Excellent French food at Hofe

One of my friends and I have been trying to get to a place called Hofe since several months back. It is always full when we try to go there (the place is small). Yesterday we finally managed to get there. The food was great! We ordered way too much food, though.

My friend is moving abroad (again), so it was good that we got to eat there before she leaves. She is really funny, so it will be a bit more boring in Sapporo when she is gone, but we already made plans for where to eat when she moves back to Japan, so at least that is settled.

French food and Japanese bicycles at Moere-Numa Koen

Previously a garbage dump, now art

In Sapporo we have a park called Moere Numa Koen. This used to be a garbage dump, but at one time the city hired an artist to make this into a beautiful park instead. There are huge sculptures and pyramid shaped hills to climb, and it looks quite nice.

My friend wanted me to "look like a foreigner taking up lots of space" while we waited for our table to be prepared.

The park also has a French restaurant called Les enfants qui reve. I have been there once before, and went there again recently. Both times with the same friend. The restaurant is a bit expensive, but they serve very nice food. The dishes have many original ideas without feeling forced or becoming worse than the original dish.

After doing silly things while waiting around in the waiting room, we were led to our table by a young man. While we were walking to our table, my friend suddenly stopped and looked at the chairs of a table for 8 which had no cutlery or glasses and which some other waiter was wiping bread crumbs from. The guy leading us continued on towards a table set for two over by the window, but my friend started looking at the chairs with a confused face and a "Which chair should I sit on?"-expression. Since I was behind her in line, I had to stop too, so I pointed out the our table was probably the one the guy helping us was standing next to and pointing to over by the window, not this table. Despite being very clever, my friend has a knack for strange things like this (and it is not on purpose, she says), so it is always highly entertaining to hang out with her.

After eating, we also rented bicycles and took a ride around the park (which is huge). My friend is short and she was worried that she would not be able to ride the grownup sized bicycles. Apparently that was the case with rental bicycles when she lived in France. We asked if it was possible to rent a kid sized bicycle instead, but the woman handling the bicycles said that there was a weight limit too. When looking at the sign it said "Less than 40kg", which is not problem at all for my friend, though...

We rented two bicycles for grownups and they turned out to be tiny, so there was no problem.

The menu had something called "Raisin juice". How much juice can you get out of raisins?

A glass of raisin juice

Asparagus with edamame cream

Raw fish on mashed potatoes, served on a rock. Extremely good.

Four types of tomatoes, with frozen basil

Frozen corn soup (corn soup ice cream)

Hot corn soup poured on frozen corn soup, a great idea!

Two types of pork

In Sweden we eat a lot of "dill". This is dill ice cream, which I have never seen before. Good, though. The white stuff is chocolate.

The creme brulee was herb flavored (thyme?), which was also surprisingly good.

The bicycle renting ticket included a map of the park.

The restaurant is in the glass pyramid.

There are lots of weirdly shaped play grounds in the park.

My friend wanted to try the play ground, but since she is about half my weight, this swing did not work that well.

Leaving Paris

After seeing the catacombs and the opera house, I bought myself a French baguette with some salami and went to the airport.

Once at the airport it was time for another culture shock. I found the check-in counters for my airline, but there was no one there (at least no one working, there were other people waiting to check in). There was a sign saying that the counter would be open for check-in after 18:00. In Japan, I would expect the counter to be open at any time the airport is open, so it was surprising.

I waited around for a while and was then allowed to check in. The French woman checking me in was very helpful and I got a good seat.

Later, there was another line to get into the airplane. I was wearing a shirt that says 日本人ではありません ("I am not Japanese"), so people also waiting in line kept pointing at me and saying to their friends things like: "Look, that guy has a shirt that says he is not Japanese". There was even one girl using her cell phone to tell someone on the other end of the phone call about me and my t-shirt, haha.

The old couple standing in front of me in line also talked about my shirt, so I said: "So as not to be mistaken for a Japanese person" to them in Japanese. They were very surprised that I could understand what they were saying, and that I could say things to them that they understood. That it is surprising that someone flying to Japan can speak Japanese is surprising to me, but this happens all the time. The husband said that he thought the risk of me being mistaken for Japanese without this t-shirt was pretty much exactly zero, but that he gets mistaken for being Chinese all the time (when in Europe) so a similar t-shirt might be useful for him.

Fancy French dinner

The last day, when the conference was finally over, I had dinner with my Canadian professor friend, and my boss.

We decided to meet at the restaurant, but since I did not really know where the restaurant was located I decided to go there well in advance. It was in an area of the city I had not visited, so I figured I could spend some time looking at the sights there after finding the restaurant.

When I got off the subway I picked a random exit and went out. After climbing some stairs to get to the street level I was looking around trying to get a bearing on which direction was north (the way I wanted to go), and heard someone say: "Ah, Jonas"...

It turned out that my boss was also there well in advance to try to find the restaurant so as not to be late. I found the restaurant quickly, so we had a lot of time to kill. My boss was too hot and tired so he said we should just go sit in some cafe and have a drink instead of keep walking around.

I asked for "freshly pressed lemon juice", which looked interesting on the menu. My boss said that it sounded good but that he thought it would be too sweet. He "cannot drink sweet stuff, like juice". I said that since I thought it would just be made by squeezing a lemon and catching whatever came out, it would most likely not be sweet, but actually very sour. He was still not convinced, since it was listed under juices, so he ordered beer.

I got a glass of what was exactly what I had expected, which was of course very sour. It was pretty much 0% sweet... They also gave me a big packet of sugar so I could add as much sugar as I wanted, but I drank it without sugar. Definitely not sweet, despite being called juice.

Once it was time for dinner, dinner turned out to be excellent. The professors had foie gras as a starter, and gave me some to try too. I do not particularly like foie gras, but this was one was great. I had an egg with chanterelle sauce. This is common in Sweden too, but I have not seen anyone pick this type of mushroom in Japan. Very good.

The food in general was very good. Even the butter for the bread was great, haha. I had baked fish with mushrooms and asparagus, which was excellent, of course. My boss had scallops and the Canadian professor had meat.

The meat came with Béarnaise sauce, which is also quite popular in Sweden. My Japanese friends that have tried it all hate it, though. They think it tastes like food gone bad.

For desserts I figured I should try Crème brûlée in a fancy French restaurant at least once, so I know if the stuff I have made myself is reasonably close to the real thing or not. I was very good, of course. The Canadian professor had something that the restaurant was famous for (profiterole), which was ice cream filled petit choux with extreme amounts of expensive melted chocolate poured on them. I tried one of those too, which was also good.

French delivery sushi

In Paris there were very many sushi restaurants. It looked like the quality was not as great as in Sapporo, and the selection of sushi was fairly limited (mainly salmon and California rolls). There was a sushi place with delivery service close to my hotel, and judging by the number of deliver bikes they have, sushi must be popular.

Very heavy starters

My Canadian professor friend mentioned that he knew of a place that was rumored to have cheap food, good food, and good wines. He wanted to go there after the conference presentations finished one of the days.

We stopped by and decided to try something light. There was something called the "house pâté" for 10 Euros in the starter section of the menu, so we ordered that.

I am not sure what kind of things show up if you order something heavier than a starter, but we could not even finish half of the stuff we got, and there were two of us. After trying to reach the halfway point, both of us ended up not having any dinner that night because we were just too full.

So, for 10 Euros we got enough food to feed at least 4. And it was great, too. So the rumors of cheap and good food seem true.

Indian curry, cheese, free wine = working

Lunch

I was in Paris to work, and I spent most of my time actually working. The work was not that exciting so there are many more photos from the few hours of non-work than from the many hours of work, though.

Me presenting some research

I gave a presentation, which was fairly well received. People laughed when I was trying to say something funny, and they did not laugh when I was not trying to be funny. I ended up in a session where every single speaker came from Japan, which was a bit strange.

The conference was held at the Paris Descartes University. This university is very old, and the desks had some form of ancient devices stuck to them that I still do not know what they are for. The university also lacks air conditioning, which made the extreme heat a bit of a bother during the afternoon presentations. Like holding the conference in a sauna (a sauna with Internet access, though).

Every day there was lunch provided by the conference. Every day the lunch served was Indian curry and French cheese. There was also unlimited free wine. Very French.