Paris Journal 2014 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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We began our explorations yesterday by checking out a couple of restaurants that I’d recently read about. One is l’Atome Café, a brasserie on the boulevard de Grenelle across from the terminus of the rue Saint Charles. The boulevard is pretty gritty in that area, due to the reconstruction work on the elevated line 6 of the metro. However, I think that when that work is done, the boulevard de Grenelle will be utterly transformed. That boulevard may be a bit ugly now, but when I look up at the metal work, and the decorative capitals on the columns supporting the overhead structure, and the maturing trees in the middle of the boulevard, I see real possibilities. The brasserie looked like a regular, good neighborhood brasserie. I am sure it is popular with the people who live right around there. We turned to the right and walked down the boulevard to the beginning of the rue du Docteur Finlay. I could not even remember the name of the restaurant I was searching for, but I knew I would know it when I saw it. In fact, other than an Asian resto, it was the only restaurant that we saw on the street. The rue Docteur Finlay, by the way, is named for Carlos Finlay (1833-1915), a Cuban physician of French and Scottish descent who pioneered the research of yellow fever. He was educated at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and continued studying in Paris and Havana. Then he began a medical practice in Cuba. His particular contribution to this research area was that he was the first to identify mosquitos as the carriers (vectors) of yellow fever. Mosquito control became very important as a result of Dr. Finlay’s work. In Florida, Tom and I now live in the county that has the reputation of spending more money on mosquito control than anyplace else in the world. It is essential to our lives. When we neared the end of the rue Docteur Finlay, I saw the restaurant: the Bistrot d’En Face, at number 24. We crossed the street to examine the menu posted in the window. Like so many Paris restos, this bistro has an English menu. I normally look away from English-language menus after reading only three words or so; generally, the translations are bad. The problems are often a lack of knowledge of English or ignorance about idioms and terminology in English; or, if the English is okay, the translator’s knowledge of food is zilch. But there in the window of the Bistrot d’en Face, I saw an English-language menu that I could not criticize. I gave it an A+. The menu appears to be very interesting, and the resto’s ratings are very good on LaFourchette and TripAdvisor. So I’ve made a reservation for Friday evening. We had ample opportunity to stare into the windows and check the place out, because it does not have service continu; the resto was closed up, and would not open for dinner until 8PM. It looks really good. Across the street, we noticed a unique modern building owned by the Fondation Michelle Darty. It caught my eye because I ran across mention of Michelle Darty in my hunt for Hubert Monmarché information yesterday. The foundation was started by Natan Darty, one of three sons of the founder of the Darty appliance/electronics retail chain, and his wife Helene. Its purpose is to aid young, mentally handicapped adults. The foundation has a number of operations in the Paris region, mostly providing housing. This is one of them.
When we finished our inspection of the rue Saint Charles and rue Docteur Finlay neighborhood, we realized that we were not far from the Beaugrenelle mall. So I led the way to show Tom the cute housewares store I’d discovered there days ago. Just for the fun of it, we walked all around in the mall again, and then it was time to go to dinner at Le Pario, which has re-opened after vacation. We’re back up to haute cuisine now. It was not a busy night for the resto, so we were seated in the downstairs dining room. The entire place has been beautifully renovated, but I think the resto has made the downstairs dining room too crowded with the tables. The Valero’s never had it packed so tightly, with tables close together, when the place was the restaurant Oh! Duo. The upstairs dining room now seems to be much more generous with the space allotted between tables. I made a mental note to ask for une table en étage next time I reserve at Le Pario. The dinner was superb. We decided against having any starter course because the desserts seemed so appealing. I was going to be content to order the rabbit tourte or the cod croustillant from the 17-euro menu, but the server told us that the pavé de bar (sea bass) was a specialty of the chef (28 euros). I do love sea bass, so I ordered that. It was delicious, and beautifully presented! And it came with a unique celery-root side dish that had been prepared in the fashion of a risotto. Tom ordered the lamb noisettes from the 17-euro menu, and they were very nice, with a lovely reduction sauce. His side was a dish of delectable marble-size potato spheres in a rich, Basque-like sauce. Tom’s dessert was a delicious strawberry millefeuille, and mine an outstandingly yummy poached pear with the best caramel sauce I’ve ever experienced. This warm sauce came on the side, and so I spooned it over the pear until it looked like lava flowing from a volcano. To the side of the pear was some vanilla-flavored mascarpone – a lovely accompaniment. Chef Eduardo Jacinto is a talented man. And the music played on the resto’s sound system was not entirely American, I’m happy to say; there was plenty of Brazilian music – essential, when evoquing the land of Antonio Carlos Jobim. A bit of Rio in Paris: that’s Le Pario.
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Thursday, August 28, 2014
Art Deco window (above) and a private school (below) on the
avenue Emile Zola.
Sea bass (above) and lamb noisettes (below) at Le Pario.
Celery-root prepared like a risotto, at Le Pario.
Poached pear (above), and strawberry millefeuille (below).
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