Surprise encounters in Alsace, France

🇫🇷🍷a two-star, too-long Michelin dinner and a new friend from Ukraine 🇺🇦: my visit to France's distinctive northeastern region

The fascinating flip-flop history of Alsace

I’ve traveled often in France, but until this past week I’d never been to Alsace, the picturesque region bordering Germany and Switzerland. With its endless vineyards, green terraced hills, storybook villages of half-timbered houses, and its mixed culture, Alsace is an altogether different experience from Paris and other parts of France.¹

My husband

Sam Harrington

and I rented a car so we could drive part of the famous Route des Vins, which runs north to south for over 100 miles. We visited Strasbourg’s stunning Cathedral of Notre-Dame, with its amazing astronomical clock; the Haut-Koenigsbourg Castle, originally constructed in the Middle Ages; and the beautiful small city of Colmar. We stayed in the pedestrian-centric village of Kaysersberg, an hour from Strasbourg, as our base for four nights. A few photos below.

What most fascinated me was the history of Alsace, which has been annexed back and forth, by France and Germany, at least four times². The result is a distinct region, whose food, customs, laws, and Alsatian dialect are a blend of French and German. We had several terrific guides who explained all this, and more.

But enough with the history lesson…

Encounter #1: My new friend from Ukraine

My friend Elie from Ukraine and the vineyards behind our hotel

The first morning that we set off by car, we were wrestling with connecting my phone to the dashboard GPS screen. All of a sudden, a very tall and handsome man appeared out of nowhere, presumably hotel staff, and reached into the car to connect it for us. Then he stood back and said politely (in foreign-accented French):

“Where are you from?”

We responded in French: “We are American.”

“Thank you very much for helping my country,” he said, switching to English without skipping a beat and explaining that he was from Ukraine.

Did he have tears in his eyes?? It was an especially poignant moment because the news from the U.S. that day was about Trump pressuring Ukraine to accept a peace plan heavily favoring the Russians.³

From then on, I ran into Elie, as he called himself, numerous times; he told me he fled Ukraine last fall to save his wife and daughter. The owner of the hotel kindly offered him a job and he was now working as the bellhop (although clearly capable of much more). The hotel, with 32 guest rooms, had a tiny parking lot which could only accommodate 18 cars, so he had to move the cars around constantly.

Encounter #2: Hercule Poirot and foie gras

The highlight of our four-hour (aargh!) dinner at a two-star Michelin restaurant in Kaysersberg was not the inventive food or the elegant dance of the servers, it was engaging in conversation with Hercule Poirot⁴ at the adjacent table. The man was a portly and elegant gentleman, of a certain age, bespectacled, bewhiskered, and possessed of an impressive handlebar mustache. We exchanged pleasantries about the foie gras, which he and my husband had especially enjoyed, as well as the excellent Alsatian wines paired with each course. He spoke charmingly in both foreign-accented French and English, but, alas, he was not Belgian⁵… it turned out he was from Brazil, and in France on business.

That’s what I’ll remember from this gastronomic experience. As a rule, my husband Sam and I avoid what he calls tweezer-food restaurants. We hate the multiple courses, the endless waiting, and sitting so long—even if the menu is “inspired” and of the “highest quality” ingredients. But La Table d’Olivier Nasti was recommended to us so we decided to try it. I won’t even tell you how much it cost; we are still reeling.

So it’s people and atmosphere, rather than the food, per se, that makes memories for me. What about you? Meet me in the comments to tell us what you most savor from your travels.

A few pics from Alsace

Strasbourg’s magnificent Gothic Cathedral of Notre-Dame; there’s a N-D cathedral in multiple French cities… who knew?! P.S. our guide took this photo using the “pano” feature of my iPhone (hence the distortion)

Inside the castle of Haut-Koenisbourg: the symbol of an eagle was used by Bismarck in the 19th century, long before the Nazis

white asparagus was in season; I love it!

Colmar

The view from our hotel window in Kaysersberg

Question for readers

• What affects you most, and makes memories, when you are traveling? The history of a place, the weather, the people, the natural beauty, the food?

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1. If you’re curious about my special relationship with France, read My love letter from Paris.

2. If you want to know more… from the Middle Ages and up until the 17th century, Alsace was part of the Holy Roman Germanic Empire. After the Thirty Years War, France claimed the region in the late 1600s ; the Germans took it back in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War; France reclaimed it again in 1918 after World War I. The last annexation was in 1940, when the Nazis seized Alsace as part of the German occupation of France; Germany was forced to give it back to France in 1945.

3. Trump Pressures Ukraine to Accept a Peace Plan That Sharply Favors Russia (New York Times, April 23, 2025)

4. The fictional Belgian detective was created by Agatha Christie and was featured in her dozens of novels and short stories. When she killed him off in her last novel, in 1975, The New York Times ran his “obituary,” in honor of his fame, but also noting that he was a fictional character.

5. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my phone to dinner, so no photo to prove how good a Hercule Poirot look-alike our dinner mate was.