A Little Food Break in Lille

Saturday saw us off on another Little Break, this time to Lille with some of London’s most reputable food bloggers. Meeting at our usual spot in St Pancras under the clock and fueled with strong coffee conversation became easy as many of the food bloggers knew each other already.

We barely had time to have our breakfast and discuss the plans for the day before we arrived in Lille, exactly one hour and 27 minutes later. On arrival we began the day with a stroll round the centre of Lille seeing the sights and watching the town slowly wake up.

On our way round we stopped off at some local specialty shops including Benoit the infamous chocolate shop, the amazing Pâtisserie Hermand as well as a gorgeous French boulangerie full of French bread and baked goods.

Mid morning we stopped off for a quick rest at the legendary tearooms of Méert. Méert waffles have been made since the 1761 for royalty and senior figures and so were amongst the patisseries we tried including lemon meringue and some impressive ‘Merveilleux’ cakes.

The weather was gorgeous as we made our way through the old streets to L’Atelier des Chefs for a lesson in Northern French Cuisine.

On arrival we were greeted with some appetisers and wine before donning our custom made aprons to cook our lunch of fish glazed with honey and beer with fresh vegetables, followed by Ch’tiramisu. As we were going to eat what we created for our lunch and my cooking skills are pretty limited I restricted myself to chopping vegetables and left the more experienced members of the group to the important bits.

After lunch we then took a short break from eating and took a gentle stroll to our next destination for some beer and cheese tasting from product local to the north of France. The beer tasting was held at La Capsule which is the pub of the well known beer shop L’Abbaye des Saveurs, and the cheese provided by Lille well known cheese shop Phillippe Olivier.

Our host Aymeric was extremely knowledgeable and we all learnt some interesting facts about the range of beers that we tried, as well as some of the smelliest and strongest cheese from the north of France including Marsallis also known as ‘The Lille Stinker’.

After a full day trying and creating a variety of food local to Lille and its surrounding areas we made our walk back to the station.

Lille was beautiful, the bloggers all lovely and fun and the weather gorgeous all of which made the perfect recipe for the an amazing Little Break.

A big thank you to Helen from Food Stories, Niamh from Eat Like a Girl, Chris from Cheese and Biscuits, Kerri and Stephen from Dinner Diary, Helen from World Foodie Guide, Liz from Gastronime Domine, Kang from London Eater, Ms Marmite Lover from The English Can Cook, Andrew from Spitton and The Food List, Michelle from Greedy Gourment, Margot from Coffee and Vanilla, and Londonelicious.