Trying to hit two birds with one stone in bringing home a piece of France, I bought a tin box of Le Lichouzic de Sainte Anne La-Palud, purportedly manufactured in Brittany. It actually tastes much like our own galletas back in Manila.
The biscuits were wrapped in twos inside the tin, making it easy for tin fanciers like me to find another use for the box later.
I have found a trip to the local grocery a very enlightening experience for tourists, more so if you end up staying in tourist traps where most of the offerings are not of the local flavor, but are of the type that appeals to the tourists only. In a local grocery, you can find the types of condiments that are served on a regular basis, and pick up nuances like their preference for snacks, ready meals, and even toiletries.
In Paris, Alan and I shopped at the more upscale Galleries du Lafayette, featuring a wide variety of goods from chocaltes to olive oil and herbs and cookies. I asked the front desk at the Hotel Warwick on Champs-Elysees for the nearest grocery, and they pointed me towards MONOPRIX which was just 2 blocks away.
Here I picked up some tea, more cookies and tarts packaged to keep for a while, as well as my supply of diet soda. (A 1.5 litre soft serve bottle costs approximately 1.30 Euro).
With the Filipino penchant for bringing home pasalubong for everybody, I found some cookies of the diet variety for my diabetic mother in law and for my mom as well. I grabbed a Ferrero product which was not your usual Ferrero Rocher — called DUPLO, and I didn’t even get to taste it, just sent it to my niece in Manila. I heard it was a big hit with my sweet toothed siblings and they were asking for more. The only problem is, this is not available here in the US.
We already had our first taste of French fine chocolate during Alan’s second trip there. He brought home boxed chocolates from DALYANOV (recommended by his bosses) and FAUCHON (which my mom took a fancy to and which I grabbed from the CDG Duty Free store). So this time around, I told him we should bring other goodies home. This time, besides the macaroons from Laduree, we brough home more cookies and biscuits, both plain and coated with assorted chocolate — to bring home a taste of Paris.