but I figured that if it¡¦s good enough for royalty, it¡¦s good enough for me.
My plate arrived and the entire table of authentic Alsatians besides us (there were 6 of them) looked at me, then my plate, then at me again, and all burst out laughing. This was to be a test of endurance and intestinal fortitude.
As it turns out, Choucroute Royale is a large plate of sauerkraut (yum) with boiled potatoes (yum), two types of tasty sausage (yum and yum), boiled bacon-type stuff (not as yum), boiled other fatty bits (less yum still), non-boiled mystery mince-like-but-not-mince meat (again, less yum), and a large, glistening, oily pile of something that had thicker coating of hair on it than I normally see on my dinner (I can¡¦t adequately describe how less yum this appeared) [http://tinyurl.com/9rwv4p]. This last item is what caused the hilarity at the table next door.
Being somewhat of an adventurer I dove in with enthusiasm and gusto. Everything was actually really tasty, even the hairy meat bit (which turned out to be thigh from the outside down to the middle, I think). I¡¦m not sure I¡¦d recommend this dish for the faint of heart, but if you¡¦re up for really getting a taste of local cuisine, this is the meal to have.
Deborah
Jan 2nd, 2009, 07:24 AM
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(apologies for the weird formatting in the last post - all those strange characters were apostrophes and dashes and such, not sure what happened...)
Day Three - Wine, Tarte Flambee, and Wine (did I mention Tarte Flambee?)
By the third day of our trip, my back was acting up (I've had back problems for years after breaking it in an unfortunately skiing accident). We decided to have a bit of an easier day, so slept in a bit, then walked over to the Petite France area.
Petite France is the oldest bit of Strasbourg, and is full of crazy little houses perched on the banks of the river. Over the years, it has been home to mills and the tanneries - some of the buildings still have the old open roofs which were used to allow the leather to dry. I can't imagine how it must have smelled back in the day, but now it's quite nice.
They even had a little Christmas market area, although it was pretty small. We wandered about the side-streets and through the market for a bit, ending up at the Barrage Vauban - a giant covered bridge over the river. It's meant to have an excellent viewpoint on the top, from which you can get the best views of all of Strasbourg. Unfortunately we couldn't test out this theory as it was closed for renovations. Disappointed, we walked back over the Ponts Couvert (the Covered Bridge - it appears that it hasn't actually been covered for quite some time, perhaps a renaming is in order?) and back onto Grande Rue.
We stopped into a little Winstub on the Grand Rue for a bit of lunch and some wine. We picked the most attractive-looking one we could find and went in. It seemed that the outside was more festively decorated than the interior, but we sat down anyway. It was just after 12:30 and we were the only ones there, other than the slightly grumpy waitress. Okay, to be fair she wasn't grumpy when we sat down, but was by the time we'd placed our order. You see, both Jamie and I speak french fairly well (to be honest, Jamie quite a bit better than me, but regardless). We spoke a bit with her, and I guess she thought that we were totally fluent. We *think* she was joking with us, but between her Alsatian accent and our non-complete-fluency, I think something got lost. I suspect we were supposed to laugh, or agree, or something, and didn't. Also, we may have offended her slightly by only ordering one Tarte Flambee between the two of us, which seems to be a starter for most Alsatian appetites.
The Tarte Flambee is a speciality of the region - basically it's a thin piece of what looks like pizza dough (very thin, far thinner even than most Italian pizzas I've had) with a cream sauce of some sort on it, then a few toppings. The whole thing is put in a pizza oven for a few minutes and served steaming and delicious. The traditional version has just the cream sauce, lardons of bacon, and onions. There's also an option to have Munster cheese added, or mushrooms. We decided that our mission for the day was to find the best tarte flambee in Strasbourg, starting with that very lunch.
Our tarte was eventually served (our waitresses annoyance with us meant that several people, who had ordered after us, got served first. We would have been annoyed, but she'd already brought us our wine, which reduces annoyance by a pretty large percentage), steaming and delicious as expected. We gave it an 8 out of 10 on the Official Tasty Flambee Scale(OTFS), which was a pretty high score considering it was our first of the day. I can also say that after much experimentation, that a few glasses of Reisling help improve the score of the tarte on the OTFS.
After lunch we walked back towards the cathedral along the Grande Rue, stopping to poke around in a few of the shops along the way. We ended up back at Cafe Rohan just down the street from the Cathedral where we'd had the coffee the day before. Today's mission, sample the tarte flambee. I was a bit wine'd out at this point, so I ordered a pint of local beer - very tasty. We also ordered our tarte (the traditional again, just bacon and onion, shared between the two of us) and settled in for a good session. I got through a few pints and Jamie did some damage to a couple of glasses of reisling. Cafe Rohan was actually a pretty good place to spend a few hours in the afternoon. Fairly busy all day with lots of good people-watching opportunities. Everyone seemed to enjoy their time there, and although our tarte only scored a 6 on the OTFS it was still pretty damn tasty.
After a sufficient amount of time had passed, we decided that we needed to stretch our legs (and my back) and so went for a quick walk around, looking for a good location for our next tarte taste test (I know, a lot of tartes, but when you've got a job to do, you just have to get on with it). We eventually ended up at (yet another) winstub which let us in for just a drink (we weren't sure that we'd actually be able to go through with the tarte). We'd tried several places, but all wanted us to order a meal with our drinks (you can see that I have my priorities in the right order, anyway). We ordered a pichet of wine and got comfortable. It was a great little place - tons of atmosphere and really friendly staff and patrons (some of whom seems to be locals?). Eventually we started to feel a bit peckish and so ordered our third flambee of the day. Again, this one was slightly lower on the OTFS, coming in with a solid 7, but again we quite enjoyed it. I wonder how it would have scored if were weren't on our third of the day?
Okay, you might be starting to think at this point that this was getting a bit ridiculous, and that we are complete hedonistic lushes. I'm not going to argue with you. We left the winstub to have another digestive walk about town, making it over the the big christmas market in Kleber Square. We checked out a few of the rows of stall that we hadn't already seen, and generally relaxed a bit from the hectic testing regime we'd been pursuing for the day. We wandered out of the christmas market and realized that we were a bit thirsty. We didn't want to go back to the area we'd just been in, so decided to head off in a new direction. As is traditional for our trips in France, we promptly got pretty well lost. We knew that as long as we didn't cross any bridges we should be okay, but we walked through some slightly dodgey feeling area (I'm not sure central Strasbourg *actually* has dodgy areas, but when one is lost and slightly tipsy at night in a strange town, it can really feel like it.
Eventually we ended up back at Le Stub, completely by accident (we'd stopped in the previous night for a quick drink or four before going back to the hotel and bed - most interesting feature of Le Stub is the giant foam stork hanging from the ceiling near the bar). We thought "why not" and stopped in for another drink and tarte flambee #4 for the day. Looking back at it, I can see that having 4 tarte flambees and who knows how much wine in one day may not have been a good choice. Le Stub's tarte only scored a 6 on the OTFS, however I strongly feel that it would have achieved a much higher score, had we not been really full and more than a little pissed at this point. We'll have to make a return trip to give it a fair chance.
After Tarte Flambee The Fourth, we felt that it would be best to call it a night. We made our way back to our hotel (in a more-or-less straight line) and completely crashed. A good day in all, both of us felt good about our taste testing.
Day Three - Wine, Tarte Flambee, and Wine (did I mention Tarte Flambee?)
By the third day of our trip, my back was acting up (I've had back problems for years after breaking it in an unfortunately skiing accident). We decided to have a bit of an easier day, so slept in a bit, then walked over to the Petite France area.
Petite France is the oldest bit of Strasbourg, and is full of crazy little houses perched on the banks of the river. Over the years, it has been home to mills and the tanneries - some of the buildings still have the old open roofs which were used to allow the leather to dry. I can't imagine how it must have smelled back in the day, but now it's quite nice.
They even had a little Christmas market area, although it was pretty small. We wandered about the side-streets and through the market for a bit, ending up at the Barrage Vauban - a giant covered bridge over the river. It's meant to have an excellent viewpoint on the top, from which you can get the best views of all of Strasbourg. Unfortunately we couldn't test out this theory as it was closed for renovations. Disappointed, we walked back over the Ponts Couvert (the Covered Bridge - it appears that it hasn't actually been covered for quite some time, perhaps a renaming is in order?) and back onto Grande Rue.
We stopped into a little Winstub on the Grand Rue for a bit of lunch and some wine. We picked the most attractive-looking one we could find and went in. It seemed that the outside was more festively decorated than the interior, but we sat down anyway. It was just after 12:30 and we were the only ones there, other than the slightly grumpy waitress. Okay, to be fair she wasn't grumpy when we sat down, but was by the time we'd placed our order. You see, both Jamie and I speak french fairly well (to be honest, Jamie quite a bit better than me, but regardless). We spoke a bit with her, and I guess she thought that we were totally fluent. We *think* she was joking with us, but between her Alsatian accent and our non-complete-fluency, I think something got lost. I suspect we were supposed to laugh, or agree, or something, and didn't. Also, we may have offended her slightly by only ordering one Tarte Flambee between the two of us, which seems to be a starter for most Alsatian appetites.
The Tarte Flambee is a speciality of the region - basically it's a thin piece of what looks like pizza dough (very thin, far thinner even than most Italian pizzas I've had) with a cream sauce of some sort on it, then a few toppings. The whole thing is put in a pizza oven for a few minutes and served steaming and delicious. The traditional version has just the cream sauce, lardons of bacon, and onions. There's also an option to have Munster cheese added, or mushrooms. We decided that our mission for the day was to find the best tarte flambee in Strasbourg, starting with that very lunch.
Our tarte was eventually served (our waitresses annoyance with us meant that several people, who had ordered after us, got served first. We would have been annoyed, but she'd already brought us our wine, which reduces annoyance by a pretty large percentage), steaming and delicious as expected. We gave it an 8 out of 10 on the Official Tasty Flambee Scale(OTFS), which was a pretty high score considering it was our first of the day. I can also say that after much experimentation, that a few glasses of Reisling help improve the score of the tarte on the OTFS.
After lunch we walked back towards the cathedral along the Grande Rue, stopping to poke around in a few of the shops along the way. We ended up back at Cafe Rohan just down the street from the Cathedral where we'd had the coffee the day before. Today's mission, sample the tarte flambee. I was a bit wine'd out at this point, so I ordered a pint of local beer - very tasty. We also ordered our tarte (the traditional again, just bacon and onion, shared between the two of us) and settled in for a good session. I got through a few pints and Jamie did some damage to a couple of glasses of reisling. Cafe Rohan was actually a pretty good place to spend a few hours in the afternoon. Fairly busy all day with lots of good people-watching opportunities. Everyone seemed to enjoy their time there, and although our tarte only scored a 6 on the OTFS it was still pretty damn tasty.
After a sufficient amount of time had passed, we decided that we needed to stretch our legs (and my back) and so went for a quick walk around, looking for a good location for our next tarte taste test (I know, a lot of tartes, but when you've got a job to do, you just have to get on with it). We eventually ended up at (yet another) winstub which let us in for just a drink (we weren't sure that we'd actually be able to go through with the tarte). We'd tried several places, but all wanted us to order a meal with our drinks (you can see that I have my priorities in the right order, anyway). We ordered a pichet of wine and got comfortable. It was a great little place - tons of atmosphere and really friendly staff and patrons (some of whom seems to be locals?). Eventually we started to feel a bit peckish and so ordered our third flambee of the day. Again, this one was slightly lower on the OTFS, coming in with a solid 7, but again we quite enjoyed it. I wonder how it would have scored if were weren't on our third of the day?
Okay, you might be starting to think at this point that this was getting a bit ridiculous, and that we are complete hedonistic lushes. I'm not going to argue with you. We left the winstub to have another digestive walk about town, making it over the the big christmas market in Kleber Square. We checked out a few of the rows of stall that we hadn't already seen, and generally relaxed a bit from the hectic testing regime we'd been pursuing for the day. We wandered out of the christmas market and realized that we were a bit thirsty. We didn't want to go back to the area we'd just been in, so decided to head off in a new direction. As is traditional for our trips in France, we promptly got pretty well lost. We knew that as long as we didn't cross any bridges we should be okay, but we walked through some slightly dodgey feeling area (I'm not sure central Strasbourg *actually* has dodgy areas, but when one is lost and slightly tipsy at night in a strange town, it can really feel like it.
Eventually we ended up back at Le Stub, completely by accident (we'd stopped in the previous night for a quick drink or four before going back to the hotel and bed - most interesting feature of Le Stub is the giant foam stork hanging from the ceiling near the bar). We thought "why not" and stopped in for another drink and tarte flambee #4 for the day. Looking back at it, I can see that having 4 tarte flambees and who knows how much wine in one day may not have been a good choice. Le Stub's tarte only scored a 6 on the OTFS, however I strongly feel that it would have achieved a much higher score, had we not been really full and more than a little pissed at this point. We'll have to make a return trip to give it a fair chance.
After Tarte Flambee The Fourth, we felt that it would be best to call it a night. We made our way back to our hotel (in a more-or-less straight line) and completely crashed. A good day in all, both of us felt good about our taste testing.
Jan 11th, 2009, 07:25 AM
#17
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Our last day in Strasbourg and for some reason we weren't feeling completely great - clearly from somthing we ate, as opposed to the large amount of wine and beer we'd enjoyed the day before.
Since we had a flight out of Strasbourg that evening, we decided to have a relaxed and quiet day in town. We started out by finding a little cake and coffee shop for what normally would have been our morning pain au chocolat but ended up being cake before going for a bit of a wander to clear the cobwebs. We ended up going for a bit of a marathon walk, pretty much around the entire town crossing back and forth over the river several times.
We ended up back by the big Christmas market and decided that we were actually pretty hungry. There was a restaurant right off the main square that looked decent so we stopped in for what turned out to be a really tasty lunch. We spent a while in the resturant chatting and watching people wander through the market before paying our bill and heading back out.
We made it back to the area around our hotel and went into yet another cafe for a coffee (for me) and a glass of wine for Jamie. We ended up spending pretty much the entire afternoon just sort of hanging out and watching Strasbourg wander past the window. Pretty much everyone stopped to take photos of the square we were in and the fantastic half-timbered house across the way.
An excellent way to spend a last lazy pre-Christmas day in Strasbourg.
Since we had a flight out of Strasbourg that evening, we decided to have a relaxed and quiet day in town. We started out by finding a little cake and coffee shop for what normally would have been our morning pain au chocolat but ended up being cake before going for a bit of a wander to clear the cobwebs. We ended up going for a bit of a marathon walk, pretty much around the entire town crossing back and forth over the river several times.
We ended up back by the big Christmas market and decided that we were actually pretty hungry. There was a restaurant right off the main square that looked decent so we stopped in for what turned out to be a really tasty lunch. We spent a while in the resturant chatting and watching people wander through the market before paying our bill and heading back out.
We made it back to the area around our hotel and went into yet another cafe for a coffee (for me) and a glass of wine for Jamie. We ended up spending pretty much the entire afternoon just sort of hanging out and watching Strasbourg wander past the window. Pretty much everyone stopped to take photos of the square we were in and the fantastic half-timbered house across the way.
An excellent way to spend a last lazy pre-Christmas day in Strasbourg.
Apr 14th, 2009, 11:54 AM
#18
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Hello: Your trip looked great! My husband and I are planning to spend Christmas there this year. We will be there on actual Christmas--Eve, Day, and the day after. Will the markets and shops be open on Eve or Day? Even if things are closed, will still be lovely scenery and decorations, but just curious when things are open/closed.
Apr 14th, 2009, 05:50 PM
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Thanks for the note Jamikins. Were you there on actual Christmas Eve or Day? If so, any restaurant suggestions? Last question---the Strasbourg market stays open post-Christmas, correct? Just asking as it seems like the ones in Germany all end Dec 22-23ish.
Planning to also hit Bruges after Strasbourg---can't wait!Kind thanks.
Planning to also hit Bruges after Strasbourg---can't wait!Kind thanks.
