I suppose that I'm a true Frenchie now, aren't I? Because I can finally, finally say "Yes, I HAVE tried both escargot and frog legs. And they are delicious."
But before I get into all the Dijon specialties (of which I tried a good number, especially considering that I was only there for a weekend)... I finally made it Dijon! I've been promising to go since the beginning of this year abroad, and last-minute I booked my tickets for last Friday morning. It was great to see the city where Bridget, Julianne, and Christian have been spending their study-abroad experience, and it was even better that they acted like our tour guides, showing Kat and I around without us having to pull out maps or look up good restaurants. It turned out to be Christian's last weekend in Dijon as well! His flight back to the U.S. left today, actually.
I'll give you a little photo tour of Dijon to start off, and then we'll talk cuisine. First up is the owl. It's this little owl carved into the side of the cathedral, and you are meant to rub it with your left hand and make a wish, then walk away towards the front of the cathedral, and away from the evil little salamander carved into the stone a few feet behind the owl. Of course, Kat and I partook in this tradition, although to me the owl doesn't really look like an owl anymore. I will say that this chouette is so important to Dijon, though, that it is now under constant video surveillance.
Next, the red buildings. Back hundreds of years ago, they used to paint the houses with ox blood to apparently kill termites, which is why the houses were a red color. I don't know if ox blood paint really works as a pesticide, but it doesn't matter because no one does that anymore. It's just red paint on those buildings. I think. I hope.
Here is one of the other sights très dijonnaise: the Porte Guillaume, which is basically a much smaller Arc de Triomphe. (Ripping off Paris, huh Dijon?)
And I'll finish off this mini photo-tour with Place de la Liberation. There are lots of fountains and cafes there, and it was so typical Dijon, especially with the cream-colored stone that is used. By far my favorite place to go in Dijon, I really loved just sitting in one of the cafes in this pedestrian-only square.
Now on to the specialties of the region! Dijon Mustard is, of course, one of the first things that springs to mind, and I did try it, but I'll start first with my trip to Beaune (pronounced Bone). This cute little touristy town is twenty minutes by train from Dijon, and it is basically what Colmar is to Strasbourg: a cool little medieval place to bring visitors so they can marvel at the region's architecture and taste wine.
Which is exactly what Kat and I did: view typical architecture and taste wine. While Colmar is full of old wood-beam houses painted in a rainbow of colors, Beaune magnifies the rooftop tiling of the Bourgogne (or Burgundy in English) region. The polychrome roofing is beautiful. You can find small examples of it around Dijon, particularly on some of the spires of one of the cathedrals, but polychrome tiles are really found in Beaune, especially in the Hospices. It's a huge building, founded in 1443 as a pretty fancy hospital for the poor. It's a museum now, and definitely worth a visit. The polychrome tiles on the rooftop are fantastic, but the interior is also beautifully tiled.
Another specialty of Beaune--and of Bourgogne--is wine! So of course, after eating lunch, Kat and I went on a wine tour at Marché au Vin, a wine cave near the Hospices. We chose to take the 7-wine tasting, thinking that was more than enough, but they added an eighth wine free. We also received a strange little tin tasting cup to use and eventually keep as a souvenir, which was very cool. The tasting was self-guided, so Kat and I went down into the dark cellars and started out with a rosé. We then tasted four reds, followed by three whites, all the while trying to say sophisticated things about the wine and clearly failing. ("This red very woodsy, a little smokey, even. Kind of like elves collecting mushrooms in the forest. But not J.R.R. Tolkien elves. Now this wine, this is much sweeter, more fruity. It tastes like faeries building an enchanted castle. I would buy that wine if it was described like that!")
Overall, though, while the experience in the wine caves was very, very cool, it was a little wasted on me. I'm just going to admit it: I dislike wine. I thought after 10 months in France... but nope! Each wine tasting is a struggle to finish. And I especially hate red wine, my goodness! White wine I can grin and bare, but drinking reds make my face screw up in distaste.
Saturday night, after our return from Beaune, Kat and I ate dinner with Julianne, Christian, and their friend Dave at a restaurant that specializes in frog's legs. It was a really fun dinner, and very eye-opening! I downed every specialty in the book in one fell swoop! Escargot, Frogs legs, Dijon mustard, and Kir (white wine with blackcurrant syrup)!
My favorite of the four specialties? Frog's legs, surprisingly! Although the Frog's legs came in a Dijon mustard-cream-and-garlic sauce, so I guess the mustard is my favorite as well. What was actually freaky was that we received the whole bottom half of the frog--hip bone and thighs and knees and calves and little feet, all still connected and intact. Obviously, you are eating off the bone(s), so... I mean, you could tell it was a frog. There was no fooling yourself--you are eating frog. The bones were so fragile, too! And I can confirm the rumors: it tastes mostly like chicken.
As for the escargot, that I could fool myself into thinking, "This isn't snail!" This is because the little snails were marinated in butter-garlic-parsley and plopped onto a slice of bread, so it was similar to eating bread with a sauce and a little brown-grey mushroom-looking thing on top. There really wasn't too much taste besides the butter-garlic. The Dijon crew said that usually, you have to take the snails out of their shells, and that the restaurant prepared them strangely, so I guess I didn't get the real escargot experience, but I'm counting it all the same!
So that wraps up my culinary adventure in Dijon. I'm so very glad that I managed to make it there before leaving, and I really loved my time there! It made me wonder about what it would have been like to study abroad there, like Christian, Julianne, and Bridget did. In the end, though, I still believe that Strasbourg was the right choice for me.
[ Also, if you were curious, the image below is of Lake Kir, which is just outside of Dijon. Apparently there was an important guy named Kir somewhere along the history timeline, and Dijon honored him by using his name for everything. ]
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