Recommended dining
On another Dijon evening we dine at Restaurant Le Verdi, Place Emile Zola. We share a Salade Chevre Chaud – squares of grilled chevre topped with pine nuts, set on crusty bread over a dressed green salad. Also, a perfectly al dente tortellini filled with ricotta and fresh asparagus sitting on a bed of creamy sauce dotted with petit pois. All washed down with a 500 ml pichet of Pays du Gard Rouge.
- Salade Chevre Chaud
Food Observations Nowadays in France you can’t help but notice a significant amount of “biologique” (organic) food and wine in the shops. Organic wine apparently accounts for 10% of the French market, with consumption growing rapidly.
On previous trips to France the cuisine was straight down the line Francaise. In recent years there has been an explosion of pizzerias, kebab shops, ethnic restaurants – Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, Moroccan, Japanese, Lebanese. And with it the inevitable run of McDonalds etc.
French chefs, who cook vegetables beautifully, still see vegetarian diners as abominations and the few menus that include a vegetarian selection assume that vegetarians eat fish.
Wherever we travel morbid obesity is never evident.
PS – Dijon Awarded Two Michelin Retreads. If the footpaths of Paris rate three Michelin Retreads for dog crappy footpaths, Dijon’s walkways, which are much cleaner, rate only two. However, there is a still a lot of shoe scraping for the short-sighted and for those looking at the stars rather than the gutter.