I don’t thumb text easy enough to answer at length on my phone, so I’ll respond here.

I liked the food. I liked the presentation on the plate. I appreciated the mix of savors. There’s some serious cheffing going on in that kitchen.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. So back to the beginning.

I walked into the restaurant at 7:45pm, several minutes before my dinner date would arrive, and was given a choice of two tables. I selected the one by the window. Before I sat down I asked the servers, a man and a woman, if the restaurant had a cat. The man said, No. Since he didn’t ask why the question, I told him: Because it smells like a cat lives here. No cat, he said. His negation was no reassurance. I smelled something, something that reminded me of a home with a cat or something furry or litterboxy—not in a long-left-untended sense, but in a musky sense. Since I was one of the first clients in the restaurant it wasn’t someone’s perfume. I would hope not.

I wondered if it was more like hay, thinking that hay has a pleasant smell. Maybe they used hay as a bed for some creative dish, I thought, since I knew in reserving that creativity was on the menu. But no, something was off. Damp hay? I don’t know. My senses kept wanting to call it cat.

I like cats. I used to have one. For a time I was lucky enough to call one my significant other. I took my niece and her friend to the cat café when they visited last year. Cats are fine by me. But I thought it odd that a restaurant with a high ceiling and large panes of window giving out to the square and one wall full of wine bottles should smell like a cat, as it did in this corner.

My friend, a French lawyer, arrived a minute later. I’d texted her the previous day to say that in the time of the coronavirus we should support restaurants and, besides, we hadn’t seen each other for six weeks. She agreed, though in the time of the coronavirus she wouldn’t kiss me when she arrived.

I asked if she smelled a cat. She said, No, maybe, well there’s something, maybe it’s the plant—for our table was near a plant. That might be it, I said, something in the soil, so we moved one table away along the window. (Empty tables abound in the time of coronavirus.)

Moving two yards away didn’t completely eliminate the odor, but my friend and I hadn’t seen each other for some time so we quickly fell into lively catch-up talk, and I forget the cat smell, as I did back in the day when I shared an apartment with the world’s most beautiful, intelligent cat.

I thought of the cat again when the waitress placed some pâté before us, but her gratuitous act was much appreciated and we were hungry. We thanked her. We were in for a modern meal and it began with a welcome slab of tradition.

Twice the waitress returned to ask if we were ready to order the meal or something to drink, and the third time she came over we were. We selected from the 3-course fixed-price menu (49€) and a bottle of Gigondas (48€).

We chatted away, as friends of 30 years do, and the wine arrived. I reached for my glasses in my coat pocket to examine the label, as one pretends one does, and by the time I put them on the waitress had already removed the foil from the top of the bottle and was about to poke the cork with a screw. Now that I could see it, I remarked that the label read 2015 whereas the wine list indicated 2013. I don’t think so, she said, this is all there is. Can you check? I asked. She checked. The menu did indeed indicate 2013, and 2015 was indeed all she had. She claimed not to have noticed before. She asked if I still wanted the bottle.

Now what do I know from 2013 or 2015? What do I know from Gigondas or Domaine du Terme other than that I was planning on visiting wine villages in the southern Rhone Valley next month? But I do know that the staff of a restaurant with a substantial wine list should have something more informative to say than Do you still want the bottle?

I said, If it’s discounted.

She abruptly went to consult with the other server who was behind the bar. He was apparently her higher-up. Together they examined the menu. As they did, my friend asked if I knew the different between 2013 and 2015 in Gigondas. I said that for all I know 2015 was a better year, but given the way the bottle had (not) been presented to us and the way I was asked Do you still want it?, it was the principle of the thing. A restaurant that notes “cuisine & vins gourmands” on its awning and presents a wall full of bottles should have someone who knows how to talk about wine, someone who will show you the label and will be willing to engage, if only to say, I don’t know much about wine but let me ask my colleague if he can help. I don’t use one of those wine label apps, so it was indeed a matter of principle. My friend agreed. She said, Sometimes principle is all we have to go on. That’s a rare thing for a lawyer to acknowledge.

The waitress returned. Apparently Pirouette has principles, too. She said, No, same price, do you want it? (I’m translating; these exchanges were in French but no more extensive than that.)

Maybe I would have a liked a warmer tone; maybe I would have liked to hear that I was being offered a 5€ discount; maybe I would have liked to have the server explain that 2015 was even better than 2013 or how they were different; maybe I expect a restaurant with a substantial wine list to…. I said, No, I’ll take another look at the wine list.

This time I selected a Vacqueyras, a 20-minute bike-ride north of Gigondas, 2016, also Domaine du Terme. At 33€ it happened to be the list’s least expensive red wine from the southern Rhone Valley. I shouldn’t say “happened to be” since I wasn’t now going to select anything priced higher than the 2013/2015 bottle. I may have been shooting myself in the gut with my principle, but there you have it.

This time the male server brought over the bottle. It’s Vacqueyras, he said, but it’s 2017, not 2016. I thought there might be a punchline but none was forthcoming. In the silence that followed he missed his chance to remark, before my dinner date did, that they needed to update their wine list. We’re in the process of changing it, he responded, humorlessly. Is 2017 alright? It’s 80% syrah. And he followed that by looking at the bottle and saying something about body or structure.

I accepted the 2017. What do I know from Vacqueyras? What do I know from 2016/2017? The waiter poured us a sip. It was relatively direct (80% syrah) and relatively adequate. I nodded. He poured more. This wasn’t the coolness of French service as I’ve come to accept and even appreciate it; this was the coldness of appearing to not give a damn. Sheesh! If this had all been done a bit more engagement on the part of the staff, I wouldn’t have suddenly remembered what health officials keep telling us about the coronavirus: “Maintain a social distance.” The staff at Pirouette must think that referred to something other than distance in space.

The waiter then parted, stirring the air, and I was reminded of the cat smell that wasn’t coming from a cat.

Then the food arrived, beginning with “cruncheese” rice balls topped with marinated sea bream and an orange vinaigrette, for one of us, and green asparagus dressed with herb breadcrumbs and accompanied by citrus butter, for the other. Quite good. We liked it from the start. Then came our main courses of crispy pork, butternut puree with aniseed and a coffee mousse, for one of us, and cod covered with buckwheat accompanied by a crepe-size carrot and ginger ravioli, for the other. A pleasure. Chef François-Xavier Ferrol’s studied mix of savors may not be subtle (perhaps subtlety isn’t the aim) but they form an appealing kind of comfort bistronomy, handsomely presented on the plate. Filling portions. Not stellar, but 49€ fine. The wine was so-so, but who cares? We were two friends enjoying each other’s company over dinner in the time of the coronavirus.

My friend and I had agreed that we could dig into each other’s dish with the clean set of silverware that arrived with each course. Yet dessert has a way of making people forget their coronavirus principles. Having licked the last of her pleasing rice pudding with salted butter caramel from her spoon, she forgot that she’d asked for a second spoon (see photo of third course) and promptly stuck the same one into my chocolate ganache, peanut streusel and cocoa sorbet. I pointed out what she’d just done by saying, And to think you wouldn’t kiss me when you came in, to which she blushed as though she’d just impulsively stuck her tongue into my mouth. Take it all, I said—not because I distrusted her germs but because it was my least favorite dish.

My friend went to the rest room while I paid the bill. Then I went to the rest room while she looked at her phone. The rest room was clean enough. The sink is awkwardly placed. I washed my hands thoroughly.

I’d been away from the table for several minutes and as I returned I again picked up the scent of something cat-like or otherwise furry or litterboxy. It was like when I lived with a cat and would go down to get the mail then return to the apartment. Hmm, I’d think, a cat lives here. Whatever the odor was by the window at Pirouette, and however subjectively I’ve interpreted the smell, there it was. We then left the restaurant.

So on a scale of 1 to 10 would I recommend Pirouette?

Well, everyone deserves a break. Especially these days. There’s too much distrust, too much aggression, too many insistent points of view, too much judging going on—even too many principles. Shouldn’t the main principle be to help keep ourselves and each other healthy and to simply enjoy each other’s company while we’re together because you never know whom you’ll be stuck with in quarantine? So why not recommend François-Xavier Ferrol’s cuisine and forget about the staff’s “social distance,” their cold-shoulder wine oops, and that odor? Why not an 8 then, or a 7?

Because at this price I’d like a more graceful Pirouette, and because mutual support is a two-way street, and because there are (correction: will be) many other worthwhile options in Paris, and because you asked: 5.

Pirouette
5 rue Mondétour, 1st arr. Metro Les Halles. 01 40 26 47 81.
Open Monday-Saturday, noon-2pm and 7:30-10pm.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Pirouette in the Time of the Coronavirus appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

***

What do Alain Ducasse, Alain Passard, Pierre Gagnière, Anne-Sophie Pic, Gilles Goujon and Jean-François Piège have in common? If you answered that they are all masters of French high gastronomy then you’d be half right. The other half? They also have very French names.

Unlike Kei Kobayashi. Yet Kei Kobayashi is also a master of French high gastronomy, working the kitchen and operating his eponymous restaurant Kei. If his name sounded more French then perhaps this exceptional chef would have more American and British clients. As it is, he has a faithful French clientele, Japanese clients and a smattering of other well-informed international gastronomes.

Mastering the art of French cooking isn’t a question of nationality, as Julia Child taught us, but mastering the heights of French gastronomy has been a fairly passport-driven affair… until recently. Ten or twenty years ago, a chef from overseas would train in France for five, even ten, years then return home to, say, Japan to wow his compatriots and pursue his career there. But increasingly some high-caliber chefs from abroad choose to pursue their careers in France.

Kei Kobayashi, for example.

“I want to do that!”

Born in 1977, Kobayashi speaks of a vertical path from his childhood in Nagano, Japan, to the stature of a 2-star Michelin chef in Paris and about his ambitions. His father was a traditional chef of precise slicing in Japan. At age 15, the younger Kobayashi saw a documentary on TV featuring French chef Alain Chapel (3-star Michelin) in the kitchen. On the screen the chef worked with flare, fire and flourish as he’d never seen in his father’s kitchen. He speaks of it as a revelation. “I told myself, ‘I want to do that!’”

Having started his training in Japan, he arrived in France at the age of 21 intent on discovering, learning, practicing and climbing to the heights of French gastronomy. (Somehow along the way he also picked up the notion that French chefs are blond and so began dying his hair.)

A culinary Tour de France followed, during which time he worked with and learned from stellar chefs in Paris, Languedoc, Provence and Alsace. He opened Kei near Les Halles in 2011, received his first Michelin star a year later and a second in 2017.

Fifteen to twenty years ago, meeting a chef who had turned his back on the world of high gastronomy to focus on more accessible culinary offerings was refreshing. Now it’s refreshing to meet unabashedly facing the summit. From the moment he opened Kei, he said, he was aiming (and pushing his staff to aim) for three stars. That’s something few chefs think or admit.

The Setting

At first glance the 30-seat room of Kei seems mildly ascetic, despite the glitter and glow of the Saint Louis chandelier. But before long the off-white walls reveal a hint of lavender and one notices the crown molding and discreet French flourishes. At lunchtime, the glassy the white cut-outs on the wall-length picture window facing the street combined with the radiance of the chandelier and of the sconces reminds me of the comfort of a dreamy afternoon on a snowy day.

Distinguishing Japanese touches from French touches in the décor, the tableware and the succession of dishes is a table game that one inevitably plays… given the name Kei Kobayashi. The dishware and cutlery clearly present a marriage of cultures. But once settled into the meal one finds that Kobayashi’s cuisine—presented exclusively through tasting menus—is not a game of cross-cultural references but a hike to the heights of French gastronomy. True, along with products from France there may be some from Japan, Italy, Scotland and elsewhere. But it isn’t the Frenchness of the product that makes Kobayoshi’s cuisine French. It’s the intensity of focus on those products.

We’ve all had exquisite tasting menus that can be showy. I do enjoy the occasional gastronomic culinary Vaudeville, but Kobayashi’s cuisine is more subtle than that.

The Meal

There’s nearly something sacred about the progression through the meal, though without ritual or ceremony. Asked about the rhythm of a tasting menu, Kobayashi says that there is no single path. Instead, he speaks of the meal as a living construction, based on quality products, whether simple or noble, forming a menu that will change but should always feel complete. Our table’s 7-step tasting menu nevertheless evolved in nearly classic French rhythm from shrimp to vegetables and smoked salmon to quail risotto to smoked langoustine, culminating in line-caught sea-bass, before easing down with cheese and sorbet/dessert.

The menu is largely based on fish and seafood, from Carabineros prawn tartare with a smoked eel emulsion and a nip of Schrenki caviar to a direct this-is-the-real-taste-of-line-caught-sea bass whose sensuality retains an enticing coarseness thanks to his treatment of scales that have been left on.

The prawn of our menu was followed by the most seductive and deceptively simple of our seven dishes: a salad of raw and cooked vegetables, herbs, flowers, crumbled olives, a citrusy arugula mousse and a slice of smoked salmon from Scotland, all to be delicately turned and mingled by the client before tasting. It’s a celestial dish—the first time that I’ve ever thought of a mixed salad as a delicacy. The quail risotto with white Alba truffle, a Perigueux sauce and parmesan then tastefully brought us back to earth. A hay-steamed langoustine married with shitaki mushrooms appeared to be an attempt to return to the salad’s state of grace, but was for me the least remarkable of the dishes.

Beyond the tasting menus, diners can also add a course of l’oreiller de la belle Aurore, a pâté (in this case of game and fowl) baked in a savory pastry. It’s a highly crafted dish of rustic elegance that has in various shapes and forms been a staple of French culinary tradition for over 200 years. It was a signature of Gérard Besson, Kobayashi’s predecessor at this address. It’s placement on the menu is a sign of Kobayashi’s homage to and devotion to the heritage of French gastronomy that he carries forward.

A French chef

Reducing the Kei dining experience to cross-cultural analysis is to ignore the richness sought at the height of French gastronomy. The height for Kobayashi is one star away. Michelin-bashing has no place in his culinary world. In order to merit the third star, he says, he’s aware that he has to develop his own originality while ensuring flawlessness from start to finish and from kitchen to dining room.

No need to wait for that third star to put Kei on your culinary map. And don’t imagine that a Japanese name makes Kobayashi’s gastronomy any less French. Whatever passport he holds, think of Kei Kobayashi as an exceptional French chef.

Kei, 5 rue Coque Héron, 1st arr, just west of Les Halles. Metro Louvre-Rivoli or Sentier or Etienne Marcel. Tel. 01 42 33 14 74. Closed Sunday, Monday and lunch Thursday. The typical lunch menu is served in five steps or an extensive tasting in 9 steps. There’s also a 9-step “prestige” menu that includes additional choice items. See pricing for various lunch and dinner tasting menus here.

© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut.

The post Kei Kobayashi: Exceptional French Chefs Aren’t Always French appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

That’s my motto when selecting restaurants for many visitors. And there’ve been a lot these past few weeks: friends, relatives, friends of friends, friends of relatives, classmates, fundraisers, writers doing research, travelers taking most excellent tours. We’ve had lunch together, dinner, we’ve been to wine bars, had picnics, stopped for pastries, chocolate, Bertillon sorbet.

“How do you/they stay so thin,” they ask, causing me to suck in my gut, “eating like this all the time?”

Now here’s a secret the food-bloggers won’t tell you: We don’t. At least I don’t.

Paris can be visited as a perpetual all-you-can-eat deluxe buffet but it’s lived as a city with countless venues for a shared meal or drink with friends, colleagues, clients and assorted visitors. Eating well implies choosing well, ordering well, buying well… enjoying good company. There is a form of Parisian self-control in matters of food and drink. One gets a hang of quickly enough. Spending two hours à table doesn’t mean consuming four times the amount of someone who sits for 30 minutes. And we actually eat at home sometimes. We have access to good fresh produce. We walk to shops. We do our 10,000 steps, including frequent staircases. We cook in our little kitchens. We may even exercise, gently.

However, there are times when some combination of visitors, work obligations, journalist events, birthday celebrations and ordinary social life lead me on an extended period of wining and dining. And no matter how much I protest when the dessert menu is handed out, there are quite a few crème brulées, moelleux au chocolat, pies and tarts placed on the table with an extra fork or spoon. “I’ll just have a little taste,” as my grandmother would say.

That period of indulgence can last a few days or a week or, with my most recent schedule of visitors, events and travelers on most excellent tours, a month. Indulgence, however, is not the same thing as overindulgence. Indulgence is a knowing pleasure. Overindulgence is loss of control. Admittedly, there’s a fine line of distinction at times.

A friend, in Paris for business, unsure of which side of the line we were on, said during our third straight high calorie wine-infused meal together, “My wife’s gonna kill me for putting on weight. I’m gonna tell her it’s your fault.”

If shared good living is my fault then guilty as charged. I don’t know what you’re during this afternoon, Scott, but I’m going for a run as soon as I finish this article.

10 Venues for Shared Good Living—Simple Food, Simply Good

What follows is a selection of simple, simply good restaurants and shops that have been on my eating trails of the past few weeks during this most recent bout of shared good living. It’s my food diary of the past few weeks, minus the less appealing, the less well served and the more gastronomic meals consumed along the way.

Simplicity is the theme, meaning relatively straightforward fare, meat and potatoes and the like yet unmistakably French. Some will call this restaurant fare “borrrrring,” others will call it “just what I was looking for.”

All are moderately priced, here meaning 25-50€ for 2 or 3 courses without beverages. All have good to excellent service. None require much, if any, advance reservation, though no harm calling ahead.

1. Le Sully
6 boulevard Henri IV, 4th arr. Metro Sully-Morland.
Tel. 01 42 72 94 80. Closed Sunday.

It’s easy to overlook this daytime café-brasserie (it closes at 8pm) because the intersection out front appears to be a place of transit only and not of pause. But here—between Ile Saint Louis and the Arsenal quarter of the Marais, between old blocks from the Bastille and a statue of the poet Arthur Rimbaud, between an equestrian center for the Republican Guard and the Center for information, documentation and exhibition for urban planning and architecture of Paris—Le Sully is a place with roots. The same family has operated it since 1917 and their roots still run deep into the Aveyron region of central France. Le Sully is old reliable when it comes to enjoying the café-brasserie experience in Paris thanks to the generous spirit of Robert and Dany Vidal and their son Romain and to their sense of quality. Le Sully proudly sports the government label Maitre-Restaurateur, which signifies that dishes are made in house essentially using fresh ingredients. Aubrac rump steak and other nice lunchtime brasserie fare, Languedoc wines. We linger into the afternoon.

2. La Poule au Pot
9 rue Vauvilliers, 1st arr. Metro Louvre-Rivoli
Tel. 01 42 36 32 96 Open 7pm-5am. Closed Mon.
Ever true the bistro tradition, Paul Racat has for 40 years now maintained this relaxed yet classy home for rustic bistro classics, attentively served, and an atmosphere of unpretentious chic that develops as the evening and the night move on. Come the later the better. Soupe gratinée à l’onion, blanquette de veau, white Sancerre. We linger into the night.

3. Boucherie Roulière
6 rue des Canettes, 6th arr. Metro Mabillon or Saint Germain des Près.
Tel. 01 84 15 04 47. Open daily.

Having long associated this street between Saint-Germain and Saint-Sulpice with creperies, pizzarias and pubs, I thought it a bit risky to head here for beef. But the risk paid off: the sliced rib just right, attentive service, elbow-to-elbow seating that offered up a mix of good cheer and Parisian sophistication. Mille feuilles de tomate et artichaut à l’huile de truffe; côte de boeuf, bone marrow and steak fries; Saint-Estèphe (Bordeaux).

4. 750g La Table
397 rue de Vaugirard, 15th arr. Metro Porte de Versailles.
Tel. 01 45 30 18 47. Open daily.

If I lived on the southwestern edge of the city or frequently attended trade shows at Porte de Versailles, I’d be happy to consider Damien Duquesne’s Table my neighborhood restaurant for good chicken, good beef, homey side dishes, much freshness, a judicious wine selection and friendly service. But I don’t, so I consider 750g La Table as a sign that no quarter is immune to honorable food and wine.

5. Les Petites Ecuries
40 rue des Petites Ecuries, 10 arr. Metro Château d’Eau or Bonne Nouvelle.
Tel. 01 48 24 02 90. Open daily.
Walking by on a sunny day, it was the sight of the pleasantly odd alcove lined with a living green wall that gave me pause for coffee. Though suspecting that the place might be too young and hip for the food or service to be anything but an afterthought, I nevertheless returned for dinner with a visiting friend the following evening. And good thing, too: my duck was delicious, my friend enjoyed his steak, we were kindly served and we barely noticed that we were among the oldest ones there.

6. Le Plomb de Cantal
3 rue de la Gaîté, 14th arr. Metro Edgar Quinet.
Open daily.
Why waste your waistline on the meat and potatoes at an ordinary greasy spoon when you can do some delicious gut-busting in this joyful restaurant in the Montparnasse quarter with Auvergne comfort food, from deep in the center of France? Sausage served with aligot (mashed potatoes with cheese and garlic) or truffade (sliced potatoes, cheese, garlic) is king here, but duck, tripes or beef are also options. Hearty salads as well. It’s simple, it’s delicious, it’s caloric, it’s cheerful, it’s Paris without needing to be hip or sophisticated. There’s an extension around the corner and another outlet across the city near metro Strasbourg-Saint Denis, but come evening the greatest joy is on aptly named theater- and restaurant-filled rue de la Gaîté.

7. Terminus Nord  
23 rue de Dunkerque, 10 arr. Metro Gare du Nord.
Open daily.

While the Auvergnats accompany their sausages with cheesy potatoes, brasseries of the north, wonderfully exemplified by this large and brassy restaurant across the street from Gare du Nord (the train station that links Paris with London, Lille, Brussels and Amsterdam), serve theirs with sauerkraut. But upon returning from Amsterdam (Café Loetje for lunch) we came here for the other specialties of northern brasseries: fish (cod, sea bass, salmon, sole) and seafood. A reminder that simple fare, simply good, isn’t just a beefy affair.

8. Le Village Ronsard
47 Ter Boulevard St Germain, 5th arr. Metro Maubert-Mutualité.
Tel. 01 43 25 07 95. Open daily.
There are many like it, but when in this quarter come lunchtime I’ve always felt comfortable at this perfectly, excellently ordinary café-brasserie in the Sesame Street of Paris market areas. Poulet-frites, steak-frites, salads, omelets, etc.

9. Fil’O’Fromage
12 rue Neuve Tolbiac, 13th arr. Metro Bibliothèque François Mitterrand or Quai de la Gare.
Tel. 01 53 79 13 35. Open 10am-7:30pm Mon.-Wed. 10am-10:30pm Thurs.-Sat. Closed Sunday.

Past the loud brasseries, the cavernous cafés and the undesirable restaurants that first assault the rare explorer of the new Rive Gauche quarter of the 13th arrondissement, Clément Chérif Boubrit (“I’m the Sheriff,” he says), philosopher, photographer, cheesemonger, oenologist, operates an off-beat wine and cheese shop and eatery where I recently organized a tasting for a group of eight bloggers/writers. Don’t worry, you needn’t be eight or even organized to enjoy the Sheriff’s approach to tasting wine, cheese and cold cuts vertically, horizontally, blindly or what the hell let’s just share-ingly.

10. My kitchen. Leftovers from last night’s party. Open 7/7, by invitation only.

© 2015, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Paris Restaurants: 10 Ways to Keep It Simple and Simply Good appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

(Updated April 2016)

1. Hotel Saint-James

Two metro stops west of Etoile, the site of the glamorous 4-star Saint James was once far enough away from the central Paris to serve as a launch pad for hot air balloons. While tall buildings have sprouted in the area, the lush private garden of this luxuriant refuge, accented with fanciful balloon canopies (photo above), remains intact and serves as an open-air bar during the fine-weather months. Like its classy library bar and Michelin-starred restaurant, the open-air bar is reserved for hotel guests and club members during the day, but all of them are accessible to visitors after 7pm.

Hotel Saint James, 43 avenue Bugeaud. 16th arr. Tel: 01 44 05 81 81. Metro: Porte Dauphine.

2. Regent’s Garden Hotel

Napoleon III liked his private physician so much that he built him a delightful townhouse with an enclosed garden on the western edge of Paris just beyond the Arc de Triomphe. This year the 4-star hotel has made its private garden an even greater draw with an outdoor exhibition of bronze and ceramic sculptures by Mickie Doussy on view through September 30. Beyond breakfast, when open only to guests, the garden bar/tea salon is open to visitors on reservation.

Regent’s Garden Hotel, 6 rue Pierre Demours. 17th arr. Tel: 01 45 74 07 30. Metro: Ternes.

3. Villa du Square

Tucked between Le Corbusier townhouses in the residential 16th, the Villa du Square (open since September 2015) is a B&B offering five luxurious bedrooms in a 1920s mansion lovingly decorated by art collector hosts Marie-Victoire and François-Christophe Gicqueau. The garden—200 square meters of urban Eden shaded by centenary pines—has enough secluded ‘corners’ that guests won’t trip over each other while they smell the roses.

Villa du Square, 26 rue Raffet, 16th arr. Tel: 01 71 72 91 33 Metro: Jasmin. The garden is only open to overnight guests.

4. Hotel des Marronniers

The secluded garden behind this 3-star Left Bank hotel is open to the public from 2pm until 11pm for tea or drinks.

Hotel des Marronniers, 21 rue Jacob. 6th arr. Tel: 01 43 25 30 60. Metro: Mabillon.

5. Villa Montabord

The Cité des Fleurs, a one-block pedestrian street in the Epinettes district on the northwest edge of the capital, is one of Paris’s original gated communities. The guidelines laid down by the developers in 1847 mandating at least three flowering and/or fruit trees for every garden are still observed. Thus, the four-room bed-and-breakfast that Isabelle and Jérôme Sciard opened in their 19th-century home has a pocket-sized private garden within a garden community. Expect fluent English (Jérôme is a former submarine commander who was stationed in Newport, RI for a year) plus large, luxurious bathrooms, WiFi and television.

Villa Montabord, 3 Cité des Fleurs, 17th arr. Tel: 06 14 88 74 06. Metro: Brochant. The garden is only open to overnight guests.

6. Hotel Eldorado

This hipster enclave in rapidly gentrifying Batignolles is one of the last places in Paris where budget-minded visitors can get a double-digit priced room with facilities “down the hall,” in a decor that mixes fake leopard skin throws and real cat-hair from resident felines. The hotel may have two stars but its popular Bistrot des Dames restaurant/wine bar, nestled in a pleasant but not-overly-groomed garden, goes by its own standards and is open to the public.

Hotel Eldorado, 18 rue des Dames, 17th arr. Tel: 01 45 22 35 21. Metro: Place de Clichy.

7. Novotel Paris Les Halles

With a giant, custard-colored canopy hovering over the Châtelet shopping center, catching ”a patch of blue” in Les Halles is as rare as it was for Oscar Wilde at Redding Gaol. Given the forbidding façade  of the Novotel Les Halles, it’s a triple-fine surprise to find a delightful, tree-shaded garden terrace-bar nestled within its walls. An oasis of calm in a chaotic neighborhood.

Novotel Paris Les Halles, 8 Place Marguérite de Navarre, 1st arr. Tel: 01 42 21 31 31 Metro: Châtelet.

© 2015-2016, Corinne LaBalme

Updated April 2016

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In Paris, haute couture extends all the way to the dessert trolley. Even a venerable let-them-eat-cake institution like Angelina, founded in 1903, has to keep up with the trifle trends.

On April 29, with the accompanying pops of pink champagne, Angelina unveiled the dernier cri on the calorie chart with its spring-summer 2014 pastry collection. Dark chocolate and truffles are beating a retreat, and sunny color combinations—raspberry with ecru-tinted Earl Gray cream; mellow peach with casual crumble accents—are on the rise.

Even the ultra-classic mont blanc, the Hermès scarf of the Angelina empire chocking up 600 sales a day, gets a summer makeover. It’s keeping its famous sugar-dusted toupée of chestnut spaghetti cream… but adding a light, bright strawberry center to its Chantilly/meringue base.

Angelina has a history of adopting new food-stuffs from outside Europe. (Think of how it perfected the chocolat chaud adored by the French royal family since the early 17th century.) This season, Angelina has looked even farther afield for rare and unusual ingredients…

… Eastern Pennsylvania.

Yes, this summer Angelina débuts its first cheesecake and the fromage in question comes from Philadelphia. However, Angelina’s Chef Christophe Appert is quick to deny any undue American influence. ”American cheesecakes are always baked,” he explains. ”Ours consists of an uncooked cheese froth served on a bed of confit d’abricot and madeleine-inspired sablé crust.”

(Apparently, soggy graham crackers just don’t make the cut.)

These treats – rounded out with other ephemeral Angelina creations like peach/vanilla tarts, raspberry/macaroon courtisanes, and strawberry/whipped cream/hazlenut éclairs – can be sampled for under 7€/each at Angelina’s nine French locations in Paris, Versailles and Lyon.

Angelina. 226 rue de Rivoli (75001), 108 rue du Bac (75007), 19 rue de vaugirard (75006), Chateau de Versailles, and other locations.

© 2014, Corinne LaBalme

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After making a name for himself in the candy business in the south of France, Antoine Rumpelmayer, originally from Austria, opened a tea room in Paris’s most fashionable commercial quarter in 1903 and named it after his daughter-in-law Angeline. Rue de Rivioli, where it borders the Tuileries Garden, was then part of the most exclusive commercial district in the city thanks to the presence of the grand hotels of the late 19th-century (the Meurice, the Ritz, the Hotel du Louvre, et al.), the Garnier Opera, the high jewelry business then claiming Place Vendôme as its home (Boucheron, Cartier and Chaumet were then present), and the haute couture business that had been taking shape.

The brand was expanding to Japan while Angelina was still in its 90s, but that expansion has been occurring at more corporate speed since its purchase five years ago by Groupe Bernard, the fifth owner in Angelina’s history.

Japan now has two Angelina tea rooms along with 14 corners and boutiques. Franchises opened in Beijing and in Dubai this fall, with one in Doha slated for this winter. There’s an outlet at Galeries Lafayette in Lyon. Closer to home, there are currently seven outlets in Paris (not franchises), including the original tea room on rue de Rivoli, and a new bakery at 108 rue du Bac.

Hot Chocolate at Versailles

There’s also a tea room inside the Palace of Versailles and an Angelina counter by the entrance to the Petit Trianon. Angelina’s presence at Versailles is first and foremost a reflection of the need of the gatekeepers to the palace-museum to augment state subsidies, but its presence is also a charming historical reminder of Louis XIV’s and his queen Marie-Thérèse’s enjoyment of hot chocolate, which helped launch the beverage in France. France got a taste for hot chocolate in the 17th-century via Iberian Penninsula whose conquistadors first encountered cacao during their South American conquest. Marie-Thérèse, l’infante d’Espagne, was in fact the daughter of the king of Spain. Admitted, Angelina’s chocolate is proudly African whereas the chocolate of Versailles was South American. No matter, it makes for a good little lesson in the history of chocolate.

L’Africain

L’Africain, as Angelina calls its hot chocolate, derives its name from the use of four types of African cacao in the mix. The unsweetened whipped cream served with it may be caloric overkill, but its nevertheless useful in toning down the bitterness that some—particularly Americans since we’re less accustom to eating/drinking dark chocolates—taste with a first mouthful of Angelina’s thick nectar. L’Africain used to beat the competition in Paris hands down, but thick hot chocolates can now be found elsewhere in the capital. Still, it’s a joy. Six hundred servings are ordered at the Rivoli tea room each day.

L’Africain is also sold in bottles to be heated up at home, a creation that in 2009 began replacing the previously sold powder to which one added milk. As of this fall travelers can even order Angelina hot chocolate at the snack bar on the TGV high speed trains in France, poured from a single-serving bottle and heated by microwave behind the counter. I enjoy a little history with my Angelina hot chocolate and tend to recommend drinking it from a porcelain cup from the original tea room, but a paper cup on the TGV is not to be scoffed at, especially when traveling with children.

Groupe Bertrand

Angelina’s expansion under Groupe Bertrand hasn’t eased its 4pm lines under the arcades of rue de Rivoli any more than Ladurée’s expansion under Groupe Holder has shortened the queues for macaroons at its main outlets.

Groupe Bertrand owns or franchises numerous restaurants, fast-food joints, pubs, brasseries and cafeterias in Paris, the Paris region and well beyond. In addition to Angelina, their most notable Paris properties are Brasserie Lipp, Charlie Birdy, Sir Winston and Tsé , while the group also operates restaurants in the Printemps department store.

The Mont-Blanc

No documents have been found to indicate precisely when the tea room began selling its most famous pastry, the mont-blanc, but Angelina’s archives show that it already appeared on menus from the 1930s. The blob-shaped mont-blanc may look less refined and delicate than other pastries chez Angelina, but that copper brown ball of sweet chestnut cream surrounding unsweetened whipped cream and a meringue heart remains worthy of admiration for any sweet-tooth and cream-hound. Angelina sells 2500 of them each day in France. (A serving of hot chocolate and mont-blanc being far too rich for most mortals, it might be advisable to accompany the pastry with tea or coffee or simply to share.)

Expanding the Angelina brand also means adding new pastry recipes to the display counter, such as the cassis-flavored mont blanc that reached rue de Rivoli to coincide with the 110th anniversary and the babylon, an almond dacquoise with vanilla mousse, candied raspberries and strawberry marshmallow created to mark the opening of Angelina Rive Gauche, the brand’s new pastry shop at 108 rue du Bac.

The light and relatively pricey lunch at Angelina is not my cup of tea, personally, but at any time of day the Belle Epoque tea room holds its historical aura. However, that aura disappears when seated in one of the back rooms. As to the space upstairs, some see it as being too close to les toilettes or away from the action of the main room, but in its far reaches, with the right company or alone with a good book or a promising text, it can feel nicely private, even exclusive.

Le Club des Gourmandes

There, in May 2013, Angela held its first invitation-only meeting of Le Club des Gourmandes, a gathering of “influential” women who delight in partaking of good food, with a special affection for sweet delicacies (gourmandises). “Influential” largely refers thus far to women in the media.

At the second gathering in October 2013, five gourmandes were inducted into the clubs,

– Natasha Harry, a television personality, who adores milk chocolate;
– Isabelle Bourdet, Director-General of the Press Club of Paris, who prefers a good ol’ pain aux raisins;
– Mercotte, a cookbook author and co-host of Le Meilleur Pâtissier, a top pastry chef competition, who claims a special affection for the classic French pastry the Paris-Brest, made by Philippe Conticini (founder of La Pâtisserie des Rêves);
– Sonia Ezgulian, a journalist, cookbook author and culinary consultant, who’s a fan of Calissons Petit Duc, a diamond-shaped almond-paste confection, and
– Catherine Guérin, founder of the international culinary public relations firm Toques Connection, a fan of anything containing almonds.

Asked what it meant to be honored into the Club des Gourmandes, Guérin said that “gathering around gourmandises gives positive energy—it’s a breath of fresh air.”

Here’s to many more years of positive energy!

Angelina, 226 rue de Rivoli, 1st arr. Metro Tuileries. Tel. 01 42 60 82 00. Open daily: Mon.–Fri. 7:30am-7pm, Sat. and Sun. 8:30am-7pm. The site has a complete list of the Angelina’s outlets in Paris and elsewhere.

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France Revisited joins in the celebration with a series of photo reports by Elise Prudhomme, a longtime resident of Paris, beginning with seven stunning black-and-white images of the Tuileries Garden, Paris’s most historical garden.

It was here, behind the royal palace of the Tuileries, that André Le Nôtre cut his teeth as a landscape gardener. His father and grandfather had worked here before him, he lived within the garden walls, and he is buried nearby in Saint Roch Church.

These Tuileries photographs are accompanied by a text in which the photographer provides background about Le Nôtre and explains her photographic interest in this garden.

Le tien, le mien, Le Nôtre / Yours, Mine, Le Nôtre’s

Photographs and text by Elise Prudhomme

A walk through the Tuileries Garden is a return to the origin of French gardens. Considering its long heritage of transformations by queens, kings, landscape architects and gardeners, the Tuileries cannot be fully attributed to André Le Nôtre (1613-1700). It can nevertheless be viewed as the matrix of André Le Nôtre’s career. By matrix I mean that the Tuileries was his testing grounds and the precursor of his future projects, the womb or mold from which his future work originated and developed.  Without the Tuileries there would be no Versailles.

Le Nôtre was born near these royal gardens in the Saint Roc Quarter. He was baptized and would eventually be buried in the St. Roch Church.  For many years he lived with his family in a house inside the walls of the Tuileries Garden. This garden was a family affair. His grandfather Pierre Le Nôtre was in charge of the parterres for Catherine de Medici, who had built the Tuileries Palace. His father Jean Le Nôtre replanted and maintained the Tuileries for Henri IV. (The Tuileries Palace itself, begun in 1564, burned down in 1871, leaving its garden to appear as though directly connected to the Louvre.)

The Tuileries appears to rest on the pillars of its historical central axis running through the garden and out west to what would become the Champs-Elysées and the geometrical work of the basins, but as a photographer these are not the aspects that most interest me here. My eye is drawn instead to the groundmass that constitutes the garden, actually a series of gardens within the larger garden.

Le Nôtre made innovative and subtle changes to the notion of space, opening what was once a medieval walled garden towards the exterior, creating gardens within gardens (these developed into bosquets at Versailles), changing the form of the parterres (octagonal to trapezoidal) for visual complexity, and constructing the elevated terraces (including the fer à cheval [horseshoe] ramps) which provided the viewer with different heights from which to contemplate the garden.

André Le Nôtre sought to break with the early formalism of French gardens in order to render the space appreciable to visitors. Working with mineral and plant architecture, he created multifaceted gardens that are both majestic and playful. The introduction of great vistas allowed him to play with symmetry and geometry in order to create complexity and diversity that open the garden to various functions, to areas of ornamentation (though there were fewer statues at the time), pleasure and utility (though commercial utility was far from Le Nôtre’s intent).

While crowds of pressed visitors are naturally drawn by the dramatic perspective from the Louvre up the Champs-Elysées, the Tuileries also allows strollers the opportunity to discover smaller gardens within the garden.

Photographing these individual spaces like the pieces of a puzzle, I wished to form a notion of the whole through the assimilation of individual details. Working spontaneously, I visited the garden frequently and photographed a variety of subjects. The choice to work in black and white was made to better reveal the geometry and rhythm that nature and humans have brought to these places.

Text and images © Elise Prudhomme.

A Philadelphia-born photographer living in Paris since 1990, Elise Prudhomme developed a passion for photography during university years at Smith College.  She also directs Studio Galerie B&B, an art gallery, photo studio, darkroom facility and digital imaging center in Paris, 6 bis rue des Récollets, near Canal Saint-Martin in the 10th arrondissement. More images can been seen at www.eliseprudhomme.com.

Thirty photographs from Elise Prudhomme’s Tuileries series Le tien, le mien, Le Nôtre (Yours, Mine, Le Nôtre’s) were accepted by the Louvre to grace the walls of their reception tent in the Tuileries Garden during the 2013 Jardins Jardin festival.

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What had previously been isolated Seine-side clusters devoted more to afternoon sunbathing than to evening picnicking, has now developed into a popular ritual whereby, picnickers both French and foreign congregate at various choice setting in the capital.

From May through August, in tune with late sunset and lengthy twilight, the most popular of these settings are:
– on the Champs de Mars by the Eiffel Tower,
– along the right bank of the Seine,
– on the western tip of Ile de la Cité,
– on the eastern tip of Ile Saint Louis,
– Pont des Arts, the pedestrian bridge,
– on the eastern side of Bassin de la Villette (19th arr.),
– in Parc de la Villette (19th arr.), and
– along Canal Saint Martin (10th arr.).
Click on the “View Map” tab to see the location of these various picknicking hotspots.

Peak picnic time at all of these locations is between the hour before and after sunset. Some arrive 6-8 p.m. for the aperitif then move on. After nightfall the average age drops as the emphasis is less on picnicking and more on hanging out.

The most photogenic of the major Paris picnicking sites is the pedestrian bridge called the Pont des Arts, between the French Institute and the Louvre. You have only to look at the surroundings to understand why: the side of the Louvre, the dome of the Institute, the riverbanks and bridges, the Eiffel Tower peeking out beyond the Orsay Museum, the towers and spires on Ile de la Cité, and of course the river itself, Paris’s raison d’être, with its parade of barges and tour boats.

The atmosphere on the Pont des Arts is at its best in June and early July, before vacations reduce the number of locals on the bridge, but it remains a choice picnic spot whenever the weather allows.

Brandon Echkoff and I went to the Pont des Arts one evening in June to catch the pulse of the bridge, as you’ll see in the accompanying audio slide-show. Watch it by clicking on either the “View Video” tab above (video may take 10 seconds to load) or on the Youtube screen below. Enjoy the view.

© 2009, Gary Lee Kraut

Picnicking on the Pont des Arts, audio slide-show
Interviews, text, some photos: Gary Lee Kraut
Audio and most photos: Brandon Eckhoff
Several photos: Jackson Shaw

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In April, I accepted to be a France Revisited guinea pig and test the Normandy Hotel for a weekend in Paris, where I was rendez-vousing with two cousins from America. My assignment: Have a good time, meet Gary (editor of France Revisited) for lunch, send an honest hotel report.

The hotel has a must-be Right Bank location, especially if it’s your first time in Paris. You’re within a few blocks of the Louvre, Place Vendome, Opera Garnier, the Tuileries Garden, window shopping galore, many restaurants (naturally tourist-leaning), and several convenient metro lines. I’d been to Paris a number of times before but this was a first for the cousins. But no matter how many times you’ve been in Paris, you can’t go wrong when you’re staying in a hotel where there are about six gourmet chocolate shops within a five minute’s walk, including the famed hot-chocolate venue Angelina. So the fun part was assured, as was lunch with Gary (a Japanese restaurant on rue Sainte-Anne, see the 2-Minute-Radius Guide that follows below this review). Now for the honest hotel report.

The Normandy Hotel is a former grand hotel that has clearly seen better days and that is biding its time while awaiting the corporate go-ahead for a thorough refreshing. So I’ll begin with the conclusion: if you’re looking for a good price on a central-as-can-be hotel that clearly has history and don’t mind a haphazard, somewhat worn décor then you’ve come to the right place. The cousins and I felt that we’d come to the right place.

The Normandy Hotel, like the other large hotels near the Louvre and the Tuileries Garden (Meurice, Ritz, Louvre, Westin, etc.), was built to cater to the British clientele who would arrive in Paris after debarking in Normandy. It opened its doors in 1877. The overwhelmingly British clientele of the period also explains why this is called the Normandy Hotel rather than the French name and spelling Hotel Normandie.

We were able to check in early, which is another advantage of choosing recession-era travel since hotels are less likely to glower at you for arriving even a minute before check-in time. However, oddity number one, we checked in at the reception, but then we received our key at the concierge’s desk on the opposite side of the lobby, as though following some 19th-century logic. Not a problem per se; it just seemed strange. The concierge was always helpful and best of all there was a distinct lack of snobbery in his attitude. Same goes for other members of the staff. In general, service was fine.

Though in need of refreshing, the Normandy really is quite appealing in a 19th-century sort of way, a welcome change from the modern minimalist hotels that have you trying to figure out what some Philippe Stark-like contraption is doing in your bathroom or wondering where they hid the TV and the mini-bar.

The décor throughout the hotel is a comely mix of French styles, with a clear longing for the Belle Epoque of the late 19th century. I didn’t notice the styles at first because I was immediately struck upon entering the lobby by two chandeliers, a mix of art deco boldness and Florida resort opulence, looking for all the world like big, ungainly slabs of cut glass stuck into wood. They were undoubtedly once a sign of elegance, but now they mostly look like suicide tools for spurned lovers. Gary commented that sometimes the point of decoration in a hotel (or a resort) is simply to be noticed and to let you know that someone had to be awfully careful hanging the damn thing. I did, however, like the circular marble staircase at the back of the lobby, leading to the room; it reminded me of European museums that you visit as much for the space as for the art.

The part of the hotel that truly exudes luxury is the breakfast room. That’s in part because it’s the one area of the hotel that has been restored since it recently made an attempt at being a chic Italian restaurant. It didn’t quite have the right sauce for that, so the restaurant closed, but it makes for a stunning breakfast room with its high ceiling decorated with the gilded initials of the hotel, NH. The breakfast buffet served there was typical and plentiful, including eggs, bacon and sausages for the Americans, cheese and sliced deli meats for the Germans and wonderful croissants, pastries and cereals for the French.

Though the hotel is no longer defined by its British travelers, the bar still leans stiffly to England with its dark wood and stuffed leather chairs. As with many English-style bars it comes off as a rather masculine place. Unfortunately, the cousins and I didn’t find any men there, by which I mean barmen, since it was always closed when we rolled in after midnight with thoughts of a nightcap. That may be the natural result of staffing shortage in a delightfully faded hotel, or perhaps just someone’s way of telling us that we’d had enough and should go straight to bed.

We had modest rooms that were ideal for our needs and budget. The bedding in our rooms was superb and everything was clean. Bizarrely, all rooms come with two heaters; the real heat comes from the heater/ac floor unit that, quite frankly, is not pretty and takes up valuable floor space in the more modest rooms. What were the vents in walls near the ceilings for, I wondered? Bizarre point number 2: my room came with a whirlpool bath, but there was no way to turn it on. Someone had sealed up the controls. Now, I did not ask for a whirlpool bath when reserving the room, and I was simply excited at the prospect of having a bath—my apartment in Nice only has a shower—but I was a bit disappointed to find that the whirlpool bit did not work. The bath though was heavenly. A white, fluffy robe completed the bliss.

On a tour of the hotel with Gary and the hotel’s assistant director, I also visited three different junior suites, all spacious, airy and decorated in 19th century British or French style and colors; the ceilings were tall and had the original cornices. We sometimes had our doubts about the details but didn’t mind the old-fashion atmosphere. The décor in some rooms is a bit threadbare and faded; not in a way that put me off, but it was obvious that the hotel group that operates the Normandy had also sealed up the knobs that control the flow of refurbishment money. Though the assistant director assured us that funds were on their way, she just couldn’t say when.

The rack room prices posted on the back of bedroom doors run about 300-500 euros but that’s just someone being hopeful. Gary and I decided that as the hotel now stands (spring 2009) the Normandy Hotel is a worthwhile choice for travelers if you can get a room for under, say, 180 euros (under $250 at the current exchange rate), and a very good chose at under 160 euros for the standard room, perhaps up to 190 euros more for those worn yet spacious junior suites.

For travelers not on a 4-star budget, let’s hope that the funds don’t flow anytime soon so as to take advantage of current pricing as found on the hotel’s website and further discounted on sites such as Expedia. Breakfast may or may not be noted as being included in the indicated price, but when contacting a hotel directly, there’s never any harm in asking them to include breakfast in that indicated price.

Allow me to repeat my conclusion mentioned above: if you’re looking for a good price on a central-as-can-be hotel that clearly has history and don’t mind a haphazard, somewhat worn décor then you’ve come to the right place. We did.

Normandy Hotel. 7 rue de l’Echelle, 1st arrondissement. Metro Pyramides or Palais Royal. Tel. 01 42 60 30 21. www.hotel-normandy.com. The Normandy is part of the Hôtels de Paris group of hotels, www.leshotelsdeparis.com.

© 2009 Stephanie Sommers

Your Normandy Hotel Two-Minute-Radius Guide
By Gary Lee Kraut

Half your guidebook is filled with sights and museums within a mile radius of the Normandy Hotel, so plenty to discover on foot from here. The quarter might be defined by tourism and luxury but that doesn’t make it any less a neighborhood. Here is the two-minute-radius guide for the neighborhood.

Places to keep in mind for:

Your morning jog: Tuileries Garden. See Paris on the Run, an article joggable garden and parks in Paris.

You introduction to the business of operating a café-brasserie: Le Musset Café, 5 rue de l’Echelle. There’s no better introduction to witnessing how things operate in a large café-brasserie in Paris then sitting at any time of day at the copper counter across the street from the hotel.

Your gas station if you forgot to fill the rental car before entering Paris: Esso, 342 rue Saint Honoré

Your grand view: Standing on Avenue de l’Opéra with a view of the Garnier Opera, the Comédie Française, the Hotel du Louvre, the Louvre, and the metro entrance circa 2000.

Eating and Drinking

Polished bistro: L’Absinthe, 24 place du Marché St Honoré. Tel 01 49 26 90 04.

Old-fashion wine bar: Le Rubis, 10 rue du Marché St Honoré. Tel 01 42 61 03 34.

Japanese restaurants: Rue Sainte-Anne, on the opposite side of Avenue de l’Opéra, is full of Japanese restaurants since food-wise it is Paris’s Little Japan.

Charming little café terrace: Le Passage Saint Roch, 15 rue des Pyramides.

Chocolate: Michel Cluizel, 201 rue St. Honoré. As mentioned in the review above, there’s more chocolate beyond the 2-minute radius, including hot chocolate at Angelina, the famous tea room.

Fine hotel bar, when yours is lifeless or closed: Hotel du Louvre, Place André Malraux. The Hotel du Louvre was the first luxury hotel of Paris when it opened in 1855 at what is now the Louvre des Antiquaires, across the square from the current location, which opened in 1887. The hotel is mentioned in several of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Sigmund Freud stayed here in 1910 while trying to figure out the relationship between Mona Lisa’s smile and Leonardo de Vinci’s childhood.

Also in the ‘hood

Unique boutique: Le Comptoir de l’Aviation, 3 rue d’Argenteuil. Articles for aviation enthusiasts. Tel. 01 42 60 26 66.

Oh la la!: L’Abys, a swinger’s club at 13 rue d’Argenteuil.

Museum: Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 107 rue de Rivoli. Click here for museum site. Click here for article about its permanent collection on France Revisited.

Historical notes

Famous Frenchmen entombed nearby: Pierre Corneille (1606-1684), playwright; André Le Notre (1613-1700), father of French gardens; Charles de l’Epee (1712-1789), abbot who codified sign language; Comte de Grasse (1722-1788), count who fought in the American Revolution, notably the Battle of Yorktown, and who is honored by a plaque placed by the Cincinnati Club of France in 1931. The tombs of these men are found in Eglise Saint-Roch, corner rue St. Honoré and rue St. Roch. St. Roch is a handsome parish church whose first stone was laid in the presence of young Louis XIV in 1653 and that was completed 70 years later early in the reign of Louis XV.

Famous Frenchwoman who lived nearby: Olympe de Gouges had a pied à terre at 270 rue St. Honoré. Born 1748, widowed at 18, she was ahead of her time as a female combatant for social equality under the monarchy and then during the Revolution. She made her voice known as an abolitionist deploring black slavery and as a feminist who drafted the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Citizen” (1789) at a time when the men expanding the Revolution were touting “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citzen” (1791). She famously declared that if a woman has a right to climb the scaffold (i.e. go to the guillotine) she has the right to climb the rostrum (i.e. to speak out). During the Terror she spoke out against the dictatorship of those who had taken power and of the need for greater democracy, which led to a cursory trial where she wasn’t allowed to be represented by a lawyer, and the “right to climb the scaffold” in November 1973.

Stephanie Sommers spent two nights at the Normandy Hotel, April 2009

Two-minute-radius guide © 2009, Gary Lee Kraut

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Self-taught incendiary, outright will-o’-the-wisp, tireless bundle of energy, art and literature enthusiast, extreme skier, Guy Martin defies the use of a single superlative. This little prince of the range, good-looking kid of the kitchen, serene poet, and toughened philosopher rules over a restaurant of legend, Le Grand Véfour. This is the story of an elusive and singular man.

Born in the harsh Alpine region of Savoy in the town of Bourg-Saint-Maurice on February 3, 1957, Guy Martin was endowed with nearly pathological energy. Blundering, cavorting, and other nonsense filled his childhood in a well-to-do family that “lacked nothing.” His mother, a religious woman, liked to prepare meals that were varied and homey yet precise enough that they might include a “reversed” flaky pastry. She wrote her recipes down in full detail, though her notebooks have since been lost, to her son’s regret. His father had a “nice situation” in civil engineering. The strapping lad skied admirably. He fit in with the décor, yet another creature of the woods not looking to be tamed. But at age 14, while his family frequently invited Offenbach and Mozart into the home, two outer encounters revolutionized his world: Claude Monet and the Rolling Stones.

His friends gave him the nickname “Mick.” Guy Martin already saw himself as a headliner, either as a rock star or a doctor without borders. Full of energy, he slept little. His mountain upbringing led him to appreciate the nature of sharing while surrounded by Savoyard grandmothers who kept an eagle eye out for the presence of spirits. A grand feeling of nobility arose from this landscape. At 19 he took on the role of a summertime pizza maker while preparing to take the baccalaureate exam. Nothing appeared to indicate that he would eventually play in the secret garden of the great chefs of this world. Yet this young man from the mountain knew how to work hard and understood the ethics of production. Faced with the infinity of the massifs, precision and justice melt into one; you can’t cheat when your life is at stake. Integrity and the need to surpass oneself are always necessary. “I didn’t know how to cook but I knew how to eat.” The gustatory collisions proved worthy: the adolescent’s morel mushrooms in a cream sauce, the parental Sunday venison in the country, the juice of the roast infused with sage from the garden, the maternal pie pastry.

At 23 he took the position of director of a 3-star hotel in the Alpine resort of La Plagne when offered a golden opportunity by Pierre Laden, director of the Gentilhommière de Coudrée. A fine combattant, he negotiated to obtain the responsibilities of manager and chef. It was a fateful time for him in a medieval setting, a weighty professional moment that lit the flames of desire. Sure of his impetuous talent, he put everything on the line when face to face with René Traversac, owner of twelve “Relais et Châteaux,” including Castel de Divonne. Straight away he asked for the position of chef-director. Six month later, with a staff of three in the kitchen, he obtained his first Michelin star. For eight years our Savoyard, with neither fear nor reproach, toiled away in the middle of this 50-acre park. His children accompanied him in daily sporting outings. He wished neither to live nor to work in the capital.

An event then occurred that changed the course of Guy Martin’s history: Jean Franz Taittinger, then owner of Le Grand Véfour, invited him to take the reins of the historical home of haute cuisine by the Palais Royal. The young chef—his feet alert and in the tempo, his mind boiling with excitement, full of ideas and projects—accepted the hallucinating challenge. On November 1, 1991, the spirit of Raymond Oliver, the late chef and owner who stood for decades at the helm of French cuisine, still haunted this restaurant of tales and legends. Guy Martin posed drastic conditions to have the freedom to pursue the adventure. Feeling his way forward, having set aside his ego, he was staggered by the scent history and by the sumptuous Directory dining rooms, by the smell the cut grass of springtime, by the sight of children fluttering around the nursery of the Palais Royal. The proximity to the Louvre determined the rest. Guy Martin draws the source of his inspiration from paintings. He imagines, eats, and paints a dish in a single effort. Bacon, Rothko, Botticelli, Schiele, and Magritte live beside him in the light of day. Artists help him exist in this landscape.

Ultra-sensitive to colors and shapes, he sketches on pieces of paper, he meditates his recipes in drawings. The food: a mental moment of Buddhist inspiration. On this canvas order comes from raw emotion. Like a play of pigments and shadows, the bitter, the acidic, or the crisp prevail in harmony. His menu is strewn with Savoyard notes: fish from the Lakes of Bourget and Geneva; cheeses of Beaufort, Reblochon, and Corne d’Abondance. More than the fragrance of individual products, these are ways of being. France anchored the Savoy region relatively late in its political and culinary history. Independent until 1860, Savoyards had produced a specific cuisine, opulent in spices. The Court of Savoy showed eminent sophistication. Traces remain in the biscuit, in preparations with saffron pistils, with lemon rind, with grain of paradise. Such spices play to perfection the accent of Véfour.

The aristocrat travels light. He abhors the superfluous. He ponders culinary behavior of the future. He listens so as to understand the tendencies of domestic consumption. The ways in which food products reach the mouth evolve: a clear gap between the city and the country, progressive fragmentation of meals, cuisine on demand, disappearance of the single dish, individuation of practices. Food as a type of play appears while culinary dogmatism disappears. Ever since Catherine de Médicis in the 16th century French cuisine has shown an extraordinary and unique capacity to integrate elements encountered abroad. Guy Martin has written or co-written popular books that echo this heritage: “Un artist au grand Véfour” (An Artist at Le Grand Véfour), 2000, “La cuisine des blondes” (Blond Cuisine), 2007, and others. His successes have rendered haute gastronomy accessible to the general public. He freely transmits to young people the choice of discernment. “Give back that which has been given to us.” A memorable dish is born of the mastery of buried foundations, of the lights at our back, of the forgotten as a form of memory. Through his emotions the taster can recall a single dish year, even a lifetime, later.

Insubordinate, Guy Martin knows that an eternal dish is defined as one that the chef no longer removes from his menu. Sharing of the dish matters as much as the protagonists that created it. Fleeing high society gathering and cliques, preferring the contemplative, he selects the guests with whom he himself eats. He humbly and surprisingly admits: “Chefs don’t count, only the plate matters.” His recipes fall from heaven like the sounds of a musician who doesn’t write down his score. Material moves toward texture rather than the other way around. His preparations form neither an arena of tension nor a table for geometry but a deep search for taste, i.e. for the memorable emotion. Recently, in Japan, near Osaka, in a cast-iron port of the same type his grandmother had used, he watched a Japanese chef prepare sea bream and rice then finish by scraping at the burnt heart of rice. For Guy Martin, a shiver of thrill to observe.

Elected best French chef among the top seven in the world by The World Master Arts of Culinary in 2001, he keeps a level head and plunges into the perpetual questioning that changes the way we look at things. Moved by his Legion of Honor, troubled by his distinction as man of the year 2006 in Japan, he sings “The Barber of Seville” in his Jacuzzi and frequents authors as discerning as Alexandre Vialette, Henri Michaux, and Milan Kundera. His own mythology is built around Lawrence of Arabia, “Casablanca,” and “La Dolce Vita.” He lives his life without spite, gives peace dinners around the world—Africa, Israel… Suddenly he’ll stop the tape. Then, lost in thought, he’ll describe an orange, previously forgotten, in the mountain, during a climb, from a backpack, handed to him, a fruit that gives the mouth such intense freshness, such pleasurable texture, such thrilling juice. To maintain the fire that burns within him and to constantly fan the flame higher he got involved in the creation of a fragrance with perfumer Annick Goutal. He seems to enjoy noting: “I didn’t want to have this profession. I would like to have been an artist.” Insatiable worker, he only creates “real things.”

With superior staffs he created the restaurant Le Sensing in the 6th arrondissement and the luxury sandwich shop and snack bar MIYOU in the 8th, where he concocts without taboo, without borders. He casts his gaze on the orchards of the world (France, Europe, the Orient) that punctuate his inspirations. Seize the day of Algerian citrus fruit for a blanquette. Far from the violence of the world and from absurd accelerations, his art expresses a way of confiding love, an outstretched hand. Having his roots in the tang of the soil reveals the taste of the earth, an interest in classicism touched by modernity. As with great music, our sensitivity is sharpened by habit and familiarity. Peas, large as the head of a pin, metamorphose into a heady, creamy ice cream. Varieties of cactus, tasted in Mexico, reveal peppery flavors and sweet undertones. In Thailand, the rediscovery of grasshoppers and larvae inspire him in memory of Edouard Nignon (1865-1935), the famous chef who wrote “L’Heptaméron des Gourmets” (1919), a presentation of 620 glorious preparations of French cuisine. Guy Martin has also created the first-class menus for Air France, provided strategy for the Monoprix supermarket chain, and advised La Mère Poulard, the famous omelet-proud restaurant on Mont Saint Michel, on its eggs, all the while working on his own cloud, his head in the stars.

Guy Martin reaches the essential. He lives every moment to the fullest, molding his life into a single work of art. For the maestro of the Véfour the winds of happiness are Hauts Sauternes and the paternal génépi liqueur… and decorating one’s power to exist, never fearing, never hoping, always believing that life affirms the infinite field of possibilities… and cooking as a spiritual exercise of training a horse: feel its heart vibrate, be one with the civilized beast through tolerance and humor. Surrounded by his family, his children, in the mauve poppy of our lives and of our desires, Guy Martin, Zen herald, Zorro of gai savoir, diagnoses the utopia of the present in a better planet. He can’t stand the idea that one would fail to understand that the first and last audacity is Man.

© Fabien Nègre. Translation and adaptation by Gary Lee Kraut with authorization from the author. This article first appeared in French on www.lesrestos.com. It has been translated (with slight modification) and posted here with permission.

Fabien Nègre is an economist, philosopher, and content producer for the media.

Three Guy Martin establishments in Paris

Le Grand Véfour – Guy Martin. 17, rue de Beaujolais, 1st arr. Metro Palais Royal. Tel. 01 42 96 56 27.

Le Sensing – Guy Martin. 19 rue Bréa, 6th arr. Metro Metro Vavin. Tel. 01 43 27 08 80.

MIYOU. 35 rue de Miromesnil, 8th arr. Metro Miromesnil. Tel. 01 42 66 33 33.

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