Oeufs mayonnaise on the Rue du Bac

As everyone knows the French have a lot of ideas about food, most of which I agree with, although you’ll never convince me that coffee shouldn’t be served at the same time as dessert, especially when that dessert involves chocolate.

But despite my fondness for French cuisine, poor Tommy had a hard time when we were in Paris. Don’t get me wrong – he did quite well on the pastry/Nutella crepe/ice cream front. And he absolutely loved all the fabulous green bean salad I made from the fresh haricot verts I purchased at the organic market at the Place Monge (and well he did, since they cost about 20 dollars a kilo). He also ate a slab of cod about the size of his head when we took him out to dinner at Le Train Bleu.

But Tommy doesn’t like meat all that much and he’s also not a fan of cheese. So when we stopped for a café lunch one afternoon after a morning at the Musée d’Orsay, there wasn’t much to please him on the menu since both steak and a croque monsieur, the French version of grilled cheese, were out of the question. He was however eager to drink hot chocolate with a healthy topping of whipped cream, at treat he’d been enjoying since the first day we arrived. So we told him he could have one to accompany his ouefs mayonnaise, which is hard-boiled eggs topped with an aioli-like sauce.

The waiter actually visibly blanched when we placed the order. I could see that he was seconds from refusing to serve the two things to my child concurrently, but glancing at Tommy, he obviously found that he had the strength of character to overcome everything he had ever been taught since childhood.

And Tommy enjoyed it mightily.

This post is for Wanderfood Wednesday at Wanderlust and Lipstick. I hope you’ll check out the other food-related posts over there. And come back tomorrow for a bit more on our 2008 trip to Paris, which I’ve been revisiting this week as I do some spring cleaning around my blog.