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Dining Out and About: In the banlieue
By Ann | September 3, 2008
Sorry for the brief interruption in posting. Our shipment of furniture and other household stuff arrived last week and we have been surrounded in a sea of boxes, trying to find places for all those things we thought we’d left behind in storage (I nearly died when the 1-ton ceramic Buddha statue showed up). Of course, no move is complete without a trip to… Ikea. And so, we spent a laborious Labor Day journeying via train and bus to everyone’s favorite Swedish emporium. After New York, Beijing, Washington, and now Paris Nord, Roissy, I consider myself somewhat of an international Ikea expert. I’ll let you in on a little secret: Ikea is hell the world round.
Anyway, we could have lunched on Swedish meatballs, but we skipped the smorgasbord for the cafeteria located in the Ikea parking lot. This is basically your run-of-the-mill food court, albeit French style. Choices included a grill station (most popular), a Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese station (second in popularity), couscous (dead last), and pizza, which we chose. Prices were in the 7-9 Euro range for a proper lunch of steak of lamb chops (grilled to order), frites and vegetable; our made-to-order pizza plus two diet Cokes was 9.90. We shared a margherita (photo top, the other pie was someone else’s) and it was nothing special. But the food court fascinated me because it offered two interesting insights into French dining habits. 1) Food is made to order–even if it’s a roadside cafeteria, even it takes a long time, and even if there’s a long line; and 2) Lunch always includes wine: unlike us abstemious Yanks, 95% of diners enjoyed a 1/4 bottle with their meal. I’d be fast asleep by 2.30pm if I drank a glass of wine with my lunch, but perhaps that explains the 35-hour work week?
Cafeteria
Parc des expositions, Paris Nord, Roissy
Open seven days a week, closes at 16h
Topics: Dining Out and About |
One Response to “Dining Out and About: In the banlieue”
Comments
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September 3rd, 2008 at 5:32 am
The other thing about the cafeteria is that it was PACKED with diners of all shapes, ages, sizes and backgrounds. A very convivial atmosphere, actually. And the bathrooms were spotless.
One other note is that I have discovered since our laborious Labor Day that among the five or so Ikeas in the Paris region, the Paris Nord Roissy Ikea is the biggest.