paris eateries – Page 2 – Scènes sur Seine

This is going to be short and a bit scattered, but I think I only slept a total of 6 hours the past two days so bear with me.

Friday was relatively low-key, as I wanted to make sure I got a decent night’s sleep before waking up at the crack of dawn on Saturday. Due to staying on a skype call/meeting longer than I should have (yes, I take full blame for this), I did not get to sleep until around two, giving me only to hours before I had to get up and get myself ready to head to the train station.

That’s right everyone. I got up at 4am.

‘But, Effie,’ you, being a reasonable person are probably asking, ‘why the hell would you need to get up at the ungodly hour of 4am?’ Good question. My answer is that the train my friends and I were taking left from Massy-Palaiseau, not from one of the many, many TGV/SNCF stations within the city. Massy-Palaiseau for those who do not know, is south of the city on the RER B commuter line, aka at least an hour away from me. As I had to be there thirty minutes before my scheduled departure time of 7:30, the 4am wake up seemed like a reasonable idea. And it was. Except for the not sleeping thing.

Anyway.
I’m not going to talk about the train ride because I spent the whole 2.5 hours of it attempting to sleep. Needless to say, my breakfast of a croissant, tartine, orange juice and café crème upon arrival in Bordeaux (all for the low price of 6.50eu, the first sign we weren’t in Paris anymore) provided a very welcome burst of energy.

The plan for the day was, after eating a quick breakfast, renting a car and making our way to a few sights in the Bordeaux area. As we were lucky to have a sunny, pleasant day to work with, we opted to go by the sea – because really, how many more chances would we get before fall/winter chills really set in?

That song from La La Land is stuck in your head now. You know the one I mean…

First stop was Arcachon, a seaside town about 45 minutes away from Bordeaux. If it weren’t for the light breeze in the air and the occasional sweater sighting, you’d think the summer season was still in full swing. Everyone was enjoying lunch en terrasse when we arrived, and as it was the middle of lunch time, we parked ourselves at a table at one of the many restaurants lining the seashore and tuck in to some fresh, and very tasty bivalves.

Month ends in an -r : must be oyster season.

Afterwards, we strolled along the beach for a bit, and I found a few more specimens to add to my shell collection (although I do wish there was some sea glass around as well):

Honestly, there were so many shells littering the shoreline, I could’ve made one of those weird lamps with them if I wanted.

It was a good thing we had a satisfying lunch (yes, we ate things besides just the oysters) because our next stop would pretty much exhaust all of our energy.

Behold, the Dune du Pilat:

Well, more like a very small fraction of it.

This is the tallest sand dune in Europe, and naturally draws a lot of visitors, given its close proximity to Bordeaux and Archachon (only 10 minutes or so from the latter). Although there were clearly visible stairs we could have taken to reach the summit, we opted instead to trudge up the old fashioned way. The view from the top, however, made it all worth it.

In case you were curious, yes we did climb down to walk along the shore, and no, there were no stairs to help us get back up to the top again (which we had to do in order to get back to the entrance where we parked the car). As we wanted (well, I wanted) to get back to Bordeaux before the sun fully set, and as our legs were all already exhausted, we chose to abstain from walking the entire length of the dune, although this was something a few other groups of people seemed to have opted for.
Alas, even with our careful planning, a traffic jam on the road back meant that daylight would pretty much be almost gone by the time we dropped our things off at our hotel. I was a bit disappointed by this, as I only had one day to see Bordeaux, given I had to be back in Paris by noon today, but I did manage to get a couple of decent-ish looking photos.

After a late dinner and a quick stroll by the river, we headed back to our rooms to turn in, whereupon my two girlfriends and I (who were sharing) found a rather…interesting design feature on the bathroom door

It’s like they heard the word ‘bathroom’ and immediately thought ‘Yes, saloon doors.’

This morning, I was up again at 5am, and after a quick shower was on my way back to the station to catch the 7am TGV back to Paris and my Shakespeare monologue class. And let me tell you, working on Shakespeare while only partially coherent is a rather…enlightening experience.

I of course rewarded myself with food. First, a croque monsieur and noisette coffee at Ten Belles :

Their bread is going to be the death of me; it is so good.

And then with a black sesame éclaire from Boulangerie Utopie:

Black sesame might be a weakness of mine.

Any guilt I had about consuming these (especially the éclaire) was immediately assuaged by the fact that I walked from my class to Ten Belles (so Opéra to Canal St Martin), Ten Belles to the boulangerie, and then the boulangerie back to my place (and this bit involved going uphill).
I think to give my body a bit of a break, I’m going to forego setting an alarm for tomorrow, and just spend the day reading at home (oh and grocery shopping). We’ll see how that goes.

So I’ve been a bit MIA lately (so much for the daily posting…), but in my defense, I think I have a good excuse.
I’ve been eating. (Prepare yourselves for some rapid-fire restaurant commentating)

The Normande galette from Wednesday’s dinner at Breizh Café. Behold that beautiful Camembert…

I figured that since we had already gotten the museums and sites and whatnot out of the way, I’d devote my mom’s last few days here to taking her to as many different restaurants as possible (so…three), ticking off the boxes in terms of Parisian/French ‘must-tries’ that she had not yet experienced – and would quite frankly be hard-pressed to find back in the states.

One of these things were Breton-style crêpes, and in particular the savory buckwheat galettes served with a pitcher of crisp, dry (my personal preference) cider. Normally, I would have taken her down to Josselin near Montparnasse for this, but as I didn’t want to chance a wait (the rain was being finicky that day), I opted instead to take her to Breizh Café in the Marais, a place that I had been keen on trying for a while but had yet to make it to. As far as crêpes go, the menu offered the traditional ‘completes’ of ham, cheese, and egg, as well as some more interesting combinations like the one I chose, which came with prosciutto, camembert and a salad. Overall, I think I still prefer Josselin to this place – crêpes are more filling, and the prices are a tad friendlier, though even in the Marais, crêpes have not gotten too exorbitantly priced – but for the ease that came with being able to reserve a table (highly recommended), I would gladly come here again.

And really, it was a good thing we did not overstuff ourselves because Thursday’s dinner was a trip to what is still my absolute favorite place to go out to eat in this city : Chez Gladines

If you aren’t smothering your duck breast in Roquefort sauce, are you even living?

Now, Gladines has a few locations around the city, but the original restaurant in the Buttes aux Cailles neighborhood in the 13th arrondissement is still the best of the bunch. The fact that its a bit tucked away from the main tourist areas of the city means that it still retains a lot of the lively spirit and soul of the immediate area – which, coincidentally, happens to be frequented in large part by students living at the Cité Universitaire, my old graduate residence, and only a short tram/metro ride away. As the photo above suggests, portions are incredibly generous, but prices are definitely reflective of the budgets of most of the clientele. And yes, the fact that the dinner crowd – especially later in the evening – is comprised primarily of 20/early 30-somethings means that it can get rather…jovial…in there after a certain hour, but this energy becomes rather infectious, especially when it is evident that the staff is having just as much fun as the patrons. The fact that the food is also delicious – those potatoes are still some of the most beautiful, garlicky, fried things I have ever consumed, and the salad still makes me laugh with its attempt to add a bit of ‘health’ to this atomic calorie bomb – and wines by the glass start at around 3/3.50euros, almost makes you never want to leave.

Finally came Friday, my mom’s last night in Paris, and thus a night for some more…’typical’…parisian dining.

Not many places do the ‘radishes and sea salt’ thing as a complementary offering. Pity.

Le Temps des Cerises is a bistro located in the 4th arrondissement, off a side street just down the road from the Place de la Bastille. The bistro itself has been around for a while – I think the building, which looks like a little house, may have conservation status – but it hasn’t fallen into the trap of resting on its years to the detriment of the food, as some other historical eateries have. There’s a small dining room downstairs, and when we arrived, I feared that we’d be waiting a while, even though we had made a reservation, as all the tables were full. Fortunately, we were ushered up the stairs to another small room on the upper floor, this one a bit quieter than the bar/dining area downstairs. And maybe you can glean this from the photo, but there was an unmistakable warmth and coziness that enveloped the room and almost made me want to curl up in my chair and fall asleep, perhaps with a large mug of tea. Thankfully, I had had my afternoon espresso earlier that day, so I was able to stay wide awake for my meal.

We split an order of escargot to start, followed by chicken and fried potatoes for my mom, ray, mashed potatoes, and micro greens for me, and then finished with a tarte tatin for dessert, all of it washed down with a lovely carafe of white wine (and I didn’t note which one we chose, but I believe it was a Languedoc…). A stereotypical bistro meal, I guess you could say, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to add this place to my rotation of eateries I take people to when they visit me.

And then Saturday (yesterday) morning, I dropped my mom off at Charles de Gaulle, leaving her with one last treat for the long trip back to San Francisco : chocolates from Jacques Genin.

She was worried security would try and confiscate these. Of course they didn’t, but I did tell her if they tried to just eat them all…out of spite.

Last night also included a visit to the Experimental Cocktail Club, another place I have been meaning to try since I was last living here, as well as marked another personal first : going to a bar alone. Okay, this one might not count because the reason I was there alone was that I was waiting for my friends to arrive, but saddling up to the bar, ordering my cocktail – as the name suggests, their menu changes frequently with new creations, so the fact that I had something called an Old Cuban last night will probably make no difference should I, or any of you reading this, choose to visit this bar in the future – and people watching for a bit was not as awkward or uncomfortable as I originally thought it might be. There’s a part of me that would maybe consider doing something like this again, but perhaps next time I’ll do it on a weekday…oh and bring a book.

All this brings us to today which consisted of going to a drop-in acting class, seeing the French entry for this years foreign language Oscar race (120 Battements par minute / 120 Beats Per Minute, a film centered around the Paris chapter of Act Up and the French government’s (non) response to the AIDs crisis in the 1990s), and then heading to La Fontaine de Belleville to do some reading. Tomorrow it’s back at the BNF where I will continue with the super fun task of continually convincing myself that my project is a good idea (that is, assuming I get a better handle on the thing). Dissertations are a bitch.

Tag: paris eateries

Day trip : Bordeaux and Arcachon (41 – 43)

25 – 29