Offbeat Eats

Colorado Springs has a lot of the old, classic “Out West” vibe going strong, and one place that really stands out is in the selection of fine dining restaurants: Colorado Springs has quite a few high-end steakhouses right in town: Saltgrass, Mckenzie’s Chop House, Peppertree, and the Famous, just to list ones easily walkable from my hotel. After several long days of work, we decided that it was worth going out and celebrating, and since I had wandered by The Famous a few times, we decided to drop in and give it a try.

After wrapping up our business activities at the Paris Air Show, we headed into downtown Paris to meet up with our hosts for dinner. Our hosts were staying at a nice hotel in the 6e Arrondissement (we were staying at a Comfort[sic] Inn out by CDG; a word of advise for anyone wanting to do the Paris Air Show: reserve your hotel room months in advance!), which is one of my favorite parts of town (twice before I’ve stayed at the nearby Hotel Quai Voltaire on the banks of the Seine in the 7e Arrondissement for a quite reasonable price, but not during the Air Show). The 6e Arrondissement has a nice selection of cafés, chocolate shops, and even a really good rum bar. As we rendezvoused with our hosts, it was just few minutes before 17:00, so our host recommended we see how the line was for the nearby Le Relais de L’Entrecôte.

After an 11 hour flight, we arrived back in Paris. We took this as an opportunity to explore more of Paris, this time with my brother and sister-in-law joining us from London (I still think the Channel Tunnel is a rather cool invention). Despite the somewhat drizzly weather, we decided to do a walk around Montmartre, enjoying this fairly hilly part of the city, included a tour of Sacre Coeur (my first since Junior High) and looking over the city from the terrace. But it was also time for lunch, and we settled on a fairly nice café near the metro station, Café Le Saint-Jean, where I had another chance to indulge in one of my simple pleasures: a basic steak frites. Like uncountably many cafés around Paris, this one has the basic Parisien Café look pretty much nailed: tiny round tables, wooden chairs, black-and-while tile, and robed waiters dashing about with trays of food, coffee, wine, and beer. We quickly found ourselves seated by the window, and after a short perusal of the menu, I decided that their bavette avec frites was the way to go.