We trained it to Toulouse yesterday for a few days, mainly to tour the Airbus factory on Saturday (David is a major aviation geek).

Our high-end hotel allowed check-in before official check-in time—-for a €35 (around CA $55) fee. We have never experienced this before, and it really irritated me. It just felt greedy, since clients are paying for the night in hotels. If the room is ready, and ours was, why would they not release it? Pure greed.

They at least kept our luggage, so we were able to walk around the city and have lunch before returning to the hotel EXACTLY at check-in hour to avoid getting mugged at the desk.

Toulouse is beautiful. It’s large yet manageable, busy yet clean and walkable. It is a wealthy city, which is kind of evident by the clean streets, clean air, and what feels like thousands of young people walking about and patronizing all the shops and cafés. These are students of the many post-secondary institutions in Toulouse, which is also considered the “aerospace” capital of Europe.

The weather is so nice that David and I both traded in our winter coats for spring jackets. The temperature reached 17C, and without any wind it really felt like a late spring day.

We spent some time in the Jardin des Plantes, enjoying the weather and hanging out with roosters! Why are there roosters in this city park?!

As we were leaving, we passed a little restaurant specializing in North African cuisine. Several customers were seated outdoors enjoying their meals, and I wondered if they would believe me if I told them that in Ottawa, eating a meal outdoors is not even possible for about five months of the year because of the cold weather, plus snow.

Toulouse has so many restaurants that it’s a bit difficult to choose where to go for dinner. We ended up at Campagne, after first having apéritifs at a small bar nearby.

Overall, Campagne was good, but the experience was all over the place. We finally figured out that it’s likely due to the fact that the establishment is trapped in a situation of its own making, where they use a traditional French model, but are also trying to use North American restaurant practices. The two are fundamentally incompatible, and the result is the chaos we experienced last evening.

In the French restaurant model, there is a set number of covers for the night, clients are not rushed, and the client determines the pace of their evening. The bill is never brought after the last dishes are cleared; you must ask for it. This means that a table can remain occupied for hours by clients who just want to linger.

Compare this to the North American model where the establishment controls the pace of service: the server times the courses precisely so that the evening progresses at a certain pace, culminating with the bill after the last dishes are cleared. In this way, North American restaurants have two seatings per evening, turning over each table at least once.

At Campagne, we had reserved a table for 8:30. When we arrived, no table was ready, and they did not offer the option of waiting a few minutes for a table to clear. Instead, they offered a place at the bar, which was entirely acceptable to us.

However, the bar felt very much like an after-thought. The restaurant was tiny so there was little space between the bar and the tables. David was hit repeatedly by the server passing behind him, despite David being pulled up as close to the bar as possible. The bar itself was so shallow that I had difficulty eating without fear of knocking my wine glass, bread basket, and cutlery over.

I noticed that many people were lingering long after their plates were cleared, and that at least 3 parties were turned away for lack of space as a result. Then at one point, it seemed that a few tables settled up and left within minutes of one another, freeing up space minutes after clients were turned away.

So while the restaurant clearly has two seatings in the North American tradition, the staff operate within the French , which makes things chaotic and unpredictable for clients who reserve for the second seating, while also robbing the establishment of additional customers who show up during the second seating time.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the restaurant should hire me as a consultant with all of my opinionated opinions 😂

The food was good, not spectacular, and wine passable, not great (it also arrived already opened with the cork stuck in the opening, and far too cold). But the space was cute, if crowded, and the servers were kind and smiley, which saved the experience for me.

On the way to the restaurant, we passed an elementary school. Something we noticed long ago in France is that schools post the week’s lunch menu outside, presumably so that the parents could see what their children would be enjoying. Isn’t that incredible?

This particular school placed the menus high up on the wall, so it was difficult for me to photograph it, but each day offered a starter (usually a soup), and a main plus a vegetarian option. Dessert was usually fruit, with chocolate mousse offered one Wednesday. They also posted potential allergens present in the menus.

I just love that little children all over France are sitting down at lunch time at school enjoying three-course meals of healthy foods, hopefully starting them on a life-long journey of food appreciation.