Tang Frères

As I mentioned earlier, this afternoon we ventured into Chinatown, in the 13th arrondissement, just south of Place d'Italie.

We met Alex at the Tolbiac metro and headed to her favorite pho restaurant. After three delicious and satisfying bowls of soup, which Erik claimed might even be better than the pho at Pho Hung in Toronto, we continued on to do some shopping.

While Erik got sidetracked by a Vietnamese sandwich shop (apparently he was still hungry...), Alex and I poked around in the Asian version of Picard, a French store specializing in frozen prepared dishes. If only we had a freezer, I wouldn't have left empty handed. Next stop was a Chinese bakery, and Alex and I chose two treats, a coconut cake, and a sesame encrusted ball filled with yellow bean paste. Both were very yummy.

By the time we were finished our snacks, we had arrived. When we managed to make our way into the store, I was overwhelmed by the amount of people, and packaged noodles. Once we made our way out of the Mr Noodle section, and found baskets, the fun began. Every kind of Asian ingredient you could ever need was packed into this huge supermarket, which was absolutely teeming with people. Erik was quickly delegated the 'basket holder' as Alex and I threw in bottles of soy sauce, curry paste, lime leaves and bags of rice. Erik found his favorite curry paste, the Aroy-d green curry sauce that he used to pick up on Spadina, and was also pleasantly surprised by the beer selection, especially the Japanese beers that were 1.15 euros each (compared to the 5 euros that they cost at the Inno). The produce section contained whole aisles of greens that I have never heard of, and all sorts of exotic and scary looking fruits. There was a whole aisle of frozen Chinese dumplings (again, why don't we have a decent freezer???). I think the best deals were the boxes of coconut milk for 45 cents, the tubs of curry paste for 1.50euros and the kilogram bags of rice for 1.20 euros.

I've got a lot of Asian cooking to do now, and I'm inspired to find some new recipes to take advantage of all the yummy things we saw. Any ideas for persimmons? Or Asian greens?