A Tale of Two Cafes

If you like good food, where do you get it?  I'm often asked this, and I can only reply that sometimes I eat well, and sometimes I eat fairly well, but seldom in the last few weeks have I got food poisoning, and looking back on that unhappy evening, I should have known better and played by my own rules.
If you are in a tourist spot like Prague, for instance, I head for the side streets.  There you are more likely to see a good authentic menu.  A narrow street not accessible by tourists on a bus is a good start.  Next I look for a simple menu, preferably without steak on it, or pictures of the dishes.  I found such a place near St Charles Bridge.  The menu was simple, and at the back of the cafe was a television showing an ice hockey game between Canada and the Czech Republic.  At the next table was a Canuck and three Czechs.  After my meal, they invited me to join them. We drank and cheered and booed and drank and a good time was had.  At the end of the evening, they gave me their business cards (they were work colleagues).  How lovely people are.

Two weeks later, I was in the Quartier Latin in Paris.  I wanted an evening meal, but as I walked along the Odeon, I was beset by spruikers wanting me to eat in cafes with pictorial menus and mange biftecks, which was fortunately not what I had in mind.  I set off down a side street as I do if I want to be alone with a good meal and without a bus of tourists, and the world is my oyster (or in France, mon huitre no.3).

I came across this understated place called La Procope.  It looked a bit posh, the diners were glamoreux, but heck, I had 65 euros in my pocket and the world was mon huitre.  Talking of oysters I noticed that they served a very nice "signature" dish of sea food, the famous assiette des fruits des mer.for only 39 euros.  I went in.  "Table for one, please" I asked insouciantly.  I received a veritable torrent of French.

"So you can't fit me in tonight"
"Oh yes sir" said the Maitre d', "but not for a quarter of an hour,  Find a seat and have a drink," so I sat down next to the hatch where the waiters were fetching the drinks from, and had a glass of pastis.

To be continued . . . .