Friday, October 06, 2023

Fabulous Friday: French Lunch 91





A week ago, I was feeling kind of stressed, and I was checking something at the office and noticed that I was nearing the limit on the number of hours of paid vacation I can have. When I reach the limit I stop accruing the time that I have earned.* I needed to take vacation time before today.  

So last Friday, I sent a message to my team, restarted my office computer and took the afternoon off.  I looked at the sweet bear and said, let's go have lunch.  There is a new French Restaurant in old town Alexandria, but alas the door was locked they are not open for lunch.  A couple of blocks later I remembered that there is a hole-in-the-wall French Restaurant on Washington less than a block off of King Street that has been there forever.  I had never been in. 

Oh my, it was good.  I had a cold salad with beets, and a quiche, the sweet bear had mushroom caps stuffed with crab, and bouillabaisse. It was amazing.  The service was good, the food was fabulous.  We should do this more often.  I could learn to live like this.  


*A truly evil policy. 
 

16 comments:

  1. Impromptu lunches or dinners are the best....and good for the soul. You'll soon have all the time to do just this.

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  2. What a fun-looking place and I love J's 2-tone polo shirt. I worked at university's that limited how much vacation you could take at one time, no matter how much you accrued. However, you could accrue forever and get a payout for those days when you left. (Not that I ever had half a minute of vacation time remaining on the books.)

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    Replies
    1. The policy was an accounting trick to balance a budget one year,

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    2. Why we abandoned the eminently practical custom of putting the napkin over the shirt I'll never understand. It remains acceptable in a number of European countries when eating something that is likely to drip and stain.

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    3. Gee, I entirely missed Mitchell's point.

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    4. J: SG would miss the bib napkin completely.

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  3. I agree. The leave policy is very unfair but I do understand why it is in place.

    I looked at the restaurant menu. It doesn't have prices but the food does look good. I have no idea what a prefix menu is. It seems like what we call a banquet menu but not quite. Set meal might be the right phrase, as you may get when flying a long distance, a choice of three for each course.

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    Replies
    1. Prefix is a very French concept, you pay a fixed price that includes 2 or 3 or 4 courses and often coffee or wine.

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    2. prix fixe = fixed price

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  4. Le Refuge looks like a great place and when you retire you will be able to seek refuge there every week if you are so inclined.

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    Replies
    1. My parents went out to lunch 5 or 6 times a week in retirement,

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  5. Sometimes those hole-in-the-wall places are the best! Plus there's certainly a lot of interesting bric-a-brac to look at on the restaurant's walls.

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    Replies
    1. The restaurant has been there for years, and it shows.

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  6. I love the hole-in-the-wall spots because more often than not they are fabulous.
    Glad you got to have a vacation day getaway!

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    Replies
    1. I need to take a couple of days a month, until I get paid out for it.

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