World Tour: 3, 4 or More

3-course, 4-course, 5-course meals. Rumor has it that French women tend to be thinner than most American women because of the smaller portions in their meals. The truth is they eat just as much as we do but they are paced in their meals and yes, the serving sizes are smaller. It takes about 20 minutes for the body to recognize that it is full so after the first course your body has already decomposed the food and thinks that it is nearly stuffed.

We were first introduced to the multi-course French meal at our beloved Citronelle in the District. As a teenager, we laughed at the idea that bite size portions of eight separate servings would fill us up…dead wrong. Thanksgiving dinner is probably the only other time of year where our bellies have felt this gorged with food. A lesson learned that we would take with us over 10 years later on a cheap flight to Paris. We now know how to handle taking in this much food over a longer period of time. Smart.

The multi-courses allow you to digest and ultimately absorb all of the flavors of the food taking in the whole experience. In Paris, multi-course dining is a dime a dozen so we stopped in on a few spots until we discovered one that had a main course we were looking for: beef bourguignon. It was hard for us to fathom how this dish would be squeezed in among other dishes because we could honestly take a whole bowl of it by its lonesome. After a few bites of a savory onion soup and chocolate mousse, it was clear that the beef bouguignon was in good company and did not need to be alone. Until our United Airlines points add up for another cheap trip to the EU, we will serve our beef bouguignon alone…but we will also watch our portions.