Paris Journal 2012 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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The newspaper called Le Parisien has a misleadingly local sounding name. In reality, it is a popular newspaper sold throughout France. The center section, usually just four pages, is called “Le Journal de Paris.” At least, here in Paris that’s what it is called. Those few pages have the more truly local news, for the city of Paris and the surrounding suburbs – an area that together is called the “Île de France.” Residents of the Île de France are called “Franciliens.” The Île de France is a region. There are 27 regions in France. This one is the richest, and most populated. The population of the Île de France is roughly the same as the population of Ohio, my native state. But residents of Ohio are not generally called Ohioans. They’re usually called Buckeyes – a kind of nut. I digress. Evidently, I had not read the Friday copy of “Le Journal de Paris” very closely before I wrote in yesterday’s journal entry about the preparations for installing the overhead walkway at Beaugrenelle. Tom read the blurb about it to me last night. It was an important event; important enough to be on the front page of “Le Journal de Paris.” From the blurb, we learned that the overhead walkway is called a “passarelle,” just like the pedestrian bridges over the Seine. The passarelle was to be attached to the two buildings on Friday. That’s why we saw the crew working late on Thursday; they were putting everything into place because Friday’s passarelle-hanging work was supposed to last all day, from 9AM to the end of the afternoon. The entire Beaugrenelle commercial center is going to be big: 45,000 square meters. Like so many projects we’ve been reading about this summer, it is scheduled to open in Spring 2013. Beaugrenelle is controversial. Many think it is just too densely developed; I tend to agree. We shall see how it works out. This morning, Yahoo Weather claimed it was only 66 degrees F at 8:30AM. I opened the apartment up; indeed, the air felt slightly cool. Last night at midnight, it was still too hot outside to open the windows. In the city, the pavement and buildings hold the heat until the middle of the night, when they seem to suddenly give it up, perhaps around 4AM or so. At 9AM this morning, I ventured out. I walked up to the intersection of rue Fondary and avenue Emile Zola. Because Sunday morning is market day up at the boulevard de Grenelle, the bakery there on rue Fondary was open. But I thought I might buy bread at Maison Kayser instead. You may have read about Maison Kayser in the New York Times recently, because Eric Kayser is preparing to open a bakery there, in New York City. Eric Kayser opened his first bakery in Paris as recently as 1996, yet he comes from a family of bakers. Eric’s first bakery was on the rue Monge, one of the most fun market streets in the city. By 2009, there were 69 Maison Kayser bakeries, scattered not only around Paris, but also elsewhere in France, and even in far-flung places like Tokyo. I’m not sure why it has taken so long for Maison Kayser to make it to New York city. We’re fortunate to have a Maison Kayser on the rue du Commerce. It is strategically located directly across from the Commerce metro station. At rush hour on a weekday, people pour out of the metro station at regular intervals, and a significant number of them pour right into the Maison Kayser bakery to buy the baguette of the evening. Unfortunately, the Maison Kayser on the rue du Commerce was closed this morning. Darn. I do like their bread – the baguette is a bit like sourdough bread. Then I noticed the young man opening up the Nicolas wine shop nearby. He was late; it was 9:40, and he was supposed to open at 9:30. I didn’t want to make him hurry, so I walked up the street to the corner of the rue du Theatre, where I turned and walked the short distance to the bakery there. That bakery normally has an inexpensive, plain baguette for 90 eurocents. There were three older ladies waiting in the tiny bakery however, because the shop was temporarily sold out of the 90-cent baguettes. The woman working the cash register kept turning around and pleading with the baker in the back room to please bring out some more baguettes. Yet another customer, a man, squeezed his way into the shop behind me. There were almost a dozen of the slightly more special, old-fashioned baguettes made with unbleached flour. These are called “baguettes tradition,” and they cost 1.20 euros. I like this kind of baguette, so when it was my turn and after I said good-day, I asked for one of those, putting my exact change in the plastic dish in front of the cash register. Madame seemed to be relieved that I wasn’t going to ask for the plain baguette which is 30 eurocents less expensive. Beautiful, traditional baguette in hand, I walked briskly back down the rue du Commerce to the Nicolas boutique, and bought some rosé wine which would be good for a hot summer evening. I decided to forego buying a Le Parisien Dimanche, because, unlike the New York Times, that newspaper’s Sunday edition is anemic and thin, yet it still costs more than the weekday editions. I think people must buy it for the horseracing news, which does not interest me. By the time I was walking back up the street toward home, the butcher and cheese shops were open and ready to sell roasted chickens and cheese. The roasted chickens at that butcher shop must be good, because they’re expensive, yet people still line up to buy them on Sunday morning. The air was beginning to feel thick. Temperatures were rising fast. Today, Yahoo Weather says the high temperature in Paris will be 101 degrees F. Airparif indicates that the air quality is bad today, due to bad ozone (O3). This is a perpetual problem in the city when the hot air cooks the auto exhaust. We are staying in today, at least until 6PM or so. Tom has plenty of work to do on the new edition of The Norton Sampler. It doesn’t matter that today is Sunday; the Tome has his nose to the grindstone. Paris is trying to get ahead of New York again . . . . Last night, we dined in the air-conditioned comfort of the Café du Commerce. One of my newer friends, Sue O. from Los Angeles, saw the photo of this restaurant from our visit there on Thursday evening. She wrote that she once had a delicious main course there – shredded duck in a flaky pastry. She couldn’t remember the name of the dish, but wondered if it would be on the menu in December-January, when she will be in Paris. I remembered the dish, because my stepson Dan ordered it one evening last month. “It is called a pastilla de canard,” I wrote back to Sue. “And it is still on the menu. I think I’ll order one tonight. Thanks for the reminder.” In fact, it is on the part of the menu listing main courses for only 14.50 euros. The pastilla de canard is a Moroccan dish that contains duck leg meat cooked with honey and spices, and in this case, some dried fruits were added to the mix. The pastry holding the mix was very fine, and the dish had a smattering of dark sauce and a few thin slices of cooked carrot. The dish was slightly spicy, which I find appealing. Tom ordered the onglet the boeuf, a steak that my friend Christian says is a prized cut in France. It is very flavorful as a steak, but perhaps is more chewy than we prefer. His onglet came with very good green beans and good sautéed potatoes. Still, Tom wanted dessert, and so ordered a baba au rhum. Instead of dessert, I ordered a class of crémant de la Loire – a sparkling wine from the Loire region. Because of its truly air-conditioned state, the Café du Commerce was extremely busy. Still, the restaurant did not open its top level. We’ve been hearing tile work (the running of a wet saw) coming from the direction of the restaurant during the mornings and afternoon after lunch, and so I am thinking that perhaps renovations are under way up there. The head waiter for the level where we were seated was the same man who chatted with us on Thursday evening. He made a point of coming over to apologize because he was so busy, he could not chat last night. Of course we told him we understood. It was so hot last night that I wore a dress and thin, strappy high-heeled shoes. I piled my hair up on top of my head. I felt like la parisienne. How anyone could walk very far in shoes like that, I don’t understand. The only reason I have them here is because of our transatlantic cruise on the Queen Mary 2 three years ago, when we had to have formal attire. The evening gown and tuxedo would have been overdressing for the Café du Commerce, however. I mentioned the retractable glass roof in yesterday’s entry; of course, this was closed up last night. It was probably installed in 1988, when the restaurant was entirely renovated and renamed from “Le Commerce” to the “Café du Commerce.” Before that, and back in the days when it was a fabric store, the roof was probably a verriere, one of those attractive old-fashioned glass roofs that you rarely see anymore. It would have been helpful in providing lots of light in the fabric store; as anyone who sews knows, it is not good to buy fabric in a poorly lit store where you can’t see its true colors. Nowadays, there aren’t so many fabric stores anywhere. But in Paris, there is still the Marché Saint Pierre (also known as Dreyfus) up in the 18th arrondissement, not far from Sacre Cœur. That store has six levels, and boasts that it is “l’un des plus grands magasins de tissus au Monde où professionnels de la couture, stylistes et décorateurs de renommée internationnale nous font confiance,” or “one of the biggest fabric stores in the world, that clothing designers, stylists, and decorators of international renown trust.” That’s the kind of robust pride that you come to expect in Paris. |
Sunday, August 19, 2012
This
creature in a travel agency window says “Upon returning from this vast tour
we will be at your service, starting Monday, August 27.”
A
piece of the French garden at Les Invalides.
The
shop with the shell art on the rue de Bourgogne in the 7th
arrondissement.
Pastilla de canard, with small roasted
potatoes, a date, and some slivered almonds.
Onglet de boeuf, one of the specials of
the day at the Café du Commerce.
Crow
guards the UNESCO globe, with the top of the Tour Montparnasse in the
background.
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