Paris Journal 2015 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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We went back to the beginning last night, dining at L’Épopée for the third time this summer. When we were there on the first night of this summer sojourn, I thought the entire ownership of the restaurant had changed. Now I think it is just the chef and the menu that changed. The young man who runs the dining room, who was not there on July 6, has been present the past two times we’ve dined there (August 5 and 12). He remembers us from prior years, but he did need to ask again where we are from. We enjoy the dreamy look on Parisians’ faces when we describe Sanibel Island, and its location. He asked if we’d been coming to Paris for the past three or four years. I told him it was 18 years, and he was astounded. That’s probably half of his lifetime. Our dinner began with a mis en bouche made from beets, cod fish eggs, and garlic. With its ivory and pink colors, it looked like a pretty, miniature dessert. But it was very salty, not sweet at all, and interesting.
Our shared starter course was a set of three long, thin, piping hot tubes of crispy pastry stuffed with herbs and gently cooked prawns. It came with a curried mayonnaise that was just the right touch.
My main course was roasted duck breast, and Tom’s was a steak. Both were cooked perfectly; very satisfying.
We shared a mi-cuit au chocolat, which I think is no different from a moelleaux au chocolat. Anyway, in this case it was called a mi-cuit, which means literally “half baked.” In this case, half-baked is a good thing. The molten, dark chocolate center of this concoction was sumptuous.
Instead of listening to music after dinner, we browsed through images of recently renovated Paris apartments featured on Houzz.com. A few of them almost certainly appear to be furnished rentals. For some of these apartments, we were able to discern the location by examining the photos showing the views from those apartments’ windows. Many of these renovations feature restored hardwood floors laid in a classic herringbone pattern. Those floors are beautiful. We were reminded that we saw a pile of discarded hardwood flooring like this on the rue due Theatre days ago. At the time we thought, and we still do, that was a terrible waste. The lovely floors we saw on Houzz seemed to vindicate our point of view. Near that pile of flooring is one of our favorite shops on the rue du Theatre: Games in Blue. We like it not so much because we are interested in games (we aren’t), but because the proprietor plays such great music on his sound system and he props his door open so we can hear it when passing by. I always walk on that side of the street when his shop is open so that I can take some delight in hearing what he’s decided to listen to at that moment. Last night, he popped out of the shop, onto the sidewalk, to see if it was really raining. It was, but only a little. I smiled at him and said I love the music he plays in the shop. He smiled and let out a surprised, short burst of laughter. |
Thursday, August 13, 2015
The art on display in L’Épopée this summer consists of
large photographs. My favorite is the
one on the left, showing the Allée des Cygnes where we love to walk.
3-dimensional jigsaw puzzles on display in the window
of Games in Blue, on the rue du Theatre.
I wonder if my mother would like these?
This teapot at the Musée Cognacq Jay looks like it was
made in China, but it was made in France in the 18th Century.
The scene depicted in these classic piece of Meissen
(above and below, in the Musée Cognacq Jay) actually originates in a scene
created by a French painter (not German after all). We have a Japanese copy of this in our
home.
The Musée Cognacq Jay in its former location adjacent
to the Samaritaine department store. |
