Paris 2014: The Week of November 10th

We’re settling into living in Paris now. Shopping. House cleaning. Dinners out. Evenings in. Reading. Watching TV or movies. Taking Emmy through the neighborhood. Just life. Trying to understand in what ways this life is the same and in what ways it is different than back in LA.

Monday was simply a day for catching up. Our guests got up at 5:30AM to get ready to head back to the US and to some extent we got up with them… Spent the rest of the day cleaning up, and catching up. Maxine introduced me to Casino, a real supermarket about a 15 minute walk from our apartment. It changes around how you shop when you know you’re going to wheel it home, or carry it home in a backpack. But, it’s part of figuring out life. Of course, if we’re ever really ambitious, we’ve been told that if you buy over $70 at the store (not that difficult) they deliver it for free. We’re just not sure how the logistics would work given that this is a 4 unit building and the front door is locked. We suppose we could give them the digicode (electronic passcode) that gets them in the first door, but then they’d leave the groceries in the first floor hallway…

Tuesday was, as we talked about in that other post, Armistice Day. As part of our living at home experience, Maxine made dinner both Monday and Tuesday nights. This isn’t to say that Maxine making dinner was an accomplishment, far from it. Just suggesting our migration to life like at home.

Wednesday we rallied for exploration of a new neighborhood. We decided on the Bastille area (yes, that Bastille, as in “storming of” to start the French revolution). It seems that development in Paris is happening in these decade long waves. Historically areas like the 16^th (where we are), the 6^th (where we stayed last time), and the 7^th arrondissements were popular. New restaurants. Interesting shopping. People living their lives. But, the 16^th and the 6^th/7^th have become pricey/popular and that causes stagnation. So people move to cheaper areas. A decade ago it was the Marais, which has now “grown up” and now it’s moved on to Bastille (which is roughly adjacent to Marais). Both of these were cheaper areas, so people could more readily open stores and restaurants. And, the restaurants (especially) are less stagnant. Which brings me to my point…

It’s starting to seem to us that finding restaurants with good reviews, which have been “discovered” in English language publications, is something of a kiss of death. The restaurant gets locked into a menu. Prices go up! The dining rooms are filled with English speakers. The French have moved on. That’s happened to 3 of the places that we adored last time we were here. We adored them 8 years ago and now, having been to each of them this trip, we’d never go back.

So, Wednesday we tried a place called Bistrot Paul Bert. “Back in the day”, it was this “rough, traditional, off the beaten path, authentic bistrot”. Now, it’s a place trying to maintain that same attitude while English speakers (not everyone certainly, but enough from what we could see) throw money at them. A nice enough meal, but it has Maxine and I thinking that to really ENJOY dining out we have to rely less on reviews. Not sure what we’ll replace them with…

Lunch there was rich enough that we pretty much skipped dinner.

Thursday we did some shopping. Biggest thing we did was buy concert tickets. Wednesday night I was watching some old concert videos and happened across some from Cat Stevens (who hasn’t toured since 1976, but I’d prefer not to get into politics here). As I was watching the YouTube videos, Maxine and I both said that, if he did tour, we’d be first in line to get tickets. THEN, the surprise… I went to his website and not only is he doing a 15 city (across the world) tour, he was going to be in Paris this coming Sunday. So, to end this long story, our big errand was to go to the FNAC store and buy tickets.

Dinner Thursday was an expression of what I said above about finding good food in different ways. We went to La Fine Mousse, a craft beer place at the edge of the 11^th (an out of the way/out of favor arrondissement). Interestingly, La Fine Mousse is also walking distance from the other great craft beer place we went to several weeks ago, Le Trois 8. This was nice. In both cases, there really wasn’t an option to buy a dinner, but both had outstanding charcuterie plates that we ordered. The crowd was young, we probably had 20 years on anyone there. But, it wasn’t a problem.

I had Correzienne Brewing’s (in the Dorgogne region of France) Imperial IPA (8.5%) while Maxine started with BrewDog’s Old World Imperial Stout (9.5%). We’re both fans of BrewDog’s beers – they’re in Aberdeen Scotland, they’ve got a pub in London that we visited twice 2 years ago, as an ego thing they make some very high alcohol limited release beers. And, 2 friends of mine got to brew with the owners for a reality TV thing this summer.

OK, for our second round, I had St. Rieul Brewing’s Silvanecte Triple (8.5%). Maxine’s developing an interest in cider so she tried Val de la Seiche’s Cidre Brut (5%), which was great.

Friday the weather reports predicted rain and it came true. Spent the day at “home”. Cleaned up some more. Among other things, I cleaned bathrooms and Maxine did laundry. Did some reading and planning. And we’re heading out for a truffle oriented dinner tonight at Terres de Truffes. We knew the restaurant from our previous trip and found a Groupon for a truffle dinner. As I type this, what occurs to me is that this dinner flies in the face of everything I said above about restaurants. We’ll see…

Friday night's truffle dinner

This foie gras tasted much better than it looked! And the center is both chopped and sliced truffles.

Tom had beef (with more foie gras on top) and truffled mashed potatoes. He thought it was great.

Maxine had shrimp with truffled risotto. See all the sliced truffles on top. Delicious!

It's a little harder to incorporate truffles into dessert. But those dark specs are truffles added to the sauces. This is a baba au rhum with rum sauce using French (i.e. sugar cane rum vs. molasses rum). Tom could actually tell by the taste.