Scrumming in Paris: La Cremerie

Xebia France hosted an excellent ScrumMaster Certification course at La Defense in Paris. What a great location for a CSM course! Not only the French, but Danes, Swedes, Germans, Poles, and Swiss are often there. Courses sell out quickly and the next one is in March. I expect more and more people will fly in from around Europe to enjoy the good French food and ambiance.

For example, a great French lunch is not to be rushed. We always have to take an hour and a half for three delicious courses, with wine of course. Even then, we are rushing the waiters. Definitely the best Scrum training lunch I have had worldwide.

And after work, what do you do when you have nothing in the refrigerator? Actually, I decided to pick up a couple of bottles of wine at La Cremerie as my wife had noticed it was one of the best wine shops in Paris. We stumbled down the street from our apartment on the Left Bank and into a little shop. The owner asked if we had a reservation as he has a little store with four tables and a bar. We told him we just wanted to pick up a couple of bottles of wine to take back to the apartment to have with an omelette. He said (speaking perfect English), "Sit down, I am going to serve you something better than an omelette!"



I asked him what wine he would recommend with an unbelievably huge chunk of mozzarella with tomato and greens. The best mozzarella I have tasted was in Rome after a Scrum course with IBM. This was even better! And the wine was even better than the mozzarella, a 2006 Auxey-Duresses, an organic burgundy.

It was a magic moment and we shared some laughs with the owner before picking up another bottle of Auxey-Duresses, a 2006 Maranges burgundy, and a 1984 Calvados. I drink a lot of Calvados and this was definitely the best I've had. Check out Cremerie when you are in Paris!