Snails, Frogs Legs and Macarons in Paris

Paris, the city of love! I loved my first visit here so much in the previous month that at the end of my Europe trip, I had to finish it in Paris.

I was disappointed that the first time I went, I was unable to find any frogs legs to eat. And so I set it as my goal this time to find it. Enter Le Weekend, located near the main shopping district and high end boutiques. I suspect it is a touristy restaurant given it’s location, but nevertheless it served its purpose of serving me, the tourist, some touristy food! There is a set menu which lets us have an entrée and main for €28.50which we order. I share this with my good friend whilst also adding another main.

Beef Tartare (raw beef)- €16

First up is our beef tartare (similar to yukke). This consists of marinated raw beef, served with a side of chips and salad. The beef is heavily flavoured with tomato, contains some sour tang along with crunchy onions. It’s not the best I’ve had but is certainly interesting. I’m happy I shared this as after a while, the beef becomes a bit heavy and boring given its size.

Escargot / Snails (6)

Next up is snails! Believe it or not, despite snails being a traditional French dish, it is not commonly available at many restaurants and most of the places we went to did not have it on their menu. To eat snails, you are given a small device similar to tongs. This grips onto the shell whilst you use a small fork to pry out the snail. It is cooked in a garlic oil and is filled with garlic flavour…mm delicious! The texture is very similar to eating chewy mussels or calamari and is not at all slimy like live snails. At the end of this dish, we had a lot of sauce left over so we dipped our bread into the sauce. Our inventiveness left us with garlic bread, yum!

Frogs Legs cooked Provencale style

Our last dish was frogs legs. I was looking forward to this as I couldn’t find it previously, but had no idea what to expect. Frogs legs have a lot of bones. It takes a long time to eat a leg, let alone a plate, and I found myself chewing through it slowly and cautiously, whilst removing the many many bones. The legs don’t actually have a lot of meat and the texture is very similar to fish, except more chewy. The way this restaurant cooked it was in a tomato oil flavour. Personally, I found it much too oily and after a while it got very heavy as well. Thankfully there was a lemon there to help combat some of the oil and add some extra flavour to the dish.

Overall, I’m not too big of a fan of frogs legs. I do quite enjoy snails though. Traditional French cuisine has some good and bad points to it, but it’s best to try everything once right?

Aside from the savoury parts of French cuisine, we also sampled the sweets the first time I came to Paris as our group devoured many macarons. This time was no different and now that I knew where to go, I had my take two of macarons! Here is a list of all the flavours I tried. And of course, some photos of them too! These three patisseriers made the best macarons which I tried. With multiple stores across Paris, it’s best to search online for which one is located nearest to you. Most of these flavours tasted just as delicious as they look and sound – my favourites were Earl Grey Tea, Rose and Chestnut and Pear. Absolutely amazing flavours which were unlike anything I had ever tasted before.

Macaron flavours I tried:

Caramel with Salted Butter
Cassis
Chestnut and Pear
Chocolate
Chocolate and Passionfruit
Creme Brulee
Earl Grey Tea
Genmaicha
Lemon
Matcha
Orange and Ginger Cream
Orange and Mango
Pearl
Praline
Rose
Sesame
Vanilla
Violette
Wasabi