Two weekends ago my wife and I took our last trip to Paris before our move back home to Canada. We went to explore the Montmartre district, which is the hip and artsy neighborhood where the Sacre Coeur Basilica is located.
It was a Saturday in August so the area was extremely busy, as expected. I assume that they were all tourist. I'm guessing that the locals avoid the area on weekends during peak tourist season.
We stopped for a French breakfast at a Cafe called Au Cadet de Gascogne.
The Cafe and the food weren't anything overly special but there was space to sit and it was a good central place to people watch.
The Cafe is located in a busy square surrounded by restaurants and the area itself is known for its many artists, shops and galleries. Many of those artists set up booths in the square to sell their paintings and to do caricatures. It's definitely a unique part of the city and a fun place to sit and watch people go by.
Breakfast isn't an important meal in France like it is in other parts of the world. Its generally quite light, consisting of coffee and juice with a piece of bread and jam and maybe a croissant or pain au chocolat. Hotels will provide an assortment of cheeses and charcuterie, hard boiled eggs and maybe cold cereal, but I'm pretty sure that all of those extras are more for tourists.
Anyway, I got a standard breakfast of coffee and orange juice, pain au chocolat and in this case an omlette. An omlette is somewhat unusual in my experience for breakfast but I figured I'd give it a try.
The orange juice is typically fresh squeezed but in this case it was just the store bought boxed variety. I know this is going to sound super pretentious but I don't like the boxed variety of orange juice 馃槅. I generally find it to be too acidic and chemically tasting. It usually makes me phlegmy in the back of the throat so I just tend to avoid it. I don't have that issue with fresh squeezed though so I started drinking it in France after many many years of not touching it. I know, I know, I sound like a snob here.
So anyway, my wife drank the juice so it didn't go to waste.
She got a crepe and jam with her coffee. The jam was a cheap version and there was too much of it, but all in all it was fine. I'm not trying to be overly critical here or to act like some sort of food authority, I just don't want people to think that I'm trying to sell them on this particular location or that this Cafe is a strong recommendation of mine.
Simply, the food was fine and it was a decent spot to watch people. We enjoyed our time but you could get the same experience anywhere in the area, so choose at random or whatever other spot that looks decent.
At the end of the day we had some time before our train back home arrived so we grabbed afternoon drinks at another Cafe outside the Gare du Nord. Beer for me and a cappuccino for my wife then back home by train.
