Paris Journal 2011 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Due to the heat, there was no walk along the Seine yesterday for us. I was homesick for the first time this summer; I wanted to swim 6,000 feet in my community pool, so very badly. But it rained a bit last night, and it will be about 10 degrees cooler today (F). Only one day of miserably hot weather with no air conditioning and no swimming pool? That’s not too bad. No whining and whinging allowed, I’m telling myself today. To combat the heat, I made a big lamb’s lettuce salad yesterday – in place of both breakfast and lunch. Lamb’s lettuce is nearly impossible to find in SW Florida. Here, it is often available. It doesn’t last long, though. You have to consume it within a day or two. (A big package of lamb’s lettuce is only 99 euro-cents at Dia!) In the evening, we didn’t feel like having a big dinner, so we just went down to the neighborhood pub, the Commerce Café. Tom had the delicious grilled veal scaloppini (with homemade tagliatelle pasta and little mushrooms called girolles), and I wanted a burger. In its new life, the Commerce Café has an entire list of burgers. A couple of them are not really burgers: the fish burger, and the chicken burger. The café thoughtfully keeps their cheval burger off of this list and they put it safely over in the list of traditional French dishes. (Cheval is horsemeat.) I applaud this sensitivity to those of us who are appalled at this old-fashioned tradition of eating horses in France. Some butchers even advertise on their front windows that they sell horsemeat!!! I’ll eat and enjoy all kinds of traditional French food that many Americans won’t touch – like rabbit, tête de veau and andouillette. But keep that horse meat away from me, PLEASE! And so they do. American-style hamburgers are a newer phenomenon in Paris. Twelve years ago, you’d have a very hard time finding one in this great, international city. Mostly you’d find a hamburger served on a plate with no bun. What fun is that? But burgers really started to become trendy here several years ago. The French found out that their kids like them, and then, voila! The adults now like them, too. The list of burgers at the Commerce Café includes a cheeseburger whose name I cannot remember, but I do remember that it was quite good and the cheese was cheddar. Last night, I didn’t want a cheeseburger, just a hamburger. And I wanted pickles on it, as well as lettuce and tomato and some kind of special sauce. There it was on the list, exactly what I wanted. Its name? The Obama Burger. I kid you not. I don’t eat burgers often. But when I want one, I really want one. The Obama Burger hit the spot. I wouldn’t change anything about it. The special sauce, mysteriously called sauce americaine on the menu, was something like a thick thousand-island dressing. And the kitchen put just the right amount of it on the burger – not too much. The beef was lean, but not too lean, and it was cooked to a perfect slightly pink-in-the-middle medium. Lovely. The burger came with a few of the café’s superb hand-cut steak fries. It also came with a salad, which was a bit boring, especially compared to the lamb’s lettuce salad that I’d already consumed at mid-day. I left most of the café’s salad on the plate. Speaking of the Obamas, when they were here in Paris they ate at the “traditional” bistro La Fontaine de Mars on rue Saint Dominique in the 7th arrondissement. This is probably because this bistro has a separate dining room that could be secured, and also because it is in the 7th – not only a safe area, but convenient to government buildings where Barack may have had a meeting or two scheduled. I have a suggestion for the next time the Obama’s dine in Paris: La Gauloise. Way at the back of the restaurant there is a dining room that can be separated by pulling its heavy velvet draperies closed over the wide, arched opening. The Secret Service guys could eat out in the main dining room, where we do. In that position, they can completely protect access to the back dining room. The food comes up from the kitchen in the back anyway, so their food could be delivered right to them, without being walked through the main dining room. Those who smoke would be out on the terrace, far far away from the back room. (Barack did give up smoking, didn’t he???) The food is top-notch, correct, and traditional with a modern twist or two. The service is the best – absolutely the best. And La Gauloise has a grand tradition of being frequented by famous leaders and politicians, yet it is not snobbishly pretentious or elite. Heaven forbid that the Obamas would dine at Tour d’Argent or someplace equally fancy and pricey. Their critics would really let them have it if they did. La Gauloise would be just right. I hope some of my friends who are politically connected will pass this useful suggestion on up the line. ;-) Even though we did not have our Seine walk yesterday, I was pleased to see in one of the weekend’s French newspapers that the public comment period is being extended by two weeks for the project that involves permanently closing the expressways on the river banks, turning that space over mostly to pedestrians, and adding pedestrian-oriented amenities. You can see some renderings of what is proposed on this web site. You click on one of the circles on the map and wait patiently for an image to come up, showing you what’s there now, and what’s planned. Sign
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Monday, August 22, 2011
The Obama
Burger at the Commerce Café on the Place du Commerce.
Another
apartment building that I adore, this one on the avenue
Raymond Poincaré in the 16th
arrondissement.
Illegal
vendors of Eiffel Tower trinkets, in the parking area by the corner of the
avenue Suffren and the avenue de la Motte Picquet. Sad news:
one day last week, the police chased one of these vendors into the
metro line 6 station at the Trocadéro. The vendor kept running inside the station,
even though the police did not enter the station. The vendor then attempted to jump the
tracks, fell, and was electrocuted.
Very sad.
A couple of
the illegal vendors taking a break.
A movers’
window on the avenue Rapp features easy-to-move dollhouse furniture. |
