The Paris Wrap Up

It has been just about two months since we got back from Paris. It should come as no surprise that we are ready to return. Telling people about the trip calls forth memories and longings to sell it all and take up the romantic life on an ex-pat. This of course will not happen. Instead we will wait patiently to return.

Paris in winter is not the Paris of your dreams. There are no idyllic outdoor cafes to sit in; no lazy afternoons stretching into twilight; no sipping rose and listening to Edith Piaf. Not once did we see an old man with an accordion and a monkey. Not once. Nothing is in bloom. The trees are barren skeletons, their spiny branches blending in with the cold, gray sky. No red balloon traipses over the tree tops ready to carry you off into happiness.

I'd be willing to go Paris every winter for the rest of my life.

I don't need to tell you about the charm Paris has. Other writers who get paid to write have stated all that needs to be said about Paris. Paris is like a joke: if it needs to be explain it to you, you won't get it. True to form, they aren't the nicest people in the world...at first. A smile, a polite, if unpronounced bonjour, goes a very long way in bridging the gap. Don't forget the French helped us defeat the British. They like us, they really do.

Middle of the trip, we boarded the TGV bound for Epernay. After arriving in Epernay, we headed southeast towards Oger. Workers were pruning the vines which stood out in marked contrast from the cotton white, snow covered ground. We turned into small development. Where in America the space between homes would have been filled with manicured lawns, ferns, and rosebushes, here every available inch of soil sprouted grand cru chardonnay. France wins.

The car backed down an incline driveway and out popped Bruno the proprietor of Vauversin Champagne. Before Bruno took over his father ran the business. And his father before that, and so on and so back as far as the 1600s. He led us into his garage and down a flight of stairs into his basement. In the basement, the father and son team, ferment, bottle, riddle, age, and cork all of the Champagne which bears their label. We then went upstairs, where it was time to pop corks. We sipped thru their brut, brut reserve, and a 2004 millesime before purchasing a few bottles of this and a few of that.

Through the entire exchange very little English was spoken by the Vauversins and very little French by us. Somehow we communicated just fine.

The Paris Dispatches: New Year's Eve

Maybe I am a pessimist, but New Year's Eve is always a let down. In fact, I may have given you very clear instructions a few months ago about why you should avoid restaurants at all costs on December 31st. Obviously, I should listen to myself.

To start, it was New Year's Eve in Paris, which we were incredibly fortunate to experience. That day Lindsay and I wondered throughout the Left Bank. We purchased a few books from Shakespeare & Co. We ate ice cold oysters that tasted as if you got saltwater in your nose at the beach when a wave crashed over you. Those oysters were simply fantastic, especially with a bottle of Muscadet, salted butter, and mignonette sauce.  We stopped at Le Baron Rouge for more oysters and white wine before stocking up on supplies to make beef bourguignon on New Year's Day.

It was a day that makes you want to move to Paris immediately.

Then we went to dinner. La Ferme Saint-Simon was recommended to Lindsay's mother by the apartment rental agency as a "charming bistro where one can eat some wonderful French food and sip wine within a stone's throw of the Eiffel Tour."

Let's start with the amuse. What arrived was a cocktail glass with a beige colored mousse of chicken liver the texture and temperature of which resembled a cold pudding served to inmates. On top of this sat a piece of chocolate, which when you bit into it gushed forth more of the chicken liver. At this point the champagne had just started to re-kick in so we all figured, "Let's just keep quiet for now."

Then came an insult to heavy eating ducks and truffle hunters everywhere. This terrine of foie gras with a truffled center caused an audible gasp at the table. The foie had not been emulsified properly and was chewy. The large sphere of foie had the effect of dominating some bites, while being absent in the majority of them. The small scoop of apricot jelly did not go nearly far enough to soothe the fattiness and richness of the foie gras. This was overkill.

What came out next was even more baffling. It looked like a prawn had transformed into a spaceship and was hurtling Klingons towards a gate in the Fifth Element. Don't believe me? Look for yourself.

That is allegedly a prawn stuffed with seafood and scallops on top of a carpaccio of scallops with a cinnamon tuile. Trying to use a knife and fork to dissect this creature proved useless. "OK, how do you eat this thing?" asked Lindsay's brother. We all took different tacts. Lindsay upended the Prawnlenuim Falcon and focused on the scallop carpaccio. I tried to remove the stuffing, which smelled like old socks, and focus on the sweet meat of the prawn. Lindsay's brother just ate the tuile. Her dad mostly attacked it like it was a mess of unruly weeds. Lindsay's mom had the best approach and just ignored it and drank more Champagne.

At this point, I was reminded of reading Virgil in Latin III and his epic line, "Someday you will look back and laugh at all of this."

Then came a dessert so heinous and offensive, it is amazing the French haven't striked over it. A green dome surrounded by pastel colored macaroons, a spun sugar crown fit for an alien princess, a globe of olive colored ice cream and a smear baby shit green. But trust me on this, it tasted much worse than it looked. If the flavor inspiration for the dish was rotting seaweed on the beach at low tide, the chef hit it out of the park.

After dinner we wandered over to the Eiffel Tour expecting at least fireworks. We found instead crowds, cheap bottles of sugary sparkling wine, and a father-son team of bagpipers. All in all it was a New Year's Eve none of us could ever forget. And isn't that the point?

The Paris Dispatches: Chez Michel

Montmartre is a disgusting place. The most prized attraction of this hilled area of Paris is Sacre Coeur. The white walled basilica has a commanding view of all of Paris - a commanding view, that is, if it is not overcast and gray. Plus you have to walk up a considerable amount of steps to enjoy the view, and leading up to those steps are streets filled with 5 Euro sandwiches, t-shirts, souvenirs, and hucksters. As you get closer to the church, dark skinned emigres from Africa, ask, "My friend, let me show you something." They then quickly try to braid a friendship bracelet on your wrist.

It is enough to make anyone from New Orleans feel right at home.

Following this excursion, we walked down streets lined with shops selling fabrics of every shade in huge spools. This turned into streets lined with shops selling dresses, colorful tuxedos, and hats. Then a turn down a small street brought us to Chez Michel. Chez Michel may have been our best meal in Paris.

Cozy and inviting, the interior of Chez Michel was nautical in theme with wood paneling and sturdy wood posts. At one point the chef brought out a balsa wood bucket filled with blue green lobsters to show off to a tableful of eager diners. The cuisine at Chez Michel was rustic and marked at this time of year by wild game and truffles. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

To start the waiter brought out a bowl of cold snails, sharp mustard, and warm bread. I think you can piece together what you do with all three of those. This was a great way to start a meal.

We ordered half our meal off the black chalkboard, guessing and using google to roughly translate what the menu items were. I started with an on the menu item of little biscuits topped with St. Malo cheese and a salad. (What? I was trying to eat healthy.) Lindsay began with a very simple sounding tartine de pate de campagne foie gras. What arrived was an 8 inch loaf of crusted bread smeared with foie gras and gilded by black truffles. A side salad just seemed like a dare.

For my main, a tender shoulder of veal braised in a milk and tarragon sauce with baby leaks, carrots, and mushrooms. Utterly amazing, the milkiness of the veal and the milk had blended into a harmonious bite. The punchy tarragon and vegetables provided a connection back to the roots of good cooking.

Lindsay got more adventurous and was equally rewarded with her braised pheasant, buckshot included, in a rustic stew strewn with carrots and laced with brandy. At one point Lindsay picked up a portion of the pheasant and asked me, "What do you think this is?" I responded the leg with confidence. Until Linsdsay noticed her hand was clasping the beak of the bird. The rich gaminess of the pheasant went especially well with the bottle of Morgon on the table.
 

 

The meal wrapped up with two equally impressive dishes. One was a cheese platter, which arrived at the table as a large piece of slate festooned with six globes of different Normandy cheeses, some raisin studded bread, and a bowl of honey. I was instructed to take as much cheese as I liked, which is a bit like telling a child he can take as much candy as he wants. The dessert on the table was a masterful chocolate and coffee cake with a texture more resembling a pudding than a cake. It was light, but dense in chocolate flavor, if that makes any sense. 

The whole meal had a dreamy quality to it. After the disappointment of Montmartre, our expectations were naturally diminished. Then we sat down in the tiny corner front bistro on the Rue Belzunce and we let Paris come to us in a succession of refined rustic cuisine and red wine. It was enough to make anyone feel at home.

The Paris Dispatches: Chocolate Roses

 A mind-altering display of chocolates at Patrick Roger. OK, not really mind-altering, but if you stare at it long enough a sailboat appears.

An overnight flight to Europe is not an awful way to spend Christmas. Face it, by noon at Christmas you are over the holiday, ready to kill Uncle Edgar, and wondering when you have to start making resolutions. Which is why Lindsay and I decided to spend Christmas in flight. The flight from Houston to Paris was about what you'd expect: soggy beef teriyaki, ice cold rolls, a tv monitor that didn't work, and neither enough booze nor sleep. Note: now airlines are charging for drinks on international flights; this is more troubling than charging you for bringing luggage.

When we arrived in Paris, she was blanketed by a cover of white snow. We stowed our bags in the apartment and headed out to begin rounding up provisions. Wine, cheese, bread, lettuce (don't worry it was not actually eaten), and pastries procured, we ate and then set off for Notre Dame, which is a church of significant importance due to it's underachieving football team.

Sightseeing done with, it was time to get back to snacking. First stop, was Patrick Roger to pick up some chocolates. While New Orleans may have in some Toolesian fantasy world po-boy shops on every corner, in Paris boutiques filled with pastries, breads, candies, and macaroons abound. The shops each have their own personality - from the whimsical forestry of Patrick Roger, the vintage, chocolate colored wonderland of Georges Larnicol, and the jewelery of Dabauve and Gallais, the shops express the vision of the chocolatier.



We sampled a variety of Roger's chocolate bars and truffles. The best being praline, lemon thyme, and lime chocolates. It being near Christmas time, Roger adorned.his shop with symbols of the season. There were Christmas trees dusted with snowy, powdered sugar, reindeer with exaggerated candied features, and a chocolate Santa Claus who resembled the bowling bowl from A Christmas Story.

A few more saunters through the 7th and we found ourselves near Da Rosa. Part wine shop, part dry goods store, part tapas restaurant, Da Rosa may be the single best place to snack in all of the world. It had been nearly twenty minutes since I last ate, so we started off quickly with some Salamanque vertes olives. As Lindsay will tell you, I can get very cranky if not fed timely. Also, when eating in any group setting, I tend to hoard the food. I blame it on being the baby of the family. Back to the olives - they were delicious with a big, meaty texture. I could have eaten these olives all day with a few glasses of sherry, but alas we had more work to do and were drinking rioja.

 

Then an arrangement of pink fleshed, white striped jamon iberico bellota unico crafted to resemble a rose. Made from 100% goodness of the black footed pig who spent his last few months munching on acorns, reading Shakespeare, and picking up hot chicks at barns. These pigs are spoiled. Just look at the striations of fat! The jamon itself could have been sliced just a bit thinner to really bring out the translucent and shimmering qualities of the ham. 

Also on the table was an order of toasted bread rubbed down with tomato that was a fine display of simple things done very well. While others at the table did not love the pate of pork and duck, I thought it was hearty and sultry like an overweight flamenco dancer.

Lastly, we rounded things out with a torchon of foie gras with quince jelly. Before we go any further, a word of caution. There is such thing as too much foie gras and truffles. We discovered this in Paris, but as this was our first foie dish in the city, we really enjoyed it, especially slathered across bread and sprinkled with sea salt. By the end of the trip, Lindsay began to openly hate foie. I think they have made up now, though.

So if you are keeping score at home, that was a full-day of eating with a brief smattering of sight-seeing. The rest of the trip would roll out in a similar fashion. But we are off to a good start, and everything was good enough to make that cross-ocean flight seem a distant memory like your last dental appointment.

The Paris Dispatches: Robuchon

Paris, France- It is 10 a.m. on December 27th. The sun has just risen over the rooftop of the Place des Vosges. It is cold. It is overcast. We have a date with L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon for lunch. Lindsay is eating an omelet for breakfast, but I can only nibble on a few tears of hot baguette slathered with salty, cool butter.

I hustle Lindsay along through the early morning rituals. She needs to take a shower. After that, there is hair to straighten, outfits to choose and discard, temperature checks, selection of the final outfit, and then covering it all up with a big thick coat, gloves, and a scarf. We are out of the apartment at 11:15, shattering all previous land-speed records.

The goal is to walk from the apartment to L'Atelier near the Rue du Bac in the 7th Arrondissement. It is a good walk. The air, though cold, is dry, and we pass by the shops on Rue Rivoli, the Louvre, and in the distance the spires of Notre Dame. We get off off track and walk a little further than we intended. This builds character and more importantly, appetite. Halfway there, we realize we forgot the camera.

Ohh come on, like you expected good photos anyway.

At a little after noon, we enter a black and red sanctum with approximately 40 seats wrapping around a completely open kitchen. The design and service of the scheme reflects Japanese sushi or Spanish tapas  rather than a classic French restaurant. This is on purpose and works incredibly well.

A glass of Champagne arrives as we look over the menu. But we have come all this way and picking two or three dishes just would be about as sensible as reading Playboy just for the articles. We are here to eat. To eat well and beautifully. We ask for the tasting menu.

First course is an amuse bouche of Jerusalem Artichokes pureed into a chilled soup incredibly fine and smooth in texture. On top of the cream colored soup is a sprinkle of Espelette powder. The potage managed to taste hearty due to the sturdy flavor of the Jerusalem Artichokes (which are neither Jerusalem nor Artichokes, discuss).

Next course was a scallop carpaccio, sliced to the width of a dime and topped with a citrus vinaigrette and fines herbs. Crowning the dish were dollops of sea urchin roe. Just a stunning dish, with the clarity of the scallop shining through and the richness of the bright orange urchin roe providing a nice contrast. Nothing bold, nothing out of place, no two ingredients fighting for the lead role. This would prove to be a theme.

Now came Lindsay's favorite dish of the lunch. A slice of potato was boiled just until done, then topped with a piece of smoked eel, a fine spoonful of caviar, and a horseradish cream. Due to a slight mistranslation, we originally thought the fish was smoked salmon. So imagine our surprise when the sublime, smoked but still moist fish turned out to be eel.

The real star here was the caviar. Tons of chefs place caviar on top of dishes in an attempt to give it an air of luxury. Most of the caviar employed in the dolloping and gilding is banal stuff - dry, chewy, and gross. This caviar popped into a rush of salty harmony with the smoky fish and pungent horseradish cream. This dish was so good, halfway thru I asked it if it was on birth control.

Here is the reason foie gras gets all the press. A half inch thick - as big around as the filet mignon peddled by many restaurants - seared crispy on both sides, and the interior just beginning to turn molten. It was plated very simply, with a few white beans underneath, an apple chip on top, and a ring of demi glace. Believe in the power of man to turn a fattened duck's liver into something surreal.

Next up an ode to the egg. Now, I try not to get all philosophical but this dish seemed to be an impressionist cook painting a field in spring. Let me explain. At the bottom of a martini glass was a bright, tart, and green parsley puree (grass), then a layer of soft poached egg and silken whites (sun), surrounded it all was a white cream (clouds) studded with mushrooms (dirt). It was freaking fantastic.

All of the above were accompanied by a bottle of Raveneau Premier Cru Chablis. I really liked it, but it is best to let Lindsay explain, "Normally, you pick these white wines and my reaction is 'whatever', but I really liked that wine." After this course we stayed in Burgundy, but went to Gevrey-Chambertin for a barnyard, modest fruit masterpiece. 

If the last dish was an impressionist painting of a spring field, the next one was a cleverly put together puzzle of the cuisines of the Mediterranean. A square of rouget (a Mediterranean fish) was topped with some "aromatics"- olives, tomato, eggplant, then a pistachio oil. As someone who is not a fan of fish, in general, I found this plate of food remarkably interesting. There was a slight hint of heat (from more of the Espelette powder), a savoriness from the aromatics, and then in the center of it all, but not lost, a well-cooked piece of fish.

There was only one choice presented to us: lamb chops, beef cheeks, or quail. We chose one beef cheek and one quail. The beef cheek was pure luxury. A moat of deep purple reduced braising liquid surrounded a fortress of braised beef, still juicy and well-seasoned. Little nuggets of bacon and pearl onions spaced at equal intervals brought the dish back to it's routes: beef bourguignon.

Now, part of the reason we ordered the quail was because it came with an order of Robuchon's world famous pomme puree. That is French for "ridiculously good mashed potatoes." Here they came topped with a few slices of black truffle. Talk about gilding a lily. The quail was stuffed with a foie gras mixture, grilled and sauced very lightly. But those potatoes. Holy Christmas carols. We asked for a small side of them and they brought us a serving in a small casserole dish. We ate the buttery, rich, and silken potatoes with the sauce from my dish and Lindsay's. But they were best standing on their own.

(Robuchon's secret is he uses half the amount butter per pound as potatoes. The cook in charge of making them, then furiously whips the puree before service. So discard everything I said about making mashed potatoes.)

A palate cleanser of sorts arrived next. A cream of "exotic fruits" - think Kiwi, passionfruit, etc. - sat on top of a granita of rum. This was all fine and well, but it just set the stage for the knockout blow.

A simple apple tart, in essence with caramel ice cream. Perfectly flaky crust filled with the deep, rich taste of stewed apples and then a delicious, rich caramel ice cream. Then a Fernet Branca (to ease the digestion), and we were out the door.

This meal didn't change our lives. We didn't walk out the door and feel like we won the lottery. We didn't uncover any essential truths of man's struggle against nature. None of that. What made it so great was that we looked forward to it, we hyped it for months, and it exceeded our expectations. But it did not exceed our expectations by giving us mind binding riddles of guess the ingredient or flavor's fighting to the death, rather it did so with subtlety and grace. All of the flavors were demur, which isn't to say dumbed or watered down but rather acoustic, elegant, and natural. On the way out, the hostess asked us how we enjoyed our meal, and the only thing I could ask was where I could find a cigarette.

It was that good.