Paris Journal 2013 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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The restaurant
we were looking for was in the Hotel Bel Ami, on the rue Saint Benoit, a
street that I know well. The restaurant
just opened in January, and already it has 300-some ratings on
LaFourchette.com, and a pretty high average rating. That, plus a 40
percent discount on the food items, caught my attention. The food photos on the restaurant’s page on
LaFourchette.com were dazzling – they showed modern, creative presentations
of very appealing courses. We simply had
to try it. We found the hotel, no
problem, but it was not clear where the entrance to the restaurant was. Also, the restaurant’s name, Les Mots Passants,
was not displayed anywhere on the outside of the building. We saw a printed paper in a display case on
the outside wall that referred to Les Maupassants (same pronunciation as “Les
Mots Passants”). Perhaps that was the
name of the former restaurant. The only thing
to do was to enter the hotel and ask a concierge or the front desk personnel
where we could find the restaurant. A sharply uniformed concierge greeted us and
graciously showed us the way, through a corridor, to the restaurant. The dining room
was large, bright, and stark, but smartly done up in a ultra-modern
décor. A young woman in a business
suit greeted us nicely and showed us to our table. We were the first to arrive; our
reservation was for 7:30PM, so we could qualify for the discount. Other diners would arrive after 8PM. The space
looked like it had been a store of some kind, but then was converted back
into a restaurant. I say “back,”
because that was most likely its original use in this building, which seemed
to clearly have been built as a hotel, probably in the late 19th
Century. We shared a
refreshing and delicious appetizer of marinated salmon garnished with
marinated potato and radish slices, and accompanied by a scoop of crème fraiche decorated with a sprig
of Japonese mustard (saumon biologique,
mariné au gingembre et citronnelle, pomme de terre et mizuna). My main course
was a grilled filet of bass, served on a bed of beautiful vegetables in a
pool of sweet red pepper cream sauce. It
was very good, and I was surprised a the smoky taste of the bass; it had
clearly been cooked on a wood fire. Tom ordered the
steak, and it, too, seemed to have been grilled on a wood fire (filet de boeuf du Charolais, pommes
grenailles et oignons grelots aux herbes fraîches). Very good. He had a café
gourmand for dessert. The surprise on
this assortment of tiny desserts was a big wad of spun sugar – not that
interesting to eat, but very interesting to look at! The entire
four-star Hotel Bel Ami is decorated in an ultra modern fashion, not just the
restaurant. It also emphasizes “green”
technology in its operations. The
entire hotel is non-smoking; electricity in each room is shut off when the guest
is not present; the air conditioning will not run if the windows are open in
the room; water flow is reduced; sheets and towels are only changed when the guest
asks; garbage is recycled; etc. As interesting
as the Hotel Bel Ami is, my preference, if I were to stay in a four-star
hotel in the Saint Germain area, would be the Hotel Aubusson. I like the softer, plusher, more old
fashioned décor. We adore the old,
original stone floors. And of course,
the Aubusson has live music in its Café Laurent – jazz three or four nights a
week. The Hotel
Aubusson is in one of those wonderful old 17th-Century hotels particuliers (stately homes) –
once called the Hôtel Mouy. Early
occupants included a prosecuter and his family, and then a professor of
physics. In the early 1940s, Simone de
Beauvoir lived in the building. I had been told
that the hotel’s Café Laurent was named for the man who runs it, named
Laurent. But that isn’t exactly
true. Laurent may have come up with
the current concept for the Café Laurent.
But in reality, the café was established in 1690 by François Laurent,
and it was a hangout for literary types and artists. In 1946, it
became a nightclub called Le Tabou
(Taboo) frequented by de Beauvoir, Sartre, Camus, and friends. It included the cellar level, where the
hotel now has meeting rooms. Taboo was
a real jazz club, with its own jazz orchestra, and people like Juliette Greco
began their careers there. It was
central to the Saint Germain jazz scene. But the
neighbors on the rue Dauphine did not like all the late night noise generated
by the club. Soon, it was forced to
close at midnight (as Café Laurent does now).
When another cellar jazz club opened at 13 rue Saint Benoit (next to
the place where we dined last night), the demise of Taboo was hastened. I think Laurent
had the right idea in re-instituting Café Laurent as a smaller, more sedate,
civilized, street-level, comfy place to appreciate mellow tones of a jazz
trio or quartet. If we aren’t
too tired after working all day, perhaps we will go there tonight. Tom is finishing a new chapter for Back to the Lake, so perhaps that
would be a good “reward” for him. |
Friday, September 20, 2013
Saumon
biologique, mariné au gingembre et citronnelle, pomme de terre et mizuna at Les Mots
Passants.
Grilled bass with vegetables in a sweet
pepper cream sauce.
Charolais
beef steak with veggies and potatoes.
Café gourmand at
Les Mots Passants. |
