North African: Chez Omar is among the most well-known Moroccan restaurants in Paris. It’s only a 15-minute walk from my apartment but until yesterday I’d been there only once. For couscous I’ve preferred for the past ten years Dar Tunis, a Tunisian restaurant in my neighborhood where the couscous is made with love and where I’ve always been welcomed as though I’m member of the family. For years the owners thought I was Tunisian, and even when they finally understood that I wasn’t they assumed that I must have Tunisian ancestors, like most everyone else who frequented the restaurant. Unfortunately, that restaurant has been shuttered for the past few weeks with no indication as to whether permanently or for vacation.

Yesterday, then, I went with three Brazilian friends to Omar’s. Chez Omar (address below) has plenty of choices on the menu but we didn’t even pretend to consider anything but the couscous and its vegetables and broth, accompanied by beef, lamb, chicken, sausage, or, in the case of the vegetarian in our group, nothing.

Though there’s nothing extraordinary about the dishes or décor or service, Chez Omar is always crowded. It’s both a restaurant and a scene. Chez Omar is easy-going, relatively inexpensive (nevertheless overpriced), amiably orchestrated by Omar, and it/he occasionally hosts recognizable faces and often attracts people with clean shirt and nice shoes.

None of the latter was at my table, especially after Ana’s high heel broke on the sidewalk and some sauce splashed onto Humberto’s shirt, and then some more. Erica simply looks like she should be famous. Perhaps that, along with good timing, was why, after a 10-minute wait, we had the luxury of a corner table where no one could overhear our accents except for the waiter and Omar when he came to say hello.

Omar asked Erica, Ana, and Humberto, the three with black hair (actually any hair) at the table where they were from and, after they told him, he mentioned several famous Brazilians who had come to his restaurant.

As a joke, he then also asked me where I was from. I say “as a joke” because to him it was obvious that I was either North African or some French-North African mix. Not from my accent, mind you, but because North Africans in Paris often initially see me as kin, as at my neighborhood Tunisian restaurant. (He may also have figured only some French and/or North African would accompany three Brazilians to his restaurant.) After so many years in France a vague aura of North Africania is actually now also a part of my personal heritage.

French: Ana Jabur (in the middle in the photo above) is the chef at another well-known restaurant in eastern Paris, Hotel du Nord. Hotel du Nord is the former hotel by Canal Saint Martin that lent its name to the famous French film of the same name from 1938. It’s now a decent, classic yet mildly hip restaurant, café, and bar with an international clientele. There, Ana prepares classic, mildly hip French dishes. I’ll say no more about Ana’s talents there, however, because she’s leaving for the restaurant at the end of April to become chef of possibly hip and happening and currently hush-hush restaurant that will be opening in late May. More on that when it happens.

Last Friday I had late lunch Humberto and Erica at Hotel du Nord (address below), then Ana joined us when she finished in the kitchen. I asked Ana if she had any suggestions for what I could make for a dinner party the following day. (They were all polite enough not to notice that none of them was on the guest list.) Ana had a question first: Do you know how to cook? My response: It depends what you mean by cook. Her comment: I’ll keep it simple then.

This image above is of the recipes she dictated and explained to me on the paper table cover at the Hotel du Nord, spread on the traditional French tablecloth in my kitchen. I would make a velouté (a thick creamy vegetable soup), a leg of lamb and potato something-or-other, and sauce for the lamb. Together we decided that the best recipe for dessert was a bakery nearby. I got the tail end of the sauce wrong, which happens to be the most part of the important sauce, but served it nonetheless—at the very least it expressed leeks, onions, wine, and effort.

Royal: There were four of us, three French friends with clean shirts and nice shoes and me, with an Iron Chef apron that someone once gave me. I served a bottle of Joseph Perrier Cuvée Royale Brut 1999 Champagne with the hors d’oeuvres. Since one guest was reliably late and another reliably brought Champagne, when the former arrived I also opened the latter’s bottle, which we finished with the velouté.

With the lamb (or on the lamb, as the French would say) I served a confidential red wine called Royal Heritage. Royal Heritage is made by two sisters, Isabelle and Catherine Orliac, who are heirs to a vineyard in southwest France that once provided wine to the Court of Louis XVI. Their ancestor Jean Orliac received permission from the king to supply the Court with his wine in 1780, thus the date on the bottle. The contents were from the harvest of 2005. The wine comes from the little-known Côtes du Brulhois, 100 miles southeast of Bordeaux, 60 miles northwest of Toulouse.

The wine is available in only a handful of restaurants (see Orliac website below) and is otherwise obtained by “sponsoring” a vine. For 140 euros (currently $190) one “sponsors” the vine and, 18 months later, a bottle of its fermented fruit awaits you at the Orliac family’s Chateau la Bastide. You can then drive over to pick up your bottle with its wax-sealed cork and its handsome black box, or, more likely, have sent to you at additional cost. Your bottle will actually have the fruit of more than just your vine alone since the wine is a mix of four grapes: tannat, cabernet franc, merlot, and abouriou. The result is an excellent, hefty, full-bodied, dark fruity, mildly spicy wine that, as Isabelle Orliac had told me, goes well on lamb.

One hundred forty euros plus postage is quite pricey for a Côtes du Brulhois, albeit a big Côtes du Brulhois. Sponsors are in part paying for a piece of history, for the sense of exclusiveness (there are only 10 hectares / 25 acres of vines), and for the possibility to one day visit their vine. Sponsor six and you’re invited for lunch. I’m looking forward to one day visiting my own vine.

I must note, however, that am not an actual sponsor but rather a journalist who broke out a free bottle to impress his friends with his generosity. My friends in turn impressed me with their own generosity by telling me how accomplished I’ve become with French cuisine, without once mentioning the sauce. They also complimented me on my choice of Champagne, cheese, and dessert. It was indeed a rather good meal. Nevertheless I’m aware that the French like to compliment a foreigner’s appreciation of things French as a way of complimenting themselves and their own heritage, now partly mine.

Royal Heritage produced by 2 Soeurs en Aquitaine at Chateau la Bastide, 47270 Clermont Soubiran. Tel. 05 53 87 41 02. www.royal-heritage.eu. I’ll be revisiting my encounters with Isabelle Orliac on France Revisited in the coming month.

Hôtel du Nord. 102 quai de Jemmapes, 10th arrondissement. Tel. 01 40 40 78 78. www.hoteldunord.org. Metro Jacques Bonsergent.

Chez Omar. 47 rue de Bretagne, 3rd arrondissement. Tel. 01 42 72 36 26. Metro Temple, Arts-et-Métiers, or Filles du Calvaire. Credit cards not accepted.

The Weatherman, March 3

I rarely go out for lunch in winter,
but today I joined a television weatherman
at a neighborhood restaurant that prides itself
in serving only the freshest of fresh food,
though it seemed a stretch for the waiter to call the scorpion fish fruity.

He recognized him, and I think the women at the next table did, too.
And afterwards someone stopped to say hello as we crossed the bridge.
What a beautiful day to be walking by the canal, she said.
It’s going to get cold again, he warned, maybe even snow next week.

I don’t have a TV to see him wave his hands before the map of France.
But I saw buds on the bush on my balcony today,
and the cat, too, noticed the morning sun on the kitchen table
finally reaching over the grey mansard across the street,
where the neighbors close their curtains a little later every day.

As a follow-up to my last post about how the person behind the counter in Paris is quickly disturbed by a client who fails to follow his or her script or rules, here’s another recent experience.

On Sunday I walked into a bakery with a friend visiting from Denmark. Everything looked delicious to him, and to me, so we were slow to choose and let several people go ahead of us. Finally the friend told me what he wanted and I ordered for the two of us since I was treating and I spoke French.

I told the seller that we wanted a pistachio crumble (in the case to the left, and so the seller immediately went left) and a brownie (in the case to the right, and so the seller went right). When I ordered the first pastry the seller was already standing behind the case with the brownies, so ordering it the way I did made him go one way then return the other.

In the scheme of things that mattered little since cash register was in the middle. Still the seller remarked, “Next time order the brownie first. It’ll be more efficient that way because I was standing right there.”

Perhaps he was trying to be funny, but if so he could have been a lot funnier. No, I think he was actually telling me that I should follow his script for seller-customer “correctness.” I was in fact being admonished for ordering in a way that he saw as inefficient.

I responded, “Sorry, but I thought it more polite to order my guest’s pastry before mine.” In other words, I have my own script for “correctness” that had nothing to do with the seller. For me, the customer, my guest trumped his efficiency.

The seller looked at me with a smile and with a slight nod and said, “C’est tout à votre honneur, Monsieur” (“That’s very honorable of you, Sir” or “It does you credit”).

He may have still thought that I’d wrong him with an inefficient order, but it was nonetheless a gracious response.

Today is Crepe Day in France as well as in other countries with crepe traditions, such as Belgium and Switzerland. Americans think of it as Groundhog Day. Crepes and groundhogs both mark the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The day’s Catholic name is la Chandeleur in France, in recognition of the candles (chandelles) that are/were brought to the church in remembrance of the day when baby Jesus was first brought to the Temple. Whatever you call it, Feb. 2 is the way the northern hemisphere acknowledges that winter is still here but that we’re all now ready for the countdown to spring.

No, those aren’t crepes in the picture—they’re tourtisseaux, which are traditional Mardi Gras beignets or fritters and so also in the spirit of the season. Tourtisseaux come in different shapes: square, rectangular, diamond-shaped. They’re basically cheap, greasy donuts. They go by other names in other regions, but Vendée and Poitou, the area just south of the westernmost portion of the Loire Valley, call them tourtisseaux.

I took that picture yesterday while in a village in Vendée, a few miles from the coast. Tourtisseaux may have been replaced by crepes in the bakery today, but more likely the bakery has both crepes and tourtisseaux. I’m not sure that the crepes are big sellers though since everyone in Vendée knows how to make a crepe at home but not everyone knows how to make a tourtisseau. Actually, they probably do know (it’s basically the same recipe just fried) but would rather flip a crepe at home than fritter a tourtisseau.

I don’t know what’s in that bakery today because I’m now back in Paris, a town that isn’t big on tourtisseaux and their brother beignets. Parisians prefer more sophisticated sweets. Anyway, there’s better mark-up for the more convivial galette des Rois, the falky pastry tart with a frangipane filling (and a little token or effigy inside), that’s traditionally associated with Epiphany (Jan. 6).

The “growing” season for the galette des Rois traditionally ends by mid-January, but with global warming and the Church’s absence of influence in the pastry industry of late, the season now extends throughout the month of January.

When I returned from Vendée last night I found an envelope in front of my door, which could only mean that my neighbor was planning a party. He’s very nice about warning us neighbors about his parties so that in case we feel like going to sleep before 3am we have time to reserve a room at a hotel for the night. He even includes his phone number just in case we feel like giving it to the police so that they don’t have to drive over.

This time his letter announced “une petite soirée pour fêter la chandeleur,” a little party to celebrate crepe day. I figured that had to be a euphemism for something because I couldn’t understand why someone would have a petite soirée to fete Groundhog Day on a Tuesday and if so why we would need to be warned about it. But I’ve been home all evening and I’ve barely heard a sound, so I imagine that they actually did spend the evening next door flipping crepes.

My friend Didier, whom I was visiting in Vendée, made crepes for his family today. Years ago I asked him for his recipe because before then I was the only person in France who’d never made them. Here it is in French and in English.

Didier’s crêpe recipe

Mélanger :
½ kilo de farine
4 oeufs
1 petite boite de lait concentré non sucré
1 litre de lait frais
Extrait de concentré de vanille
Un peu de huile (2 cuillères à soupe)
1 verre de bière

Laisser reposer 2-3 heures en dehors du frigo. Il est ensuite possible de mettre le mélange au frigo.

Faire les crêpes.

Mix together:
1 lb of flour
4 eggs
1 small can of (unsweetened) evaporated milk
1 quart of whole milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
1 cup of beer

Allow to rest for 2-3 hours out of the refrigerator. Mixture may then be placed in the refrigerator or used immediately.

Make crepes. (Circumflex optional if you don’t have one handy)

You remember Jordan Zell, don’t you, the France Revisited Guest Blogger from Israel who came to Paris in June seeking inspiration for his songwriting?

Well, this fall, freshly inspired and with new songs in his repertoire, Jordan has taken the next step in his career and has been playing in bars in Jerusalem. He’s been performing his own songs and various covers accompanied by talented guitarist and assistant arranger Yuri Stolov.

One of the songs they’ve been playing is “On a Train from Paris to Rome,” which Jordan was working on in Paris and for which I wrote the lyrics. One of these days we’ll get around to making a real video for it, but in the meantime you can watch and listen to a recent practice performance of the song at the Putin Bar in Jerusalem.

I’m actually not a big fan of this version since I find its ending is a bit of a downer (Jordan disagrees), Yuri’s fingering sometimes makes it sound as though the train is headed to Spain (Yuri disagrees), and the sound quality, though decent for bar, isn’t great, especially regarding the lyrics, which I’m sure you’ll all want to listen to very attentively. Also, you can’t see Jordan’s face from behind his shadow-mask. But I’m just the lyricist.

So here it is, Jordan Zell and Yuri Stolov playing “On a Train from Paris to Rome,” a travel song by Jordan Zell (music) and yours truly (lyrics), take 1.

Henri and I kissed our host good-bye, told her it would be genial to see her again, and vousvoied her one last time regarding her gentillesse before leaving Dinard for the 4½-hour drive back to Paris.

We would be in Paris in about six, actually, because we stopped to visit the town of Dinan, a 20-minute drive from Dinard inland along the Rance River. Due to their proximity and the similarity of their names, no one who lives outside of Brittany can ever remember which is Dinard and which is Dinan. Dinard is the resort town along the coast; Dinan is the medieval town that’s inland. An easier way to remember is that Dinard is the place you go because your rich friends tell you to while Dinan is the place you go because your guidebook tells you to.

Henri and I had really been looking forward to going to Dinan, he because the ramparts of Dinan speak volumes about the efforts of the Duchy of Brittany to remain independent of the French Crown, I because I thought I could get an interesting article out of it.

The Blue Guide I had brought along calls it “one of the most beautiful towns in Brittany.” The dark stone towns of Brittany do indeed have a brutal beauty and a medieval timeliness. And Dinan’s old town is so well preserved, along with intact ramparts and a view of the Rance River, that it’s easy to understand why the guidebooks speak so highly of it. But Henri and I were both disappointed.

Henri wouldn’t say he was disappointed since failing to appreciate a town that was graced by a duke is bad for his self-esteem as it calls into question the very essence of his aspirations to live like one. But I could tell he wasn’t into the place because he only asked me once to take his picture, and in that picture, standing on a rampart overlooking the Rance (the view in this photo), his expression is as hard and cold as the very stone of those ramparts.

Perhaps it was the change of weather—after 48 hours of luxuriously clear skies the clouds of northwest France suddenly arrived. (Note the difference between the top photo and the others.) But it may actually have been the town itself at 5 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon in September.

The old streets themselves felt like a weekend winding down, with stale kouign-amans (carmelized milkbread cakes) and fars bretons (pudding cakes) in the bakery windows, the sidestreets empty, and people milling about the main streets in the hopes that the old stones would tell them something about their past or perhaps about the direction of their lives, but the stones had nothing to say but “go home.”

It’s times like this when you realize that your guidebook can only take you so far and that the rest is up to you.

Forty-eight hours may not sound like a lot of travel, but it was indeed time to go home. We had a four-hour drive ahead of us. Before leaving we stopped for a drink a café on a grand old square that’s now mostly a vast parking lot. Our table was near an equestrian statue of Bertrand du Guesclin, a 14th-century warrior and nobleman from Brittany. Henri tried to tell me about the man but either his heart wasn’t in it or he really didn’t know himself why the guy deserved a statue in Dinan.

In any case I took the wheel and steered us onto the highway and didn’t let go, except to get gas, until I dropped myself off in front of my door. Henri made a feeble attempt to have me drive him home and return the car myself in the morning, but it was too late for negotiations.

Post Script
Six weeks after we returned from our trip to Brittany Henri called to say that a speeding ticket had arrived in the mail. One of us had been driving 57 km (35 mi.) per hour in a 50 km (31 mi) per hour zone—that one of us being me. It had happened on our way to Brittany, near Fougères. I’d suspected at the time if I’d been flashed by the radar post but I hadn’t said anything because Henri was sleeping at the time, and rather than disturb his peace, as well as my own, while driving through one of those plane-tree bordered routes that make driving in the French countryside so pleasant and dangerous, I’d continued on.

I naturally told him that I would pay the ticket—90 euros, about $135, argh!—but Henri would have none of that. He insisted on paying half. He’d received the ticket as the one whose credit card and address we’d used in renting the car, which also meant that the was the one to get the points deduced from his license. I offered to plead guilty to the authorities so as to restore his points, but Henri declined, saying that ever since he got rid of his car last year he doesn’t drive much anyway.

Gotta hand it to Henri, the man knows proper etiquette.

The Rance River separates the old port town of Saint Malo with the 19th century seaside resort of Dinard. Dinard remains a luxury-minded town, the kind of place where one is invited, as Henri and I were, to a party whose bilingual invitation reads: “Dress code: smart casual – blue and white of course!” on the English side and “Tenue marine de rigueur: en bleu et blanc naturellement!” on the French side.

My brother Jon would have loved Dinard. He liked anything with the word resort in it: beach resort, ski resort, island resort, tennis resort. Wearing “smart casual” or “resort casual” came natural to him. After he died in a plane accident in 2006 my three other brothers and I inherited his clothes. They either didn’t fit the others or they weren’t interested, so I brought some back to Paris.

I rarely wear any of them but when I received the invitation to the party in Dinard I immediately remembered they were in my closet.

In this photo I am dressed in Jon’s clothes in Dinard, the sweater studiously thrown over my shoulder as it should be in such places. The photo doesn’t show my (brother’s) blue loafers.

The invitation called for blue and white not only because those are the colors of seafarers but because those are also the colors of the Virgin in the grotto along the Promenade du Clair de Lune at Dinard, which is where I am posing. This Virgin echoes the highly celebrated one in Lourdes, which is where one of the hosts of the party is from.

To me, the strangest thing about this photo is that I find that I’m not only wearing Jon’s clothes but also his smile. He would have loved having his picture taken on his way to a party in Dinard.

The couple hosting the party held a brunch beginning at noon the following day, which required another set of smart blue and white clothes. The invitation was actually unclear as to whether blue and white was de rigueur for the entire weekend or just for Saturday evening, so while some guests treated the Sunday brunch as an afterthought others kept up appearances.

I don’t often shop with “smart casual – blue and white of course!” in mind, and to be honest I don’t often shop at all, so for Sunday brunch I looked for my mother for inspiration.

At my age you might think it would be embarrassing to admit that my mother sometimes dresses me, but in my family we’re never too old to be given clothes by our mother. For nearly 55 years—for 9 children, then 28 grandchildren, and now 2 great-grandchildren—she has had an uncanny ability to spot a shirt or hat or a pair of pants from yards away and know exactly who it will fit and who might wear it. And if she gets it wrong she simply gives it to someone else.

Before going to the Sunday brunch, I had Henri take this photo so as show my mother that I finally found the occasion to wear that shirt and that hat she gave me last time I visited. You need to imagine the white short and the sandals—I’m sure my mother can.

Travel, as I like to say, isn’t just about where you’re going, it’s also about where you come from. I now add that it’s also about where your clothes come from.

On our way from Paris to Brittany Henri and I had talked a lot about what we should bring as a gift for the women who as putting us up for the weekend. We’d never met her. She was the neighbor of the friends who was having the party on Saturday and she had told them that she had extra room if any of the guests were reluctant to spring for a hotel. She didn’t actually say that last part but our friends immediately thought of me and Henri. We’d considered bringing chocolates, Champagne, or flowers as a house gift, finally deciding on flowers, but we arrived too late to buy them so we greeted her empty handed.

That wasn’t such a problem for me since I immediately complemented our host on her tchotchkes and her red Louis Vuitton handbag so as to reassure her that she was hosting a man of good taste. But for Henri, who is the kind of Frenchman for whom etiquette, grammar, and knowing all about Madame de Pompadour are all that is left to distinguish those you would accept in your home from those you would only accept in your bed, arriving empty handed was akin to slap in the face—his own, that is, for he immediately turned red. Our hostess then further displayed excellent etiquette by opening a bottle of Champagne to welcome us.

If there was one thing I’d learned about Henri after 24 hours on the road it was that you can tell him to pose anywhere and he’ll do it. So here is Henri on his bed in the cheery room we’d been given.

Henri and I had never spent the night in the same room, so I took the bed by the door in case it turned out that Henri snores or has other uncontrollable and unpleasant nighttime habits that would require me shifting to the couch in the living room. Turns out he refrained from doing any such thing that night. We both slept well.

Brittany is famous for its ever-changing weather, whereby you’re told to run outside as soon as the sun shines because it may not last long. So immediately upon waking up and eating the breakfast that our hostess had prepared for us (further embarrassing Henri for not having a brought a gift) we got in the car and drove off, planning to find a gift along the way.

Our good fortune with the weather is also the reason that we bypassed Saint-Malo. It was far too nice out to spend our time on and within the granite ramparts of that famous rebuilt town that was once made wealthy from the workings of privateers and merchant ship owners and once made rubble in August 1944 by the workings of war.

So we leap-frogged Saint-Malo proper and headed to its suburban the coast by way of the Lemoëlou Manor, which once belonged to Jacques Cartier (1491-1557).

Cartier, you may remember from history class (particularly if you’re Canadian), left from Saint-Malo in 1534 to find a northern route to Asia and instead discovered Canada, which he claimed in the name of King Francis I. I’m writing this on Columbus Day and am aware that it is politically incorrect to say that Europeans discovered the Americas since there were already people here, but all traveling, I think, can be considered as discovery—or rediscovery—no matter how many people have been there before, so let’s all take a break with the anti-discovery crusade.

Not that that thought made me particularly anxious to visit Jacques Cartier’s house, now a museum that reveals manor life in these parts in the 16th century. We couldn’t have visited even if we wanted to because they were closing for lunch shortly after 11am even though the sign out front says that they close for lunch at 11:30. Still, an employee let us enter into the courtyard to take the above picture before she closed the gate and drove off for a 3-hour lunch.

The manor is located less than a mile inland from Rothéneuf. We followed the signs to Rochers Sculptés to see rocks along the cliff that had been sculpted into 300 characters by a priest named Abbé Adolphe Fouré (1839-1910). At age 55 he had a stroke, which left him deaf and mute yet able to wield a pick and hammer. He then withdrew to this windy corner of Brittany (actually, all corners of Brittany are windy) and set about sculpting the rock over an area of 5000 square feet into characters inspired by local legend.

Henri and I nearly turned back when we discovered that we had to pay 3€ each to climb on the rocks when nearly the entire coast of Brittany is full of rocks to climb on for free. But I felt a sense of investigative duty to see it since we were right there, so I sported up the 6€ and off we traipsed on the rocks. And I’m glad we did because now I can tell you that it isn’t worth driving out of your way to visit the Rochers Sculptés, however, if you ever do come this way and there aren’t more than a few other cars in the lot you might was well fork over the few euros and behold the monk’s work and have a climb on the rocks—at your own risk of breaking an ankle or being blown off the cliff in the wind, I might add.

Afterwards we continued along the coast and stopped to admire some beautiful seascapes after that. Such as this:

and this

and this, where you’ll see why this is called the Emerald Coast.

We then drove to the Point de Grouin, which is the northeastern most point of the peninsula and in fact of all of Brittany considering that when you look out you see Normandy.

After parking our car, we couldn’t agree on which path to take out to the point. Henri wanted to take the high road out and I wanted to take the low road, which pretty much sums up the difference between us, and unwilling to fathom a compromise in which one of us would have to give in and the other one smirk, we separated, which was just as well because after a couple of hours with Henri a little break is always welcome.

I eventually found Henri back near the car (I had the keys). I could tell by the way he asked what had taken me so long that he had either missed me or had taken the less interesting path. When I asked him if he’d seen Le Mont Saint Michel in the distance he nodded “Mm” in such a way that I knew he was lying. Here’s Le Mont Saint Michel beyond the rocks:

We then stopped at Cancale. I’d been here briefly on a weekday in early June this year when there wasn’t a tourist in sight and found it a wonderfully charming little port town where I wish I’d been able to spend more than an hour. Now, on a sunny September weekend it was quite crowded, and even though I didn’t feel the need to stay for long I was very glad that I did have another hour here.

Cancale, which faces the bay of Le Mont Saint Michel and finally afforded Henri a distant glimpse of the Mount, is famous for its oysters, which enjoy the refreshing current of some of the strongest tides in the world. The Cancale is a firm, salty everyman’s oyster that makes its way onto tables throughout France, especially during the Christmas-New Year season.

To best appreciate Cancale oysters in Cancale you should go directly to the oystermongers at the northern end of the port and ask them to open up a dozen that you can then down (with a spritz of lemon) on the ledge with a view out to the oyster farms and, on a bright day, Le Mont Saint Michel in the distance.

Henri and I would have done just that if we’d known the stands were there before we took a seat in a creperie. No regrets, though. We enjoyed the crepes, which are also very much a part of Brittany. Henri was feeling particularly Breton by the time we left.

We were so happy with our little excursion that it wasn’t until we got back to the house in Dinard that we realized that we’d yet to get a thank-you gift for our hostess. We didn’t have time go back out though as we had a party to dress for.

Henri and I had never taken a road trip together, so we had no way of knowing how compatible we would be in deciding which towns and sights to visit along the way and where to stop for lunch or coffee or even a pee.

But we’d both been invited to a party in Dinard, in Brittany, so we decided to rent a car in Paris and do some visiting along the way.

Between car rental, gas, and tolls, a Paris/Brittany round-trip can cost about the same as a week in a 5-star hotel in Tunisia, flight included, but Henri and I found a comparatively decent price with an agency called Rent-a-Car-with-One-Taillight-Missing. The car came with a quarter tank of gas, which may or may not have been what the guy meant when he told us that we were getting an upgrade.

Anyway, the car moved and Henri managed to avoid getting us crunched by a bus (i.e. he almost got us crunched by a bus), so by the time we made it out of Paris I wasn’t worried about compatibility so much as survival.

Dinard is just past Saint Malo, which is just past Le Mont Saint Michel, so we had a choice between the north route going through Normandy or the southern route going past Chartres and Le Mans. Henri didn’t care as long as there was a palace to visit along the way—all Henri wants to do is visit palaces—so I decided that we would take the southern route and told him to pull off the toll road at La Ferté Bernard.

La Ferté Bernard doesn’t have a palace. It doesn’t have much of anything, to tell the truth, but part of the interest of a road trip is to stop where there isn’t much of anything, otherwise it isn’t a road trip but an itinerary. Henri only agreed to stop at La Ferté Bernard because I told him that something really important had happened there in the 15th century. Being French he couldn’t stand the idea that I might know something about his country that he doesn’t.

La Ferté Bernard is a very nice town as far as towns with nothing to see go. Its main attraction is the church Notre-Dame-des-Marais that’s a mix of flamboyant Gothic and let’s just finish the damn thing. I took the picture of the scribe (above) there.

There’s also a late-15th-century entrance gate to the old town, below left, where Henri stopped complaining about the lack of a palace at La Ferté Bernard long enough to pose. Henri’s face is not normally as blurred as in these photos but you really don’t want to see his expression here. I also got him to pose on the other side of the gate, below right, without him seeing that I’d placed by a sign that says “I’m waiting for my master.”

One of the nicest things about La Ferté Bernard is that at lunchtime, when the streets are deserted, you can have a pee by a plane tree without worrying about passersby.

La Ferté Bernard is only a few miles off the A11 toll road, so it was well worth the 30-minutes stop, though we didn’t realize at the time that in addition to paying something like 200 euros to get off the toll road we had to pay another 200 to get back on.

By now we were getting hungry so we took a vote as to where we should stop for lunch. Henri voted for a quick lunch at a rest stop so that we would have plenty of time in the afternoon to visit palaces. I voted for Laval, which is an actual town where I told him there was lots to see. We went to Laval, not because my argument was so convincing but because I was driving.

Laval, as far as we could tell, is famous for having parking unimeters so far from most of the parking spaces that you risk getting a ticket during the 10 minutes it takes you to find it.

We had lunch on the terrace of a brasserie by the River Mayenne facing the ramparts and fortress castle that define the old town. I don’t care much for omelets but I ordered one anyway because road trips are for eating things you don’t normally eat (I’ll tell you sometime about my meal at Shoney’s when driving through South Carolina last April.) I regretted the omelet as soon as it arrived, but the view was indeed quite nice from where we sat, the sun was out, and Henri tends to complain less when he’s eating.

We then headed into Brittany through less traveled roads so as to visit Fougères, which actually does have a palace. Well, sort of. It’s actually a fortress-castle, half in ruins, but Henri bounded from the car as though we’d just entered an oasis after three days in a cultural desert.

Like other fortress-castles on the former border between the Duchy of Brittany and the Kingdom of France, the castle was built, rebuilt, and refortified from the 12th through 14th centuries at a time when Brittany when trying to stave off advances by the French kings with the Normans lurking nearby. Between the castle and the under-visited town nearby, Fougères is a great introduction to the growth and medieval history of France and to the slate and schist that defines Brittany’s architecture as well as a great example of the pleasures of traveling in off the main tourist paths, even with Henri for company.

Actually, Henri’s mood had changed by the time we cross the drawbridge into the castle complex. He was now in full, Euro-cultured glory. It’s quite amazing to see how connected Europeans feel at times to the full length of their national and continental history. At most, even well-educated Americans will connect to only a portion of their history—for example, the “In God We Trust” part or the free market part or the pioneering part or the immigrant part or the I-can-eat-pray-etc-anyway-I-want part—but Europeans, particularly when they have a diploma or two on their CV, have a way of embracing their entire past no matter how obscure it may appear.

We were lucky enough to have arrived shortly before a guided tour was setting out. The guide gathered together the entire crowd of visitors that afternoon. There were three of us: me, Henri, and a woman who looked like she was trying to escape a bad marriage only to realize that the ruins of an old fortress were not the answer. But for Henri this was the answer. He was now in ecstasy.

Here is a glimpse of Henri’s smile against a backdrop of the Château de Fougères.

My favorite little shop in Paris, Plaques & Pots, one of the last living vestiges of the historical belly of Paris that was the Les Halles Quarter, will be closing at the end of July.

Been a long time coming–rather, going. It isn’t easy making a living selling enamel plaques, enamel street numbers, butcher’s paper, and pottery handmade upstairs in an quarter otherwise devoted to cafés, clubs, restaurants, and mass fashion. Owner Josette Samuel, in photo, is now ready to move on.

If you live in Paris or will be visiting in July, take advantage of a last chance to visit this authentic remnant of Les Halles, even if only for a vision of the passing of time in the quarter as it pursues its drive to urban uniformity.

The wholesale and retail food industry left this area for modern installations in Rungis, south of Paris, in 1969, so Josette’s goods long ago lost their place at Les Halles. Still, I’ve to got applaud her stubborn gumption in taking over (five years ago) the shop formerly called Papeterie Moderne and trying to make a go of selling old-fashion practical-cum-decorative products in a space that’s probably smaller than your kitchen. For more about the shop, read the article I wrote soon after Josette purchased the shop.

While at Plaques & Pots, 12 rue de la Ferronerie (tel. 01 42 36 21 72), you might pick up an antique street number for yourself or for friends.

Or a street sign (left) or even some old butcher’s paper (right) that she inherited from the previous owners.

By the time you get here there may not be any clay pots left, such as this one (photo right). Knowing that I’ve always been a fan of this shop, even before she took it over, Josette gave me one of the last pots as a farewell-to-the-boutique gift. Handmade in the Les Halles Quarter.

Several other vestiges of Les Halles from its by-gone centuries as the center of the food trade in Paris continue to hold their own. Among them:
- E. Dehillerin, a family-operated store for kitchen and pastry utensils and cookware, 18-20 rue Coquillière.
- La Poule au Pot, a bistro with a décor dated 1935, serving traditional rustic fare including one of the best onion soup’s in Paris, 9 rue Vauvilliers.

- Julien Aurouze, a family-run pest exterminator that was trapping rats around Les Halles as early as 1872, 8 rue des Halles. Those are sewer rats caught in the quarter in 1925 hanging in the window on the right below.

The oldest and most lasting of the remnant of historical Les Halles is the Church of Saint Eustache, 1532-1640, which may well be the most under-visited, touristically speaking, of the major churches of Paris. It’s a Renaissance church within a Gothic body with great accoustics for its famous organ.

The enormous proportions of its interior are worth a look, but I’ve come here today to photograph one of the most endearing church sculptures in Paris, “Departure of the Fruits and Vegetables from the Heart of Paris 28 February 1969” by Raymond Mason.

“Departure” (completed in 1971) is so fitting at Saint-Eustache not only because the central food market that had existed since the Middle Ages was the raison d’être for the church but because this is a wonderful sculptural retelling of Paradise Lost, the departure from the Garden of Eden. (Having recently written an article about musicals in Paris, I note that it is also reminiscent of the departure from Anatevka in Fiddler on the Roof.) Or, as the sculptor has written of that departure 40 years ago, “It’s the man of the Middle Ages that’s leaving.”

Plaques & Pots, formerly Papeterie Moderne, now joins the procession in the departure of signs and numbers from the heart of Paris July 2009.

Wishing Josette all the best in her future endeavors.