Foodie's Paradise

Over the 13 days that JP and Eden were in town (which coincided with the 8 days my mom and Cathy were here), we engaged in some epic food tourism. Here's a list of most of the places we hit, just so you can get a sense of the sheer magnitude of our consumption. With the exceptions of the places specifically indicated as not recommended, this is a pretty good list of places to eat and buy food during any random visit to Paris. We'll be posting about groups of these places and reviewing individual restaurants in the coming weeks, so don't worry - there's plenty of food photography in store.

Afternoon "Tea"
Ladurée (tea and pastries)
La Maison Berthillon (pastries and ice cream)
Hôtel Crillon (hot chocolate)
Angelina (hot chocolate and pastries)
Mariage Frères (tea and pastries)
Maison des Trois Thés (intense authentic Chinese tea)

Lunch (only the ones worth mentioning)
Così
Le Baratin
Café Trésor
L'As du Falafel

Dinner (* = from Jesse's List)
Fish La Boissonerie*
Coq Ming (do not recommend)
La Cerisaie*
Polidor (famous, but do not recommend)
Nambodaï
Astier*
Hotel Kaiserstein (two meals)

Fine Food Shopping:
La Grande Épicerie (at Le Bon Marché)
Galeries Lafayette Épicerie
Fauchon
Mariage Frères (tea)
Pierre Hermé (macarons)

La Bonbonnerie (chocolaterie across from la Trinité)

Now it's time to rest for four days, eating as much rice, beans, and pasta as possible, so we can do it all over again when Matt gets here Monday . . . (well, maybe we won't do it all over again).

Le Bon Marché

Before Printemps, before Galeries Lafayette, before BHV and La Samaritaine, there was Le Bon Marché. The first modern department store, Le Bon Marché revolutionized shopping and middle-class life. Sales, special events, entertainment for children, fixed-price shopping, all were pioneered by Le Bon Marché's founder, Aristide Boucicaut, in the mid-19th century. And the place is still going strong, as classy as ever.

The building complex isn't as flashy as the flagships for Printemps or Galeries Lafayette, but it has its nice touches, especially inside. 

Yeah, they've got fish. But I don't think they're for sale. Anyway, our favorite part of the store is elsewhere - it's La Grande Épicerie, a humongous and remarkably aesthetically pleasing gourmet supermarket.

Any store that arranges dried fruit and nuts, egg cartons (notice how they're not refrigerated?), and jars of olives and spices so carefully is a store we like to shop at. Also, they have a really funny American aisle. Peanut butter, syrup, popcorn, pancake mix, M&Ms, Hershey's chocolate chips, OMG THEY HAVE FLUFF BRB

Fluff makes us miss Somerville. But we have plenty here to be excited about. Not least of which is the fact that Le Bon Marché, a fancy-pantsy luxury department store, welcomes dogs. 

Two Days with Moritz and Rebecca

After a glorious, five-day romp in Paris, Becky flew back to the States yesterday (sad times Panda). Now that she and Gladis have come and gone, we only have one remaining visitor coming up - Maggie's mom. But before we get too ahead of ourselves, we're super late in gushing about two visitors we had in early April, when the ash cloud was still just a bit of indigestion in the belly of the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano.

Rebecca (Maggie's 2nd cousin) and Moritz (Rebecca's partner) had previously been our hosts when we visited Munich for Thanksgiving. We were excited to return the favor during their trip to Paris, and we hope we showed them as good of a time as they showed us.

Since neither Rebecca nor Moritz cared too much about hitting all the major sites of Paris, we were free to meander through our favorite areas, stopping by places both familiar and completely new. For example: the Maison de Victor Hugo (the apartment where he lived between 1832-48 is now a free museum run by the City of Paris) . . .


 . . . the Berthillon salon de thé . . .

 . . . La Grande Épicerie du Bon Marché, where all kinds of Easter-related delights could be found  . . .

 . . . and the Pont des Arts, where couples recently began leaving small padlocks attached to the bridge as a sign of their undying love (the City of Paris just announced it will soon begin removing said padlocks).

But the big event of the weekend had nothing to do with where we went or what we did. It started when Moritz emailed us several weeks before the visit, asking for restaurant recommendations for a "special celebration." Maggie came up with Les Ombres, the restaurant on top of the Musée du Quai Branly with close-up views of the Eiffel Tower. Here's the happy pair before dinner:

When they got home, we found out that Moritz and Rebecca had had the "best meal of their lives," followed by a short walk to the Eiffel Tower, where Moritz proposed, and where Rebecca accepted. Hooray! and congratulations!

It turned out Moritz and Rebecca showed themselves a good time in Paris. We're just glad we got to go along for the ride.

One night in Paris

Alyssa and Michelle could only stay for one night in Paris, so even though they were very jet-lagged, Louis and I somehow managed to drag them out of bed after a brief mid-afternoon nap (well, Panda helped, too). We had made plans to meet up with Joy and Jake at Galeries Lafayette, one of the big department stores that we have visited twice before.

It was nice to get out of the cold, go inside, and see the grand Christmas decorations.

As we were walking around, Joy saw a dress she liked. It cost only 1400 euros, and even though we all thought she looked great in it, she decided not to buy it.

We passed through the "épicerie," which is really a giant gourmet supermarket, and marveled at the huge table whose multicolored spices filled the whole floor with delightful scents.

Back outside, we walked a block over to Printemps, another grand magasin (epic department store). They didn't have a central area with amazing decorations, but they did have a "Russian" theme going on. I especially loved the larger-than-life nesting dolls.

To give you a sense for just how big the store is . . .

Through careful study of this complex map, we figured out that the real highlight of Printemps is its rooftop deck, from which you can see the whole city in all its amazing shapes and colors . . .

La Madeleine, with la Grande Roue de Paris (Ferris wheel) just to the left

A Printemps turret bathed in red light, with the back of the Opéra visible to its left

Eventually we took 8 flights of escalators down from the roof to leave Printemps . . .

. . . and headed to dinner at Le Mesturet, another restaurant on Jesse's list that's very close to Louis' primary place of research. If Alyssa, Michelle, Jake, and Joy wanted to experience tasty traditional French cuisine at a reasonable price, they couldn't have done any better than Le Mesturet. Louis' three-course meal (just as an example) included:

Smoked-salmon-topped puff pastry, greens with fennel vinaigrette

Parmentier de canard - mashed potatoes over roasted duck, baked just a few minutes

Mi-cuit gâteau de chocolat (chocolate cake with a moist center), topped with cardamom ice cream

What a night!