Le Refuge des Fondues

These past few days have been rainy so we have been starting our days later than usual. I have tons of activities planned but we have enjoyed staying in our awesome apartment, making jambon et fromage sandwiches and drinking wine *orange jus for Liv* watching the lightening and rain through the skylights. The other night we had our first big hail/thunderstorm. It was terrifying. The hail was huge and we were sure it would break the skylight over our bed. I did not want my obituary to read, Died on vacation in Paris from broken glass shards.

The sky was like this all night, Liv was so excited to see lightening and hail. Here’s a video of me sounding like a major dork!

We waited for a break in the rain and headed back to Montmartre in the evening for a special dinner. Refuge des Fondus has been a tourist staple for years. French people do not eat here. There is always a wait at this place no bigger than a closet with only two long tables, you must step on the table to get in. There are two choices on the menu, fromage or meat with red or white wine served in baby bottles *due to the heavy wine glass tax*. We happily chose one of each.

We only had to wait for five minutes for a table on a busy Saturday night. There was a live band playing across the street. Paris makes it hard to be grumpy.

This place is TEENY TINY! Lucky for me I didn’t have to step on the table to get to my seat but you sit elbow to elbow with other diners.

Here is Liv making friends with the people next to us. They were visiting from Spain. Everyone in there was from a different country!

There is a fixed menu of either meat or cheese, so we ordered one of each. We began with some tasty kir and an ensemble of appetizers.

Santé! Don’t panic, Liv had a non-alcoholic apéritif.

Olivia was thrilled to drink from a baby bottle. It was weird but I guess a good thing because you couldn’t chug your wine. They only have two options, white or red which both are mediocre, yet the atmosphere is so jovial, you don’t mind the terrible wine.

Our meat was just that, RAW MEAT. No seasoning and you get a vat of boiling oil to cook it in. It wasn’t bad but it was an extremely decadent meal.

We also had potatoes, four sauces and bread to dip.

The waiters are intentionally rude. I definitely understand having to wait on drunk foreigners all night long in a space the size of a bathroom but I warmed up to ours.

The fondue is enormous, more cheese than I would ever want to eat. Our friends Terry and Morgan make much better fondue but it was a fun dinner.

Olivia didn’t nap earlier so she was out the rest of the night.

Our waiter gave us a free souvenir bottle for Liv as a gift. The food was so filling and the wine made me tipsy. It’s definitely something you should try once.