Paris II: Rue de Mouffetard

A great street to have a quick (and not so quick...) lunch. First of all we have to remind all of you it's not just another traditional-sightseeing street, but a remnant of an old Roman road, where old buildings, some even dated by the 12th Century, can be found. You'll find this little treasure at the 5ème arrondissement, very close to the Panthèon. The picture from Maximilien Luce probably is not going to help you a lot, but I'm sure you'll like it and if a XIXth Century painter thought the street was worth enough to be painted,... you won't dare to miss it.

Right in 60, rue de Mouffetard you'll find the best fast-made crepes in Paris (except for, of course, any crepe done by a true Britanny native). Au p'tit grec is a really small bar where you can buy and eat cheap crepes. We paid 16 € for three crepes and three cokes. There's not the huge range of choices you might find in Britanny, but it's pretty assorted. My friend took tuna and cheese and my other friend and I took egg, ham and cheese (une complète, on dit chez-moi). You can have tomato, lettuce and onion on it; in fact, the guy seems bothered if you don't want it in your crepe, he didn't understood it, as it was free. I've been told the best sweet crepe is the one made of Nutella and banana. Omelettes (2 or 3 eggs) with differents ingredients can also be taken.

If you feel like a fondue, this is also a good street to find a nice and cheap one; there are a couple of good restaurants where you might fondue and raclette (3 for 5 people, for example), paying around 16€ each one.

Omelette, she wrote

Again in Barcelona, again a "must". Flash Flash Tortillería (La granada del Penedès 25, very close to Balmes and La Diagonal) opened more than 30 years ago, and since then they have been serving every kind of omelette you could imagine. From macaroni and cheese omelette to the most simple plain omelette can be eaten there (however, my aunt says it's she who actually my invented the macaroni omelette, and I wouldn't dare to doubt about it). I also have tasted the mallorquina, with onion and sobrasada, the fornera, with tomato, fried bread and emmental cheese, and the one with ham and potatoes. They were all great, although I have always felt I wouldn't be able to finish them. I have never tasted the hamburgers, but I have been told they are great; the cook says he has a special kind of seasoning for them, and it must be true, because whenever I go, there's always a family eating hamburgers.

The restaurant is really cute, all in black and white. Some "beautiful people" can be found there, which contrasts with the dismail waiters. In fact, Flash Flash was a kind of meeting point for the people belonging to the Gauche Divine movement during the 70's. Nowadays it is open from the midday to 1:30 a.m., a wide choice of hours to taste a different omelette.

"Just" a sandwich

Again, a typical place from Barcelona. It's one of my favourites, where you can eat something cheap at any time. Many people from Barcelona come here and take a sandwich every week.
Can Conesa started half a century ago and now its sausage sandwiches are known all over the city, and probably beyond. The formula is quite simple: good bread previously heated in the grill and good ingredients in it. Mmmmm, I feel like eating one of those...



The place is open the whole day and it's located in the city centre, at Plaça Sant Jaume, at the end of the Llibreteria St. In this square you can find the City Hall and the Regional Government, so while you are eating your sandwich and drinking your cold beer, you may find a prostitute's demonstration asking for their right to work on the street or maybe some workers from the Seat car factory asking for help. Don't panic, that's quite common. Can Conesa is at the Gotic district, what makes the bar very helpful when you are visiting Barcelona. Saturday midday is a great moment to taste the sandwiches.



But, if you are in Barcelona and want to go out on a Friday night, you may feel the temptation of going there. Forget the idea, it's not worth it: usually the queue is so long that you would die before you have bit the sandwich. I will talk about some secret places for those occasions some other day.
By the way, I almost forgot there are also good pizzas and fine salads to refresh yourself during the hot Barcelona's summer.

Mussels at March 5th Street

I don't really know if you have ever been to Zaragoza or its surroundings, but there are plenty of old, small places where you can eat a sandwich made of ingredients which may be quite exotic for a foreigner. One of this is La Mejillonera, always located in a tiny street in the centre of the town, called Moneva. This small bar is specialized in mussels (mejillón in Spanish) and in squid sandwiches, as the one showed.
However, last week I was wandering around another central street from Zaragoza, called March 5th (remembering an old battle which took place in this town in the "Carlists" war; read a history book if you want to know more about it), and I found a pleasing surprise: another subsidiary of la Mejillonera had been opened. So a bit later, in order to avoid the nuisance of going starving to the cinema, I decided to go in and eat something.
All comparison is false, but anyway, there I go (I'm talking about the Moneva's one). The one at March 5th is newer, with much more space between the tables and the bar and, ofering the same, it seemed to me a more comfortable option. I chose a table and the waiter arrived immediatly, as if he had been waiting for me the whole evening. I asked for a squid sandwich, spicy, of course, a plate of mussels and a glass of red wine. The bread was gummy, and that was quite strange, because bread is one of the reasons I always come to this place. It was not so bad, but the new place started to seem less comfortable than before... Let's go on... I decided to change, so I decided to taste those nice mussels waiting for me. Everything was fine, what a tasty sauce,... but then I saw something shining in the mussel; the sauce was so good I decided to fake I hadn't notice anything. But then, that shine became in my mouth an unpleasant feeling, like sand among my teeth and I found myself chewing a piece of nacre. I swalowed some wine and bless; it was a bad wine, but I didn't really care. Meanwhile, the waiter was taking of the dishes like an uncontrolled robot, making me take my glass, still having some wine in, in case he took it out of me. Well, the film could still arrange the night (thanks, Woody).

I will definetly come back, but next time I'll go to the old one, although I will have to be squeezed among many other people close to the bar. Maybe I expected too much from this.