Recently in Paris category

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 (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 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 certainly get a real “New York Experience” from a real New Yorker.)

Continue Reading Change…

A friend who’s been living here quite long time once wondered aloud to me, why Parisians sandwich-makers weren’t more creative. I never really thought about it; because I buy sandwiches so infrequently, I’m really happy to have a simple, classic jambon-fromage with a smear of butter on a baguette. But I suppose if I ate sandwiches daily, like so many people now do, that I’d also want a little diversity between the slices. (In my defense, I’ll sometimes see if I can get goat cheese on my sandwich, rather than the usual Emmenthal.)

That probably explains in popularity of the Subway chain in France, who offers something different from the French classics. According to their website, they now have around 66 outlets in Paris. But I’m not joining the lines, though, because it’s where I had one of the worst sandwiches of my life back in the states. You’d think it’s pretty hard to f-up a sandwich. Thankfully, things have taken a turn for the better.

Continue Reading Verjus Sandwiches…

After all this time you’d think that I would have figured out how to go back to older postings here on the site, update them, then bring them up to the front. Because if things change on a subsequent visit, or if I hear something major has changed, I like to make sure we’re all in the same loop. But not being so tech-savvy, I decided just to start with a clean plate after a recent visit to Les Rubis, even though not much has changed since my last visit. In fact, I don’t think anything has changed since my first one, which was probably decades ago.

One thing I am better at, though, is keeping up with Pam Williams, who I met almost about ten years back when she was launching Ecole Chocolat, her online chocolate school. She lives in Canada, but comes to Paris annually with her students, and it has become our tradition to have lunch together. No matter what is happening, or how crazy my life is, Pam and her husband’s visits have become one of the few calming presences in my life. (It might help that last time they gave me a spa gift certificate, since I was in the middle of a rather torturous remodel.) But I really mostly enjoy their annual visit because they’re such nice people (trés canadienne) and are funny, we can openly talk about anything, and they’re just all-around good dining companions. Oh yeah, and she also brings chocolate along.

Continue Reading Le Rubis…

I had kind of a crummy day yesterday. I was invited to a restaurant opening that didn’t go as I had hoped. It was something that was a new concept for Paris, based on something uniquely American. And while people here are very good at embracing “concepts”, I almost felt the need to remind people that having a restaurant and serving food are about: 1) Serving guests, and 2) Having good food. Get those two down first, then everything else is gravy.

My initial clue should have been the people working the door. Their first question was – Who was I writing for? And then, Where was I going to place my article about them? (They seemed pretty disinterested that I had a blog…um, #egoshrinker) So after spending close to an hour sitting there, waiting, and watching the attractive young women next to me get their table set up with bread and different spreads, I decided to split because I had other things to do – namely, eat. So I stopped at Kayser bakery, picked up a loaf of levain bread and went home to make myself a grilled cheese sandwich.

(Interestingly, as I was leaving the other place, I ran into chef/owner Gregory Marchand of Frenchie who I told about my experience and I could see he felt my pain. Then mentioned he’ll be soon making similar items, and I was happy to know that I will at some point soon, I will be able to get my fix at his place.)

Continue Reading The best 5 euros I’ve spent in Paris…

It’s rare I find a restaurant where I wouldn’t change a thing. I don’t consider myself picky or a tough customer (others might say otherwise); it’s just my idea of a perfect restaurant is a nice welcome, servers that are nearby when I need them – and I don’t need to be besties with them – and good, uncomplicated food made with well-sourced ingredients. I tend to think those things are fairly easy to accomplish, but I’m often dismayed when I order something and it arrives at the table underseasoned, or the presentation takes precedence over flavor.

While I appreciate chefs wanting to fuss over every teensy little thing on the plate, I kind of wish they would focus on the food and the flavor rather than making sure the singular poached scallion blossom is draped just-so over the artfully placed crescent of beet alongside the smear of white chocolate-cumin emulsion with a poof of salmon cheek foam balanced on top. Just put the food on a plate and send it out, folks! So after a few dud dinners at highly touted restaurants, I was happy to hit pay-dirt at Le 6 Paul Bert.

Continue Reading Le 6 Paul Bert…

So we’ve had the first bean-to-bar chocolate maker open in Paris. And now we have homemade tortillas. Or as I call them, “Two more reasons to stay put.” Which also means I can give the valuable luggage space I was devoting to lugging corn tortillas back from the states to something else – like pecans and memory foam slippers.

Continue Reading ¡Hola, Mil Amores Tortilleria!…

“Goopy” isn’t a word used too often when writing about food. Am not sure why, but perhaps because there aren’t a lot of things that are goopy, that you actually want to eat. Mont d’Or has been called the holy grail of French raw milk cheeses. It’s goopy for sure, and if that bothers you, well, that’s something you’re going to have to work on for yourself. In the meanwhile, I’ve been lapping up this Mont d’Or I recently acquired, enjoying every single goopy mouthful.

Called “the holy grail of raw milk cheeses”, Mont d’Or (also called Vacherin Mont d’Or, and Vacherin Haut-Doubs) is truly a spectacular cheese. And even though they’re widely available in the winter in France, because of their richness, it’s something I reserve for special occasions. For me, that special occasion was lunch yesterday.

Continue Reading Mont d’Or…

There are so many of these places opening in Paris that it’s making my head spin, in a good way. Way back when, in 2008, when I did a post on where to get good coffee in Paris, there were just a handful of places listed. Now I can’t keep up! So along comes a little place, Tuck Shop, located in the 10th, a slip of a joint where a former café used to be that rented sewing machines for use, on-site, by the hour.

I can’t sew, nor can I knit. But believe it or not, I can spin – and I can eat and drink coffee, too. So there I found myself at Tuck Shop, one of the newest of the coffee places that are brewing and extracting cups in Paris that people are crisscrossing the city to sip.

Continue Reading Tuck Shop…