Mr. Rabbit

*Warning* My vegetarian friends may not want to read this post.

It was a good day at the office. I can't talk about my work. Whoops, wrong link. This is the correct one. But I can say that when I have a good day, I want to have a good French meal. The microwaveable meals here are better than those at home, but I feel a little silly living in Paris and eating TV dinners every night. I have a list of traditional French restaurants in the neighborhood that are recommended in various places on the internet and I intend to try them all out before I leave. I walked by several tonight, but they were closed for the month (see my previous post), so I ended up at Monsieur Lapin.

That translates to Mr. Rabbit. Walking in, it reminded me somewhat of one of my old haunts when I lived on the South Side of Chicago in law school: Harold's Chicken Shack. There is really only one similarity between the two. When you go to Harold's Chicken Shack, there are chickens on the wallpaper, which I always found a little disconcerting, considering the menu. At Monsieur Lapin, there are stuffed rabbits and rabbit-themed art.

In case you hadn't guessed by now, there is a speciality of the house at Monsieur Lapin. I don't know, but I imagine it may be the world's most expensive restaurant specializing in rabbit. It has to at least be in the top 5%. This didn't really concern me -- at last week's French restaurant, my starter was croustillant de pied de porc. That would be pig's foot. (For the record, it's a little fattening.) Plus, I like defying the French waiter's stereotype of what Americans eat. I've ordered andouilette a few times and am usually met with the response, "Do you know what that is?" Come on, they serve it in New Orleans!

This blog is not going to become a restaurant review, but because M. Lapin is unusual, I feel I must report that I began with a starter of rabbit terrine, but decided two courses of rabbit would be a little much, so I had veal kidney for the main course. (OK, I warned you two to stop reading at the beginning.) I do not know why, but it seems to this lay man that French cuisine does have an unusual emphasis on what we would consider the less pleasant parts of livestock. My guess is this is a relic from a time when people really needed to utilize all parts of the animal, but I don't know.

Apparently my French pronounciation is not yet where it needs to be, because tonight after asking for a table for one and saying I did not have a reservation in French, they gave me an English menu. That happens about half of the time. Sometimes, I get seated in what I call "the American sector" with the tourists. Once, I was next to a Swedish couple who had the hardest time trying to order something light from the menu. The man's order of a salad arrived, and the woman somehow confused the waiter into bringing her a plate teeming with sausages and sauerkraut. The 3 of us could not stop laughing. Tonight, I was seated next to a fashion designer from New York who is in town to see her daughter's ballet company perform here. She had been to Des Moines several times, the first when she played one of the Van Trapp daughters in the first national touring production of The Sound of Music. We were talking politics and she asked me to talk about current issues in agricultural policy. I kid you not. Paris can be a good place to make friends, when you know the language you're speaking. And when you're eating veal kidney at Mr. Rabbit, it can be nice to see an American.