Well, Pam & Alan went out after a Saturday of cleaning, relaxing, catching up on blogging and playing games on the computer. Isn't it amazing what a week of school can do to some people!
The reason for going out was to buy milk and bread for the morning, but we decided to turn it into yet another Montpellier adventure, and we went down another street we hadn't explored.
The street led to an amazing little square or place (pronounced plas) with the most astounding seafood shop, an Arab bakery and cake shop and an Arab butcher attached to an "Arab mixed business"just like the ones in Sydney Road. The seafood shop was a complete knockout and they were preparing seafood platters by the dozen, for Saturday nights dinners, each one would cost over $120 back home. We didn't ask the price! The bakery was a bit overloaded, so we didn't wait, and the butcher was equally entertaining with huge cuts of Halal meat at very good prices. You could smell the lamb and it was delicious! We bought herbs, halva, peanut butter from Holland and a double adapter!
We then had a bit of a think. What to do for dinner at 8:30 on a Saturday? Restaurant is the only logical answer, and there was one there of course. All decked out in Iznik blue tiles, this place has a North African emphasis, so we ordered tagines and taboulleh, accompanied by the vin d'maison. It was all mind blowing. The flavours, the quality, the quantity and the value of the wine was all amazing (it turned out to be a bottle of the local Cote du Rhone merlot). I had to wander down the road to an ATM to pay for it all, but that was part of the fun.
We went home very happy sans bread and milk.
Pam
A few weeks later and we repeat the exercise on a public holiday, only this time the fish shop wasn't open. But the boulangerie & patisserie (bread & cake shop) were and so was the butcher and the Arab supermarche, full of lovely fresh spices in huge sacks (fabulous aromas).
We had received an advertisement / flyer for another nearby restaurant, but it turned out to be not very nice looking and more of a men's domain. (Being in the Arab quarter, means there are lots and lots of coffee shops and bars that are men only territory - it is where the men sit and socialize and play cards or tile games. They are safe enough to walk past, but definitely not places for women, and foreign women at that, to enter!)
So this time we decided to try a different restaurant across the road from our previous experience. We hit the jackpot! Not as extensively decorated and no Iznik tiles. (For those who never caught up with our Turkish exploits in 2006, Iznik is the town in Turkey that is famous for producing those beautiful blue tiles you see on Turkish & Arabic buildings - great city and previously called Nicea as referred to in the Bible). Anyway enough on Turkey for the moment -back to France and more particularly Gambetta, the Quartier Arabique en Montpellier.
So we sit down and look at the menu and discuss it in English. The lady owner comes over and asks where we are from and we tell her Australia and she decides to practise her English, while we practise our French. When we asked her where she was from, she said Turkey and once we said we had been there and established our credentials (ie knew places and museums, etc), it was on for young and old. We probably spent half an hour chatting to her in broken French about Turkey, how much we liked the country, where we went and what we saw. We chatted throughout the evening, finding out about her family and why she came to France and looking at pictures of her children etc. It was great fun!
And the fun did not stop there! The food was superbe! Pam had poulet (chicken) cooked in the tangine while Alan had the mixed grill (grillade) served with cous cous and an enormous bowl of vegetables cooked in a vegetable stock - more like a huge chunky vegetable soup. The chicken was moist, flavoursome and also accompanied by a tangine full of vegetables. If we ate like this every day, we would be rolling around France instead of walking!
Wine was also fun. We didn't feel like having a lot of wine, so asked what she had in demi (half) bottles. There were 3 choixis (choices) a Turkish wine, an Algerian one and a Moroccan one. When asking for her recommendation, we of course got the Turkish one, and we have to say it was the best Turkish wine we have had - better than all the ones we tried when we were in Turkey! It was so good and the evening was so much fun that we relaxed enough to splurge another 2.5 euro (yes folks - excellent wines for under 5 dollars!). this time we decided to experiment again and try either the Moroccan or Algerian, whichever the lady chose. It happened to be the Moroccan wine and it was also excellent!
So replete with good food, good wine, good company (ourselves excluded!) and lots of shopping we rolled home thinking how lucky we were to be living next to Gambetta and the lovely restaurants! We will be back.
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