537 - Join Us in France Travel Podcast

Categories: French Food & Wine, Moving to France

[00:00:15] Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 537, cinq cent trente-sept.

Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.

Today on the podcast

[00:00:31] Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Andrew Prior about his incredible journey from Australia to France, his culinary adventures, and his experiences on MasterChef Australia.

Join us as we dive into his foodie adventures, his podcasts ‘Fabulously Delicious’, and discover hidden French culinary gems. Whether you’re an avid listener of French food podcasts or looking for some inspiration in the kitchen, this episode is packed with delightful stories and invaluable and wonderful insights, and I love talking about food, you know that, right?

Podcast supporters

[00:01:06] Annie: This podcast is supported by donors and listeners who buy my tours and services, including my Itinerary Consult Service, my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with me around the Southwest of France in my electric car.

You can browse all of that at my boutique: joinusinfrance.com/boutique. And remember, Patreon supporters get the podcast ad-free and as soon as it’s ready, click on the link in the show notes to enjoy this Patreon reward for as little as three bucks a month.

The Magazine segment

[00:01:39] Annie: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Andrew today, I’ll discuss a type of accommodation that doesn’t come up a lot on the podcast, but is wonderful for families.

Introduction and Greetings

[00:02:00] Annie: Bonjour, Andrew Prior, and welcome to Join us in France.

[00:02:03] Andrew: Oh, bonjour and merci beaucoup for having me on. I’m fangirling or fanboying at the moment. I’ve been a avid listener of your podcast for a long time. And, in fact, you inspired me a bit to create my own podcast. So, yes, thank you very much.

[00:02:18] Annie: Thank you.

Andrew’s Podcast Journey

[00:02:19] Annie: So what’s the name of your own podcast?

[00:02:21] Andrew: Oh, well, Fabulously Delicious: The French Food Podcast, and so it literally is as the name suggests about delicious French food.

[00:02:30] Annie: Just French Food.

[00:02:31] Andrew: Yeah, that’s it.

[00:02:32] Annie: Lots to talk about, lots to talk about.

Moving to France

[00:02:35] Annie: So what inspired you, because you moved from Australia to France, right?

[00:02:39] Andrew: Oui, that’s correct, yes. We moved here in 2016, and we’ve been happily living here. We had four years in Paris and now we’re living in the French countryside, and we’ve been here since the first day of confinement of COVID, so that was an experience in itself.

[00:02:56] Annie: So you did not decide to move because of COVID, you had decided to move before COVID.

[00:03:01] Andrew: That’s correct, yeah. So the dream with coming to France was always to have a place in Paris and have a place in the countryside, because I love French food, we wanted to get out, explore the different regions and et cetera, with food. And I wanted to move from- I was doing food tourism at the time, so I wanted to move from doing food tours to actually doing cooking classes.

And so that was part of that move to the countryside, was to do cooking classes. But of course, at that time things changed, there was a little thing called COVID and that- especially with Australians, it meant that they couldn’t travel to France for a good two years, so that was a bit of a problem.

[00:03:37] Annie: Yeah, yeah. And obviously because you are kind of famous in, in Australia.

MasterChef Australia Experience

[00:03:43] Annie: You did MasterChef Australia. So I assume most of your customers are from Australia. Tell us about that a little bit.

[00:03:50] Andrew: Yeah, they were definitely, it’s changed a little bit now, but definitely they used to be from Australia. So as you’ve said, I was on MasterChef Australia, back in the fifth season of it. I think they’re now on their 13th or something like that. It’s unbelievable.

But yeah, the fifth season of MasterChef Australia, back in 2013, I had just the year before, I had spent a year in Paris. My husband, now husband, he wasn’t my husband then, but my now husband, was doing his PhD at Seance po. And so I went over with him and we had, it was a bit of a big change for me. I’d never done that before, so I sort of had my gap year when I was 39.

Hence, went to Paris and just walked around Paris and discovered a love for Paris and a love for French food. I mean, I already had a love for French food but, it really cemented it. Went back to Australia, I didn’t really want to go back to insurance, which I’d done for 20 years, and I really wanted to move to France. That’s what we both really wanted to move to France then.

But one day I saw an ad on the television and, yeah, I applied and that was for MasterChef Australia, and got on, which was a big rigorous process, just in getting on, and it was a great experience. I say often that it was the best experience of my life and the worst experience of my life.

So, the best because it literally changed my life, it really cemented my love of food and wanting to work in the food industry in some way, also was just a fabulous experience to be on a TV show, you know? The behind-the-scenes part of it really intrigued me. I used to love the cameramen and the mic people and all of that sort of stuff, and I loved joking around with them and the producers.

And the worst part of my life was that I wasn’t really a big fan of the competition, so to speak, the fellow contestants, it was quite competitive, and I didn’t really like that. I had this dream of it being the family, you know, the MasterChef family, which is what they sort of say on the telly, but in reality everybody was quite competitive and I just didn’t go into it thinking that. Despite the fact that my husband said when he dropped me off at the hotel, “If you don’t come home with our $100,000, don’t come home.”

[00:06:01] Annie: Oh, nice husband you have.

[00:06:04] Andrew: Yes, that’s okay. He’s a- you know, he has his- he has his, sometimes he says the right things, sometimes he doesn’t, like most husbands, you know? And also because I happened to be the only contestant on MasterChef Australia in the world, and I think it’s still the case, who was medically retired. So I wasn’t eliminated for my cooking, they loved my food, I was actually eliminated because I hurt my knees on the show, so I got bilateral stress fractures in my knees and I fractured my left kneecap, so I wasn’t allowed to walk for 10 weeks after being on the show.

[00:06:36] Annie: Oh dear. Yeah.

[00:06:38] Andrew: I know. I know. It was quite funny, actually, I say this all the time because we had to keep it a secret that I was on the show, and they filmed before, but then they, now they actually film from my understanding the whole season before it goes to air.

But back then they filmed half it and then whilst it was on air they were still filming, so, I was away filming the show and then, that was eight weeks, and then I had 10 weeks where I wasn’t allowed to walk. So I just stayed at home. And we kept it a secret from everybody, so I literally just stayed home, no one came over, friends, family, we only told my parents really, and really close friends. So, by the time it actually got onto the telly people were going, “Oh, we haven’t seen Andrew for 18 weeks! He must have done really, really well on the show!” And then four weeks into watching it they then found out that I’d hurt myself and then everyone was going, “Oh my God, are you OK?

[00:07:38] Annie: All right, all right. That’s great.

Life in the French Countryside

[00:07:40] Annie: So, tell us about your life in France now. Is there places that you particularly love? And then we’ll get to the food a little bit later. I want to hear about the places you love.

[00:07:51] Andrew: Yes. Well, I mean the first place that I love would have to be my hometown here in Mont-Morillon. So it’s… I’m desole for my French accent, it is…

[00:08:00] Annie: You’re going to have to spell that.

Mont-Morillon?

[00:08:03] Andrew: Mont-Morillon. So it’s M-O-N-T-M-O-R-I-L-L-O-N, Mont-Morillon. And so it is located in the Vienne. We’re sort of halfway in between Poitier and Limoges. And so we found the house here and fell in love with the house.

And we have fallen in love with the town. It’s a great town. It’s got about 6,000 people. It has its own macaron museum, because there specifically is a Macaron Memorial. It’s quite different actually, it’s like a macaroon, but instead of being made from coconut, it like the macaroon is, it’s made from almond, like a macaron is.

So the museum gets busloads of people coming to it, which is often quite fun because that’s literally right next door to our house. And so there’s buses pull up with people getting off to go to the Macaron Museum, but it’s quite handy because they make delicious chocolates as well.

So we can pop over to there. But it is a great town. It’s on a train line. So we’re two and a half hours from Paris, on the train. And we have a hospital here. We have lots of schools, which is, I think, important when you’re looking for a place to live if you want it to be lively and active. There’s four schools in the town.

Two of them are boarding schools. So, that’s really great for jobs and all of those things, so that’s great. And then lots of little towns around to explore. So I quite like that.

I love Paris of course, and I try to go there at least once a month. It really is our second home, we’re still looking for that idea of getting another place in Paris. So hopefully maybe a little pit of tear, there. And then just exploring France. I just love to explore France and there’s so much of it to do. So that’s why I’m an avid listener to your podcast, and hearing the stories of people that have explored. I think, since listening to your podcast, my list has gone from about 20 odd places about four or five years ago, to now I think the list is too big. I don’t know if I’ll ever do it in my lifetime.

[00:10:05] Annie: Yeah, that’s the same as my list. Oh my God, there’s so many places that sound really, really fascinating but, you know, you have… That’s another thing that I hope the podcast helps people do is to prioritize, you know, okay, this one is great for me, but maybe this one, ah, maybe later, put it down the list a little further or so.

Exploring Local French Markets

[00:10:24] Annie: So the food, the cooking, so we already know about the macarons that they do in your town. What other local specialties have you enjoyed?

Are there any, I’m not even sure?

[00:10:36] Andrew: Oh, there he is. There is. So I find it fascinating, the cheese in France, and how there’s so many different local cheeses. I had a guest on the podcast that once told me that there was more than 1500 French cheeses. So I don’t know if there’s, if that’s correct, but if it is, I’m hopefully in my lifetime, I’ll get to eat every one of them that would be fabulous.

But, I didn’t, I never really liked goat’s cheese before I moved here. I don’t know why, but it was always something that I just wasn’t. And of course, the area is known for anybody that knows cheese and is a fan of goat’s cheese, they’ll know that the Poitou-Charentes is one of the areas for goat’s cheese in France. That is a really special favorite. Especially I love when you go to the weekly market, so we have a market here every Wednesday, and so at the weekly market, we have two vans that are fromageries that come to the market. One is actually staffed by a very handsome Frenchman, not the reason why I go, he has good cheese as well, but I do spend a bit of time. I’m always, especially if there’s a big line and I can chat to the ladies at the line, whilst looking at the handsome cheesemonger.

[00:11:45] Annie: Yeah, why not?

[00:11:46] Andrew: Then I get a call from my husband saying, “Where are you? How long does it take to go to the market?”

[00:11:51] Annie: Just looking, just looking.

[00:11:54] Andrew: Yes. And so, but we also have another, sometimes actually up to four, but usually always two cheese suppliers from the area, so local farmers, et cetera, that have come and are selling their cheeses.

[00:12:08] Annie: So that must be a pretty big market to have that many…

[00:12:11] Andrew: On Wednesday, it has its ups and downs in when it’s very much a… We have a nearby town called Chauvigny which is definitely bigger. They have a much bigger market. But here, the weekly one, it’s a town of 6,000 people, so it gets a decent amount of people going to the market every Wednesday.

I would say the busiest time is actually around about now, so sort of this sort of October, November, and then in the beginning of the year, it’s always around about, I would say April, May, that it’s quite busy with people, with locals and nobody’s gone away, et cetera. But sometimes yeah, you can go to the market and there can be two cheesemongers and four other cheese suppliers just there.

We get two boucheries… butchers, boucheries, and there’s even a permanent one in the square, so that’ll be three, two poissoniers, fishmongers. So yeah, it’s quite a good market.

[00:13:08] Annie: Yeah, that’s good, that’s good. So, are there specific dishes that you recommend people try if they go? Like, what should they order in the restaurants?

[00:13:17] Andrew: Well, yes. Well, just getting back to the… Just to finish with the market, one of the things that I would suggest is to, and it is a dish, is the farcie poitevin. So, Poitevin being the area that we’re in, the Poitou, that’s where it gets its name from. And it’s a stuffed cabbage, and it’s stuffed with all the good things, so that’s bacon lardons, and it is quite delicious.

And even with the cheese, the thing that I really love about being here in the French countryside, and especially because of my love of French food, is this idea of older dishes. Some people might think that a stuffed cabbage is a really old dish. It’s something that our, like, my grandparents would have had, and my mum would never have had it. You know, she would have said that. But here it is, everybody has it. And why? Because it’s delicious. We don’t care that this dish is, like, you know, 200-300 years old and grandmothers were making it, and mothers were making it, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:14:16] Annie: Right. there’s couple of things that you can do with pork products and, what do you call these things? The choux. How do you say choux in…?

[00:14:24] Andrew: Oui, oui, oui, oui, oui, chou, so cabbage.

[00:14:26] Annie: Cabbage.

[00:14:27] Andrew: Cabbage.

[00:14:29] Annie: So cabbage and pork dishes, so you can have the farci that you mentioned. The farci poitevin being one of them. But you can also have a potée, which just means you cut up your cabbage and you put some sausages, and you usually put something like a little sweet, so maybe apple juice or apple slices, and a few potatoes. And you just slow cook that, and a miracle happens. It’s delicious.

You don’t really need a recipe. It just needs to be slow cooked, you know, you set it in the morning and forget it, and slow, slow, slow, slow. So it used to be when I cooked with gas, I always worried about having the gas too low, that it would go off, you know, just flame would burn out, and then I would have a problem. But now that I cook with induction, I find that much better because I can just set it on two or three for like three hours, four hours, it’s not a problem, and I don’t worry about it. It’s almost like a Crock-Pot sort of cooking. You could put that in the Crock-Pot for eight hours and it would be delicious.

[00:15:40] Andrew: What was the original crockpot? I’ve got, like, three of them here. So just your Dutch oven, just pop everything in there, exactly like you said, on a stove, on a really low setting, or in your oven on a really, really low setting. I love that.

Pretty much every Sunday, if it’s not a roast, it’s something that’s just slow cooking in oven, 150 degrees, and it’s just cooked for five, six hours, and then you just open the pot, and miraculously, wow, I’ve created something really delicious. Yeah.

So the farcie Poitevine is amazing. Also I love, because it can be used in, you know, and had in so many different ways.

So it’s the same… I got this tip actually firstly from when I was in Melbourne. I was doing food tours in Melbourne, and I had an all-day French food tour in Melbourne. And I used to take people around. We started at 9:00 in the morning, picked them up in a bus, 22 people, and drove them all around Melbourne and we just ate French food all day, and then dropped them back off at 5:00.

And one of the places that we went to was, in Melbourne is called the Parisian Paté. And Muriel there, she had been making patés, with her husband, and terrines and all these sort of things, so we’d go and taste that. And so she gave me this tip with terrine because, for me, it was just like you had terrine and that was it. You know, just had it cold and usually with cheeses is what we would do in Australia. We wouldn’t have it any other way. We’d just have it on a big cheese platter.

But she taught me to have it as a dish, you know, by itself with salad and potato. But then she said, you know, also that they would chop it up and pop it in the fry pan.

And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I would never have thought to do that.” And she said, “Yes, we always, like, always would do that, for just, like a week night meal. When it was just her and her husband by herself, the kids were, had soccer or gone off to wherever, she would just dice it up and then pop it in the fry pan and fry that up.

And so I tried that with the farcie Poitevine, thinking that this was something that I could, that I was like, “Oh my God, I’m going to teach the French something. I’m going to do this.” And then I spoke to my French neighbor and, because I did it, I fried the farcie comes in a big slab, and I fried it in the fry pan and then ate it like that, because we’d had it before cold, and it was still delicious. But fried, it was just amazing.

And so I thought I was telling my French neighbor something really, you know, amazing that I’d created because of this tip from… And she said, “That’s how we always have it, Andrew. Always fried. We’ve been doing that forever.” “Oh, okay.”

[00:18:16] Annie: There you go. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s very few things French people won’t try in the kitchen other than spicy food. They won’t do spicy food. But other than that, they will try a lot of things. A lot of foods that maybe Australians would object to, like, oh, I don’t know, some strange cuts of pork…

[00:18:35] Andrew: There are a few things the tête de boeuf and the… what’s the sausage again? The…

[00:18:39] Annie: Is andouille.

[00:18:40] Andrew: You know, is not that I object to it, it’s just that we didn’t grow up eating it, and so you’re just not used to those things. But I will say, you know, we are, as I said, we live in between Poitiers and Limoges. Now, Limoges is known for many things. It’s got the ceramics, which is pretty amazing. And it also is known in the area for the limousin beef.

And the actual Limoges market is one of my favorite places to visit. We go there in October, on the third weekend of October, there is always a big beef festival, and there’s the old part of town, in Limoges used to, this old quarter, and it’s actually where all the butcheries and the, what’s the word, when they slaughter the beef? I’ve forgotten what that word is.

[00:19:27] Annie: L’abattoir.

[00:19:28] Andrew: Oui, they were located in this area. What they do is they have a big fair, a big market over the weekend, on the third weekend in October. But you go to the actual Les Halles…… the market in Limoges, the butchers there, there’s three of them specifically that I know, and I go there and you look at it, and it’s just that the way they do the tête de boeuf do like a layered, sort of terrine type way of serving it. So they serve it in a terrine and they slice it see all the different layers of it.

When artisan butchers do this and they’ve put, like, they’ve got these recipes they’ve been doing forever and they’re putting a lot of effort, it looks beautiful. When a food looks good, it makes you want to taste it, even despite the fact that you know what it’s made out of. It might not be my favorite thing in the world, but when it looks that good, you go, “Mm. Okay, well, I might give it a try.”

It’s really about what we’re used to. My daughter is away in Portugal for work, and the first night she spent in Porto, she sent us a picture of a food that one of her coworkers had ordered in a restaurant, and it was, she said it was cassoulet with tripes. It was a photo and she says, “Cassoulet with tripes. SOS.” because she didn’t grow up with tripes and she’s like, “Oh, this is not happening.”

Yes. Well, I always prefer not to know what the menu is when I go to a posh restaurant. When I go to a really, like, you know, a nice restaurant and they’ve got a discovering menu, I just go, “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I will eat it all.” If it’s something that I really, really, really dislike, I will say that I’m allergic to it, but apart from that, I just go with the flow. Because if it’s made, if it’s done well and it’s made well, it should be tasty.

[00:21:24] Annie: It just amused me, the tripe SOS.

She didn’t order that. She ordered something with pork and chestn- uh, walnu- um, chestnuts.

[00:21:34] Andrew: Oh, yes.

[00:21:34] Annie: Les marron, which is probably pretty good.

[00:21:37] Andrew: Yes, I’m sure it would have been delicious.

[00:21:39] Annie: Yeah.

Andrew’s Food Guide to Paris

[00:21:39] Annie: So you… I’m sure you wrote… you have a cookbook, right?

[00:21:43] Andrew: Actually, no, I don’t have a cookbook. I actually have a, I have written a book, but it wasn’t a cookbook. I’ve written a guide to Paris, a food guide.

[00:21:52] Annie: Oh, okay.

A food guide to Paris. Do tell.

[00:21:57] Andrew: So pretty much I lived in Paris for four years, and as I like to say, I had a year before then in 2012 where I just walked around eating at markets and things like this. And I like to say that I ate my way around Paris, for people. And so I wrote a book about it. So it’s called Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City. I will send you a copy. I’m literally just in the throes of updating it for the new year. That’s my plan, is to update it every year so that it is very much up-to-date.

And it’s a mixture of places to go to as well as stories and facts and things like this about Paris and its food. So there’s more than 370 recommendations in the book and every single one I’ve been to and eaten at. They didn’t give me any money to recommend them, they’re just all good food places. Obviously, I went to more than that, because there was places that I didn’t put in the book.

[00:22:53] Annie: Yeah. Well, and I’m assuming that if they are, you know, a good traditional French restaurant, the turnover isn’t great. Like, the… If you update it year after year, are there a lot of changes?

[00:23:06] Andrew: Well, actually, that’s interesting. So, I wrote the book just before COVID.

[00:23:10] Annie: Ah, well…

[00:23:11] Andrew: That happened and I didn’t release it. And so then I updated it last year before releasing it, well, actually just, in 2023 I updated it, before releasing it for the year. And when I went through everything, because I also had to… it was two years old, so I had to go, first of all check to make sure that every place that I’d recommended was still there and they still had the reviews, and things like that were still good from what I remembered. And I did, I really went into it, I went into… if I hadn’t been to the place because of us moving, over the COVID period to the countryside, if I hadn’t been to the place, I really went into researching and looking at photos of the food, et cetera. I, even to the point that I sent friends in Paris to say, “Have you been here since, you know, in the last few months?” Because knowing that there was these places that they might have been to.

So I put a lot of effort into that. It’s not just French food, it’s all foods. So I’ve got sections for French bistros, there’s a section for restaurants, there’s a section for Michelin-starred restaurants, but then there’s also a section for cafes. So the best coffee as well, the best breakfast, brunch places, fromageries, bakeries, pretty much tried to get it all covered in there.

And so even now, I mean, as I said, we’ve been back to Paris in this last year pretty much every month, in fact, a couple of times, especially with the Olympics twice a month. And I made an effort to make sure that I go back to a lot of the places and try things, and also to find new places. So… that’s been my joy and… Look, if I can do that, and the podcast, for the rest of my life than I’ll be a very very happy person!

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

[00:24:53] Annie: How about that? So, hey, darling, we got to go, we need to go back to Paris and try restaurants because it’s my work.

[00:25:00] Andrew: Yes, pretty much.

[00:25:02] Annie: Not bad, right?

[00:25:04] Andrew: It’s not bad. So… and there’s also little things in there, I try to give tips on things, so, you know, one of the things that I’ve said in there is about where to go to eat, especially in areas where it can be a little bit touristy. That’s a bit of a, you know, it’s a bit of a… not… I want to… what is the word I should say? I don’t want to say dodgy, but it is a bit of a… you know, they’re catering to the mass market.

[00:25:32] Annie: Right.

Finding Authentic Cuisine in Paris

[00:25:32] Andrew: And, you know, for me, when I’m going on a holiday, the first thing I look for is where I’m going to eat. But that’s not the priority for everybody, is it? Some people it’s art or, you know, some people it’s architecture. It might be comedy. You know, they might be going to see a show or something like that for the reason why they’re going somewhere.

Whereas for me it’s usually food. So I wanted to make sure that I had some, you know, just some words of advice in there about that, about… you know, I do think that it’s important to look at who’s in a restaurant. If you go past a, especially in France, if you go past a place in Paris and you’ve had enough of French food and you want to have something, you know, Japanese, Asian, Chinese, for example, you go past the restaurant and it’s full of French people, you’re not going to get the most authentic Chinese dish. If you go past a restaurant and it’s full of Chinese people, we know there’s a really great Sichuan restaurant around the corner from Saint-Lazare and it’s literally the only place that I’ve ever had real chili in Paris. And it came out hot. It was delicious, and it was full of Chinese.

[00:26:39] Annie: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:40] Andrew: They know. Whereas if I went past a French restaurant and it was full of Chinese, I think, I might think twice about it. “Well, it might be a bit touristy. What’s the reason why?”

[00:26:50] Annie: Yeah.

Navigating Tourist Areas for Food

[00:26:50] Annie: Well, you know, there are places in Paris where definitely I struggle a little bit, because I write walking tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, and I always recommend restaurants where people can stop along the way.

There are some areas that are a little bit challenging, like for instance, right around Shakespeare and Company, is so touristy that, you know… ugh, mm. So if you walk a little bit further to the Cluny Museum, then you have good choices around there. But right ar- I mean, there might be some, I just don’t know about them. Do you know of one around there?

[00:27:28] Andrew: Yes. Well, I mean, the one I can think of first off when you say that, because it’s every time I go to Shakespeare and Co, I make my way there, is the Poilane bakery.

[00:27:39] Annie: Yes. Yeah that one, yes!

[00:27:40] Andrew: Is just, oh, delicious!

The Parisian Picnic Experience

[00:27:43] Andrew: And, you know, this is one of my, one of my tips for Paris, is that it doesn’t have to be all about restaurants. The reason why I included bakeries and fromageries in my book was that it’s like, you really should have that Parisian… especially if you go in summer, have that Parisian experience. Go get some bread, some baguette, go get some cheese and some, usually you’ll probably find some charcuterie somewhere. I even found… and then go and get a bottle of wine and go sit by the river or sit in the Jardins du Luxembourg or the Jardin des Plantes and have a…

[00:28:15] Annie: Any bench really. There’s a lot of benches.

[00:28:17] Andrew: Yes. Any bench. Exactly. I once… I’m always talking to strangers and I once met a Australian couple, just by the chance of it, sitting in the Jardins du Luxembourg and they were eating vegan cheese. And it was, like, fabulous. They looked like they’re having their typical French experience, and they were, it was just that their cheese wasn’t real cheese, or there was no cheese!

[00:28:37] Annie: Well, France has made lot of progress when it comes vegan everything. I mean, we’re not quite to the level of, say, India, where the vegan food is out of this world, but in France we’re trying, you know…

[00:28:50] Andrew: No, you’re right.

Yeah. No.

Exploring Parisian Bakeries and Cafes

[00:28:53] Andrew: And so, Sheakspeare and Co. is the fifth, sixth. Fifth or sixth? The fifth. Oui. Ah-hah.

[00:29:00] Annie: You’re probably… It’s one of those. Let’s see. Fifth? Okay.

[00:29:06] Andrew: If you want good coffee and a good bit of breakfast, there’s Dose, D-O-S-E, Dile de Cafe. And then, where else? What was that place? Oh,

[00:29:17] Annie: Café Dose Paris, mais c’est rue Mouffetard. That’s far away.

[00:29:21] Andrew: Ah, well, yes, you’re right, yes.

[00:29:22] Annie: You know, that’s like a, more than a mile away.

[00:29:25] Andrew: Oh, I’m all about walking in Paris, you are right. Yes, no, you’re right. Well, you’re right because I always, I kind of give that area a little bit of a miss, specifically through what you just said.

[00:29:39] Annie: Around the Cluny there’s one, I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s really close to the Cluny Museum. There’s one that’s pretty good.

Yeah, Poilanes, of course. Yes, that’s… that’s a very good… yeah. And there are places like that in Paris where, you know, eh, not sure what to recommend.

Writing Food Tours and Recommendations

[00:29:55] Annie: So, I do the exact same thing you do for my tours, I just go and try. I got to try at least… you know, if I’m in Paris for two weeks writing a tour, well, every lunch and some nights I try different restaurants, because I’m going to stay out all day and I get to try, you know, 15, 20 restaurants, while I’m writting the tour. And then at the end, I just say, “Okay, here are my favorites in this area.”

And I also go by recommendations from other people, like other people tell me, “Oh, you should try this one or that one.” Yeah. And it’s interesting because I also wrote a food tour of Les Halles. Yeah, yeah, Rue Montorgueil has a lot of very interesting food. And I really enjoyed doing that because you know, I got to try all these iconic, like, Au Pied du Cochon, places like that where I… I mean, I had seen them before, but now I had a reason to really go, you know, I need to try a couple of times to make sure.

[00:30:56] Andrew: We lived in Sentier for four years when I was in Paris, so we had our dog walking parc was the Palais Royale. And, oui, Lenny, one of my Golden Retrievers, he was very popular at the Palais Royale. And yes, Rue Montorgueil was literally my local street and, oh my gosh, it’s just the best in that whole area. I mean, there’s so much food history there, Les Halles, and even modern food history, what the chef at Frenchy, an owner at Frenchy, has done there with Frenchy at Rue du Nile, there has completely changed that whole area. We even now to this day because our neighbors, we’ve very much kept in touch with our neighbors from Paris. We go there often, we often stay with them. And even now to see it changed from when we were there four years ago, it’s just fabulous. And yeah, it plays a very big part in the book, the second arrondissement. It’s one of my favorite arrondissements in Paris. Yeah it is a wonderful place and lots of choices, I mean so many choices for food. (Mid-roll ad spot)

Cooking French Dishes at Home

[00:32:04] Annie: So, if you had to give some advice to somebody who wants to start cooking French things at home, what are some they could try? I’m going to have to pitch my own book, since you don’t have one, I’ll do mine. It’s called Join Us at the Table, and it was very much a pandemic book. I’m not really a cookbook writer, but during the pandemic I found solace in food. And so I wanted to try all of these different things and write down, make it, you know, just like an experiment. Let’s see if I can improve on this, the way my mother cooked really. My mother’s French, so you know, I had classic French recipes from her. I had written down some of her recipes. And so I wanted to try them and just, you know, really measure everything, make sure… you know, play with the temperatures, play with this and that to see what would work really well.

What I ended up with was simplifying a lot of stuff. Because especially, people who grew up with Julia Child, she is wonderful, but she has a knack for making everything impossible. You have to have so many things, you have to have all day, really.

[00:33:14] Andrew: Yes. Yes, and I think that… well, just a touch on there with Julia Child, again, love Julia Child. You know, it really, she’s played an important part in French food history, bringing it to the audiences that she did. I like to say that I’m the Australian Julia Child. That’s what I aim to be in life with the podcast, you know, because, the podcast, just to briefly chat on that for a sec, is every episode is about a specific dish, an ingredient, or a cooking technique, or it could be a profile of a chef from the past.

The idea for me was that it was evergreen content. It was something that was going to be available in five to ten years’ time and it doesn’t age. It’s just part of that history. You could add to it for that five or ten years.

The Importance of Seasonality in French Cuisine

[00:34:02] Andrew: But in doing the research for the episodes that I’ve done, and one of the things that I’ve found that I really love about French food now, and it’s… I think it’s something that’s really lost, it’s the seasonality of French food. Whether this is the haute cuisine or the traditional French dishes, they are all very seasonal, very regional.

And for me, that’s about sustainability. When you’re eating seasonally, it’s sustainable. And I think that’s something that’s really being missed. When most people think about a French dish and when you say to me, “Well, what could you start to begin, like, you know, a French dish?” I would go with the most simplest one and probably the one that is going to get you the best results if you keep on practicing it and doing it all the time, and it’s something that you could practice and do all the time, and that’s just an omelet. Make an omelet. Because that’s something that is, it’s all year round. Chickens are always laying eggs as far as I’m aware, and you can add seasonal ingredients to it. And it will give you technique.

And it might not be a technique that is something that you’re going to use in lots of other dishes, but by just simply focusing on it and doing it, you’re going to get that confidence that can lead to other dishes and send you on a journey for French food. I love a coq au vin. I love a boeuf bourguignon. There’s a lot of dishes that I love. They’re not, you know… You can’t make a boeuf bourguignon… Well, you can, but you shouldn’t be making it in summer.

[00:35:37] Annie: In France you can’t even find a cut of beef.

They start putting it out in September, October, November, where you can buy this… in a little packet, you can buy your kilo of beef to make boeuf bourguignon. In July and August, they don’t even… you’d have to go to your butcher and specifically order, for some reason you want to make a boeuf bourguignon in July, who knows?

[00:36:03] Andrew: Not going to happen. Yeah, and you know, and that can be even said for vegetables. I mean, even here in Montmorillon, when it’s changed a little bit now, I don’t know why, but I have found that we still have, last year, in February there were still tomatoes, but they were all from Spain.

[00:36:22] Annie: Right.

[00:36:23] Andrew: But the years before that, and even in Paris, you couldn’t find tomatoes in many of the supermarkets. If you did, they were going to be just one small little section.

[00:36:35] Annie: Right.

Right.

[00:36:36] Andrew: I’m sure, you know, audiences from America and from Australia, we know that we get it all year round.

[00:36:42] Annie: Yeah. Yeah. If you want to make a charlotte aux fraises, which is classic French dessert, well, you make that in the spring or summer, because there are some strawberries that come back in the summer, les remontantes is what we call them. But, you wouldn’t do that in… for Christmas unless you want to import your strawberries from far away.

And I suppose you could find them, but they’re not going to be as nice as the ones grown locally, that you can get from the Tarn or Tarn-et-Garonne near me in the Southwest. We have a lot of fruit producers, but just in season.

One thing I can think of that you could get year round is like soupe a l’oignon because onion soup, there are… I mean, you get fresh onion and then you get the dry onion later. Well, not dry, but I mean, they are like the… they get the brown outer layer, you know, but these are still onions from that year. It’s a vegetable that’s made to be kept year round. So you could make different…

Unique French Ingredients and Dishes

[00:37:43] Andrew: Do you use Roscoff onions when you do your soupe a l’oignon?

[00:37:47] Annie: I have not, I don’t think. I use whatever onions are, whatever onions are out there. Like I don’t… it would be Roscoff onions have a very specific flavor kind of to them, but you know, in the Southwest you don’t find them everywhere, so…

[00:38:06] Andrew: So if you’re lucky, if the listeners are lucky enough to be here at… And they can get them, because they come in season, and then they’re pretty much sold. Like, we would have them, I think we had them at the market for about, mm, I want to say eight weeks, nine weeks, and then that was it, you couldn’t get them anymore, because they just sell out.

But it is, when you make a soupe d’oignon with a Roscoff onion, it’s in my opinion and from, I have done an episode on them, is that you just add water. Just water. Water and a bay leaf and some herbs if you like.

But just the sweetness from the onion and the flavor in that onion, and it’s great. You still get a great soupe d’oignon when you make it with all the other onions there are in the world. But if you have that opportunity to make it from a Roscoff, a Roscoff onion, it is just fabulous.

The History of Onion Johnnies

[00:38:54] Andrew: And have you looked into the Onion Johnnies?

[00:38:57] Annie: No, I have not. Tell me about that.

[00:39:00] Andrew: So the onion Johnnies, come from, again, from this, originally from this Roscoff onion.

So they were, onion Johnnies were men, French men. What they were doing in the, I think it was the mid 1800s.

[00:39:15] Annie: Okay.

[00:39:16] Andrew: It was more dangerous to take their onions to Paris to sell at the market than it was from Normandy, from up north. It was more dangerous to take the onions to Paris to sell at the market than it was to go over the water to the UK and to Wales.

I don’t know why it was more dangerous. I’m assuming it was possibly them coming back with money, they would be robbed or something along those lines.

So what they would do is they would take their harvest over to the UK and over to Wales and the UK. And on bikes, ride around, selling door to door pretty much, their onions to the English and to the Welsh.

And of course, the English came up with the great idea of, as they do, you know, just calling all French people “Johnny” because you know, usually every Frenchman that they met was Jon, J-O-N, Jon. And so they, they called him Johnny, and that’s where they would drive around on their bicycles with their typical… It’s that look that you see in old French photos and things like that of the men on their bicycles with their striped shirts and their beret and they’ve got, like, onions or garlic wrapped around their necks and bikes is the thing. That was the Onion Johnnies.

And up until, yeah, up until I think it was 2012 was the last, they moved from being doing it through their bikes to actually having stalls. And then I’m pretty sure that the last… they had a whole association to them, and the last member of the Onion Johnnies was finished in 2012, I think at the, I want to say, the Borough Markets, but it might be a different market in London. But they were selling them up till then. They used to take the onions over and sell them to the English.

[00:41:04] Annie: Interesting. This is not something we do in the South.And France, that is one of the things about France, is that there’s a lot of to the local food culture that’s… grounded in the local history and habits and what have you, so…

So, it’s important to get know them.

[00:41:24] Andrew: I had a gentleman on the podcast, so the first two seasons I used to interview a lot of people on the podcast that were experts, so to speak, on the topics. But then as I wanted to do more and more episodes, it was time-consuming to find the expert, so I did the research and became the expert. I found a wonderful gentleman down south that makes France’s only flatbread. Now did you know that France made a flatbread?

[00:41:48] Annie: No.

[00:41:49] Andrew: No. It’s called the foue. F-O-U-E it’s made from a wood fire. He actually takes it, he actually goes around in his area with a wood fired oven, on the back of a trailer.

[00:42:03] Annie: La fouée au mogettes. So that’s a local southern bean, and then you fill it up in the bread. Oh, never-

[00:42:11] Andrew: Yes. You put it in the fouée, which is the bread made flour from…

[00:42:15] Annie: It puffs up bit …

[00:42:16] Andrew: Exactly like a flatbread.

[00:42:18] Annie: And you can put stuff in it.

[00:42:20] Andrew: Yeah. They say it comes from the Moorish influence, they think, from that way. And who knew? And I love that about France. I love finding out this little things.

[00:42:31] Annie: We have a lot of different things and if you’re looking for like odd, unique, you know, you don’t have to dig very far to find those things. I tend to just specialize more in the stuff that you can find anywhere. You know, in my cookbook, I don’t have anything that’s impossible to find. I would rather give people recipes that they can make at home, even if they live in the US or in Australia or wherever.

And I’ve adapted, you know, because I lived in the US for a long time, so I’m used to buying US ingredients and so I just said, “Okay, crème fraîche, here’s a suitable substitute for the US.” It’s not perfect, but you know, there are a lot of people who live in areas where they can’t find fancy French ingredients, you know, but they still want to try it.

[00:43:18] Andrew: No, exactly. It’s like I can’t find sour cream here. But, you know, I just have to adapt and I have to make it. And, you know, sure, I’m used to putting sour cream on Mexican food, because that’s what we do in Australia. But that’s not Mexican. That’s Tex-Mex, you know? It’s like it’s not the same.

So all of these things go all the way. And it’s like we’re getting back to the Julia Childs of it all. You know, she was making and spent that much time and amazing, just an amazing experience in my mind, to spend that much time on all of these French dishes and making them for an American audience.

So, at that time, in the ’50s, when she says to boil the bacon before frying it, it’s because of what was in the bacon at that time to keep it. Now they don’t put that in the bacon anymore here in France or pretty much anywhere, I don’t think, in the world. You don’t need to boil the bacon when you’re making a boeuf bourguignon, or a coq au vin. You know, it’s not something that we would do here in France. But at that time, that’s what you did.

Preserving French Culinary Traditions

[00:44:21] Andrew: And, you know, that’s great, and one of the things for me, for Fabulously Delicious is I wanted to really find out what these dishes, these ingredients, and these things were about, what their history was, so that there is a record of that.

Because I would hate to think that, I mean, not that I think that it’s going to be the end, be-all and end-all for a record for French food, but I like the idea that it is a record of what it’s supposed to be.

And so yes, you can make it your way, and you can make it in America with the ingredients that you can get there, but at least we know, and, you know, one of my favorite things in the world is, and it takes me forever, because my French isn’t that great, but I get along. But it’s, what’s helping my French is old French cookbooks. I love them. Whenever I’m going past a, you know… If your listeners know about the old phone boxes and letterboxes that they turn into libraries with free books. So whenever I walk past one, we’ve got one in the town, I’m always searching for people that have left behind cookbooks for free. If I’m in a brocante, I’m always heading over to the book section, searching for one euro, two euro old French cook books.

I just love them.

[00:45:33] Annie: Yeah. That’s wonderful.

Conclusion and Farewell

[00:45:35] Annie: All right, Andrew, we’ve been talking a long time. I am sorry to say our time is up, but it’s been lovely meeting you and I will put links to your podcast, and you have a website too, surely.

[00:45:49] Andrew: I do, yes. Andrew Prior Fabulously. So, the podcast is Fabulously Delicious, it’s the French food podcast, and the website is Andrew Prior Fabulously. The book is Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City. So there’s a theme there.

That’s because, my motto is “whatever you do, you should do it fabulously.”

So people can do that.

[00:46:12] Annie: Lots of links to all of that on the show notes for this episode. And thank you, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It’s been a delight talking to you.

[00:46:21] Andrew: Merci Beaucoup for having me on. It’s been a absolute pleasure. And I hope to one day get you on Fabulously Delicious.

[00:46:27] Annie: It would be lovely. I would love to get your cookbook as well. I will send you my address because I want to see… I want to see your recommendations for Paris. That sounds really good.

[00:46:35] Andrew: Fabulous.

[00:46:36] Annie: Merci beaucoup. Au revoir.

[00:46:39] Andrew: Au revoir.

Thank you, patrons

[00:46:46] Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus.

And a special shout out this week to my new Join Us in France champions, Emily from Canada. Bonjour, Canada! Who joined at the Groupie du Podcast level. Rebecca Wainwright, who also joined at Groupie du Podcast level, and Marilyn Jane Miller. Thank you, Elaine Donborgu, Christine Moore, and Gwen Y for editing your pledge up to Groupie du Podcast. And welcome back as a patron, Carol Mellinger.

Would you join them too? You can do it for as little as three bucks a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more so you can have access to more rewards.

And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/ElysArt.

This week I chatted with my patrons about my visit to Paris. Shared some photos and some videos and things like that. It’s always fun to share with them and get their insights as well.

New VoiceMap tour in the works

[00:48:01] Annie: And as you know, I’m in Paris writing a tour, a new tour, that will take you to Notre Dame, inside and out. That will also take you to the Sainte Chapelle, inside and out, and to the Conciergerie. So big topics, lots to discuss for people who love gothic architecture and Marie Antoinette.

This new tour is going to be ready very soon. I’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready. I’m still trying to decide, the rest of the time I have in Paris, because I’m here for a couple of weeks, once I’m done with a tour and it’s going great, should I just go do things that I want to do in Paris or should I try to write another tour?

Today, honestly, I’ve worked so hard that I’m thinking I should just go visit things. You know, there’s so much to do in Paris.

Anyway, podcast listeners get a big discount for buying these tours from my website. And if you buy directly from me, it’s a manual process, so give us a few days. But if you don’t hear within two or three days, do pipe up because occasionally email, you know, they can get lost and things like that.

And if you want to read reviews of these tours, go to joinusinfrance.com/vmr. That stands for VoiceMap Reviews. I’m still doing the itinerary planning. Lots of people are telling me, oh, I tried this too late, I can’t get you help right now. And yes, people do book in advance. That’s just how it goes.

You can choose the Bonjour service for a one hour Zoom call with tailored recommendations that we just discussed. Or VIP for the same call plus a detailed follow up guide. So if you’re ready to start, go to joinusinfrance.com/boutique and follow the email instructions.

And for the day trip with Annie, well, that’s pretty simple, I have this wonderful electric car, it’s not a Tesla, it’s actually a Chinese EV and it’s an awesome car, I’ve had it for almost three years now and I still love it as much as I did the first day. I can take you around the Southwest.

Now people ask me for different things that they want to see, but there are some marvellous things that you can do in the Southwest. And so, if you can’t come to the bootcamp, because the dates won’t work for you, perhaps you can book a day trip with me. These are private tours, so just you and me, and up to two guests, in my car. We move at your pace. We skip the stress. We focus on what interests you the most and I can make suggestions, of course.

And again, you can get all of that at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.

French Campsite Experience

[00:50:39] Annie: All right, let’s talk about a way to experience France that doesn’t get mentioned often enough, but is actually wonderful.

And that’s the French campsite experience.

If you think camping in France means pitching a tent in the middle of nowhere, think again. You can rent a bungalow or a mobile home at a French campsite and it’s more like booking a private holiday rental with the added bonus of resort style amenities.

It’s comfortable, it’s budget friendly, I mean it’s not super duper cheap, it’s not like pitching a tent in the wild, but it’s not very expensive. And you have a lot of modern conveniences. You can rent a bungalow for two, three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, a living space.

And of course, air conditioning is an essential feature if you’re heading south in the summer. Most of those have a deck with seating. You know, you can enjoy the summer, it’s kind of like laid back. It’s outdoor meals, that sort of things.

But what sets these French campsites apart, at least the luxury ones, they’re not all that good, but of course we do have some that are just nothing but the flat area and nothing else, but there are luxury ones for which you pay a little more, but they have a lot of amenities.

So many of the four and five star camping sites feel like resorts. They feature large swimming pools, often with water slides. They have bars. They have restaurants. They have kids clubs. Some have spas, golf courses.

Some campsites also offer things like ziplines, tennis courts, lakes with a pedal boat rental. They are an excellent choice for families and, or anyone looking for an active holiday. And one of the best things is that you usually have an on site boulangerie, little store, and that’s where you can get your pain au chocolat, or chocolatine as we say in the Southwest.

Oh, it’s funny, today I, in Paris, I stopped at a bakery and the guy was making a joke about a strange customer that he had seen there earlier, and so I said, because this person had used a word that doesn’t exist. And I said, oh, we don’t even say that in Toulouse. And of course they picked up on my accent and, then when it was my turn to order, the lady said, oh, you could have, and I said, pain au chocolat.

And she said, oh, you could have said chocolatine, I understand. I actually like it better because pain au chocolat just means bread with chocolate in it. And I was like, yay! You get us, you get us.

Anyway, but these campsites have all of these amenities, including a bakery and a little store. I’m not saying these stores are like the best and the cheapest in the world, but they’ll provide you with what you need right there.

Most of these campsites where people like most is that there’s a swimming pool, and sometimes they’re by a lake as well, but I think the kids really love the swimming pools. One of the things that’s nice about these campsites is that you don’t usually have to arrive on a specific day of the week.

Apparently that’s common in the UK. In France, you can arrive whenever. You can check in at 3 or 4 PM. You can arrive later if you need to. They want you to leave the bungalow clean, but you know, you don’t need to, like, spend hours scrubbing floors, and things like that.

You can pay someone to do that. At any rate, it’s a very unique way to see France and enjoy France, and I think, if you’ve done this yourself, I would love to talk to you about it because I think for young families, it’s absolutely perfect and there are so, so many choices, that really, they’re all over France.

So, I think, you need to think about those.

Next week on the podcast

[00:54:27] Annie: Next week on the podcast, an episode with Carol Handel about how to plan a leisurely trip to France. Very important. Take it easy, folks.

And my thanks, of course, to podcast editors, Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produce the transcripts and make the audio sound good.

Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir.

Copyright

[00:54:55] Annie: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent, and Copyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.

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Transcript for Episode 537: MasterChef’s Andrew Prior: From Australia to France