Up until the point we left Paris for Rennes, the meals and snacks we enjoyed were all tasty, well prepared, and just delicious. While I have written about French Cuisine, the meals we have been eating are both a combination of my sibling's and French cafes. Paris is loaded with cafes, and based on my limited travel through northern and north western France, each hamlet has at least one cafe. But just because there is a cafe, does not make it good.
I follow a general principal I learned from my Grandmother Sadie; if the cafe is busy, it's probably a good place to eat. If it is constantly empty, don't bother. What this does is limit you in selection and may not allow you to expose the gems of places to eat. However, if you're on vacation, the last thing you need is to spend time eating at a place that has not been well tested by restaurant patrons. Leave that work to locals.
So when we arrived to Rennes on the 24th, all we knew was the great food we had eaten in Paris and unwisely assumed that France had great meals. The hotel we stayed at was the Mercure in Rennes. The place was clean but not high on amenities; for a better description of the Mercures we stayed at, see "Wee-woo". The Mercure is somewhat like a low end Hampton Inn, though I think Hampton Inns are better. Breakfast is provided and the one in Rennes did have room service at night. But, the room service was offered by a local restaurant. Since I was unaware of the restaurant, and its patronage, we decided to eat at the restaurant instead of ordering room service.
At 8:00pm, we were the first to be seated for the evening. To some that might seem really odd, but in France, this is early for dinner. Dinner usually starts around 8:30pm, and continues until 11:00pm. So I was not too worried yet. Then the maitre d' sat us at a nice table, and as you can see from the picture, the place seemed cozy and warm. Others began filing in, when our waiter came and gave us menus. I asked if there were menus in English, and he said there were, but offered none. So, I had to ask for an English menu to get one. We only received one. By this point, I knew this was going to be interesting.
The menu was chock full of foods (fruits) from the sea, "fruit de mer". There were shrimp scampi, mackerel, winkes and winkles, lobster, scallops, oysters, salmon, and sole. So, the menu seemed decent enough. Since I had never heard of a winke or a winkle, I asked what those were. They were different size snails. Our waiter as it turns out spoke no English and decided to refer us to the manager who spoke English fluently. This meant that I was now at the whim of the manager and her time in the restaurant. I ordered mackerel for an appetizer, a Mediterranean salad, and salmon for dinner. my daughter ordered a plate of shrimp scampi. When you order food that you have had at a multitude of other places, you tend to think that all places prepare them similarly. There are nuances that make them different, but you have a certain expectation.
That's when the whole eating experience in France took a turn. The mackerel came out on a bed of lettuce. It was a tan gray color and was, well, not exactly what I had in mind. It stuck of a strong fish flavor, was very mushy, and was disgusting at best. I damn near spit it across the restaurant after it entered my mouth. It was terrible. So, I swallowed what was in my mouth, had a sip of white wine, and decided to try the lettuce. The lettuce was good enough, and I left the fish in place. We sat at the table for quite some time before the manager returned. She asked if I was done, and I said yes. She asked was there something wrong with the mackerel, and I said it just wasn't what I had in mind, and was not interested. The next course comes out with my daughter's shrimp scampi and my Mediterranean salad. Well, the salad was ok, but the olives were simply black olives and the tomatoes were mushy. The scampi was the biggest kick in the rubber parts. They were completely whole prawns, eyes and all, on a bed of seaweed and a bowl of ice. No garlic. No butter. Only homemade mayonnaise. It was peal and eat shrimp/prawn.
I told Sarah not to worry, that if she didn't like it, she could have mine, as any good parent would do. Well, she hated the prawns. They were cold and not of good taste. So, I ended up eating a dozen prawns. I had to peal the shell which is more like a crayfish, split the body from the tail, remove the mud vein, and then eat the meat. It was a lot of work for little food. I was getting hungrier as I ate. I shouldn't have to expel more energy to eat dinner than what the food provides, otherwise the meal is not work it. The salmon I ordered, according to Sarah, was good. It was salmon filet on a bed of ratatouille and mashed potatoes with a lemon butter sauce. I determined at that point that when I get home, one meal I have will definitely be shrimp with real cocktail sauce and a real salad. Dinner for me was lousy. I ate the salad and asked for the check. At that point I had thought that of all the meals I had had, this was definitely the worst and that this is probably going to be the last bad meal I have in France.
Well, I spoke a bit too soon, because the following night we ate at an outdoor cafe. Although we were near the ocean, and the air was cooler, it was still quite warm and humid in Rennes. Instead of eating room service from that terrible place we ate the night before, I decided to try a walk around the area to see if we could find something better. The cafe we stopped at was really busy, and thought that this is probably a better place to eat. Upon asking for an menu in English, the waiter gladly gave us one and asked if we wanted something to drink while we read the menu. We ordered sparkling water for me and regular water for my daughter. Dinner for me was a "boquet of shrimp and cocktail sauce", a green salad, and tuna covered with sesame seeds, with a soy sauce dip and Basmatti rice flavored with saffron. Sarah decided to get a tomato and mozzarella dish with olive oil and balsamic vinegar in a crepe. The tuna was raw, the shrimp not peeled, and the "cocktail sauce" was mayonnaise with a touch of paprika; yuck. The food was better than the night before, but not much. Needless to say, bad meals are available in France, especially in Rennes.
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