Wine drinking in France sucks

[Brian_Tuite]

@Victor Hong

The wine lists at most entertainment-amenable restaurants seem to be like hair-trigger landmine fields, perhaps by deliberate design. The host implicitly faces two bad alternatives, sheepish embarrassment for not selecting the far-overpriced wines, versus painful explanation or even rejection when submitting the expense reports. That is why I bring my own wines, even to business dinners.

Because we research, collect, and taste so many different wines, we are far more likely than the average restaurant patron to know when we have stepped into a landmine field…which still might not prevent us from being blown to smithereens.

Yeah, Alan should have brought a Saxum or a Kosta Browneand told them to stop pouring their insipid swill and serve him a real Murican wine.

[Craig_G]

Twenty minutes later, possibly under their own steam, the snails arrive.

[R_Greene]

Alan:

1. If you travel through Europe, you’ll notice that wine lists are dominated by their country’s own wines (see other comment above).

2. I’ve traveled to France very often, mostly to Bordeaux and Northern Rhône. I have had only positive experiences at restaurants, in regards to wine selection and value. For instance, in Saint-Emilion, I have been introduced to some fantastic <$50 wines that you can’t fine here in the U.S. It just takes an open mind, a little research, and a brief conversation with the waiter/somm.

3. Calling French wines “tasteless watery stagnant” is laughable.

[Jeremy_C]

@Scott G r u n e r

@John Morris

@Alan Eden

The choices in French restaurants are limited to local wines…

The reason they sell so much French wine in the restaurants is because they do not sell anything else, not even Spanish or Italian, this really surprised me when we basically in the foothills of the Pyrenees and still not a Spanish wine in site. We were also eating in what you would call foodie type places, not chains.

The reason we have such eclectic, diverse wine lists here is that the US doesn’t produce any good wines.

Ha! “I see your troll and I raise you a Troll!”

Cheers to that

[Julian_Marshall]

In Europe, restaurant prices are often close to retail, actually. But perhaps not in the Paris steakhouse where Alan ate.

I agree it may seem that way, because some know where and how to buy wine! But we have to make a 3x mark-up for tax reasons: if the inspector sees less than 3 in the books, he suspects fraud; likewise if it’s over 3 - both lead to closer scrutiny! Another reason for regional preference - costs are lower.
This is why in the past, when EP made sense, one could find incredible Bordeaux bargains in restaurants. Sadly, not any more.
Off track here, but since I know you like Loire reds, if you ever plan a trip to the Loire, I’ll give you the name of a wonderful restaurant (for the wine, not the food) where you can find the most extraordinary cellar anywhere with very old wines sold by the glass.

[John_Morris]

@Craig G

Twenty minutes later, possibly under their own steam, the snails arrive.

M90BO-KFyQk

[John_Morris]

@Julian Marshall

Off track here, but since I know you like Loire reds, if you ever plan a trip to the Loire, I’ll give you the name of a wonderful restaurant (for the wine, not the food) where you can find the most extraordinary cellar anywhere with very old wines sold by the glass.

Thanks! I’ll remember that.

And I think the best thing that could happen to this thread would be if it went off track.

[Neal.Mollen]

@M. Dildine

Here’s a cozy little spot for you Francophiles - L’Ami Louis!

Tour De Gall | Vanity Fair

What you actually find when you arrive at L’Ami Louis is singularly unprepossessing. It’s a long, dark corridor with luggage racks stretching the length of the room. It gives you the feeling of being in a second-class railway carriage in the Balkans. It’s painted a shiny, distressed dung brown. The cramped tables are set with labially pink cloths, which give it a colonic appeal and the awkward sense that you might be a suppository. In the middle of the room is a stubby stove that also looks vaguely proctological.

At the end of the dining room is the tiny kitchen and an even tinier bar, where the waiters lurk like extras for a Gallic version of The Sopranos. The staff are an essential part of Louis’s mystique. Paunchy, combative, surly men, bulging out of their white jackets with the meaty malevolence of gouty buffalo. They may well be related by blood—theirs or other people’s. They exude a pantomime insolence, an existential Le Fug Youse. As you walk in, one approaches with an eyebrow raised and nose aloft to give you the benefit of full-frontal froggy nostril. If you get past the door, and many don’t, the first thing your waiter does is take your coat. The next thing he does is fling it with effortful nonchalance into the luggage rack. Returning customers know to keep wallets, BlackBerrys, and spectacles out of their pockets. As it is, a tinkling dandruff of change scuttles behind the banquettes.

We are sat at a table by the door. Our particular chubby, oyster-eyed fellow dumps off a pair of menus and a large book without a word or the offer of a drink. The menu is brief and bloody. The tome is the wine list. It turns out to be a massive eulogy to claret. Every grand château and vintage is represented with sycophantic prices. The wine cellar is behind the lavatory in a crypt that smells overpoweringly of fetid bladder damp. After a lot of smiley semaphore, I manage to beg a single glass of house red for my companion.

We order foie gras and snails to start. Foie gras is a L’Ami Louis specialty. After 30 minutes what come are a pair of intimidatingly gross flabs of chilly pâté, with a slight coating of pustular yellow fat. They are dense and stringy, with a web of veins. I doubt they were made on the premises. The liver crumbles under the knife like plumber’s putty and tastes faintly of gut-scented butter or pressed liposuction. The fat clings to the roof of my mouth with the oleaginous insistence of dentist’s wax.

As I suck my teeth, I watch the waiters saunter up and down the aisle like Vichy ticket collectors. Another one appears. Not fat, not white, not a caricature. A lithe, handsome boy, who is probably North African. He is plainly a prop. His job is to be wrong, to soak up blame. The big men bully up, roll their eyes, wave their chubby knuckles at him as he delivers and clears and sweeps crumbs. A man pretends to cuff him round the ear and looks over at a table of Americans with a grin and a wink to include them in the jape.

An Englishman in blinding tweed and racy cap pushes through the door and roars. A waiter steps forward, arms outstretched, and makes hee-haw, hee-haw noises like Bart Simpson pretending to speak French. It is the practiced and familiar ritual greeting of mutual incomprehension and ancient contempt. Our servant glides past and does a silent-movie double take. “Your snails!” he exclaims. “They have not come!” His cheeks bulge as he flaps his short arms. In all my years of professional eating, I have never seen this before. I have seen waiters do many, many things, including burst into tears and juggle knives, and I once glimpsed one having sex. But never, ever has a waiter commiserated with me about the lack of service.

Twenty minutes later, possibly under their own steam, the snails arrive. Vesuvian, they bubble and smoke in a magma of astringent garlic butter and parsley. We grasp them with the spring-loaded specula and gingerly unwind the dark gastropods, curling like dinosaur boogers. They go on and on, expanding onto the plate as if they were alien. We have to cut them in half, which is just wrong. The rule with snails is: Don’t eat one you couldn’t get up your nose.

Twenty minutes later, our plates are taken away. Twenty minutes after that, our main courses arrive. Or rather, my companion’s does. A veal chop, utterly plain, unaccompanied or sullied by decoration or inspiration. Just an awkwardly butchered skinny rib that has been grilled for too long on one side and too little on the other so that it is simultaneously stingingly dry and overdone and flabbily, slimily raw. She can’t decide which side to complain about.

I have decided not to go for the famous roast chicken, mainly because I’ve suffered it before and I’d just been watching a Japanese couple wrestle with one like a manga poltergeist from some Tokyo horror movie, its scaly blue legs stabbing the air. So on to the broiled kidneys. Nothing I have eaten or heard of being eaten here prepared me for the arrival of the veal kidneys en brochette. Somehow the heat had welded them together into a gray, suppurating renal brick. It could be the result of an accident involving rat babies in a nuclear reactor. They don’t taste as nice as they sound.

As an afterthought, or perhaps as an apology, the waiter brings a funeral pyre of French fries—they taste of seared and overused cooking oil—and then a green salad of frisée and mâche, two leaves that rarely share a bowl, due to their irreconcilable differences. They have been doused in vinegar that may have been recycled from the gherkin bottle. Dessert is four balls of gray ice cream and something that had once been chocolate.

Bon appetit!

I’m guessing he didn’t like it but can’t be sure because there was no rating. No stars or scores.

What is a sycophantic price?

[Craig_G]

To achieve the true pinnacle of berserkerdom, you must strive to eliminate any trace of self-awareness.

[Marc_Breitenmoser]

@John Morris

@Alan Eden

The choices in French restaurants are limited to local wines…

The reason they sell so much French wine in the restaurants is because they do not sell anything else, not even Spanish or Italian, this really surprised me when we basically in the foothills of the Pyrenees and still not a Spanish wine in site. We were also eating in what you would call foodie type places, not chains.

I guess you’ve never traveled in Europe. In Tuscany, you won’t find Piedmont wines in the stores or on restaurant lists, or vice versa. And you’re unlikely to find an Italian or French wine in a Spanish restaurant.

The reason we have such eclectic, diverse wine lists here is that the US doesn’t produce any good wines.

That’s so much off base one wonders of the mold issue is really just a phenomenon in your friends cellar or more wide spread

[David_Cooper]

Perhaps Alan was traveling with Bubba Watson.

[Alan_Eden]

A few things to add

I was the only non French person present, i did not pick the wines.

Mark up outside Paris appeared to be 2-3 times, inside Paris 3-5 times, bad on wine, really bad on whiskey. Any malt thats sells here for $50 ish a bottle was €20 a shot in Paris.

For the most part the food was excellent, i was genuinely surprised how bad the wines were.

[Warren_Taranow]

@M. Dildine

Here’s a cozy little spot for you Francophiles - L’Ami Louis!

Tour De Gall | Vanity Fair

Bon appetit!

Mike,
That’s a really funny read. Thanks for posting it!
Cheers,
Warren

[ERPark]

The irony of the posts noting the OP sounds like an “ugly Murican” is that he’s actually Welsh (aka the infamous Welshturd from the WS forums).

Please do carry on with the rightfully deserved skewering!!!

[Jayson_Cohen]

Stick with a pitcher of berry smoothie next time. Sounds like you would have been happier.

If the OP wasn’t a troll, I’d engage. I’ll leave it at — you haven’t spent much time in France.

[Julian_Marshall]

The irony of the posts noting the OP sounds like an “ugly Murican” is that he’s actually Welsh (aka the infamous Welshturd from the WS forums).

Ah, hence the dragon!

[Sc0tt_F_tzgerald]

@Alan Eden

A few things to add

I was the only non French person present, i did not pick the wines.

Mark up outside Paris appeared to be 2-3 times, inside Paris 3-5 times, bad on wine, really bad on whiskey. Any malt thats sells here for $50 ish a bottle was €20 a shot in Paris.

For the most part the food was excellent, i was genuinely surprised how bad the wines were.

Alan, can you provide the names of some of the restaurants you visited? Not doubting your experience, but it might be no different than someone visiting the states and eating at a decent U.S. restaurant, only to find a subpar overpriced wine list.

[Neal.Mollen]

@Scott Fitzgerald

Not doubting your experience

Not to worry Scott; others have that covered

[Arv_R]

@Alan Eden

A few things to add

I was the only non French person present, i did not pick the wines.

Mark up outside Paris appeared to be 2-3 times, inside Paris 3-5 times, bad on wine, really bad on whiskey. Any malt thats sells here for $50 ish a bottle was €20 a shot in Paris.

For the most part the food was excellent, i was genuinely surprised how bad the wines were.

The best Parisian travel advice I was ever given: bring half as many clothes, and twice as much money.

Sorry that you didn’t enjoy the place. I still find the humblest Beaujolais sipped in a cafe there to be a wondrous experience.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

[Chris_Seiber]

@Scott G r u n e r

@John Morris

@Alan Eden

The choices in French restaurants are limited to local wines…

The reason they sell so much French wine in the restaurants is because they do not sell anything else, not even Spanish or Italian, this really surprised me when we basically in the foothills of the Pyrenees and still not a Spanish wine in site. We were also eating in what you would call foodie type places, not chains.

The reason we have such eclectic, diverse wine lists here is that the US doesn’t produce any good wines.

Ha! “I see your troll and I raise you a Troll!”

My thought exactly. Somehow managed to one up the OP.

It is amazing how lucky we are to be wine lovers in the US. Maybe especially the west coast. You have the best of everything to choose from, locally and internationally. Though restaurant lists aren’t usually the best place to experience that.