Paris Journal 2015 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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The day promised to be very warm, so I broke with my routine and went for a walk in the middle of the morning. Sunday brings the market to the neighborhood, so I headed for that stretch under the elevated tracks that run down the middle of the boulevard de Grenelle. The market is so busy that I cannot take photographs there. Everyone is so close that no matter what I would do, I’d be pointing the camera in somebody’s face. That’s rude, and so I don’t do it. I just walk and observe. I didn’t need to buy anything yesterday, so I simply wove my way in and out and through the moving mass of humanity. When I reached the end of the market, I turned around and wove my way back to the beginning. Elsewhere throughout the neighborhood, Sundays are much quieter than every other day of the week. Traffic lights don’t mean so much to pedestrians on Sundays, because the cars are fewer and farther between. So the strolling is easy. The only shopping I did was at the end, when I stopped in at the Nicolas wine shop. There I bought the last remaining bottle of the Pouilly sur Loire, which has been on sale for a good price for an incredibly long time now. At home, we worked at the computers for a while. Tom has managed to come up with an exceptionally good layout for our kitchen in the house we recently bought on Sanibel. Having a plan feels good. Something has to be done with that kitchen; it is nice, but not right. I’d emailed La Fontaine de Mars about a reservation for
yesterday evening. Here is the response I received: Bonjour Merci pour l'intérêt que vous portez à la Fontaine de
Mars. Nous prenons les réservations uniquement par téléphone au
+33147054644 MAXIMUM
1 mois à l'avance Hello,
thank you for your interest about La Fontaine de Mars. But
We only take reservations by phone at +33147054644 MAXIMUM
1 month in advance. We
are open 7 days a week. Short
pants and opened shoes are not suggested. Kind regards. Christiane Boudon La Fontaine de Mars 129 rue Saint Dominique 75007 Paris Ouvert tous les jours +33147054644 --- I had written to La Fontaine in French, but of course my Comcast.net email address is a clear indication that I’m really American. So Christiane Boudon wrote back to me in both French and English. Note that she did not include the line “Short pants and opened shoes are not suggested” in the French version. The assumption is that a French man would not ever wear shorts and sandals to a restaurant; only American men would do that (and Brits and Germans, I note). I asked Tom if he thought the admonition against wearing “open shoes” applied to women as well. He said, “No way. All women wear open shoes here.” That certainly is true in the summertime. I was annoyed that Christiane assumed we might be inappropriately dressed. In reality, I should be annoyed at the Americans who do too often dress inappropriately for dining in nice French bistrots and restaurants. I admit that Christiane has some basis for her prejudice. In my very small wardrobe here in Paris, I have three dresses. Tom has a sport coat that he wears every evening, except when the weather is too warm. In a suitcase in the cellar, we have formal attire: a tuxedo for Tom, and an evening gown for me – just in case we go on a cruise or something. I was prepared to telephone for a reservation at La Fontaine in spite of Christiane’s presumptuousness. However, the evening was so warm that a stroll down through the Parc Saint Lambert sounded much more pleasant than a walk up into the streets of the 7th arrondissement. So I reserved a table at Le Cap instead. I wore a new summery dress, and Tom was, as always, wearing long pants and closed shoes with socks. So there, Christiane! Le Cap is so casual that they’d never object to men in shorts and sandals, but my observation even there is that only an American, Brit, or German man would be seen in such attire. We were given a nice little table in the middle of what used to be the terrace, but has since been glassed in. The outdoor terrace extends out beyond that, on the big square in front of the 15th’s town hall. We generally do not want to be on the outdoor terrace because of smokers. They can ruin a perfectly good dinner. We skipped the starter courses, and went straight to the main dish. That was a small roasted sea bass for me, and a rumsteak for Tom. My fish was superb, and it came with good mashed potatoes. Tom’s steak was a bit too chewy, but it came with a fine sauce and stunningly good Lyonnaise potatoes. The delight of the dinner was dessert. We each ordered the tarte fine aux pommes. Finally we found a place that serves tarte fine aux pommes that is every bit as wonderful as Joel Valero’s was. Joel was the chef at Oh! Duo, one of our longtime favorites on the avenue Emile Zola. Joel and his wife Françoise retired to Epernay two summers ago, and Le Pario is the restaurant now located where Oh! Duo had been. The tarte fine aux pommes at Le Cap was very thin, with a crispy and yet flaky pastry topped by thin, delicious apple slices, drizzled with a touch of caramel, and cooked under the broiler, we think. A little scoop of French vanilla ice cream topped it off. On the unusually good sound system at Le Cap, the management was playing some very fine jazz. That was the case the first time we dined there, too. For us, the kind of music playing softly in the background can make a difference in how we feel about dining at a particular place. The music is part of the ambiance, and ambiance is important to us. Ambiance is a French word, after all. |
Monday, August 3, 2015
The
Grand Palais, as seen from the Pont Alexandre III.
Looking
across the Seine, we see the steeple of Saint Pierre de Chaillot
on the left, and the flame on the Place de l’Alma
on the right. Inside the floodwall
that’s behind the tourist boat is the tunnel where Princess Diana perished.
The
garden in the middle of the Petit Palais.
Small,
whole roasted seabass (above),
and rumsteak
(below).
La
tarte fine aux pommes at Le Cap. |
