We gather here today to recognize and affirm our place in the world. In our halting quest for peace, freedom, happiness, prosperity and the well-being of our loved ones, we gather not to walk lock-step towards a single destination, but to wherever our interests, whims and desires may lead us, without willful harm to others. Where are we? Where are we going? Let us consider:

You know you’re in Paris when:

… you’re on a bike, one foot to the ground, waiting for people to cross the street and for the light to change, and a man teeters over to you, drunk.He says, “I won’t ask you for a little change to buy something to drink.”
“Why not?,” you ask.
“Because you’re North African and you don’t drink.”
“And if I told you that I do drink?”
“Can you give me some change?”

You know you’re in southeast France when:

… you understand that the association of food and drink with place is what most marks market-based gastronomy.
Read here for the theory: Market Day in France.
Read here for the bulls, lemons, olives, figs, cheese, honey and wine: Market Day in the Southeast: Provences-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.

You know you’re headed somewhere in the so-called middle of nowhere when:

… your friends say, “Why are you going there, to raise sheep?”
France Revisited takes pleasure in revealing the somewhere of such nowheres, and there is nowhere more somewhere in Creuse, in central France, than the small town of Aubusson, world famous for its 500 years of tapestry-making.

You know you’re in Paris’s 10th arrondissement when:

… you’re following these bar-hopping footsteps in a sliver of the tenth.

***

Having recognized our place in the world and in order to better it, let us herald this new era, you are cordially invited to two inaugural events in Paris:

1. An inaugural cocktail walk with I DRiNK PARiS, a daily sip of the City of Light. Wed. Jan. 25, 6-8pm.
What is I DRiNK PARiS? I DRiNK PARiS explores wine, cocktails, beer, spirits, coffee, tea, hot chocolate and more and the people, pleasures and places that go with them. By the way, if you can take photos and tell a good story at the same time I DRiNK PARIS is looking for contributors.

2. An inaugural public reading of Paris Vignettes entitled “7 Writers Walk into a Bar.” Mon. Jan. 30, 7-8:30pm.
What are vignettes? Short pieces of writing that examine transformative moments of love, loss, joy and personal insight.
What is Paris Vignettes? A vibrant weekly writing workshop in… Paris.
On Jan. 30 Elizabeth Neylon, Christine Hennebique, Niamh Tixier, Alice Evleth, Patricia Wilson, Natalie Fynn and I read (in English) from our recent works. The reading will be held at upstairs at Falstaff, a café at 10-12 place de la Bastille, near rue de la Roquette. While admission is free and open to the public, attendees are each expected to purchase a drink.

Welcome to a new era on France Revisited.

Happy travels always,

Gary

Gary Lee Kraut
Editor, France Revisited
www.francerevisited.com
gary [at] francerevisited.com

The post France Revisited Newsletter: The Inauguration Issue appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

In this first in a series of Paris cocktail bar expeditions we sipped our way through a sliver of the 10th arrondissement with stops at three very different bars located just off Boulevard Saint-Martin, between the metro stations République and Strasbourg Saint-Denis.

For some cocktail travelers any one of these bars will be enchanting enough for an evening’s excursion into cocktail-land, for others the contrast of two will raise the spirit before dinner, while the devoted cocktail explorers will enjoy a delightfully varied journey by taking in the three, all without walking more than 600 yards.

These bars can be visited in any order, at any time in the evening and into the night, but our preferred order progresses from Lavomatic, where we found recipe, to CopperBay, where we enjoyed chemistry, to Baranaan, where we discovered alchemy.

Come before 7pm if you want a relatively quiet cocktail, otherwise enjoy the crowd, either before, after or instead of dinner. Anyone over 40 may feel a bit over the hill as these bars fill, but all are welcome and will soon feel at home. None takes reservations.

Recipe: Lavomatic

Lavomatic
30 rue René Boulanger, 10th arr.
Metro République
Open Tues. and Wed. 6am-1pm, Thurs.-Sat 6am-2am

What may well be the world’s smallest laundromat is also the front to Paris’s most secretive cocktail bar. Well, it would be secretive if this bar, which opened in 2015, weren’t already such a hit. Still, not all comers know which button on which laundry machine gives access to the cocktail cycle.

Find it and a door will open to a staircase leading to a compact and lively cocktail scene. Fellow launderers sit on Brillo cubes, swings, bar stools and leaning ledges. Get your suds up with contemporary cocktail recipes for the start of your evening whether out for a quick rinse or the full cycle, cool, warm or hot. 10-12 euro cocktails and nice little appetizers won’t take you to the cleaners. Rinse, repeat if necessary.

Best seat in the house: the corner ledge of the bar area.

Chemistry: CopperBay

CopperBay
5 rue Bouchardon, 10th arr.
Metro Strasbourg Saint-Denis or Jacques Bonsergent
Open Tues.-Sat. 6pm-2am

The faraway name and the clean-lined décor of CopperBay may be mildly evocative of the bar of a New England yacht club, but as watched Aurélie and Julien measure out doses, dashes and dollops of the elements of fine mixology we immediately recognized them as highly skilled cocktail chemists.

Choose from the brief description on the wall, from the chemistry cards on the menu rung or simply present your tastes and requirements to the owner-lab techs behind the bar.

While Julien’s hand ballet executes state-of-the-art formulas, Aurélie selects, stirs, shakes and shimmies with such self-assurance that she can also simultaneously offer a warm welcome to newcomers while offering advice to a return traveler. Meanwhile, Elfi, the third partner in this smooth-running experiment, largely works behind the scenes.

Canned, jarred and wrapped nibbles can be ordered, but the focus is firmly on beverage at this second stop on our cocktail tour.

Alchemy: Baranaan

Baranaan
7 rue du Faubourg Saint Martin, 10th arr.
Metro Strasbourg Saint-Denis
Open Tues.-Sun. 6pm-1:30am

An unmarked door at the back of the vegetarian Indian snack joint Elaichi opens to a subcontinental speakeasy where cultures cross from one cocktail to the next.

Owners Raphaël and Krishane and their team of multiculti alchemists lure us out of Paris and into a joyful world of spirits, infusions, essential oils, spices and liqueurs. This is the cocktail traveler’s passport to nearly mystical concoctions. Booths—rather, compartments—along the wall offer a train journey into the Tamil heartland. Gaze through the one-way mirror in the rest room to reflect on your fellow traveler before returning to your seat.

Naans and other noshes allow 10th arrondissement cocktail explorers to ignore dinner and continue their spirit-fueled journey into the night.

(c) 2016

Want to partake in a France Revisited drinking or eating expedition?
France Revisited occasionally enlists readers to join on cocktail, beer or wine bar expeditions as well as on gastronomic adventures, particularly in Paris, sometime beyond. Expeditionists and adventurers are expected to be willing to try different food or beverages (i.e. you won’t be forced, but please don’t be difficult) and to give honest opinions that may be integrated into an upcoming article. Expeditionists and adventurers pay their own way or a pre-defined cost. These are not tours but ways in which you help us in our research and we help you enjoy (re)discovering Paris and beyond. Write to gary [at] francerevisited.com if you’d like to join the exclusive list. Another way to be sure to join is by supporting France Revisited, as explained here.

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By Kate Robinson

“I’m a fan of beers that are facile à boire, that you can drink the whole evening,” Daniel Thiriez said with a wry smile as he introduced the latest creation of his brewery Brasserie Thiriez.  (Brasserie means brewery in French.) He’d been invited by the owners of Paris’s new craft beer bar La Fine Mousse to present his various brews, including his latest, La Petite Princesse, a pale gold, low-alcohol beer brewed in collaboration with the Austin-Texas-based Jester King brewery. The crowd at La Fine Mousse was in for a special treat that evening. “You’re probably the very first people in France to taste this on tap,” he said.

Until recently, opportunities like this to meet craft brewers or discover beers outside of the Heineken-AB-InBev-Kronenbourg industrial triumvirate on tap in Paris were few and far between. But the Great Beer Desert finally has an oasis: La Fine Mousse, the first bar in Paris to seriously specialize in craft beer. Located on a discreet corner of the 11th arrondissement one block from the heart of the lively Oberkampf neighborhood, La Fine Mousse, roughly translated as “The Delicate Head [of Beer],” offers a revolving selection of 20 craft beers on tap and nearly 150 bottled references, as well as a program of brewery nights, brewing classes, and tastings—all proof that good beer is making its comeback in Paris and in good company.

From couch to counter

Romain Thieffry, Cyril Lalloum and Laurent Cicurel, the trio behind the counter at La Fine Mousse, which opened in September 2012, are also behind Les Soirées Maltées, a Paris-based organization that has been bringing craft beer fans and brewers together since 2010. Their diverse backgrounds did not include experience in the bar or restaurant industry, but they shared a love of good beer and the frustration of not having a place to enjoy it.

“With Les Soirées Maltées, we discovered that there were many difficult-to-find craft beers in France and no bar, even in Paris, that represented the diversity and quality of French breweries,” says Romain. So the three beer-lovers, together with Simon Thillou, owner of the beer shop La Cave à Bulles near the Pompidou Center, decided to create a place dedicated to good beer.

The craft beer revival in France is recent, but the country’s dormant affinity for a good brew goes back a long way. At the end of the 19th century, soon after Pasteur demystified fermentation and long before Americans started putting their own spin on European brewing traditions, France was home to 2,827 large breweries, and thousands of small local operations peppered the country’s northern regions.

At the time, beer and wine were happy tablemates: both were products of strong local industries with deep connections to the land. But the early years of the 20th century were not kind to traditional beer-making. Many village breweries were run by men who ended up fighting and dying in the world wars, which left fewer people to carry on the tradition of craft beer. In the absence of strong local breweries, the industrial giants found an easy foothold. By the mid-1970s, only 23 breweries were operating in France.

It would be the mid-nineties before the first French craft breweries appeared and another decade or more before the public started taking notice. Today there are nearly 500 breweries in France—that’s more than there are in Belgium. While many limit themselves to a small locally-distributed production, altogether they reflect beer’s enormous diversity. Before the recent revival of craft beer, however, as wine continued to evolve in quality and diversity, beer in France followed an inverse curve of standardization and homogenization. From there, it was easy for wine sympathizers to cast beer as a second rate drink. In fact, much of the advertising for wine focused on reinforcing the wine-is-good-beer-is-bad dichotomy.

As a result, many French people were left with the impression that French beer was unfit for anything but guzzling on the couch while watching a football (soccer) match—and definitely not worthy of “tasting.” However, the brew-bashing may actually have supported beer’s transformation from maligned second-choice into a sought-after beverage in its own right that remains accessible even as it grows in prestige.

“People are afraid of making mistakes with wine and this has made it inaccessible and intimidating,” says Romain. Because beer lost the battle for preeminent national beverage, it still has a friendly, guy-next-door kind of approachability that makes it easy to get into. “People don’t have any complexes when it comes to beer.”

Raising the bar

La Fine Mousse is a friendly little bar where the uninitiated rub elbows with seasoned professionals. Having themselves evolved from beer enthusiasts to connoisseurs to mini beer geeks, as Romain puts it, the owners are as attentive to the novice as they are to the most accomplished brewer. “We tried to break the stereotypes with this bar,” explains Romain. La Fine Mousse has nothing in common with a typical zinc-inflected brasserie (in addition to meaning brewery, brasserie also means a large café-restaurant that naturally serves beer), nor is it a wood-paneled beer den. It’s a stone-textured place with subdued modernity that reflects both the terroir of craft beer and the demands of an urban clientele.

From the row of glistening taps to the rustically modern concrete bar to the custom-designed cold room and draft system, everything in La Fine Mousse has been thoughtfully chosen to create an environment conducive to discovery that reflects the exceptional beers available. “We want people to discover different styles and different breweries, to wake up their sense of taste and change their perception of beer. There’s real work and craftsmanship behind it and there are now excellent products out there,” Romain explains.

La Fine Mousse also wants to overturn the stereotype that a craft beer is an expensive beer. “We set out to prove to people that they can drink an excellent, high-quality product at the same price as an industrial beer,” says Romain. Most craft beers here cost 3.50€ to 7€ for un demi (a 25 cl glass of beer), about the same price as a Heineken at many bars and cafés in Paris. Bottles run 6-10€ plus some exceptional higher-priced beers from select brewers throughout Europe.

A chacun son goût – To each his own

The clientele at La Fine Mousse is as diverse as the beer on tap. From the elderly couple looking for a beer they tasted in Flanders to the group of women starting an evening out to the beer geek regulars who know every brew on the menu, La Fine Mousse has something for everyone. And half the fun of an evening at the bar is figuring out what exactly that something is.

The statement “I’d like a beer” triggers a series of questions to identify what you’d really like: Dark or light? Fruity or floral? A touch acidic? (In French or in English if you prefer.) “Some people find it a little disconcerting at the beginning because most of us aren’t used to making a choice about beer, like we would naturally with wine,” explains Romain.

Nevertheless, he says, most people get hooked once they begin to get a sense of the variety of tastes that beer can have. “They see very quickly that this beer is more flavorful than what’s usually available. Once they get into the game they’ll come in and say, ‘I want something that’s not too bitter, with a hint of fruit, a little bit of spice’—and when we find the beer that fits their taste and aromatic profile, they’re enchanted.”

A beer near you

Romain sees the current interest in craft beer as part of a more general shift toward a “consume less, consume better” attitude, one that’s making people more receptive to a new way of thinking about beer. “We have so many good breweries [in France] that are making an incredible diversity of beer with a real savoir-faire,” says Romain. “Someone will try a beer and say, ‘Wow, this is excellent, where’s it from?’ When we tell them Paris or another region they know, the response is often ‘I had no idea.’”

That’s not too surprising considering that the craft beer revival in France is still quite young. “I was the only one in Esquelbecq when I started 16 years ago,” Daniel Thiriez explained to me during the evening dedicated to products of his brewery Brasserie Thiriez. Esquelbecq is less than 10 miles from the Belgian border in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. The village once had five breweries and more than 50 estaminets (the name for traditional northern pubs), but no beer had been produced in the village for 50 years by the time he moved into the former Brasserie Poitevin in 1996.

But Daniel Thiriez is no longer alone. While statistics show the decline of the French beer industry in general, the smallest breweries are maintaining double digit growth. In the last 15 years, the craft beer movement has produced some excellent breweries, including at least six in and around Paris.

Part of the charm of craft beer is that it starts out local somewhere. Rather than go through big distributors, the team at La Fine Mousse goes directly to most of the brewers. That might involve traveling a few hours from Paris to a beer fair or brewery or making a quick trip to Bagnolet, 15 minutes from the city center.

“There are talented brewers all around us,” says Romain. His advice to anyone interested is to go out and meet them. “Find the brewers in your area. They will be thrilled to show you what they’re doing. That’s what local is all about. You’ll see real craftsmanship at work, you’ll smell the grains that go into it, and you’ll drink a beer with the person who made it.”

The cream of the crop

Of France’s nearly 500 breweries a growing fraction are exceptional. Romain and his colleagues hunt down these liquid gems and offer them a wider audience. They decided from the beginning that French beers would represent half the menu at La Fine Mousse. Most of the other half are European brews though some come from overseas. “When we made our list of what we wanted to see on tap and in bottles, we realized that half were already French. We didn’t have to force to find them and that was a really nice surprise,” says Romain.

With so many good beers in France and elsewhere, choosing what to keep isn’t easy. Deciding on a selection of eclectic and refined flavor profiles accessible to both the inexperienced drinker and confirmed beer amateur means making some sacrifices. Stout, I.P.A., cervoise, barley wine and lambic are among the styles that circulate regularly through the 20 taps. “We made it a priority to have a truly diverse selection of breweries and styles,” explains Romain. “We might have 15 different styles of beer on tap so we rotate them frequently to feature different styles, but also different breweries and different styles within the same brewery.”

The beer that binds

There’s a strong spirit of exchange and innovation associated with craft beer and it’s one that La Fine Mousse actively supports. The bar already plays host to beer tastings, guest brewery nights and even beer-making classes with My Beer Company, a microbrewery just beyond the edge of Paris in Levallois. The bar and its owners are bubbling over with curiosity and passion which comes across in the attention they lavish on clients and the beers they serve. “There are still so many breweries that demand to be known,” says Romain.

The many small breweries appearing all over the country are redefining beer as a local product of quality. La Fine Mousse and a handful of other bars and beer shops are finally giving people a place to discover them, proof that wine isn’t the only drink worth ‘tasting’ anymore.

La Fine Mousse, 6 avenue Jean Aicard, 11th arr. Tel. 09 80 45 94 64. Metro Saint Maur or Ménilmontant. Open daily 5pm-2am. Cold cut and/or cheese plates can be ordered after 7pm. See the bar’s site for special events.

Other notable craft beer bars in Paris

Brewberry, 18 rue du Pot de Fer, 5th arr. Tel. 01 43 36 53 92. Metro Place Monge or Censier-Daubenton. Open Mon. and Tues. 3-9pm, Wed.-Sat. 12:30-11pm, Sun. noon-9pm.

Le Super Coin, 3 rue Baudelique, 18th arr. Metro Jules Joffrin or Simplon. Open Tues. and Wed. 11am-midnight, Thurs.-Sat. 11am-2am, Sunday 4pm-midnight.

Beer shops in Paris with a wide selection of craft beers
La Cave à Bulles, 45 rue Quincampoix, 4th arr. Tel. 01 40 29 03 69. Metro Les Halles, Rambuteau or Chatelet. Open Tues.-Sat. 10am-2pm and 4pm-8pm; closed Wed. Owned by Simon Thillou, co-owner of La Fine Mousse.

Bieres Cultes, 14 rue des Halles, 1st arr. Tel. 09 81 98 93 32. Metro Chatelet. Open Mon. 5-8pm, Tues.-Fri. 1-8pm, Sat. noon-8pm. Also stores in the 17th and 18th arrondissements.

Chop’In, 45 rue de Gergovie, 14th arr. Tel. 01 45 42 93 71. Metro Plaisance or Pernety. Open Tues.-Fri. noon-8pm, Sat. 10am-8pm.

La Moustache Blanche, 16 rue des Tournelles, 4th arr. Tel. 01 75 57 15 06. Metro Bastille. Open Tues.-Thurs. 11am-8:30pm, Fri. noon-9:30pm, Sun. 2-8pm.

People’s Drug Store, 78 rue des Martyrs, 18th arr. Metro Pigalle or Abbesses. Open daily noon-midnight, until 2am Fri. and Sat.

© 2013, Kate Robinson  for publication in France Revisited

Kate Robinson is originally from the Pacific Northwest and has lived in Paris since 2004. A freelance writer and editor, she also organizes the reading series “Pause on the Landing” for the Paris literary journal Upstairs at Duroc.

Interested in organized beer and wine touring in the spirit of France Revisited? See here.

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* * *

Shangri-La, a welcome addition to the top tier of 5-star hotels of Paris, is a discreet establishment. Its discretion begins with its location, which is respectably askew from the glitter of the city’s golden triangle.

Detractors cite its distance from the hubbub of high fashion and gastronomy in Paris. So do admirers. Count me among the latter.

The building at the heart of Shangri-La, the former Palais Iéna, was built 1892-1896 as the home of Roland Bonaparte (1858-1924), Napoleon Bonaparte’s grandnephew. Shangri-La is an Asian chain (this is their first European venture) yet it has largely maintained the original patrician Parisian spirit of the ground-floor public rooms. They were and remain an ode to the marriage of aristocracy and industrial achievement. Shangri-La’s public spaces successfully play the Parisian parlor game of showing class through restraint, with the occasional silk vest standing by to let you know that the Shangri-La chain is indeed based in Hong Kong.

I will write soon on France Revisited of the appeal of the rooms (which start at $1000 per night), of the 19th century themes of straight lines, dark wood, marble, bronze, gilt, of the beautiful wall paper, and of the Eiffel Tower views.

L and I, however, didn’t come for the night. We came for the evening.

Le Bar

Discreetly entered beyond the hotel’s reception area, the contemporary Empire décor of Le Bar offers an easy-going invitation to dream of foreign and local adventures. There’s a faux minimalism to the center of the bar that on first glance on a relatively empty evening can make it feel that something is missing from the décor, but then we realized that it was us—and here we were!

It all came together when we took a seat and got in deep conversation about a choice of a cocktail with head bartender Christophe Léger, who previously tended at the Bar Vendome at the Ritz for 13 years.

I’d felt duty-bound to ask for a Pink Lady since that’s the house specialty, but Mr. Léger saved me from the embarrassment of sitting in front of a pink drink by explaining that the egg white and cream in it made it too heavy before dinner. After a brief bit of cocktail history—something at which the head bartenders at top hotels are known experts—Mr. Léger steered us to what can only be considered a women’s drink (something slightly sweet) for L and a man’s drink (some kind of sour) for me.

Forty minutes later there was a question of trying other concoctions and of considering a fine selection of olives and nuts as our appetizer, but then we remembered that an enticing dinner adventure awaited just down the hall.

La Bauhinia is an airy east-meets-west rotunda sporting a Maurano 3-tiered chandelier and crowned by a glass canopy.

There’s a wavering moment as you enter since you’re aware that people sit at these same tables in the morning ordering veggie omelets or paying $50 for coffee and a croissant, and your enthusiasm deflates slightly at the thought that you’ve come to a hotel restaurant and not a real restaurant. But that impression goes away as soon as the waiter pulls out the table for your date to sit on the banquette and your date, rearranging her pearls, says, “Thanks for bringing me here, I thought this was just going to be a hotel restaurant but it’s really quite nice,” and you see how lovely and comfortable she looks against a background of celadon vases.

So we toasted our good fortune at dining together.

La Bauhinia, named for the flower on the flag of Hong Kong, serves polished cuisine that’s largely French along with select Asian dishes. The hotel has a separate restaurant of more rarified gastronomy, the intimate and formal L’Abeille (The Bee), named for a symbol of the Bonaparte family. A third restaurant, Shang Palace, slated to open at Shangri-La this summer, will serve gourmet Cantonese cuisine.

We were testing La Bauhinia in springtime, so L started with a fresh salad of grapefruit, shrimp, peanuts and a spicy vinaigrette (photo below) while I took the white and green asparagus with a light leek sauce.

We then tried a second appetizer, a gift from executive chef Philippe Labbé, of braised endives with black truffles and a while truffle cream sauce—and a most pleasing gift it was, our shared favorite.

Makes you want to dive right in.

Next came L’s lotte (monkfish) and my lamb. La Bauhinia serves well prepared, non extravagant gastronomy. It’s the kind of meal one has when one wants to eat chic and well without having to deal with attitude or a picture-perfect plate. Here is L’s dish of chunky pieces of sauced-up lotte.

L’s dessert was so pretty that we simply admired it. There was a question of rather to begin by forking or spooning it. L preferred to spoon.

We followed the meal with tea, as much for the desire to prolong our communion at the table as for the pleasure of having the celadon color tea set on the table, with the vases over L’s shoulder.

L then bore her soul to me and proffered a piece of chocolate.

Neither overly refined nor overly brash, pricey but Parisian, an evening at Le Bar and La Bauhinia at Shangri-La is just right when you want to head confidently, though not excessively, upscale—and grab what life offers you with both hands.

Bauhinia at Shangri-La Hotel, 10 avenue d’Iéna, 16th arrondissement. Tel. 01 53 67 19 91. Open for breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner. Dress code: smart casual. For dinner count on 75-100 euros per person for 3 courses, without drinks, or 150-175 euros per person for an evening that begins at the bar and ends well.

Read the review of the Shangri-La Hotel, particularly its rooms, decor and location, here.

For the prequel to this article see In Transit: The Route to Shangri-La Is Paved with Good Intentions.

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You peruse the right magazines, or so they tell you.

You read the best travel sections, as though any of them knew what was going on in Paris.

You read the most up-to-date blogs, or so they want you to believe.

And still you don’t know that Le Comptoir Général, a bar and events space across the street from Canal Saint Martin, is among the hippest spaces in Paris this spring.

Not hip as in style or attitude, not age-related or attitude-bound or drug-induced. Commercial or non-commercial, doesn’t matter. This is the hip that money won’t buy and fashion won’t help you achieve. You’ve either got or you don’t.

By July it might still be a fine place to hang out for the evening but it’ll be old news, the kind you read about in those magazines and travel sections and blogs.

And please don’t expect me to actually describe the place to you or show pictures of what hip look like this spring or tell you what nights are best or take you by the hand to lead you down the dark alley that gets you there. Either you get or you don’t.

Either you’re in or you’re out.

Up to you.

Le Comptoir Général, 80 quai de Jemmapes, 10 arrondissement. Metro République or Jacques Bonsergent. http://www.lecomptoirgeneral.com/.

© 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

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L. took the open stool; she ran Paris’s 20K race the day before. We ordered mojitos, possibly because that’s what we had the last time we came. We watched the bartender mash the mint. The current numbers of their ongoing straw poll was drawn on the mirror: Obama-Biden 69, McCain-Palin 40. (Harry’s poll picked Kerry in 2004 but Bush in 2000.) They sell hotdogs here.

Harry’s Bar is like an opium den but with stiff, pricey drinks. It’s saloon doors and wood, mirror, framed portrait, bottle-and-glass décor exude both community and loneliness. You can make bar friends at Harry’s, an evening’s worth, possibly more. You can while away a few hours. If I were a business traveler staying in the area I would come here then tell people back home that I don’t really get much time to see Paris when I travel. And it would be true.

Do ask, do tell, that’s the policy of my relationship with L., but since is a blog not a diary mums the word. We were in no rush to leave our stools (after 30 minutes I’d snagged one, too) yet decided that having a second mojito wasn’t a good idea.

We went to Gallopin for dinner. Gallopin is behind the stock market, and there’s no problem getting a table at a handsome restaurant by the stock market these days. Gallopin, which opened in 1876, is one of the few historical brasseries that remains in private, non-group hands. The waiter treated us with slow, gentle consideration as though either he or we were in an asylum. L. had a delicious, tender lamb served with potato-something-or-other. I had a thick filet of beef—satisfying and done just as I’d ordered, but less tasty than the lamb—served with string beans, fries, and a béarnaise sauce. I’m not into béarnaise, but L. took a spoonful. A bit of wine: Saint Estephe, a merlot-heavy blend from the northern end of the Bordeaux region’s Médoc vineyards. For dessert in this classic, comfortable, well-heeled, very Parisian brasserie, L. couldn’t resist ordering the classic French baba, a rum-soaked sponge cake. For me, a sablé (a sweet and buttery biscuit) topped with un-seasonal strawberries and whipped cream. Polished fine brasserie fare.

L. isn’t feeling well today. She says it had something to do with her baba and my béarnaise yesterday, but I think it was because she was already sick and had nevertheless run Paris’s 20K race the day before.

Harry’s New York Bar, aka Harry’s Bar, 5 rue Daunou, 2nd arrondissement. Metro: Opera. Open daily 10am-4am.

Gallopin. 40 rue Notre Dame des Victoires, 2nd arrondissement. Metro: Bourse. Open daily noon to midnight.

The post A feel-good evening and a tough next day appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.