Paris Journal 2010 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Before I forget about it, I want to tell you that the flowers I photographed and included in the September 6 entry of this journal are anemones. This I now know thanks to loyal reader and facebook friend, Cynthia. And I also want to mention that one of our restaurant discoveries that was included in last year’s update of my restaurant recommendations is now gone: Chez Maitre Paul has disappeared from rue Monsieur le Prince. Earlier in the summer, we walked by and saw that the place wasn’t open for business. But the proprietors had posted a sign announcing that they were going to renovate the place over the summer. Three men sat at a table inside with papers before them, seemingly discussing renovation plans. But now, nothing. No sign, and the place is shut up tight. Plus, the restaurant’s web site has disappeared. Maybe the landlord raised the rent. Maybe Paul couldn’t get a loan. It is too bad. We liked the cuisine, and the uncrowded dining room. We normally do not go out for breakfast or lunch, but yesterday we found that there was surprisingly little to eat in the apartment, and our beloved Saint Germain market is closed on Monday. We also needed a couple things, like chocolate bars and paper towels, that are not available at the market. So we decided to go out for brunch and then hit the Carrefour City grocery store on the rue de Seine. I was considering eating at our regular Bistrot de la Grille Saint Germain, or one of the cafés on the block where Carrefour City is located. But colorful Le Mondrian, on the corner of rue de Seine and the grand boulevard Saint Germain, was the place with the menu that appealed to both of us. It was 1PM, and Tom was interested in breakfast. I wanted lunch – and the thought of French onion soup was appealing to me. The classic brasserie, Le Mondrian, still was serving breakfast even as it was serving lunch. We ordered a continental breakfast plus fried eggs for Tom, and onion soup for me. We shared a side dish of fries. Even at 1PM, the server gave Tom café au lait, which normally is not served after noon. I guess this neighborhood has a lot of late sleepers, so Le Mondrian bends the traditional rules. The onion soup is home made, and I loved it. The broth had some zing to it. Really nice. Tom was pleased with his breakfast, too, and the prices were okay. I’m sure we’ll go back. The server was a very nice, polite young man who insisted on using his excellent American English when serving us, even though we were speaking in French. It is confusing to me to switch back over to English in a French restaurant. But in the end, his English was so good that I had to compliment him on it. I just found a web site that claims that Le Mondrian is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. How interesting. We’ll have to see if it is really true. Piet Mondrian, the artist for whom Le Mondrian is named, was from the Netherlands. In 1911, he moved to Paris, and changed his name from Mondriaan to Mondrian. He had to leave Paris in 1914 because of an ill father, but he returned to the City of Light as soon as he could, after the war, in 1919. He did not leave Paris until 1938, when he could see fascism progressing through Europe. That’s when he went to London and New York. In his early career, Mondrian painted in an Impressionistic style. But it was in his Paris years of 1919 to 1938 that he developed the modern black-grid-and-primary-colors style for which we all remember him. He died in New York in early 1944. After doing our shopping at Carrefour City and buying newspapers, we shared the load, each of us taking one handle of our big reusable shopping bag (carts are not practical in this part of town) and ambled home. We worked, and then when it was time for dinner, we went out again. In the afternoon, I’d discovered the web site for Café Tournon, and was delighted to learn that this was where Duke Ellington had made his Paris debut. So I wore my new, big, dangling, clef-note earrings from the Aristoloch boutique (10 rue Saint Sulpice) to dinner at Café Tournon, 18 rue Tournon, Tel. 01 43 26 16 16. We made a reservation for 7:30PM, so when we arrived we could observe people on the terrace who were still there just for drinks. We were given a nice table inside, just inside the open window to the terrace. One of the people on the terrace looked so much like Lauren Bacall. But it wasn’t Lauren Bacall. The woman I saw looks more like Lauren Bacall than Lauren Bacall now does. I was delighted again to see that calamari in their ink (calamars a l’encre), a Spanish dish, was on the blackboard of daily specials. I ordered the oeuf mayonnaise because I’ve never had this classic French starter course. I have never ordered it because it sounds boring – like deviled eggs, nothing new. It was like deviled eggs except that the mayonnaise had not been mixed with the cooked egg yolks. Plus it came with a little bit of salad. When I ordered the squid, the server said “A good choice.” The calamari was served in rice, with the ink mixed all through, making the rice almost black. Most importantly, the calamari was cooked right – it did not have the consistency of rubber bands. Good job, Chef Patrick Canal. There was too much to eat all of it. So I had to explain when the server removed my plate that it was “tres, tres bon, mais beaucoup” with a smile. He was pleased. Tom surprisingly ordered the stir-fried vegetable plate (Wok de légumes du jour aux herbes fraîches). No meat for Tom? That was a real shocker. His veggies looked good, and he finished the entire plate. Good for him. The servers in Café Tournon have been very nice to us. I wonder where all the surly French waiters have gone? Retired, hopefully, and living out in the country, away from Paris. Other famous people who have frequented Café Tournon include the journalist George Plimpton, and Denise Epstein, the daughter of a writer recommended to us by our friend Sally-Jane: Irene Nemirovsky, who wrote Suite francaise, primé. The book was published very post-humously by Irene’s daughter Denise, because Irene perished at Auschwitz. The Austrian writer Joseph Roth lived in an apartment above Café Tournon from 1937 to 1939. One of his famous lines is: “If you have not been to Paris, you are only a half person.” Sign
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here. And here’s the 2009 Paris Journal. |
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
The
Bacchus statue in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Statues
of former queens of France grace the Luxembourg Gardens.
This
former queen was Sainte Clotilde (475 to 545 A.D.). She was married to King Clovis, and got him
to convert to Christianity. |
