The Sunday Chicken

On Sunday, every open-air market (marché) in France apparently has a chicken rotisserie truck. Our first ever rotisserie chicken in France was several years ago, in Normandy. We still occasionally discuss how awesome it was – moist, juicy, succulent. Even better, we also bought the potatoes that had been roasting in the chicken juices (ok, fat) in the bottom tray of the rotisserie. That was a really memorable introduction to Sunday chicken. Our first Sunday in France this year, we went down to the local marché around noon and bought a roast chicken and all the (raw) fixings needed for a chicken dinner.

Our first chicken this year was also delicious, though we did our own potatoes. We vowed that Sunday Chicken would be a weekly celebration of the delicious French birds.

Last Sunday, however, we were moving between rentals, so no chicken… 😩

Today we were determined to have chicken. As J dawdled around doing this and that, M said, “We have to get going or there won’t be any chickens!” We got to the small marché in Crozon and were alarmed to not see a rotisserie. Maybe every town doesn’t have Sunday chicken? But then we saw them – several spits of plump, juicy chickens. After waiting in line, we asked for one. “Sorry, they have all been reserved for one o’clock,” said the vendor. Uh-oh, now what? Then the lightbulb went off – we’ll go to the other largish town in the area (35 minutes away). J checked the internet (where there is, of course, a website specifically for finding the marchés near you) and made sure there was one there on Sundays. We drove there, found a parking place a bit of a way away, walked briskly back. (Those people down there in front of us – they’re going to buy the last chicken!)

But wait – there’s no marché here! Where is it? J checked the website again… oops, that was a pull-down menu, not something actually saying it was open every day.

NO SUNDAY CHICKEN!!!

So we did the best we could…and went home and had omelets.

As a consolation, the views were great as we drove back and forth on our fruitless errand. And downtown Châteaulin was attractive.