After two full days of meetings and two full nights of social activities, our annual sales kickoff was over! Now my co-workers and I could explore Paris at our own pace. Stéphane, our customer support manager, knew just the place for a “gastonomic” dinner: Neva Cuisine. The chef at Neva was trained by Stéphane’s brother-in-law, who in turn trained Stéphane’s wife Sofie. With such connections we got the best table in the house, the same table that Metallica shared just last week. Maybe that’s what inspired Yannick to cut loose un peau.
The dinner was indeed a gastronomic experience of carefully chosen ingredients, prepared carefully for maximum flavor. The was no ordinary dinner of foie gras and roast duck. The foie gras, embellished with gold flecks in the aspic top, melted smoothly across my tongue, and the Colvert Rôti was roasted to perfection.
But the pièce de résistance was la sphère déstructurée chocolat, an ice cream filled chocolate sphere glazed with silver and doused with hot chocolate sauce at the table. Magnifique!
After dinner we walked up to the 18th arrondissement passing the famous Moulin Rouge in search of a dance club. We considered and rejected more than one, then switched our search to finding a taxi, which proved just as difficult. We almost rented Velib bikes, but they didn’t take our chipless American credit cards. In the end, half of us caught a taxi and the others simply took a long walk back to the hotel.
