Paris Journal 2009 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Oh happy day! We found Isabelle and Laurent Houry again. This couple who opened a restaurant called Le Tire Bouchon almost a dozen years ago has resurfaced. Two years ago, we found the restaurant closed. I searched and searched on the internet for the Hourys, and I never found them. I was afraid that the decade of summers enjoying Laurent’s cuisine was over. How sad. Then last night, the four of us decided to eat at Le Blavet, another favorite restaurant located just around the corner from the former Tire Bouchon. There, standing in the doorway to greet us, was Isabelle! We were delighted to see her, and she was delighted to see us. She is filling in for madame at Le Blavet for a couple weeks. Then Le Blavet closes for a month of vacation in August. Laurent is not with her in Paris. He’s working for some other chef in Burgundy. Now Isabelle has my card and she promises to keep us posted. She and Laurent plan to buy another restaurant somewhere in Paris someday. She did send out postcards when Le Tire Bouchon closed, but we were not on her list, and that was probably our fault. I don’t blame them for giving up Le Tire Bouchon. The physical setting was unsupportable. The kitchen was way too hot in the summer. Often, Laurent was working in 140 degree (F) heat! The restaurant was just too small, too. And the location was only okay, not great. We love Laurent’s cooking, and Isabelle is the best when it comes to running the front of the house. Together, they are an unbeatable duo. I’m going to make certain we don’t lose touch again, even if they never open another restaurant. I’m sure he’ll be cooking somewhere, and we’ll find them. I asked Isabelle about the children. Her four kids are with the grandparents for much of the summer, as usual. All four of those children were born since we first discovered Le Tire Bouchon and first met the Hourys. Time flies! I enjoyed poking a bit of fun at madame by explaining to Isabelle that madame had trained us very well; we would order all the starter courses first, then all the main courses, then all the desserts, all in an organized fashion! Isabelle giggled, because she is fully aware of madame’s personality and obsessive-compulsive nature. At Le Blavet, the dinners are all a fixed price, and one must order all three courses. Tom and Dan each had the escargot starter course. The snails arrived sans shells, encased instead between two layers of flaky pastry, which sat in a pool of lovely, sinfully rich beurre-blanc-with-parsley sauce. I had the melon and ham with mozzarella starter, which was delightfully light and summery. I cannot remember Mary’s starter, but she was very pleased with it. Tom, Dan and I each ordered the tagine for our main course. Tagine was not something I expected to see on the menu at Le Blavet. Since it was a surprise, I ordered it. Patrick brought my tagine with a pink lid; he made sure I noticed the color. Tom’s and Dan’s tagines had blue lids. It was the best tagine I have ever eaten. Full of flavor, with perfectly cooked tender lamb, little vegetables, and couscous, the tagine also sported a jaunty looking triangular crispy pastry/cracker cooked in honey. Yum!!! My dessert was poached pear and pineapple with a drizzle of chocolate sauce and a little scoop of rich chocolate ice cream in its own crisp little pastry cup. I liked the ice cream because of the rich chocolate flavor, but not so much the ice cream part. I was so deeply involved with enjoying the rich chocolate and fruit combination that I don’t remember anything about anyone else’s dessert. What a great dinner. Speaking of ice cream, one day about a week and a half ago, the front page of the center section of Le Parisien (the section about Paris) had a huge headline about the fact that the Berthillon boutique on the Ile Saint-Louis was going to close for a month and a half of vacation! Horrors! According to Oliver Magny (author of the “Stuff Parisians Like” column in FUSAC), “The best ice cream in the world is made in Paris. Of course. And it can be found at Berthillon. Parisians of all social classes know about Berthillon. Parisians of all social classes have tasted Berthillon. Berthillon is one of the rare forms of luxury all Parisians can afford.” Why this closing of this boutique is such a big deal, however, is beyond my comprehension. Berthillon makes ice cream, and it is sold in many places all over Paris, including five other places on the Ile Saint-Louis itself. But for some reason, it is this boutique owned and run by the Berthillon family itself that attracts long lines. Why? It is the same ice cream as the Berthillon that is sold elsewhere. Nobody disputes that. But to close the Berthillon boutique in the middle of summer is “shocking” and a “sacrilege,” according to Le Parisien. Okay, I know it’s sarcasm. According to Muriel, the daughter of the Berthillon household, their business is largely based on orders placed for receptions and parties. In the summer, when Parisians leave on vacation, there are fewer receptions and parties, and therefore less business for Berthillon. Muriel says the Berthillons need a break, too, just like everyone else. And, she reassures, the Parisians “will not be deprived of our sorbets because we have 100 re-sellers in the capital.” Even after the Berthillons lower the metal curtain over the front of their shop, the ice cream turbines will continue to turn for three weeks to make sure there is enough sorbet and ice cream for the city through the summer assures Bernard, the boss. Bernard was a chef who became a “glacier,” or maker of ice cream, when he married a Berthillon. The Berthillons are good at continually coming up with new flavors. This year’s new idea is a Chantilly ice cream flavored with raspberries. Muriel’s mom thought it up last spring during a family dinner. “We are all gourmands, so the ideas are not lacking,” explains Muriel. According to Le Parisien, the Berthillons were not always ice cream makers. In 1954, Raymond and Aimee-Jeanne Berthillon acquired a bakery in the 15th arrondissement. It was when Raymond and his in-laws took over a café-hotel at 31 rue Saint-Louis-en-Ile that he “fell in the ice.” In the middle of the move, they found a turbine (ice cream machine) in the entryway. Raymond said he didn’t want it, the seller said “the deal is, you take everything.” Aimee-Jeanne said, “Leave it out front; we’ll make ice cream for the kids.” Raymond took it on as a sort-of game, to make ice cream for the café-hotel clientele. Only a few people had experienced this ice cream until one day, Gault and Millau, journalists at the time, discovered this talent and rendered homage to it in an article, referring to “this shocking ice-cream-maker who is hiding in a bistrot on the Ile Saint-Louis.” That was 1961. Since then, the business has grown to the point where it produces 1,500 liters of ice cream and sorbet every day for consumption throughout Paris. Nearly 500 people go to 31 rue Saint-Louis-en-Ile to stand in line to buy it every day. Me? No. I’m not really a dessert person, and super sweet things like ice cream don’t appeal to me so much as they do to other people, like Tom. I do find this obsession with Berthillon to be curiously odd. Another phenomenon that attracts crowds are the markets that occur all over Paris in particular locations on particular days of the week. There are many of these, including several in the 15th arrondissement. For your convenience, I’m including here a link to a web page maintained by the City of Paris in which the markets, their locations, and times are listed: In this English version of the web page, the City translates the word “arrondissement” as “district,” which I don’t think is a very good translation. But for lack of a better word in English, I just use the word “arrondissement,” and everyone who’s heard much about Paris seems to understand it. The City of Paris does a great job of providing things like these markets that make living in the city easier than it would be without them. The mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, does a very good job, as far as I can tell. Each year, he adds another area to the list of places closed to automobile traffic on Sundays. This summer, the expansion included the Gardens of Ranelagh in the 16th arrondissement, near the Musée Marmottan, a must-see for those who love Impressionistic art. Bertrand Delanoe popped into the Theatre de la Renaissance unannounced the other day. In the theater, a movie scene was being shot. A friend of his, Dominique Besnehard, is the producer. Also on scene were two actors, Sergi Lopez and Isabelle Carré. Isabelle lives just two floors above us in the apartment in the 6th. Here’s a photo of her by the very talented Carole Bellaiche:
Although Isabelle is an award-winning actress, people never seem to recognize her on the street because she wears eyeglasses and no makeup then. In the photo with Delanoe in the newspaper, however, she has no glasses, and perfect pale skin due to the makeup. She looks younger even than in the photo above. She also probably looks younger because she is not accompanied by her baby and baby carriage. When she’s home, she locks up the baby carriage with a bike lock and chain at the bottom of our steps. That’s because if it isn’t locked up, the literary critic who lives below us pushes the carriage out into the courtyard, under the mulberry tree. The literary critic, it seems, thinks that he owns the landing because he has the apartment on one side of it, and his library on the other side. But of course he does not own the landing. We all have to use it because we use the stairway. He thinks that if the baby carriage is allowed, then the next thing you know, there will be bicycles there, then motor cycles, etc. Really! I’m on Isabelle’s side. |
Friday, July 24, 2009
Every once in a while, someone
props open one of those ubiquitous, big, wooden porte-cochere doors and we
get a glimpse of what’s inside -- in this case, a charming, small cobbled street
with little houses and gardens, a microcosm of what the 15th
arrondissement once looked like. This
is on the rue de l’Eglise or the rue des Entrepreneurs, not far from the
former location of Le Tire Bouchon.
The cemetery for the old village of Grenelle, which is
now part of the 15th arrondissement.
A monument in the Grenelle cemetery.
The Schmid family monument in the Grenelle cemetery
features a bronze angel carrying away the spirit of a young girl, René
Schmid, who died at age four.
Upon closer examination, we see that the sculpture has
been made to appear as though the angel is coming out of the monument.
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