Situated somewhere in the middle of 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica is a place called Monsieur Marcel. It’s easy to miss if you aren’t looking, and in the countless times I have been there I had never seen it myself, at least until I was looking out specifically for it. Based on the name, you would expect Monsieur Marcel to be French, and you would be right. The menu is populated with unpronounceable dishes, but fortunately they also come with English descriptions.

After a long, long look at the menu, I finally decided on the Croque Marcel. A croque is like a French sandwich, but with the added twist of being fried with some cheese. And in this cheesy sandwich was smoked turkey, goat cheese and mornay (creamy) sauce. It had the makings of a delicious meal, and was on the road to being even better with some truffle fries on the side.

When the sandwich arrived, it looked positively beautiful. There were no veggies in sight and the fries looked pretty good. Or did they? For truffle fries, they seemed pretty dry, and a quick sniff told me they were truffle-free. I told the waitress, who brought out some oil just for my and I sprinkled it over the fries to make them pretty special. Without those truffles, they were some pretty boring shoestring fries, but with them they were certainly improved. Now onto the croque!

I love grilled cheese. Who doesn’t? And while a regular, buttery white bread grilled cheese with gooey, melty American cheese is awesome, sometimes an upgrade can be pretty amazing. Enter the croque. Not only did it cover the cheesy and butteriness necessary for a grilled cheese, but the addition of smoked turkey, goat cheese and mornay sauce made the sandwich even more special. The best part was that despite all the flavor, nothing felt overpowering.

For an adult grilled cheese, Monsieur Marcel did a great job. Ok, I guess it’s called a croque, but in my mind it shall remain an adult grilled cheese. Considering the lack of good food available at 3rd Street, Monsieur Marcel is a pretty good meal. Even outside the Promenade, I think it would handle its own pretty well.

For my birthday, my lovely girlfriend got me something called a beer class at L’Epicerie Market [EDIT: Now Closed] in Culver City. This was exciting as it turned out to be a multi-course set meal with a glass of beer per dish. Yet, as exciting and delicious as the beer and meals were, there was a particular course worth its own blog. It was one of the strangest meats I had ever eaten: frog legs.

First off, I should say that on this set meal, I had no clue what kinds of foods and beers I would be getting, so when a plate full of three fried legs appeared in front of me, I was in shock. But not necessarily bad shock. In fact, the most shocking part was that the chef had taken the time to cross the legs after cooking. How dainty. I always say any legs worth crossing are legs worth eating. Okay, so I’ve never said that before, but the crossed legs certainly added to the intrigue.

Although I know frog legs aren’t that crazy in France, I have to wonder who looked at a frog and decided they wanted to eat it. There doesn’t seem to be much meat, the color is the same as rancid meat and the sound it makes is a synonym for dying.

Yet, when I began to tear apart my frog legs I not only found that all the joints still worked and I could make the legs dance (froggeteering), but also found the look and feel to be quite similar to chicken wings. Inside, the meat was white and nothing like the green of frog skin. I bit in and was not nearly as repulsed as I expected to be. The meat was chewier than chicken, but mostly took its flavor from what it had been cooked in. There was something a little funny about the taste, though, and that was a slight fishiness. I know frogs aren’t fish, but there was no denying a sort of fishy taste to the legs.

I don’t know if this was due to preparation or because frog legs just always happen to taste that way, but the taste turned me off of the legs. I’m not exactly a fish guy and when I do like fish it is because it is fresh and lacking that classic fishy smell. And to back myself up, the halibut L’Epicerie served later in the meal was awesome.

So while I’m glad I tried frog legs, I know that I don’t need to eat them again. Despite this, I felt they were a great gateway amphibian meat and I can’t wait to get my hands on a salamander next. Protein is an essential nutrient that helps build and maintain tissues, regulate hormones, release energy, and fight infection. Organ meats are high in protein. The frog’s meat can be consumed in a number of ways.

And now that I know what frog legs taste like, I just have to wonder what happens to the rest of the frog. Does it get ground up into frog sausages? Fed to the family dog? Or does it simply wait to be served in the lesser-known dish of frog torso?

Ever since I conceived of the notion of a to-eat list, Comme Ça (pronounced comb-eh sah) has resided on that list. The reason is because once upon a time, Jane Sigal of the New York Times called The Comme Ça Burger “perfect.” That is no small claim and no small publication. But how would it fare against my unvegan palette? Would it crumble to the ground and beg for mercy like the Father’s Office Burger or would it leaving me begging for more like Umami Burger? I hoped it would be the latter.

Comme Ça is not your average everyday restaurant. The prices aren’t out of control, but a burger for 17 greenbacks isn’t something you just choose to eat in passing. Hence, my mom treated me and my girlfriend to dinner at Comme Ça on the most important occasion of all – my birthday. And because it was my birthday, I didn’t just jump right to the burger. Instead, I started out with some Soupe A L’Oignon Gratinee, which is fancy French-speak for French Onion Soup, because it looked so damn good at the table next to us. I wanted to order it Al Michaels-style (aka “hold the onions”), but opted to split it with the girlfriend and eat around those onions. Despite said onions, this was a good choice. The gruyere cheese melted over the top alone would have been enough to make it worthwhile, but the delicious gooey croutons and flavorful broth served as a great warm up to the reason I was there.

The burger.

After all this time, it was finally mine. The menu claimed that it was made with angus beef, cheddar, dressing and carried a side of pommes frites (fries for the riff raff), but I didn’t want to take any chances. I asked our waitress if it contained anything else, and as she described some sort of strange cole slaw-like concoction I had to ask her to forgo it. She insisted I at least take it on the side and I did to humor her. Luckily, that side meant it was off in its own little pan and made no contact with my meat unless I willed it. I ordered the burger medium rare and it turned out to be as medium rare a burger I had ever seen. Totally brown on the outside, mere millimeters inside the burger, the beef turned into a dark pink color. But amazingly, there was nothing raw about the burger.

Comma Ça’s burgerizing method involves searing the burger to get the outside brown and then tossing it in the oven to get the inside cooked, but still retaining the peak of flavor and juiciness. Their method is amazing at producing awesome patties, yet for all the goodness of the patty, I couldn’t help but expect more. All this talk about a burger topped with ordinary cheddar and a pretty good bun? Don’t get me wrong…I like simplicity, but if I (or the person who happens to be taking me out to dinner) drop 17 bucks on a burger, it had better be spectacular. Comme Ça produced a damn good cheeseburger, but in the end it wasn’t a lot more than a cheeseburger.

The pommes frites were a pretty good companion to the burger, though. Then, to top it all off, the waitress brought me out some free birthday dessert. This was their Chocolate Pot De Creme, which loosely translates to something chocolatey with fresh whipped cream. I may not be a big chocolate man, but this dessert was light, creamy and a deliciously sweet way to end my birthday meal.

So, was the Comme Ça burger a victim of overhype? Are there just too many amazing burgers in LA? Was I simply depressed because it was my birthday (aka the day I realize I have one fewer year to live)? There are oh so many questions to ask, and yet the truth is that Comme Ça can still produce a damn good burger. They’ve nailed down a perfect cooking method and although the toppings could use a bit of inspiration, there is certainly very little to complain about. After all, Comme Ça means “like that” in French and I sure did.

On another fantastic trip to Disneyland, this one filled with wheelchairs and electric scooters from scooter sleuth rather than roller coasters, we ended up at Cafe Orleans for lunch. More upscale than your average Disneyland restaurant, Cafe Orleans is located in the heart of New Orleans Square, not far from Pirates of the Caribbean. Serving up French-influenced food, they had a good-looking menu with a couple unvegan options.

Since I had been and would continue to push a wheelchair all day, I figured I needed to load up on some heavy foods, beginning with an appetizer. I started with their Pommes Frites, which is just a fancy French word for French fries. But these weren’t your ordinary fries. They were covered in cheese and garlic, which you could smell all the way to The Haunted Mansion. Fortunately, the garlic and parmesan weren’t overkill. There was just enough flavor and the fries had been fried to a perfect crisp. They came with a bit of a Cajun sauce that provided a nice balance to the cheese and garlic flavor.

On top of that cheese, my main course got even cheesier. I ordered the Three-Cheese Monte Cristo (presumably named after the Count). This was mozzarella, swiss and brie, fried in some batter. It came with a berry sauce for dipping and was sprinkled with powdered sugar. When I first read the ingredients, I was under the impression I was getting the French version of grilled cheese. Instead, I found myself faced with one intense meal. The sugariness of the sauce and powdered sugar coupled with the salty cheesiness was one delicious meal. The batter ad been fried crispy enough that you could eat it with your hands, but it was really a dish best eaten with fork and knife. When things got too heavy, it was served with some grapes and strawberries to make me feel better about myself.

The only real downside of this meal was how truly heavy it was. After only eating half, I was a full unvegan. I boxed up the rest to tackle another day, then departed Cafe Orleans for an afternoon of wheelchair pushing to work off one tasty and destructive meal.

After a couple of days in Michigan, it was off to Chicago for a wedding, but I wasn’t going to let the wedding get in the way of my feeding. My sister, a Chicagoan for the past few years, recommended we head to La Creperie, so to La Creperie we went. Having been to La Creperie a few times in the past, I was pretty excited to grab some lunch there. The place has a great outdoor courtyard that is perfect for those Chicago summers. If only they could last for more than 3 months.

We took a stroll through the place and grabbed some seats at the courtyard. Then we took a look at the menu. La Creperie has a nice selection of savory and sweet crepes, but I was having a tough time deciding which direction to go in. It turned out I had plenty of time to think, because after taking our seats, the waitress seemed to disappear. During this time, my girlfriend came to the rescue and offered to split some sweet and savory with me. We decided to go with the Poulet au Curry crepe for the savory end, which is fancy French-speak for chicken breast, with curry cream and mango chutney. As for the sweetness, we went with a tried and true favorite, Nutella and banana.

There was another long break between ordering and getting our food, but when it came, it looked pretty delicious. I started into the savory first and found myself in the middle of a delicious clash of cultures. I hadn’t imagined France and India could work so well together, but the nicely seasoned curry and paper-thin crepe were a match made in…Chicago. Bet you thought I was gonna say heaven there.

And the desserty crepe made for a great follow-up to the curry chicken. Once again, the crepe was nice and thin, but the innards were quite different. In general I’m not much of a chocolate man and have a hard time understanding the infatuation some people have with it, but when it gets combined with hazelnut and becomes Nutella, it simply becomes awesome. And of course the best medium to eat the Nutella is a crepe. While these two alone go great together, it’s nice to throw it some fruit as well, like bananas. Combined, they make for one powerful crepe, and La Creperie did a great job of executing this.

Then, after eating, it was time to wait again. After chatting with a busboy and another waitress, we finally got our own to come back and take our money. It’s a shame the service was so bad, because the food was quite good. Fortunately for La Creperie, I had been there a few times before and felt like this was an isolated incident, but it was still bad enough to keep me from feeling fully content with experience.

For the birthday of a special someone in my life, we headed to little French restaurant called AOC. You may be wondering what AOC stands for, and so did we. Apparently it is not some made-up acronym, but actually is the French version of the FDA, which makes it far more pretentious and Frenchier. We had a reservation and were seated immediately, as I would expect from the French. Our waitress, who had an indistinguishable accent that most certainly was not French, brought us our menus so we could figure out some foodstuffs.

The menu was a bit confusing, but we go our bearings and decided to start out with some cheeses. Not knowing too much about cheese except that I’ve never met a cheese I didn’t like, we let the waitress decide. One cheese was $5, while a three-cheese platter was $15. Not sure why they had to tell us the price of a platter of three cheeses since it was just three times the amount for a single cheese and wasn’t discounted, but that must be some sort of French thing I can’t comprehend. She picked out a goat cheese from Sardinia, Italy called Pantaleo, a sheep cheese from the Loire Valley in France called Le Berger de Rocastin and finally some good old fashioned cow cheese from Burgundy, France called Chaource. No, I can’t pronounce any of them, but I can tell you that they were all mighty tasty. We also had some bread, which came with a nice semi-spicy spread that was really good and could easily be coupled with the cheeses.

For the main course, I decided to get into some white meat. The white meat I chose was listed on the menu as Grilled Chicken, Roasted Roots, Aged Balsamic. I asked the waitress what roasted roots entailed, hoping she would bust out into a song by Rusted Root, but instead she told me it was potatoes. Really? Couldn’t just put potatoes down on the menu? At least it wasn’t vegetables.

When my chicken arrived, it was surprisingly small for the $14 price tag. It tasted good, to be sure, and this was greatly aided by some sort of a puree that the chicken was laying upon. Nonetheless, I cannot take away from the fact that the seasoning on the chicken was pretty good. The potatoes, I mean uhh the roasted roots also tasted nice, but I spotted a couple carrots in the mix. Definitely a root, but definitely not a potato.

By the time I finished that little piece of chicken, I was definitely full, unfortunately this wasn’t because of the chicken itself. I had to eat a ton of bread to fill up this unvegan tummy of mine. It was great that they kept refilling the bread, but I would have liked the main course to do the job of filling me up.

EDIT: While the truck is grounded for good, the Flying Pig has spawned some brick and mortar that may or may not be anything like the truck.

For my second course on First Fridays in Abbot Kinney, I headed out to one of LA’s newest food trucks, the Flying Pig. When I first read about this Mexican-French fusion truck, I wasn’t too amazed by what I read. Fusing Mexican food with Asian is one thing, but to try to fuse it with French as well seemed like a strange niche that I didn’t need to explore. Lo and behold, my opinion changed when I saw the truck and the happy customers outside of it.

Rather than making French food and putting it into tortillas and such, this truck went gourmet and uses French techniques to make really good food, then puts it into tortillas. The prices also reflected a bit of a gourmet markup, with tacos running for $2.50, rather than the average cost of $2. Their menu wasn’t really built for an unvegan, with almost every item featuring a vegetable of some sort. I settled upon the Grilled Beef Short Rib taco and the Tamarind Duck taco. The beef one came with oyster mushrooms and a mysterious “death sauce,” while the duck came with toasted almond and pickled beet salad. I asked for the beef without mushrooms, and was extremely disappointed to be told that the shrooms were mixed in with the beef. Thinking fast, I ordered the Smoked Chicken instead. This came with green curry and napa slaw. I ordered it without the nasty slaw and then ordered my duck without the absurd-sounding pickled beet salad.

When my food was presented to me, I must admit I was a little disappointed in the diminutive size of the tacos. Sure, they were the same size as a typical taco truck taco, but I was hoping that extra 50 cents might somehow translate into more food. I was also a little upset that the Tamarind Duck taco had somehow been topped with clovers. I really have no problem with clovers, as they are tasteless and textureless, but it is unnecessary to cut down these poor, defenseless plants as they do nothing to enhance food in any way.

After all this consideration, I bit into the duck taco. It was pretty amazing. The duck was nicely glazed and perfectly flavored. Each bite was slightly chewy, but gave pretty easily. The toasted almonds were a nice touch, too. After this great experience, I tried out the smoked chicken. One again, I was floored by how good it was. The chicken pulled apart quite nicely and curry, coupled with the juices, brought the taco together quite well.

These tacos were kind of a luxury in the food truck world. It was definitely worth it for the extra 50 cents, yet it will be hard to pull myself away from all the varieties of cheaper tacos.