French February!

February’s international dinner and YUM snacks celebrated France. Our French dinner was in downtown Minneapolis at Chloe’s by Vincent. We had an early dinner starting when the restaurant opened at 4:00pm. The next reservation available was 7:30pm and we thought that was a bit late for Charlotte and Caleb.

Chloe’s is fine dining with a casual flair. When researching French restaurants in the area it was the only one with a kid’s menu. Chloe’s is named for Chef Vincent’s daughter. I especially like their mission statement: Every day French food. Shareable dishes served with an unstructured, no-stuffy-rules attitude.

We enjoyed dining in a large booth. It was perfect for the six of us and made sharing our food easier.

There were no complaints about the food. Charlotte and Caleb chose their standby favorites – a burger for Caleb and Chicken Tenders for Charlotte. Charlotte tasted most of the foods on the table, winning the taster sticker again this month (she has won all three months that we have been doing the dinners). Caleb won the French Trivia. We do the trivia in the car on the drive to the restaurant. Did you know that over one hundred wild wallabies live in the village of Émancé? We were most impressed to learn that the French government gives out medals to citizens for raising well-behaved kids.

We started dinner with a baguette and poutine as apéritifs. Joe and I opted to have a three-course dinner. For the first course, Joe ate winter root vegetable soup with curry crème fraiche and pink peppercorn. I had poached egg “meurette” in a red wine sauce with bacon, pearly onion, and croutons. When I say we ate or had, we also shared with Megan, Jeremy, and Charlotte. Caleb opted out but enjoyed the baguette and poutine.

Here are pictures and a brief description of our other dinner items: 

Charlotte's chicken tenders were scrumptious. She shared her food with us 

since we were sharing with her!

Joe's Corsican Perbronata Stew (braised pork shoulder,

red bell pepper, juniper berries, and panisse fries). Charlotte and Caleb

both enjoyed tasting this dish.

Megan's French onion soup warranted two photos. It tasted excellent and they

did not scrimp on the cheese.

Caleb's hamburger

Jeremy's scallops a la orange served with thinly sliced potatoes.

Beth's Spanish mackerel with soubise puree, baby bok choy, and kumquat condiments.

Desserts:

Charlotte and Caleb each had vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce

 and madeleine cookies

Beth's chocolate mousse with macerated orange and pistachio

Joe's cheese course of the moment with citrus jam

Megan's honey creme brulee

Jeremy's lemon and sugar crepe

After dinner we went home to taste-test the YUM box snacks. The box for the month  included pure butter sablés (butter biscuits that have been produced since 1888), goat cheese & espelette chili potato chips, strawberry chews, raspberry roll cake, chocolate chip cookie truffles, fleur de sel caramels, popcorn truffles, sour cherry hard candies, 47% dark chocolate with sea salt, and garlic aioli potato chips.

Tonight’s score card:

Our favorite snack was the strawberry chews. The worst snack was garlic aioli potato chips (Megan and I LOVED them, everyone else gave it an okay, except Charlotte who rated it as "I did not need this in my life").We all agreed that the weirdest snack was the popcorn truffles.

Of the three international dinners we have experienced so far, this seemed the smoothest. I am not sure if eating at 4:00pm versus the 6:00 pm we usually do made it seem more relaxed. It also helped that this was our first sit down international dinner. Our other night outs were a deli/cafeteria experience where you had to order at a counter and than the meal was brought to your table. WIth six people this gets a bit cumbersome and seems chaotic. Tonight was very laid back.

Recently, I taught Charlotte my favorite French phrase, "Mon petit chou chou." This means my little sweetheart (or literally my little cabbage). She enjoyed repeating the phrase several times during dinner. 

À bientôt!