One for the visitors and expats

I visited a fantastic Mexican restaurant on Friday night, and there must have been something special in that 50 spice sauce that provoked me to write a restaurant critique, and possibly make a habit out of it if I ever figure out how to group posts by theme in the sidebar.

Boulevard Solferino in Lille is one of my favourite areas of the city, and has an abnormally high saturation of neon fronted asian restaurants but, nestled in between and Irish and a Scottish bar, is the kitschy mexican decor that screams central American themed restaurant. Truth be told, I didn't expect much from a resturant called Los Tacos (aye carumba), but the extremely pleasant owner immediately made me kick myself for not having known about this place earlier and reserved beforehand. But, despite the late night Friday crowds, he managed to squeeze us into a free spot. Feeling seriously in the mood to try something completely different to the standard fare, (Mexican or otherwise), I ordered one of their more exotic specialities, the chicken molé (as in olé), a chicken and rice dish drizzled with a serious helping of a 50 spice sauce (to whit, I can't even think of 50 spices). The first bite is kind of a maelstrom in the mouth as one's tastebuds try to go about deciphering something out of the mix. Then the taste mellows out as the mouth gives up on the challenge. Every bite is like this. And topped off with a glass of delicious Chilean merlot (I've a palate more partial to new world wines - especially Chilean) it certainly satisfied my gourmet mood.
The margaritas are a decent size and you can actually distinguish the tequila and lemons (after a recent disappointment in a vieux Lille mexican resto whose margaritas were everything that the Los Tacos version is not - except for the price. They didn't even salt the rim, hello?)But, I rarely make it to the dessert course, generally filling up on entréé and main, so no sweets to add to the mix. As we left the owner, once again making us feel especially privileged, followed us to the front door with well wishes and hopes of seeing us again soon. On the whole, restaurant owners are friendly enough - their business after all depends on a general absence of misanthropic tendencies. But this dear chap had something just a little extra in his smile and in his manner that put me very much in the mood to recommend his restaurant to others
Los Tacos
164 rue Solférino, Lille
Tél: 03.20.77.59.86
Meals range from about 11 - 20€
booking ahead on weekend nights is advisable, we were just lucky

tea, apples and ginger snap biscuits

Are three things I like to consume together. They also sound rather quaint when you put them all in the same sentence like that. I'm reading a book about the heritage of British food, disappearing regional specialties, canny seaweed eating sheep from Orkney, BSE and chicken tikka masala. There seems to be a certain similarity between certain dishes still current in Europe and what the Brits were eating a few generations ago. Before they got scared of germs. And started feeding meat to their cows. Be that as it may, despite the fact that you can buy a bag of powdered oats here easily enough, I can't say for sure who, aside from me and the odd Scottish expat, is actually eating them.
Monsieur has recently put in an offer for an apartment, I think that constitutes grown up news or something. We're moving in at the end of the year if all goes to plan (i.e the bank generously hands us a ball and chain to cart around). It needs some work doing, but doesn't seem to have any resident mould colonies which is quite high on my list of priorities (not damp, not damp, not frigging damp). We'll be slightly (2-3km) removed from the city centre and living in one of the nearby suburbs (Marcq en Baroeul - a name which is likely to screw up more than one of my english speaking friends when it comes time to write their Christmas cards). It's a pretty nice area with some quite amazing residential architecture. Needles to say, we are not going to be living in any examples of this amazingness. It is a first purchase, after all.

Can I get through this post without saying Crikey?

Looks like not.
So I've been informed by about 17 reliable sources since 9am this morning that the trooper, the little Aussie battler and the all round annoyed the hell out of me for the most part bloke Steve Irwin (aka the Crocodile Hunter) died today. And he allegedly wasn't even physically annoying the animal in question. As you've guessed, this isn't going to be a glowing obituary. Being a bit of an Attenborough freak since the age of 5, I always found Irwins style of 'documentary' to be brash, tawdry and highly invasive for the animals in question. I also thought it sent a very sterotypic and incorrect portrait of the 'aussie bloke' to overseas viewers. And while the 'he who lives by the sword' metaphor is leaking out from my fingertips, I have to at least acknowledge that he was a Dad, and probably a good Dad, and that it's sad for kids to lose a Dad so young. I must be mellowing or something (remembers back to shrieking matches with the television every time she saw his goofy head on screen). Still, my first thought was '60 minutes are going to have a field day with this', Not that mellow.
Well, my first Braderie was an interesting experience - took some groovy pics, got shoved around by a million or so people , about half of whom had crass pseudo ethic African giraffe statues bobbing along with them in the crowd, got hit on, got treated like a no-nothing schmuck who couldn't possibly know the first thing about the fine art of being ripped off by professional secondhand dealers, bought a couple of neat things, 70's plastic orange is the new black in bric a brac land, thought about 6 times 'I should really have bought that', ate a respectable number of plates of 'moules frites' (as you must, by law, consume during a braderie under pain of permanent expulsion), decided I absolutely must own a gramophone at some point in my life, walked about 35km, got sore feet, inspected the car damage this morning (snapped off side view mirror). I think I had what you'd call a very average experience.