Concert #3

Soon after we first arrived in Paris, the "sweet" sounds of my clarinet reverberated through the courtyard as I tried to get back in the habit of practicing daily. To my knowledge, no neighbor ever complained - but I did get lots of invitations to play with people the neighbors knew. Héloise, for instance, connected me with her pharmacist, Catherine, who was looking for a clarinetist with whom she could play through a collection Yiddish folk music. We got together a half-dozen times over the course of the year and ultimately decided to repay Héloise's social networking prowess with an informal concert for her, her kids, and Catherine's parents. It turned out that the concert took place during Dimi's visit, so she attended as well.

As was my habit, I recorded the concert - but unfortunately I botched the recording, such that only one and a half tracks exist. Here they are:

Luckily, Dimi took charge of the Flip Video camera during the concert, and there are lots of clips to give you a better sense of what (and how) we played. Also there's lots of footage of the kids, who were (as always) unbearably adorable, even when they got a little tired of the whole concert thing.

This is just me warming up, but I include it because, at the end, Catherine says either "He is very handsome" or "He is very good." Either way, it's all good.

Mehdi and Nahel watch attentively while Héloise prepares her iPhone for recording. Tilal dances like no one's watching, and Catherine's parents listen respectfully.

A rare, full track. We could have rehearsed more, but that would have taken all the spontaneity out of the concert. After the hesitant beginning, we make it through the whole thing unscathed and rather spiritedly.

I love the way Catherine celebrates at the end of this one.

Dimi got all meta, filming Mehdi filming us.

Nahel gives new meaning to "interpretive lap dance."

More meta filmmaking. An almost complete "track."

Drama! Tilal knocks all my music off the music stand, then cries about it.

After struggling to find the pages I needed to continue, all is resolved and we pick up where we left off.

The kids were getting bored, thus all the ambient noise and the sterner-than-usual looks from Catherine's parents. Dimi also apparently discovered a new camera angle.

The finale of our Yiddish repertoire was a canon without a satisfactory end, but we made do anyway.

Encore! An Irish folk song. I don't know why, but whatever.

The end! (This post is dedicated to Catherine, who's waited way too long to hear herself play, and to my grandfather, who eats this stuff up.)

Musée National Eugène Delacroix

After the disappointment of having to pay for a museum on what should have been a typical First Free Sunday (see also: Château de Vincennes), we sought vindication in the form of another museum visit, this time to the Musée National Eugène Delacroix.

Occupying the former apartment and atelier of the über-Romantic painter, the (smallish) museum showcases many of the famous artist's lesser-known works, as well as a number of sketches and personal items collected during Delacroix's voyage to North Africa. The only major works on hand was an early draft of The Death of Sardanapalus, and completely missing were any references to a work we'd learned about through the "Jeunes ont la parole" program - The Women of Algiers (in their Apartment) - or my personal favorite work in the entire Louvre - Liberty Leading the People.

We were in and out in under an hour, but that shouldn't diminish the importance of the museum's collection. If you love any of the works above, the Musée National Eugène Delacroix offers many equally delightful gems. And even if you find the museum itself disappointing, at the very least the garden separating apartment from atelier provides a fantastic refuge for the weary First Free Sunday aficionado.

Hidden Kitchen

After a restaurant has been gushed over in the New York Times, on various foodie blogs, and by a random friend-of-a-friend who happens to be in Paris and comes over for dinner, it's perfectly reasonable to want to go to there with every fiber of your being. This was the case with Hidden Kitchen, which isn't really a restaurant at all - it's a private supper club run by two twenty-something Americans in Paris. Thanks to all the buzz, its existence isn't so hidden anymore. But the address has been kept a careful secret, and it's so hard to get reservations that Hidden Kitchen has remained mysterious and tantalizing. Somehow we managed to score three spots for Saturday, May 22 (one extra for Dimi), and the 10-course tasting menu did not disappoint.

That front door grille is all we can show you of the exterior of the apartment building in which you'd find Hidden Kitchen. Isn't it pretty? What we can tell you is that the supper club is located in the 1st arrondissement, and that we were stunned to learn that such a centrally-located apartment could fit such a long dining table in its salon.

Upon arrival, Laura (one half of the HK team) handed us champagne flutes, each with a single, submerged lychee infusing the apéritif with the flavor of fresh fruit. We chatted with the other diners - 16 in all, most American, a few Italian, a few French. Then, it was time to sit down for our amuse-bouche.

Braden, the chef, came out to introduce each course, and luckily I took notes as this one wasn't on the printed menu (which you'll see below). We started with this black pepper cracker topped with green apple and watercress, served beside chilled watercress and nutmeg soup. This resembled one of our amuse-bouches at Le Cinq back in February, and portended great things for the rest of the meal.

Next, spring vegetables, poached quail egg and Green Goddess dressing, presented niftily in a rye butter cookie over a spicy fava bean base. We were also served our first wine pairing, a 2008 Domaine de Villargeau, Coteaux du Giennois. If you notice the picture quality degrading gradually through the end of the post, it's because of rapidly fading exterior light, and rapidly increasing intoxication on my part. I'm such a lightweight. Professional pictures of all these dishes can be found here.

This homemade semoulina linguini with radish leaf pesto, pickled white asparagus, and ricotta salata unleashed a fiery debate on the best way to make your own pasta. The Italians had a few things to say about that. But no one debated the excellent taste and presentation of this dish. We were impressed that - in what turned out to be a tiny kitchen, and with only one server helping - they were able to prepare and plate a dish like this such that it arrived hot. Wine pairing: 2007 Domaine de la Pépière, Muscadet Sèvre et Maine.

Behold the beauty of this salmon with hibiscus bay leaf sauce and fingerling potatoes. Too bad the low light prevents us from appreciating the rich color of the sauce, and the way it complemented the salmon's pink hues. Wine pairing: 2010 Château de Roquefort, Côtes de Provence.

For a palate cleanser between the "entrées" and the "plats," we were offered lime sorbet over bourbon jello (!!) with a sprig of mint. They call this the "Mint Julep Cleanser,"and you can find the recipe on Hidden Kitchen's blog.

Braised artichokes with chicken liver mousse ravioli, fennel sautéed in a white wine sauce, and preserved lemon coulis - how many elements can you incorporate in one dish? We love our raviolis, though, so we certainly weren't complaining. Wine pairing: 2009 Domaine Chaume-Arnaud, Marselan.

Meat-time: Cumin encrusted flank steak with skillet polenta and smoked eggplant. Another interesting plating, the meat was perfectly cooked (read: on the rare side of medium-rare), and who doesn't like smoked eggplant? (Actually, I would be shocked if anyone has even heard of smoked eggplant.) That garnish on top is deep-fried eggplant skin - very clever, not to mention striking. Wine pairing: 2008 Clos de l'Anhel, Corbières.

If this were a regular meal and not a tasting menu, the white bean, dill, and beet salad seen here would be a side to the flank steak, but we're glad we got to appreciate it on its own. Braden used bucca soison, a distant cousin of Lima beans, and roasted them in garlic and thyme.

Finally, we made it to dessert. This strawberry shiso sorbet with a puff pastry and rhubarb was the perfect, super sweet complement to a remarkably light meal (considering the number of courses). Wine pairing: 2008 Château Pierre-Bise, Carbenet d'Anjou.

And of course no French meal would be complete without coffee - which in this case arrived with a distinctly American twist: glazed doughnuts.

Towards the end of the meal, Braden and Laura let loose their French bulldog, Tati (named for the discount clothing store), whose presence only underscored the curious nature of the evening - we were served dinner in someone's home, at a big table with a bunch of brand new friends...


. . . which isn't to say there weren't a few formal notes to the evening. At the beginning, we were provided with simple but elegant menus as a souvenir of the evening. And at the end, along with coffee and doughnuts came a request for a "donation" to cover the cost of the meal. Hey, whatever it takes to keep this thing going.


Over the course of the evening, we figured out the reason why the only thing Hidden Kitchen has been able to keep secret is its address: there's no hiding the satisfaction and enthusiasm of people who have just eaten one of the best meals of their lives.

A Morning with Leslie and Ilona

Back in the day during Dimi's visit, we managed to get together with one of Dimi's best friends, Leslie, who happened to be on an art tour in France with her friend, Ilona. You've already heard about our out-of-this-world lunch at Fish La Boissonnerie, but before lunch was even the hint of a rumble in our bellies, we started our day by visiting the Musée de l'Orangerie.

Located at the far end of the Tuileries from the Louvre, the Musée de l'Orangerie (as its name suggests) originally sheltered the Emperor's orange grove, starting in 1852. By 1870, apparently disdainful of the health benefits of oranges the Third Republic used the building as storage, a test-taking facility, a barracks, a venue for sports and music and political rallies and industrial trade shows and dog shows and flower shows, not to mention a paintings exhibition hall. Finally, in 1921, the building was given to the Beaux-Arts administration, who turned it into a modern art museum.


The building's transformation into an art museum took place with a particular work in mind: Claude Monet had just donated his epic Nymphéas (Waterlillies) series to his country, and asked only that a space be designed to accommodate the uniquely proportioned paintings. Housed in two specially-designed elliptical-shaped rooms that feature skylights covered in diaphanous materials to facilitate the gentle dispersion of natural light, Nymphéas was and remains the main event of the Musée de l'Orangerie. It's easy to see why.

Besides Nymphéas, the museum's permanent collection (donated by the widow of the influential modern art collector Paul Guillaume) includes pieces by Renoir, Manet, Cézanne, Sisley, Derain, Matisse, Picasso, Soutine, Utrillo, and Modigliani. There are quite a few portraits, and it is all extremely good stuff.

(You will get so many brownie points if you can name the artists and piece titles of these four paintings. Mo, good luck.)

The collection supplements what you'll find in the Musée d'Orsay and the Centre Pompidou, and for the lover of fin-de-siècle and early-twentieth-century art, the Musée de l'Orangerie is a must-see.

The museum is also a must-see for the lover of Paris city walls, as a fragment of the 16th-century enceinte that protected west end of the Louvre-and-Tuileries complex was unearthed during recent renovations and left visible for museum-goers. 

So cool!

Vélib' is Everywhere

Just when you thought you'd seen everything, Vélib' now has bikes in the Seine. Kind of.

On our bateau mouche, no one else seemed particularly taken aback by Vélib's presence, so I looked like a total weirdo jumping up to snap a few pictures as the boat sped by.

Maybe JCDecaux's next troubled business venture can be a boat-sharing program on the Seine. I'd sign up.

Bateau Mouche

It's one of the classic tourist experiences in Paris:

You climb onto a long, flat boat that cruises up and down the Seine. During the cruise, a guide - and sometimes a recording - points out the incredible concentration of sights along the banks, translating each sentence into at least four langauges. During the hour-long cruise, you "see" most of what lures people to Paris: the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, Place de la Concorde, the Palais de Justice, the Île-St.-Louis, the Hôtel de Ville, the Palais Chaillot at the Trocadero, the Grand Palais - just about the only thing you don't see is Montmartre.

On her jet-lagged and slightly disorienting first day in Paris, Dimi bravely stayed awake during a bateau mouche ride that we'd been saving just for her. Having already seen all the above sights from multiple angles on multiple occasions, Maggie and I weren't too impressed by the water-level views, but it was a good introduction to the city for Dimi. And there was one more redeeming factor: the bridges.


Yeah, it's bridge trivia time: the Pont des Arts (left) links the Institut de France (home of the Académie Française) with the central courtyard of the Louvre, which was called the "Palais des Arts" under Napoleon. The original bridge, constructed between 1802 and 1804, was the first metal bridge in Paris. Luckily an inspection revealed structural deficiencies in 1977, resulting in the bridge's "temporary" closing and preventing disaster when, two years later, a barge rammed it and 60 meters of the bridge collapsed into the river. An exact replica of the original bridge reopened in 1984, and is now covered in tiny locks that symbolize love or some such nonsense.

The Pont Neuf (center), literally "New Bridge," is the oldest bridge in Paris (figures, right?). Joining the left and right banks via the tip of the Île-de-la-Cité, the Pont Neuf was constructed by Henry IV between 1578-99 and had the distinction of being the first Parisian bridge not covered by houses. Rumor has it that the hundreds of sculpted faces lining the bridge (click on the picture for a close-up) were meant to mock Henry IV's enemies at the court; some common criminals were thrown in just to confuse things properly.

Finally, the Pont d'Alma (right) is best known today as the bridge right next to the eponymous tunnel where Princess Diana died in 1997. Before that, its landmark was the Zouave, the only remaining statue of four originals meant to commemorate France's victory in the Crimean war, which ended around the beginning of the bridge's initial construction in 1854-6. The Zouave has traditionally been used to measure the Seine's water levels, and in 1910 the water came up to his neck. Crazy! Oh, bridges, you fascinate me.

Of the 32 bridges crossing the Seine within the city of Paris, we floated under 22 during our cruise with Vedettes du Pont Neuf. And as much as I love some good bridge trivia, the real highlights of the tour were the parts of the bridges we never get to see - the undersides. Every bridge regaled us with different structural supports, construction materials, and patterns.


Based on our bateau mouche experience, Maggie and I agreed that the next time we come to Paris, we're living on a houseboat moored to the banks of the Seine. We'll support ourselves by selling a coffee table book called "Under the Bridge." Place your order now, supplies will be limited!