Paris to Provence 2015

Paris to Provence is a French festival with stalls and activities that embrace the culture of France. Held at the Como house and garden, the space is transformed into a little French village with entertainment and loads of amazing French food. There are artisan cheeses and meats and wine and pastries and chocolates. A fine selection of food and drink indeed.

The garden is full of stalls and there are lots of areas to sit and enjoy the atmosphere.

First up a chouquette, which is a little choux puff w sugar on the outside. It was super light and fluffy with soft sweet pearls of suger on top. Delish.

The La Bastide stall had these charcuterie cones with cold meats, pickles and bread sticks. It was a good walk around snack. They also had some delicious chicken pate, and fois gras baguettes.

I tried a goats cheese tart from La Parisienne Pates and it was amazing. The pastry was buttery and short and the goats cheese filling with chives on top was really tasty. They also had quiche lorraine my fave. They had a range of savoury pastries and pies including duck pies and rabbit pies and beef burgundy. It was good because you could buy them hot to eat now or cold to bake at home later. They also had a large range of pate on offer.

The Brasserie Bread stall was a bread lovers dream. The bread looked and tasted incredible.

They had a range of breads, crusty sourdough, quinoa and soy, French sticks, brioche, mini brioche slider buns. It was fantastic. We took home a loaf of the garlic bread, which was amazing. It had roasted garlic swirled through and sweet roasted garlic cloves scattered throughout. Loved it.

At Frencheese they were serving raclette. It’s a semi-firm cows milk cheese that is good for melting. The way it is served is a plate of fried herbed potatoes are layered with cold meats and then the raclette is melted like fondue and poured over the top, served with gerkins and salad. It was delicious. Hot, oozy cheese ohh yea. A lady was telling me about how she used to go to raclette parties all the time in France. It sounded awesome and I’m thinking I need a big wheel of raclette for my next bbq.

Then onto the croissants. What is a French festival without a few cheeky croissants. Agathe Pastisseie had some traditional croissants like the plain and pain au chocolate.

They also had pear and almond danishes and cheery pistachio ones. All amazing. The danishes were buttery and crisp on the outside with awesome flavour combos and the croissants were airy with lots of buttery layers.

Mosaic Pastiserrie had a range croissants aswell including almond croissants and a range of croissant muffins. They also had shelves of colourful macarons on offer.

A la folie had a range of thier sweet pastries including the petite choux, which are little choux puffs filled and topped with different flavours. They also had their raspberry vanilla filled macarons and the vanilla mille fueille. So so good.

Milk the cow had a stall with a selection of artisan cheese and wines.

Monsieur truffle had a stall with a selection of their artisan chocolates.

Nougat Limar had a stall serving a variety of delcious nougat, which was soft and creamy. There was vanilla and almond, pistachio and cherry cranberry, and chocolate almond hazelnut just to name a few.

The doughnuts balls were nice, fresh out of the deep fryer. They were soft and fluffy and covered in sugar, sitting in a pool of nutella or salted caramel.

The crepe we got from Professeur crepe was perfect. It was thin, soft and fluffy, with a good amount of nutella. They had a range of flavours savoury and sweet. Yumness!

There was lots of entertainment for all ages there were roving mimes, magicians, musicians. There are also adult art classes, chef demos, a bean bag area and a secret garden area with childrens activities.

We got to meet the lovely Jinkee from @lifeofjinkee, who was judging the French bulldog dress up comp. She was so gorgeous, just the most adorable puppy ever.

These were some of the entrants. So adorable, the king and queen.

There were French bulldogs everywhere, i had never seen so many in one place. We felt sad that we didn’t end up bringing our Frenchie Max.

This was his face when we got home. After a whole lot of sniffing Max identified that we went to the French festival without out him. He was not impressed.

They played the French national anthem for solidarity in light of recent events which was nice. It was a great event and a great opportunity to indulge in all things France, even just for a weekend. Today is the last day of the event so head down if you can. The venue is covered in French flags, you can’t miss it.

I heart Paris to Provence!

Olives x

Paris to Provence
Event dates: 20^th November – 22^nd November
Address: Como House and Garden - Cnr Williams Road & Lechlade Ave, South Yarra
Website: http://www.paristoprovence.com.au/
Trading hours: Fri: 12pm-9pm, Sat: 9am-6pm, Sun: 9am-5pm