Paris Restaurants

Pet Travel Tuesday Destination: France (Paris & Provence), Cambridge, Massachusetts Book: Julia’s Cats: Julia Child’s Life in the Company of Cats (2012) By Pamela Douglas Webster If you grew up watching television in America, you know Julia Child had a passion for cooking. If you’ve seen a documentary of her life or the feature film, Julie and Julia, you know of her passion for her husband, Paul. But did you know about her passion for cats? I thought not. Documentary filmmakers Patricia Barey and Therese Burson thought that was a shame. After all, as chef and close friend Jim Dodge said, “If you don’t know how much Julia loved cats, you didn’t know Julia.” Julia’s Cats: Julia Child’s Life in the Company of Cats begins in Paris. Paul Child worked for the Foreign Service and had pulled the plum assignment of designing cultural exhibits for the American embassy. A Parisian Cat explores a park fountain. While exploring her new home and improving her language skills, Julia noticed the cats who ruled the city. Much has been made of Paris restaurants and shops catering to dogs and their doting people. But the markets, rooftops, and alleyways are ruled by cats. It didn’t take long for Julia and Paul to realize their apartment would only become a home when it hosted its own feline. They adopted Minette. Minette’s escapades were the subject of JuPaul’s (one of the many combined names they used) frequent correspondence with family. Paul even entered into a friendly rivalry with his twin brother over whose cat played the more inventive games. While reading the imaginative messages— “Minette wants everyone to know she caught a bird on the roof.”—I start to wonder if Julia and Paul Child weren’t the first pet bloggers, simply lacking the technology to share their love with a wider audience. After Julia enrolled in le Cordon Bleu to learn the techniques that produced the exquisite French food she had fallen in love with, Minette watched every experiment. And when Julia prepared her first Cordon Bleu meal for her husband and sister, Minette arrived in the dining room resting like a stole around the chef’s neck. When Paul’s new posting took the couple to Marseilles, Julia had to leave her beloved Minette behind. Luckily, Julia’s friendship with the local fishmonger and fellow cat lover led her to the owner of a charcuterie who was inconsolable after losing her beloved cat. Julia was sorry to say goodbye to little Minette. But she knew that no one could provide a more loving (and delicious) home for the wee cat. For many years, Julia was unable to have her own, full time cat. After leaving France, Paul’s work took them to Germany, Washington, DC, Norway, and eventually, Cambridge, Massachusetts. And, by the time they landed in Cambridge, the success of Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking had led first to book tours and eventually to her own cooking show. The frequent travel meant that Julia would have to fill her love for cats with her regular attendance of cat shows and her greeting of every cat she met in her travels. A kitty fan of French cooking. The success of Julia’s television show and the exhaustion that resulted from all the work involved drew the couple to look for a place to recover their energy. They found it in Provence. With a small home near her collaborator and friend, Simone Beck, Julia was again able to adopt a cat of her own. And, when she returned to Massachusetts for the television season, Julia was able to leave her kitty in her friend’s capable care. The authors detail the various cats the Childs befriended, in Provence, in Cambridge, and in their eventual retirement home (although even two weeks before her death, Julia Child could hardly be called retired) of Santa Barbara, California. The book ends with two lovely portraits of Julia Child. Paul Child took one of her and her kitty Minette in Paris as a young newlywed. The other was taken a week before her death at 92, holding her cat Minou

Paris is a relatively safe city, as cities go, and recently, I was having a discussion with someone about places to be wary about traveling to and was told that the only place in the world that they felt unsafe was in….San Francisco. (And they were from Naples!) So anything can happen anywhere in the world and petty crime sometimes occurs in places where you don’t expect it, like museums, hotel dining rooms, and restaurants. Sometimes it’s just bad luck. Other times, it’s a lapse of common sense. For example, if you wear fancy jewels or tote a pricey handbag on the métro, there is probably someone on there that loves your gold Rolex as much as you do. On public transit, it’s especially easy to “grab and go” things because once the doors shut and the train pulls away, the damage is done. (If that does happen to you, notify the driver at the next station; sometimes they will call security for you and alert others on the train to be careful.) In cases where your wallet is stolen, they will sometimes remove the cash right away and toss everything else in the trash, or even on the ground, as it’s hard to prove that a wad of cash is stolen. So sometimes you do get your wallet back. (A friend had the wallet lifted from her purse, which was next to her in a restaurant. After the diner next to her quickly left before eating, when she realized what had happened, the waitress found her wallet on the ground just outside.) Wily pickpockets blend in well. It’s easy to categorize people by how they dress or look, or their nationality, but pros know how to mix in. Someone who leads tours in Italy pointed out the pickpockets at her outdoor market, some posing as young couples on their honeymoon and I never would have suspected a thing. I’ve shooed away a few young women “tourists”, looking lost as they tried to read their maps in Barcelona, using the maps to cover up their hands as they rifled through people’s belonging. I’ve seen the same ruse in Paris and it’s a shame that we have to be careful when helping someone who is ostensibly lost. Continue Reading Paris Safety Tips...

A week recently spent in the Loire Valley, which I hadn't visited for more than a day or two in many years, caused me to fall into love with this magnificent and graciously green patch of France all over again. And this despite the fact that it's not always an easy place to eat. Oh, there's lots of good food in the Loire to be sure, but after two or three of the very old-school French feeds that so many restaurants in the region still feel it incumbent to offer, I found myself squirming for relief from the relentlessness of these heavily formatted meals and their self-consciously serious traditional French cooking. The problem is that many chefs continue to believe this sort of dining is what up-market travelers to the region require when the reality is that most people would be made much happier by simpler, lighter, healthier cooking and a service style that's more relaxed and less sociologically stuffy. As a city-dweller, I'm really not looking for the same thing in the country that I want in Paris either. Happily, however, a few local chefs have seen the light, and the best among them is young Olivier Arlot, who moved a few miles from Tours to the pretty little town of Montbazon a year and a half ago and took over the premises of a well-respected local restaurant called La Chanceliere. He gave the dining rooms a modern makeover, too, painting the large old exposed beams on the low ceilings dove gray and installing soft artful lighting. So instead of the tedious faux-chateau idiom you so often find in the Loire, this place comes off as a casually chic country auberge, and that's a good thing. Having eaten lunch at a pretentious and disappointing one-star restaurant in Blois--the service was glacially paced, the food fussy and unoriginal and the atmosphere hidebound enough to bring on the worst symptom of a restaurant where no one feels at ease, a clientele that speaks in whispers at the table out of misplaced respect some high-handed idea of gastronomically serious meal, neither Bruno nor I were very hungry when we left our hotel for dinner. We might, in fact, have begged off going out to dinner altogether if our hotel had offered the option of a slice of homemade terrine de campagne with a nice big green salad and then maybe some cheese. Instead there were silver candelabras on the tables in the dining rooms and the pale salmon colored linens that are a surefire visual warning that the kitchen could be depended upon to offer a eighties time capsule experience of 'gastronomique' dining. So we went out. Settling in over glasses of Domaine de la Taille aux Loups sparkling Montlouis, my new favorite vin petillant, the dining room was populated by a mixture of mostly middle-aged Americans and Canadians rewarding themselves with a good meal after a long day of the cycling tourism that's popular in the region and shy locals out for a special occasion, and the young staff was warm and welcoming. Though I'm often exasperated by amuse bouches, since they rarely deliver what their name promises, I wasn't particularly interested when ours arrived, but the bright gently sweet flavor of warm fresh pea soup spiked with the jus of gently poached and chopped baby squid was intriguing. The soft brine of the squid did an intriguing minuette with the vividly vegetal flavor of the peas, and our mouths were amused indeed. Blanketed in foam though they may have been, our first courses were outstanding. I loved my chopped white asparagus with a fried egg and crumbled bacon in a light smoky broth, and Bruno's lobster ravioli, too often anonymous and barely tasting of lobster, were tender little crescents of homemade pasta filled with perfectly cooked lobster meat and garnished with more of same and served in an intriguing fennel scented froth. The bread served with our starters was excellent, too, and suddenly we were really glad we hadn't thrown in the towel and missed this meal. Our main courses, which arr

One of the things that you need to have when shopping for food in France is a big, sturdy shopping basket. You Also need to have a bit of patience because the lines can be long, and lines in Paris are like airplane restrooms; when it’s your turn, everyone behind you disappears and suddenly, you seem to have all the time in the world. But more important in Paris than having a big pannier, and an even bigger bladder (to hold it, because few markets have a place to, uh, “go”), is that you also need to have plenty of change. France and America have a curious relationship. Each is fascinated with each other and both have a camaraderie that’s built on admiration, a little of frustration, and a soupçon of envy. For every American that rattles on about “free health care” (no matter that it’s not free, it’s paid for by – or from – a percentage of your earnings) there is a French person exclaiming how much they would love to live in New York City because of l’energie. (No matter that if you walked right into someone as if they weren’t there, as happens in Paris, they’d get a real “New York Experience” from a real New Yorker.) Continue Reading Change...

                  Perbacco is a restaurant Colette and I had "tested" and it has a private space on the 2nd floor somewhat suitable for private parties, which in this case meant I could hold an Editorial Board meeting there - I thought.  The problem was that at its peak at lunch the noise from downstairs drowned out the upstairs' discussion.                   We all started offwith a green salad with parmesan slices; then I chose the sole with capers and raisins over the chicken breast and both were pedestrian; and we ended with a nice strawberry-rhubarb and creme fraiche dessert. My publisher picked up the check so I have no idea of its magnitude. Go again? Not for a meeting, but personal lunch sure. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Zuni Cafe is a place we haven't been in eons and where when our local hosts whom I frequently eat with in Paris suggested it, I jumped.  It remains nice, clean, contemporary, and reliable.                 We all started with various salads (Caesar for me and rabbit and mesclun for the others [all unpictured]); then Colette and I had incredibly great quail while our hosts had salmon and halibut.  We all then sort of shared an ice cream dessert which was superior. With a bottle of Dehlinger Pinot Noir graciously brought in from their cellar ($20 corkage), another of Chardonnay and a glass of Cabernet Franc, one tea and no botled water our check came to $133.75 per couple before tip. Go?  For the quail alone it's worth it.

Often there's no faster route to high spirits than a sudden surge of spontaneity and a good dose of extravagance (deeply considered penuriousness somehow just never seems to work). So on a gloomy Saturday morning, Bruno and I set out on a gastronomic expedition that I was certain would raise our weather-dampened spirits. We were heading to the new butcher shop that Hugo Desnoyer had opened in such a remote and very quiet corner of the remote and very quiet 16th arrondissement that it barely seemed like Paris when we got there. Or at least the Paris I know, but then everyone inhabits the same city differently. Almost from the moment I arrived here in 1986, I developed an indifference shading to aversion to the 8th and 16th arrondissements, which have always struck me, with the exception of certain small neighborhoods, as epitomizing a certain bourgeois smugness. And since none of my friends live in this part of the city and most of them feel the same way that I do, I very rarely find myself in these western arrondissements. Still, there's some handsome architecture deep in the 16th, and it's also very green. And at this time of year, rain-filled lilacs are tumbling over wrought iron fences, and you catch a glimpse of an occasional bank of peonies on a private garden here or there. (Oh, how lovely it would be to have a private garden in the city! But failing that, I'm awfully glad to have the Jardins de Luxembourg). In any event, Monsieur Desnoyer's new butcher shop turned out to be neat as a pin, and the staff just as polite and helpful as they are at Tiffany's---if you find other similarities between these two businesses, you're not wrong either. But our destination was the solid butcher block table d'hotes on a raised platform in a corner of the this immaculate white space. What we'd decided, you see, was to take ourselves out for a carnivore's feast, something Desnoyer only previously offered in a do-it-yourself version. So we settled in at the table, and decided to share the faux-filet for two with a very good bottle of Haute Cotes de Beaune. No sooner than we'd ordered than the handsome and courtly Monsieur Desnoyer arrived with a complimentary plate of charcuterie, not because he knows me from a hole in the ground, but rather because with the opening of this new address, the butcher's shop where he began his career as an apprentice many years ago and is now the boss, he's celebrating his good fortune and hard work by sharing. Not only was it a generous and charming gesture, but it reminded me of why he's my favorite Paris butcher. In the suddenly testosterone jumped up big bad ego world of star butchers in Paris, Desnoyer is the quiet man who gets on with his craft and who's real pleasure is in selling people the very best meat he can possibly find. There were three other people sitting at the table, and if we were reciprocally polite, there was no conversation with our neighbors occurred until a kindly and very familiar looking man and an Asian friend sat down at the table, and I racked my brains trying to figure out why I knew him. When our meat arrived and we grinned, he wished us a "Bon appetite!," and we fell into conversation. He told us he owned a a little restaurant on the Left Bank, a steakhouse, and I suddenly recognized William Bernet, the owner of the wonderful Le Severo in the rue des Plantes. Mais bien sur! He'd come along for lunch to support his star supplier, and because these two gents are really good friends beyond anything having to do with commerce. So then he ordered a really good bottle of Burgundy, and insisted we try it, and the table suddenly became very jolly as a previously shy crew recognized one another as lovers of la bonne chère (and chaire). Just as our meat arrived--a sublime and perfectly cooked piece of Limousin beef so big we took half of it home and ate it for the next three days (here, parsimony is much advised as the basis for real de

Following in the footsteps of Septime, and (once-upon a time) Spring, the hard-to-book Paris restaurant Le Chateaubriand has acquired a space for an eventual wine shop between the restaurant and its sister wine bar Le Dauphin. Word on the street is that it will focus on interesting imports. No [...]

Here's a video of Chicago-born expat chef Daniel Rose talking to interviewer Charlie Rose on his eponymous PBS show about opening Spring in Paris, France. He starts off discussing how he got to Paris in the first place—he originally arrived to finish university, only deciding to attend cooking school as a way to stay in the city. "I stayed in France because there was this opportunity to be nourished by all these new things I was learning. Whether it was language, or culture." The Roses discuss the beauty and "certain clarity" of a great dining experience, "...it opens up the rest of the evening for other things: for falling in love, for having a conversation, for enjoying a restaurant, and for feeling alive" and learning French from scratch: "When I landed in Paris [for the first time] I spoke no French, and every moment that I tried to speak was frought with intense anxiety." On the the difficulties behind opening the first Spring: In 2006, ... no one had opened up a tiny little restaurant ... with no service and sometimes no heat. In the winter it was impossible, people were freezing. I moved restaurants because one day someone said, 'I'd like a coffee.' And I was busy answering the telephone and cooking at the same time, and they realized that it just wasn't going to to possible for me to just stop what I'm doing to make a coffee. I said, what kind of a dumb restaurant is this, where a guy wants a coffee and he can't have one? It's not like he asked me to make a banana split; he just wanted a coffee, which is a normal part of a restaurant experience. Video: Daniel Rose on Charlie Rose · American Chef Daniel Rose discusses his Paris restaurant Spring [Charlie Rose] · All Daniel Rose Coverage on Eater [-E-] · All Charlie Rose Coverage on Eater [-E-]

                          Boulevard is a place we last came to some years ago and quite liked it so when we were told this is where my professional association's past-presidents luncheon was being held we considered it a lucky stroke of luck.  The menu was restricted as befits a special meal for 30 in their special room - L'Avenue - but was OK and there was no booze since we were considered to be working.  

I have always loved Middle Eastern foods. The fresh vegetables, the liberal use of herbs and seasonings, including a touch of spiciness at times, and the casual way of eating that the food encourages. Meze is the term that’s used to define all the “little plates” that get brought out to begin in a meal, served in little bowls often with pools of olive oil in the middle, waiting to be sopped up with soft pita or other flatbreads. When I wrote about the Lebanese meze I’d had on a trip to the Middle East, I didn’t realize that a number of people were all that interested in what vegetables went into it. (But who can blame them? I wanted to remake it, too.) Like a lot of those foods, people aren’t necessarily following recipes – they’re following their nose, and yup, you got it – they cook by taste. Continue Reading Labneh...