Thursday, April 09, 2009

l’Escargot Paris

Restaurant L'Escargot Paris, 5" x 7"
Have any of you had snails at restaurant L'Escargot?

I've passed by so many times at 38, rue Montorgueil 75001, and perused the menu, but I've yet to enter.

No guts, no glory

While I was busy prepping for the March trip, I noticed something interesting. How Paris arrondissements are laid out.

Paris is laid out like a snail with the lower numbers in the middle. French Girl says, "Paris was built like a snail. You can see it perfectly when you look at the map with the quartiers. Take your finger, imagine number one is at the center. Then draw a snail with the other numbers and you'll be able to place the "arrondissements...Yes we Parisians are snails."

 I saw a million chocolate snails in Paris for Easter.

  Not a snail, but a close relative.  
Is this a French snail?
This gorgeous snail was in New York Bergdorf Goodman's Xmas windows. I once had snails at now long-gone classic Bistro de Saint-Peres. Eating l'escargot is similar to eating 6 croissants 🥐 at one sitting, the butter is that rich.
Paris provides the antidote - ODDIBIL 250. Available over the counter at pharmacies - just plain old charcoal tablets.  They filter out the gras/fat so you can live to eat
another day.
Please tell me your l'escargot stories.
BONJOUR JEUDI!

32 comments:

  1. A snail is the key to the arrondissements? How wonderful is that! Lovely painting, Carol, and those brass {?} snails that decorate the top of Restaurant L'Escargot's sign are beautiful.

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  2. Haha... you don't even want to hear my snail story! But I will tell you anyway. I was in Holland at a rather posh restaurant in Rotterdam. We ordered a chilled plate of "seafood" and amongst the oysters and clam-like things, there was an escargot. I picked it up and went to stick my fork in it, and IT DUCKED BACK IN ITS SHELL! I was laughing so hard that I nearly fell off my chair! It was alive, alive-o!

    The snail way of the arondissments was the way I learned how to figure out where things were.

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  3. Grace under pressure9:59 AM

    LOVE your casual doodling...
    Hmmm...a bit like the trail a snail leaves behind?

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    1. Anonymous5:57 AM

      Oh thanks a lot :))

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  4. Puts new meaning to the Slow Food Movement!

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  5. 1976 Quebec
    I thought someone had dipped an eraser in gravy :)

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    1. Anonymous5:58 AM

      Snails 🐌 = rubber erasers Perfect!

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  6. I feel sad for the snail sometimes because it tastes so good! :) I don't really have a story except how I love watching American's faces when they hear I love them. I never eat red meat or poultry, fish I enjoy sometimes, however when it comes to snails I can tuck into really good ones.

    I also think the snail has a great deal to teach us about life...just look how the Slow Movement (food and otherwise) has tapped in on how important it is to stop and consider what we miss when we do everything so fast.

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  7. oh i like the snail decked out for christmas...so festive and of course the golden snail is very elegante'.
    have a wonderful day.

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  8. You organize your photos by day?!?!?! And I was hoping for some insight into how to organize my growing stockpile. Mon Dieu! How do you save them all? 6,000 photos from this last trip? PS Snails are an excuse for butter and garlic. Yum.

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    1. Anonymous5:59 AM

      Perfect! ‘Snails are an excuse for butter and garlic’

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  9. My favorite Paris haunt for escargots is definitely D'Chez Eux - a lovely eatery near Les Invalides! Yummy - must return again when I'm back in May!!

    Thanks for the arrondissement "snail" clue - makes so much sense now!!!

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  10. No snail stories here, but wanted to say how much I enjoyed this post. Your photos are always fabulous.
    Maureen

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  11. I never eat snails except chocolate snails of course!!!!! Beurk for the first ones and miam miam for the second ones!!!! Cocottes en chocolat and Oeuf de Pâques are also waiting for you .....

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  12. I found your blog through Sarah Herman's blog and I have to say, it is lovely! I've never had snails before. I see them for sale at our local grocery store in a can and then the empty shells are packaged on top of the can so you can restuff them. That has never appealed to me as I'm sure that is not the way it is intended to be done.

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  13. I love the arrondissement snail but I must confess I can't eat them - too much butter and too much garlic for me. HAve a happy Easter, xv.

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  14. I've never had snails! you make them look great and I love the map :-)

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  15. I haven't ever been to L'Escargot in Montorgeuil, though I am attracted to it by the typically Parisian décor despite the fact that I am extremely faint hearted about eating escargot! The only way it usually happens is that I eat them by accident, and then happen to enjoy it!! LOL

    Kisses from Paris! :-)

    xoxo

    www.chicsetera.com

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  16. *Bobbi- I organize my daily pictures simply by downloading them end-o-day into a file with that day's date. But I don't know what is where. I really should make a list of places visited and put in the file...

    *Joie de Vie- that is exactly how snails come if you don't live in Paris near a fresh seafood marche. I once helped friends make them in Venezuela with exactly those ingredients. It's a classic. You "sandwich the snail between mounds of chopped garlic, parsley and butter top and bottom and pop them in the over. Voila!
    Miam...

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  17. love your drawings!
    love the black paint? applyed after your wash?

    Peggy

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  18. Hi Carol,
    I look forward to receiving my Paris Breakfast each and every day. I too love Paris, I feel at home when I am in Paris. I notice you mentioned you organize your pictures by the day.
    When I travel, I organize pictures by subject matter. With digital each photo has a reference number and that is how I organize my photos by subject matter and the digital reference number. I upload my pictures as soon as I get back to my hotel room, stored them in the file folder by subject.
    You may say way too much work, but that's the only way I can keep track of the numerous photos I take while in France.
    On my last trip, I took over 2500 photos - what a digital slide show and they were all organized by subject matter.

    Good luck use what ever method works for you, just enjoy life, the food, wine and most importantly keep doing what you are doing!
    A bient tout
    Robyn

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  19. And you really didn't know Paris was a snail?????

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  20. Love the snail/map--how curious. I never thought about it, but I TOLD you you're good at spotting trends, woman. ;D

    Lovely paintings!

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  21. I can tell you what happened to your pictures of snails...look at that first box of chocolates with a snail...now look 2 rows over to the left...and 2 rows over from the right. Yep! RABBITS! That's what happened to your snails!

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  22. La France Profound! Our neighbours collect them, give them lettuce to eat for a few days, purge them with salted water and then cook and eat! When it's been raining heavily you see them all out with their buckets. We have been offered them in the past, but they've given up now as DH has refused. I adore them, but prefer to let someone else to the preparation!

    Best snail story? The bit in Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts tries to eat one and it flies off the plate.

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  23. Hi paris breakfast i love reading your daily post...they describe paris so
    exqusitely...even though I have never been...one day i shall GO!

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  24. I love all of the themes for your entries!

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  25. No specific stories to tell, but of course I love snails! Passed by the l'Escargot restaurant so many times, but never entered. It should be worth a visit (a bit expensive) also for its interior which through the windows looks fabulous (obviously partly comeing from Sarah Bernhardts's home).

    The snailmap is a brilliant idea!

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  26. Hi, Carol. In a nice cafe on Boulevard de Madeleine one nice spring day, I had a live snail (sans shell!) in my salad. And the menu didn't even tell me to expect it! We decided to be amused rather than horrified, and I did survive the episode. And we've eaten there again.

    Once upon a time, you mentioned loving the signs in the food cases. When I saw these, I thought of you.
    http://www.presentandcorrect.com/item.php?item_id=273&category_id=3

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  27. I just had snails tonight at the Moulin Rouge..they weren't bad..I think they were afraid to use garlic,,semi bland..the show was great so it made up for it.

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  28. Have you ever had snails without the garlic butter - YUK!!

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  29. I've never eaten escargot, but I would like to travel back in time to see who was the first person who looked at a snail and said, "You know, with some butter and garlic, that looks like it would taste marvelous."

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