My wife and I had a wonderful trip to Paris, where we were spoiled by all the amazing and legendary French food. Coming back to the US after a trip to Paris is always a huge disappointment for me because the food culture here is so….lacking, bland, sparse, impoverished , spiritless, uninspiring, stale, feeble, vacuous, frustrating….you get the idea. To make matters worse, when you do find a really nice place, its usually in a building that should likely be demolished because it is so ugly. especially compared to the beautiful postcard perfect city of lights situated beautifully on a part of the Seine river in France. Just to illustrate what I mean, here is a cafe in Paris:
And here is the closest we can get to it in Orange County:
I’m inspired aren’t you? Strip malls don’t convey the sense of history and imagination that 19th century Haussmann architecture does. But this is a food conversation, not an architecture one, so pardon my helpless disappointment at our buildings that were made with the least amount of artistic interest possible, just so somebody could turn a profit. Ok, done now. On to the food.
After returning from Paris, I wanted to see how close I could get to the food I experienced there, and quite honestly, I didn’t have high hopes. Moulin’s website declares that they intend to deliver “the most authentic Parisian experience” to their guests. Since I was fresh off the plane from Paris, with all of my food memories intact, I had to see for myself if Moulin could deliver.
The best way I can think to describe my overall experience with the food at Moulin is by way of a comparison. Do you remember a favorite food that your grandmother used to make in your childhood and it was a perfect version of whatever it was, say pancakes? They had the right amount of butter, crunch on the pancake, and maybe just a hint of blueberries nestled in a pillowy softness that became heavenly once you put just the right amount of maple syrup on it? But then, as an adult, you try to recreate grandmother’s pancakes. You use the same recipe she used, and you even remember standing with her and watching her make the pancakes. You get the whole family involved and it becomes a project to recreate grandmother’s pancakes perfectly. There are mythic stories about mystery ingredients. Your uncle suggests that your grandmother sold her soul to the devil to be able to make pancakes that good. Days are spent, perhaps years trying to recreate those amazing fluffy clouds of buttery perfection but to no avail. With all of your efforts, you just can’t get it there. You can’ recreate grandmother’s magic. You can get close, and the results are delicious, no one complains that they taste bad, and everyone wants more. You’ve created a great pancake, but it’s just not right in certain specific measurable ways. This is not just your nostalgia talking, everyone agrees that the flavor is just not right. Substitute Paris for your grandmother, and Moulin for your effort to make the pancake, and you’ll have an idea of how Moulin (and practically any restaurant in the US that tries to deliver a Paris food experience) compares.
Don’t get me wrong – I really enjoyed my trip to Moulin and the food there. And I’m a little jealous of the locals who get to eat there regularly. We can’t have Paris in the US, we just cant. We can have New York City and San Francisco, but we can’t have Paris. So until you can get yourself there, Moulin can get somewhat close. Here are some specifics.
The Baguette
The cornerstone of the daily culinary experience in France is the Baguette. Even fine dining establishments will generally serve a baguette at some point during the meal, so getting the baguette right is a crucial part of getting Paris food right. Paris has an annual competition for the best baguette, and the winner supplies the president of France with baguettes until the next winner is chosen, so they take their baguettes very seriously. While in Paris, I visited winners from 3 separate years, and tried the baguettes at each place. They were all very similar, with subtle differences, but they all had at least two things in common:
- The outer shell was thin and crispy
- The interior was spongy and soft.
The outcome of the best French baguettes is that they have the right ratio of outer crispiness and inner spongy softness. The Moulin baguette does a good job with the spongy softness, but the outer shell crunch was missing. It was also very chewy, much chewier than the ones in Paris, but it was noticeable only if you’re being picky. If you are expecting to get the baguette that won an award in Paris, you’ll be disappointed, but it is really enjoyable nonetheless. Moulin also sells a variety of imported French butter, which is the perfect companion to the baguette. I haven’t been able to find any of the butter they sell in local grocery stores, so it is wonderful that Moulin makes this available to you.
The Baguette Sandwich
The baguette sandwich can only be as good as the baguette, so there are already limitations here. Moulin has a number of baguette sandwich offerings but I always head toward the ham and cheese version. The ham on this sandwich stood out as being a little too noticeable, taking too much attention away from the baguette. I noticed that the better sandwiches in Paris had a nice string trio effect, where the baguette, the ham, and the cheese were more balanced and you felt like it was a unity of three members working together for the same goal, to amke you taste buds happy. The Moulin ham and cheese felt like the ham was trying to push the baguette and the cheese out of the way, and demand to be noticed before everyone else. Still, it wasn’t unpleasant. But I may try a different sandwich next time.
The Croissasnt
Not having high hopes for the croissant, I didn’t take a picture of the one I bought, which turned out to be a mistake. The Moulin croissant did turn out to be very very close to the croissants from the award winning boulangeries in Paris. The texture needs to be slightly crispy on the outside, just enough to contain the buttery softness of the inside. So many croissants in the US are dry and stale, and there is very little butter to be found inside. The crunch on the outside can be too harsh and overpowering, and it stops you from enjoying the inside. Not so with Moulin’s croissants, so I would highly recommend them. And what’s more, my wife highly recommends them as well. She is more of a croissant person than I am, and she was delightfully pleased with Moulin’s croissant. Her recommendations are golden.
The Apple Tart
When I was in Paris, I had a formula to my day. I would begin the with baguette sandwich, and in between bites I would enjoy the baguette and evaluate it compared to the other baguettes I had been eating. After I finished the sandwich and some of the baguette, I’d go for the apple tart. There were many different tarts and pastries, but for some reason I was drawn to the apple tart. While Moulin’s apple tart was good, and I’ll definitely want another one sometime, it didn’t quite match up to some of the better ones in Paris. This may have simply been a choice of different styles, but one of the best one’s I had in Paris achieved an amazing integration between the glazed apples on top and the buttery crust on the bottom. They were so well integrated it was hard to tell where the apple ended and the crust began. That they were so well merged was astounding to me, and made my taste buds very happy. Moulin’s apple tart didn’t have the merge, but it did have very flavorful apples and an enjoyable crust. It was as if the apples and the crust in Paris had been married for 50 years together, and at Moulin, they were just getting to know one another.
The Iced Tea
One of the things you don’t get in Paris (or Europe, or the rest of the world honestly) is iced tea, except at places visited by a lot of Americans. The best you can hope for sometimes is hot tea with a glass of ice. But Moulin knows that their customers want iced tea, and so they are happy to accommodate with a wonderful, fresh brewed, passion fruit iced tea.
Everything Else
I have focused on a handful of items, but Moulin has so much more to offer. For starters, they also have a full ‘hot’ french menu as well, complete with the croque madam and monsieur. This is also one of the core staples of casual French food. I haven’t tried their croques yet, but that will be next on my list in a return visit. You can also find quiche, crepes, and french onion soup. In a separate part of the store, they have their pastry and tarts, and they have plenty of good things from which to choose. You have to make two separate lines, but who cares? Nothing wrong with thinking about your choices twice. They also have a retail section where they sell French wines, cheeses, and other grocery store items. If you can’t go to France, they’re bringing some of the good stuff to you.
Authenticity?
There is a lot of really good things going on at this place, and according to their website Moulin has 6 locations, and I can understand why. Based on what I was told when I was there, the owners are French, and you could hear some silky french accents from some of the people who worked there. There is a strong desire to achieve an authentic French experience at Moulin. I speculate that, for reasons that remain a mystery, this is about as close as you can get to an authentic French experience in the US. I have heard top chefs discuss how you can make the same recipe in one country as you do in another, and it just doesn’t taste the same. In some cases they may use the exact same ingredients, but they still cannot achieve the exact same result. If only you could package grandma’s magic, and sell that in a grocery store. But then, perhaps, it wouldn’t be quite so magical.