Field Trip Friday: Le Mouton Noir

March 12, 2013


Are you ready for another installment of Field Trip Friday? This time, our wanderings took us to Le Mouton Noir (“the black sheep”) Bakehouse, because sometimes you just need to visit a gourmet bakery. Partner-in-adventure Laure and I made the trek to downtown Tampa to have lunch at this little place I’d heard about through the newspaper.


While our day was fun, we had a bit more adventure than we planned, thanks to my own inattention to detail. My first mistake was to copy only the rights and lefts of the Google Maps directions without the distances between points, and my second mistake was assuming I knew where the place was and walking confidently off in that direction after we’d parked. It was after we’d walked several l-o-o-n-g blocks and the street numbers were going the wrong direction that I remembered a bit about cross streets and Laure pulled out her phone to locate it. Yup, we’d walked in the opposite direction.

We were lucky it was a gorgeous, cool-but-sunny day and the extra walking made us feel that we could indulge, perhaps, in a pastry as well as lunch. (What better way to celebrate 20 extra minutes of walking than by inhaling 800 calories of sweet and sinful delight?)

By the time we reached the bakery, which we had actually driven past on our way to the parking garage, we were more than ready for lunch.

What I ate:

Insalata caprese sandwich
Our reward for the extra walking:

German chocolate cake
Lunch was delicious and worth the drive and walk. Laure sketched hers (she writes about it here) and I took pictures. Perhaps a sketch will appear in my sketchbook, but probably not, because I still haven’t finished the sketches from Sunken Gardens (but I promise I will and I’ll share them here)! We’ll probably go back at some future date—we haven’t tried the chocolate croissants, after all.

The moral of this Field Trip Friday is: when exploring new places, go with the flow and don’t get too upset if things don’t go quite as planned. Oh, and be sure to reward yourself with cake. Definitely, cake should be involved.

Have you taken a field trip lately?

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8 comments

  1. Now THAT'S the kind of field trip I love - any time chocolate is involved! LOL!! Your food looks wonderful - wish I could have joined you. I wouldn't have minded the extra walking at all.

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  2. What fun to hear the story from the other story. Super great idea you two have with these "Friday field trips". Enjoy!

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  3. I use the talking feature of my maps on either my phone or my tablet. It really helps keep me on track but bugs the heck out of most of the people who go with me.

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  4. Claire--We hope to keep taking them, so glad you're enjoying hearing about them!

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  5. Timaree--It was a good thing we had Laure's phone, or we might still be wandering around the city!

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  6. I think getting lost made it more memorable and absolved any guilt at eating the cake—perhaps we should get lost more often?!

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  7. Cheryl--Somehow my response to your comment didn't post--We wish you could have joined us, too. Chocolate is definitely a plus for any field trip!

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  8. Laure--Yes, we should get lost more often. Aside from the extra calories burned, that's when we tend to make our most interesting discoveries.

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