Mercredi, 15 Mai 2013: La Tasca

Léa and Baptiste had no school and no lessons today. Maman had two orders for the kids...1.) Do your homework with Melinda until it's all finished and 2.) Ask her to help you make your cake for school. So that's what we did.

I was able to sleep in for a bit since Céline dropped Camille and Gregoire off. Around 9h30, I was fully awake and got down on some homework with Léa. Baptiste kept fighting me about school work so I texted maman about it and she made sure that he apologized for being a brat. He ended up not doing any homework anyway but he came down to help with the cake. I don't know how these kids don't know how to follow a recipe yet, but it was a doozy trying to get them to understand why the flour had to be level when you measured it. Oh well, at least they had fun making it. The cake turned out to be pretty decent.

I went to Marseille tonight to have dinner with Andréa. He was worried about not having enough time with me since I'll be leaving for Croatia this weekend. When I got to his apartment he was dressed in a suit. I was absolutely horrified because he didn't tell me we were going to a formal dinner. I was in my usual jeans, plain tee, and white jacket. As soon as he saw the look on my face he asked if he should change, ha haha. My expressions say a lot. He ended up wearing black jeans and a pink, collared shirt. That was casual enough. Remember people, he's French ;-)

Andréa took me to a restaurant called La Tasca. It's basically a tapas joint where all of the servers are guys. The place was magnificent! I thought the restaurant was dead because there was no one sitting in the beautiful dining room, which looked like this...

http://todosobremimarsella.wordpress.com/

I completely understood why the restaurant was empty as soon as we stepped onto the terrace. Every single table was packed out there. The gravel terrace was covered by a red tent awning, the entire area was lit by candlelight, and there was wax melted on the stone walls. It was absolutely beautiful with all of the candelabras, trees, and shrubs. Kind of a gothic style. I'm so happy that Andréa brought me there because I completely fell in love with the place. He can annoy me sometimes but he sure does show that he knows and loves me. 

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187253-d785589-Reviews-La_Tasca-Marseille_Bouches_du_Rhone_Provence.html

http://claudiaetc.blogspot.fr/2011/08/des-tapas-au-coeur-de-marseille.html

I let Andréa handle ordering all of the food. For as much as we eat together, he's got to know what I like or would like to eat. We started out with a carafe of Sangria and soon after, our tapas came out. We had fried potatoes with aioli, ham with melon, arctic surf clams in a cream sauce, calamari, a cheese, plate, and I forget what else. It was all delicious as you might have guessed. I love tapas bars because you don't feel like you're eating too much or even too much of the same thing and you still leave satisfied. 

For dessert, we both had the raspberry lychee pana cotta. It was absolutely divine!!! Andréa loves making pana cotta so this is one recipe he'll have to figure out! If he succeeds, I will totally re-consider marrying him sooner ;-)

After doing some online research, it turns out the La Tasca is a worldwide chain. It's based in the U.K. but the restaurants are spread throughout Europe and the United States. The closest one to my hometown is 2 hours away in D.C. I'm not sure if they have the same decor on their terrace grounds. Google isn't dishing out any photos of a romantic, outdoor dining area but there's only one sure way to find out. I'll let you know how it is when I make it back to the states!