Food Review: Isabelle et Vincent

If you are in Fairfield, Connecticut, stop and go to Isabelle et Vincent located at 1903 Post Road. When you walk through the door the aroma of fine French baked goods hits you and you know that this isn’t just an average bakery. Having lived in Paris for seven months I am always on the look out for good baguettes, macarons, and other French goodies and Isabelle et Vincent delivers all this. My friend Liz and I stopped on our drive down to NYC last weekend and decided to have quiche for lunch. I had the broccoli and Liz tried mushroom. Both were delicious and the crust was amazing, just the perfect combination between flakiness and butteriness, and at $4.85 a quiche it’s a steal. The lunch options are pretty limited so your best bet is quiche and the main draw really is the pastries.

For dessert I tried this wonderful apple custard tart with powered sugar and almonds (also $4.85 for a slice). It was mouth wateringly good. I had some good coffee with my tart. I didn’t take photos of the actual bakery because there were signs asking people not to. The area behind the counter is huge because the oven they have is gigantic in order to bake all of their baguettes. I’ve tried the traditional baguette, the cranberry walnut, and the Parmesan thyme and all three were wonderful and they are priced at around $4. Be prepared to have a little bit of difficulty when you walk in because there are so many pastries and chocolates to choose from. Isabelle and Vincent are a husband and wife team and their kids also work at the bakery. I spoke with Isabelle in French and she was very nice and told me that they are from Strasbourg, France.

Since it was Easter I had to buy a chocolate bunny. In addition to the pastries, they make their own chocolates from Valrhona. They are delicious. The macarons are good, but I have to say don’t measure up to Pierre Herme or Laduree.

So the moral of this story is stop in Fairfield, buy a baguette and some pastries and life will be good. Liz and I ended up spending way more than we anticipated but it was well worth it!

April Showers in New York

Yesterday was a warm sunny day in Connecticut and I even got sunburnt sitting on Foss Hill. Today is an overcast gray day just like this weekend was. I just want it to be nice and sunny already! I’m getting real tired of this mugginess and grayness. This past weekend I headed to New York to celebrate Easter the Ukrainian way (this means meat and church).

Victor and I headed to the Green Market in Union Square to buy some veggies and ingredients I needed to cook with, such as horse radish root. Shopping in the rain isn’t as a much fun as when it’s dry…

When I spotted the tulips at the market I had a major flashback to the Keukenhof gardens outside of Amsterdam.

I had a lot of difficulty settling on one color so I choose a type of tulip with two colors:

I love pictures of food, so that’s why the pears are here. If you’re also obsessed with food and cooking, check out Tastespotting, it’s an awesome website for beautiful photos of food with recipes.

While walking around we found this random sculpture garden in Alphabet City.

Later in the day I assembled all the flowers. Lilacs remind me of Easter so we bought a huge bunch.

Speaking of assembling things, Ukrainians take baskets with the traditional foods, babka, meats, eggs, horse raddish, to church to get them blessed for Easter. If you want to know more about the traditions check out this site.

Hopefully the sun will come out soon!

Thesis Times

I have finally emerged from my thesis lair. Theses were due this past Tuesday and it feels good to be done. It has become a tradition at Wesleyan to go pop a bottle of bubbly on the steps of Olin Library at 4 p.m. (due date time). So it was only fitting that I would have a bottle of Ukrainian oligarch/politician Yulia Tymoshenko’s champagne to celebrate completing a thesis on Eastern Europe (mainly Russia). Thanks to Victor for getting the bottle.

A lot of people showed up to help all of the seniors celebrate. It was definitely one of those Wesleyan moments I will remember.

And this person had clearly returned all of his/her library books.

One of the best parts of the day was dessert. My friend Liz baked for everyone in our group of friends who wrote a thesis.

And after last night’s monsoon rain storm, I think spring may be here to stay. There is a nest below my window sill so this pretty bird sings to me a lot now.

Happy Sunday to everyone.