The Not-So-Fancy Lunches.

FrenchBoy and I have been floundering a bit when it comes to keeping up on our weekend ‘Fancy Lunch” tradition as of late. It’s not that there aren’t plenty of fancy restaurants in and around Metz, it’s more that we’re becoming too lazy to do the research to find them all. Yes. We research restaurants. After-all if I’m gonna pay 40 euros a person for lunch, I want some reassurance that I won’t leave with food poisoning or that I won’t have to suffer through some waiter’s horribly obnoxious service.

So anyway, a few weekends ago we found ourselves in a pinch because we hadn’t done any research. We headed to Rue DuPont des Loges which is lined with restaurants which we’ve been sampling one by one. We randomly chose an Italian restaurant called La Storia. We didn’t have a recommendation from anyone but the menu looked OK, and I was about to go into a low-blood sugar rage so we went it and ordered.

Let’s just say we were not impressed. The food was mediocre and so was the service. And to make matters that much more annoying, there was an insane 4 year old girl at the next table that was carrying on like she had just taken two hits of crack. Possibly three. A few minutes into my pizza, I hear a loud “whack” and simultaneously feel a thud on the back of my chair. You guessed it, the little cracked-out 4 year old somehow managed to run smack into the back of my chair at full speed. How? No clue. And is it wrong that the sound of her wailing from her head smacking into my chair somehow made my pizza taste better? Anyway---on a scale from one to ten, that place gets a six.

Fast forward a week. Indonesian food! Yum. It wasn’t fancy, but then again neither were the prices, but still…Yum!

I’d actually been to this place before, but years before with my wedding planner. The owners are an older Singaporean couple who lived in Paris for many years before moving to Metz to open L’ile de Java. Go figure. Anyway, the service was as delightful as I remember and the food was quite good….and so were the three ginger cocktails I slurped down.

So, lessons: Italian restaurant with crack-head 4 year old = bad.

Indonesian cocktails = good.