Paris Journal 2009 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
Sign
my guestbook. View
my guestbook. ← Previous Next
→ Back to the beginning
|
We made what
was probably our last trip to the food market at Saint Germain for the season
yesterday afternoon. The fromagerie is
our favorite stall, where we buy milk, eggs, butter, orange juice, and
cheese. The quality of everything at
the fromagerie is the best. The produce and
butcher stalls come next. While there
is only one fromagerie in the food market, there are a few butchers and
several produce stalls. We have our
favorites: the produce stall run by
the North African family, and Serge Caillaud, the French butcher with nice
blue eyes. The one and
only bakery in the market is also run by a North African family, it
seems. I especially like their pain aux cereales – a multi-grain
country bread. Tom buys the occasional
pain aux raisins there – a sweet
roll with raisins. But for now, we
have enough supplies to see us through the week and we leave on Sunday. Au
revoir, marché Saint-Germain! A la
prochaine. We wandered
aimlessly in the Luxembourg Gardens again, and soon it was time to head for
dinner. We took a longer route,
zig-zagging through some of the ancient streets behind the church of St.
Germain des Pres. When we arrived
at the restaurant on rue Christine, we were exactly on time. Linda had made a reservation for seven
people at 8PM. She, John and Ellen
went first to a 7PM lecture about Stalin at the Village Voice bookstore on
rue Princesse. We waited
outside the resto, the Rotisserie d’En Face, until our German friends Bogie
and Ulla arrived. We went in with
them, and after several minutes, Linda, John and Ellen walked in. By then, we’d already ordered white wine. The dinner
started off well enough; Ulla and I each had a healthy and tasty 7-vegetable
salad. But then several of us had the poulet fermier (roasted chicken, dark
meat only) and it was supremely mediocre and tough. It came with bland puréed potatoes, and a
very ordinary thin gravy. Most
brasseries can do better than this.
This was not worthy at all of a restaurant owned by the famous Jacques
Cagna! So I will have to
revise the restaurant recommendations yet again. Service was
only so-so, too. One of the servers
accidentally knocked me in the back of my head fairly hard with his elbow, so
he must have noticed. But he did not
apologize. I wasn’t in his way, I was
just sitting normally. He was a klutz,
that’s all. The whole
restaurant seemed to be full of tourists; I didn’t notice any locals,
really. The Parisians have already
figured out that this resto has gone down the tubes, I guess. I was sort of embarrassed on behalf of
Paris; I hope our friends do not think this was typical French food. Not too far
from the Rotisserie d’en Face, just across the Seine on the Place Dauphine,
is Le Caveau du Palais, a fine resto.
That’s where the locals were last night, I’m willing to bet. The best part
of the evening was dining with friends.
We’re about to go do that again for lunch today. See you later! Sign
my guestbook. View
my guestbook. |
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Lion
on the Saint Sulpice fountain. We
enjoyed walking our friends by there after dinner last night – the fountain
is well lit in the dark hours.
Flowers
in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Locksmith
shop with old-fashioned sign and façade. |
