Paris Journal 2012 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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I was walking
on the rue du Cherche Midi yesterday in the early afternoon
when I realized that I was in front of the Poilâne bakery, at number 8. I went in and bought a half of one of the
large loaves. This
substantial, stone-ground dark wheat sourdough bread is excellent, and it
keeps longer than a baguette does. It is also a
typical, historically French kind of country bread. Pierre Poilâne came to Paris from Normandy
in 1932 to open this bakery in “our” neighborhood. Pierre’s son
Lionel took over the business in the early 1970s. Lionel married a woman named Iréna who was an architect and designer. Together, in the 1980s, they figured out
how to establish a factory for making this bread without sacrificing
quality. How? By having 24 wood-fired ovens, each
operated by a baker working as if he were in his own shop. The existence
of that factory is why we are able to find Poilâne bread in some grocery
stores, and how it can be served in so many brasseries, bistrots,
and restaurants in Paris. London, too,
has Poilâne bread now. After a couple
years of trying, Lionel finally received permission to open a bakery with a
wood-fired oven there in 2000. Lionel, his
wife, and their dog died in a helicopter crash in 2002. Lionel was the pilot. The company is now run by Lionel’s
daughter, Apollonia, a Harvard graduate who took
over after her parents’ death. There are three
Poilâne shops in Paris: the one I
visited on rue du Cherche Midi, another at 49 boulevard de Grenelle in the
other neighborhood where we reside in July-August, and one in the Marais, on
the right bank, at 38 rue Debelleyme. In addition,
London has two Poilâne shops; one of those has a café in it. The factory is
located in Bièvres, to the southwest of Paris, in
the Essonne department of France. You noticed, probably,
that I did not say this was “whole” wheat bread, but rather “dark”
wheat. That’s because it is made with
what is called “grey” flour, in which 85 percent of the bran is kept, but not
all of it. In addition, the bread is
made with flour that is about 1/3 spelt instead of wheat. Spelt is an ancestor of wheat,
some say a “rustic wheat,” that dates back to 8000 B.C. Lionel took an
intellectual approach to his work.
According to the Poilâne web site, he believed that “bread was
intimately linked with history, politics, arts, language, etc. Over time, he started a collection of books
and iconography revealing the extent of those links.” Those books are
in a library that is open to researchers and students, by appointment. It contains over 500 works, in French and
other languages. Speaking of
cultures, one of the interesting aspects of the Poilâne web site is how
different content is used on the French pages vs. the English pages. This is not just a translation; there are
different stories told on each set of web pages. They are not contradictory, just
different. For example, the library is
described in the French pages, but not the English ones. In the history, different facts are related
on the English page that are not told on the French
page. So if you read
both languages, look at both URLs: www.poilane.fr, and www.poilane.com . Even on the
paper sack that contained the loaf I bought yesterday, one side describes
four grains in English, and the other side describes four entirely different
grains in French. There was as
much English spoken as French at the restaurant where we dined last night, La
Bastide Odéon, at 7 rue
Corneille, across from the Odéon national theater. We’d dined
there before, in recent years, and quite frankly, Tom liked the place more
than I did. But last night, we
discovered that the restaurant has changed.
I like it a lot now. The head waiter
explained that in August of 2011, there was a change in management. What a difference it has made! My problem with
the former version of this resto was that it was a
little overpriced for what it was, and it operated like a tourist trap. No more. Now this is a high-quality address, a
destination, with excellent, interesting food, wonderful service, and fine
ambiance. Because it is
here, in the middle of the 6th, there are plenty of
English-speaking customers. But the
ones who were in the resto last night were a
sophisticated lot; many were either living in Paris, or conducting business
here. A few were tourists on vacation. The menu is in
French on one side, and in English on the
other. The English version is not bad;
the translation is better than most. For a starter, I
ordered veal sweetbreads, and they were beautifully sautéed and served in
between two circular layers of very flaky, homemade pastry, with a little bit
of brown sauce that tasted of honey and sherry; some baby spinach greens
graced the dish. The concoction was called a feuilleté
de ris d’agneau braisés au miel et Xérès, pousses d’épinards. (Sweetbreads
are most commonly the thymus gland, but sometimes the pancreas is used. In a human, I know that the thymus gland is
behind the sternum, and it is an important part of the immune system,
training T-cells to do the right thing.
Sorry for the digression; for my B.S. degree, I studied medical
communications in the College of Medicine at The Ohio State University.) I do love
calamari, and when these squids come with their own ink in a restaurant dish,
I love them even more. La Bastide offers tender calamari on a bed of penne pasta
that has been allowed to soak up the ink, resulting in some super-tasty,
almost-black penne. The seasoning
included lovely tasting herbs, but required addition of salt and pepper. The name of this dish was penne à l’encre de seiche, calamars aux trois poivrons et roquette. Tom had a gigotin d’agneau poêlé au serpolet, polenta et légumes verts, small chunks of leg of lamb, braised with thyme and served with vegetables and polenta. Dessert for Tom was a millefeuille traditionnel « fait minute » à la vanille Bourbon – a tall stack of homemade, flaky pastry with a layer of vanilla-bourbon creamy pudding in the middle. Oh so French! For the first time, we were seated at a corner table in an upstairs dining room at La Bastide Odéon. I’m not sure if we even knew the upstairs existed before last night. The upstairs has two parts; on the other side of a wall was another upstairs dining room in which one large, English-speaking group was being served. They all were having the same courses, so it must have been some pre-arranged deal. The group appeared to be co-workers and spouses, or perhaps academics. We had reserved via lafourchette.com again, resulting in a 20 percent reduction on the food part of our bill. That was the reason I was willing to go there again, even though in the past I thought it was overpriced for what it was. But last night’s dinner was so good that I think I’d go back again even at full price. Our total bill, with sparkling water and two glasses of wine, was 59 euros (with the 12-euro reduction factored in), tax and tip included. We did, however, leave an additional 3 euros as a pourboire (small additional tip), because the service was so good. Thank you, lafourchette.com, for getting us to go back to La Bastide Odéon. |
Friday, September 21, 2012
Looking
up through the Luxembourg Gardens and the Square de l’Observatoire,
you can see Sacre Cœur in
the distance.
Lovely
Haussmannian building on the avenue de l’Observatoire.
Fake
horses and real pigeons enjoying the Four Corners of the Earth fountain.
Calamari
and penne pasta soaked in their ink.
Leg
of lamb chunks with polenta, lima beans, chanterelle mushrooms, and more.
An
upstairs table at La Bastide Odéon. |
