Paris Journal 2013 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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I’ll shoot
anything – with my camera. We walked
aimlessly along the boulevard Saint-Germain, the rue des Saints-Pères, and
the rue Jacob yesterday evening, and I was shooting away. We entered
courtyards that were open. I started
shooting when I saw a gorgeous old paulownia tree that was clearly being
treasured and cared for on the rue des Saints-Pères, where a fabric store
resided in a solarium constructed in an old courtyard. There’s a
reason why Tom likes to walk along the rue Jacob. That street has some of the most
interesting shops you’ll see anywhere.
My favorite from last night’s exploration was a bookstore selling
antique tomes on science and medicine.
It was charming beyond belief.
If it hasn’t yet been used as a movie set, it should be. The shop,
called Librairie Alain Brieux, will
be participating in a salon of
scientific instruments and curiosities in Paris in mid-October. Do take a look
at the photo on its web site, which is taken with some kind of special round
panoramic camera placed on the floor or a table, and pointed straight up at
the ceiling. That’s right,
there is a stuffed alligator upside down, attached to the ceiling. I guess that’s what you do when you don’t
have anyplace else to put something. If you keep
putting your mouse/cursor over the circular photo over and over again, you’ll
see many more photos of this incredibly quaint shop. Nice job on that web site! This shop has
existed since 1883, when Janvier Pere, an antiques dealer, set up his
business. His son took over, and
expanded into the field of autographs and historic souvenirs. Alain Brieux bought
the shop in 1958. His specialty was
the history of science and medicine, and he was the one who transformed the
place into a “cabinet of curiosities.”
He was internationally known as a collector of and expert in old
scientific instruments. The shop was
taken over by Jean-Bernard Gillot in 2005.
He’s added his passion for photography and travel to the mix, just
enhancing the eclecticism of the place all the more. Jean-Bernard’s
outstanding web site includes a page where you can search
the extensive collection of old medical and scientific books. Then there was
the shop called Le Douze at – you guessed it – number 12. Prominently displayed in its front window
was the kind of chandelier that I covet.
I had one once, in the second house I ever owned.
We were walking
along the street just before 7PM, and so the shopkeepers, if they had not closed
already, were preparing to close up for the evening. Very near the
end (well, really the beginning) of rue Jacob, we turned right on the rue de
Furstemberg and soon we were back out on the boulevard Saint Germain. As we approached the boulevard, we came up
alongside La Rhumerie. Tom and I had
always thought this was a rather unpleasant and sickly sounding name for a
brasserie; not appetizing at all. But
as we came up along beside it, I could clearly see the graphic image on the
side of the awning: a Caribbean
scene. Ah, so this is about RUM, not
illness. Good. We could
clearly see that the inside was full of very interesting and smart looking
Parisians having their before-dinner drinks.
What a sophisticated and educated-looking lot they seemed to be! I saw a man that I’m pretty sure is Gilles Pudlowski, the literary and
food critic.
From there it
was a short walk to Vagenende,
a dazzlingly beautiful big Parisian restaurant on the boulevard
Saint-Germain. It calls itself a
“brasserie,” but I think it is really a restaurant and not a brasserie. It started out
as one of the glorious Art-Nouveau Chartier bouillons. For more about
the history of the place, see what I wrote on September 23 in last
year’s Paris Journal. We shared an
order of six escargots. They were
tender, juicy, hot, and LARGE. The
garlic/parsley/clarified butter bathing them was perfect. These win the best escargots of our 2013
summer award. Then we each
had the voluminous quenelles, which are served two per person in covered
copper pots: quenelles de brochet
soufflées, sauce Nantua. This
sauce, which tastes like lobster sauce, is actually made with crawfish. It was even a little spicy, they way you’d
expect it to be in New Orleans. The
quenelles are like souffles, but were far superior to the souffles we had at
La Cuisine de Philippe. These
quenelles were properly cooked all the way through, yet retained their rich,
moist qualities.
Yes, they were so
rich that we couldn’t finish them. The
little old couple at the table next to us did finish their quenelles. I don’t know how they did it. Their very tall granddaughter who was
dining with them had a lean plate of beef carpaccio. The trio was German, and the granddaughter
was ordering for them in French, so we think she may be a young fashion model
working in Paris. She was so
tall, in fact, that the bottom of the hem of her short skirt swept lightly
across the top of our table when she inched her way between tables to take
her place on the banquette. We noticed that
the Sunday special is leg of lamb.
We’ve not yet eaten leg of lamb on a Sunday this summer, so we plan to
go back for that. The Vagenende is so
beautiful and the food is so superb that I told Tom, “You know, I could eat
here every night.” |
Thursday, September 12, 2013
A
paulownia tree in an old courtyard on the rue des Saints-Peres.
Looking
into the Librairie de Alain Brieux with the
reflection of the buildings across the street. Below are a few items on display in the
front window.
A
hat in an ethnic clothing boutique on the rue Jacob.
A
skull fashioned from colorful plastic hair clips.
The
Hugo Boss window display on the boulevard Saint-Germain. |
