Chowing down on the moveable feast

I had a very literary dining experience today. Being a Hemingway fan, I decided to take the trip to his old hangouts in Saint-Germain-des-Pres. For the unwashed masses among my readers, Hemingway wrote of eating potato salad in A Moveable Feast at the Brasserie Lipp, and in The Sun Also Rises, Lady Brett meets Jack Barnes at Les Deux Magots. (According to my handy dictionary, a magot is a hoard, as in money.) Conveniently, these are directly across S-G-d-P from each other and right off of the metro stop of the same name.

Enamored of the wait staff in flowing white aprons, the average tenure of which is around 15 years, I chose to eat at Brasserie Lipp. As the name would suggest – see my next post on French dining – Lipp specializes in the Alsatian. To start, I ordered foie gras, which was excellent. This is engorged duck or goose liver served as a pate with warm toast. Slightly tangy and rather expensive, it is an hors d’oeuvre that I recommend to anyone dining French. PETA be damned.

For the main course, I went with that staple of Alsace, choucroute, specifically Choucroute Lipp, which is a joint of pork, bone and skin on, served over a bed of sauerkraut with peppercorn and garnished with boiled potatoes and two types of sausage, including andouillette. My verdict: C’etais tres bon. Peut-etre assez bizarre pour un americain, mais maintenant je suis a Paris; alors, je vais essayer.

Hemingway would be proud – even if it wasn’t potato salad.