Pho 14, Dalloyau, cream puffs

A lot of our restaurant picks are from our research on the internet and the guide books that we have. Most recommended place are pretty decent or outright delicious so we took a lengthy walk over to the 13th arrondissement to try Pho 14 on Avenue de Choissy. The place was packed and there was a line of people waiting outside to be seated. We both ordered pho, their signature menu item, and were incredibly dissapointed. It's only in France when "average" equals dissapointment. It was an average bowl of pho, nothing special, and not too tasty. At least it
was cheap (in Paris standards!).

We made a repeat visit over to Dalloyau to try their Opera cake. After the last time we went to Dalloyau, I did some research online and learned that Dalloyau was the original creator of the Opera cake so of course, we had to go back and have it there. Quinn had the millefeuille, which is inching up on our favs list. One thing that I love about the cafes in Paris is that you can order just coffee and/or dessert and sit for hours on end. The waitstaff won't bring you your check until you ask for it since they consider it impolite to give a guest the check before it's asked for. We sat for a good 2-3 hours enjoying our cafe cremes while I studied some of my notes and Quinn was on his laptop.

We've been eating a lot of pastry cream lately in the different desserts that we've been eating so I decided that it was time for me to do a little bit of baking. I made choux pastry and pastry cream to make cream puffs, which is what we ended up having for dinner (oh so healthy). I was also going to make caramel sauce but ended up burning it so I made a sugar decoration instead. I am now determined to make the perfect cream puff. It might take me a couple of times, but I have some ideas on how I want to tweak the recipe I made.