Paris Journal 2011 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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La salade Niçoise – I just had to have one yesterday. A strong craving for this brasserie standard consumed me. I thought the best nearby place to order this salad would perhaps be Le Suffren, a brasserie at the corner of the avenue Suffren and the avenue de la Motte Picquet, because they specialize in seafood. Once last year I had delicious mussels there. I checked menus posted outside a few places along the way, and I was a bit disturbed to see that this old standard was not included. Sure enough, when we reached Le Suffren, there was no Niçoise salad on the menu! Mildly outraged, I said, “Well, let’s go to La Terrasse!” La Terrasse is a somewhat fancy brasserie on the Place de l’École Militaire, on the far side of the Champ de Mars from Le Suffren. It offers a panoramic view of that multi-pronged intersection of several big avenues. When I reached the menu posted in a polished brass stand outside the main entrance, I was delighted to see La Salade Niçoise for 12 euros. La Terrasse meets all the Cooley criteria, as we discovered last summer or the summer before. We’ve dined there a few times, but not yet for salad. It was lunchtime when we arrived – about 1:30 or 2PM – and we were greeted by multiple servers and given our choice of tables, although there were still plenty of people dining there. I selected a nice table in the middle of the dining room, with a banquette on one side for me, and a comfy chair for Tom on the other side of a generous (for a brasserie) sized oval table. The servers, all male, had the requisite white dress shirts, long narrow black ties, black slacks, black shoes, and black aprons. Very sharp. Our server was young, and he smiled almost constantly. He thoroughly approved of my order of the salad and a glass of Pouilly Fumé (only 5 euros for this premium white wine!). Tom ordered an omelette and fries, as well as a big bottle of sparkling water for us to share. As we waited for our food, I admired a large old china cabinet that displayed simple polished silver and pewter serving pieces. A businessman at the table next to us began to mutter to himself and he asked for his check. He’d only consumed three cups of coffee, yet he’d occupied a table for quite some time while he read his copy of Le Parisen. He finally was impatient to get back to the office. At last he stood and went over to the bar to demand to be able to pay his check. But we found the service to be impeccable. I was stunned by the appearance of my salad. It was beautiful beyond my wildest dreams. I wished I’d brought the camera, but the skies were threatening to rain and so I had not. Artfully arranged, the salad had two little hearts of Romaine, intact; two excellent, ripe tomatoes that had been peeled; one very small cold, peeled and steamed potato; slightly roasted but chilled slices of red pepper; half of a peeled, hard-boiled egg; one anchovy, some tuna; and a sizeable little pile of delicious green beans that had been cooked just to the edge of softness and then chilled. A slight drizzle of vinaigrette was on the salad, but the server also brought a bottle of olive oil and one of balsamic vinager. I added a little of each, and some freshly ground pepper, and the salad was just right. And it wasn’t large – so I was able to finish it completely. The little glass of Pouilly Fumé was cold and crisp, too. I was in heaven – how could my lunch be more perfect? Tom’s omelette looked correct, and his fries were hand-cut, hot, and good. The sparkling water was Badoit, and we prefer the less-salty San Pellegrino, but we didn’t specifically ask for San Pellegrino. Maybe they have it, maybe they don’t. After lunch, we walked up toward the rue Cler on the avenue de la Motte Picquet because Tom had seen a banner announcing this weekend’s outdoor brocante there. A brocante is a sort of antiques fair, but it can include a certain amount of junk instead of antiques. This brocante, however, was a pretty nice one. The booths and tables held mostly high quality items. We explored the full length of the brocante on the avenue de la Motte Picquet, and then the rue Cler. We went slowly, taking it all in, so that by the time we were through it all we were ready to saunter home and watch the end of the day’s stage of the Tour de France on TV. On the way home, we passed a far more ordinary brasserie with a Niçoise salad on its menu for 15.80 euros! In the evening, we just wanted to have something simple, so we went to our neighborhood joint, the brasserie at the corner of the street and park both named Commerce. The head waiter recognized us from years past and gave us a big greeting as well as a nice little table. The menu now included a more comprehensive list of “burgers,” including an “Obama burger,” and even a “Fish burger.” I was still in the mood for fish, so that’s what I ordered. The head waiter warned me that it was just salmon, but I said that’s good. Not surprisingly, when the food arrived (and it was fast!), I noted that the salmon was very fresh – fresher than at Oh! Duo. The bun was just like what we’d get at a place like Doc Ford’s. This is a change from years ago, when Paris brasseries began to offer buns with their hamburgers (prior to that, a hamburger arrived on the plate with no bun). The initial buns were a bit strange, but now they are what we expect. Tom ordered the veal scaloppini which is cooked very simply in its own juice and thyme. For the second time in the day, he ordered fries. The pile of fries that arrived on his plate was huge! I was grateful to receive some green salad on my plate, and a far smaller serving of fries. The salmon was just right, and the sandwich came with little slices of cucumber instead of tomato, with a bit of lettuce and the mysterious stuff called “sauce Americaine.” And so now it is Sunday, our day to walk along the Seine. I think the clouds will clear up this afternoon and we should have a great day for this hours long promenade. A little article in the newspaper here the other day reminded me that once upon a time, not all that long ago (the early 1960s), there was no highway along the banks of the Seine, and the riverbanks were used mostly for recreation and boats. What goes around comes around. Now there are increasing efforts to turn the riverbanks back over to people, instead of cars. Current projects planned to do more of this will begin in 2012. A couple kilometers of the left bank’s highway, between the porte de Solferino and the pont de l’Alma (not far from us) will be taken away from cars and given to the pedestrians – permanently, not just on Sundays. Something will be done also on 1.5 kilometers of the right bank, farther to the east, to create a pedestrian way from about where the Paris city hall is located to the bassin de l’Arsenal. Let the promenade begin! Sign
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Sunday, July 10, 2011
The Eiffel Tower as seen from the Trocadero
on a cloudy day.
New! The first
carrousel operated with renewable energy!
A reduction in carbon dioxide of about 837 kg pr
month, or about 10 tons a year!
Flowers at the Place Dupleix include blue morning
glories.
The side of a discarded moving carton, made just the
right size for packing books. What a
cute cat!
This billboard tells us that the sculptor for the large
iron statues I showed you on July 7
is named Carmona. The thing in front
of the left side of the billboard is a sailboat mast, at the Port Autonome de
Paris, near the end of the boulevard de Grenelle.
Sculpture in the Jardins du Trocadéro. |
