Saturday, October 18, 2003

Two restaurants - one good; one bad and a home cooked meal In the last few days we have eaten out twice and home once (that's right "home"). Christina went to the wonderful outdoor market at the Bastille and did all the market shopping for dinner. She came home with chicken, mushrooms, vegetables and bread and cheese. There are a lot more choices to make when you shop in Paris - especially in a Marche. For example, there are at least 4 different kinds of chicken that range in price from 3.5 euros per kilo to 14 euros (that's about $1.50/lb to $6.00/lb) at the market - signficantly higher at the store. None of them look like Perdue (especially with the head, feet and feathers). They clean them for you when you buy them. For example, we had a "Bresse" chicken ($30 for a chicken big enough for 2 people). It did not look or taste anything like our chickens. More more bone and less meat (especially white meat). On the other hand it was much more flavorful than ours. Christina roasted it with Cepe mushrooms and we had a feast.   The good restaurant was "Au Vieux Paris" at 24 rue Chanoinesse on the Ile de la Cite. We read about it in Thirza Vallois' wonderful book "Romantic Paris". She is a wonderful writer about all things Parisian http://www.thirzavallois.com/. We met Thirza in Paris last year (she was our guide on a "where to live" tour of Paris. We later had a wonderful dinner with her. The restaurant is located in a tiny 16th century house. There are two floors with about 6 tables each. The food is country french (from Aveyron in the SW) and the hosts are a husband and wife team. She cooks, he serves. We started with a wonderful terrine and salad. We followed with "Cofedou" (beef stew) and baked scallops. I went to the cellar to select my own bottle of wine (with advice from Georges). The food is good but the setting is exceptional. It's clearly worth a visit. The bad restaurant was "Le Rouge Gorge" (the red breast or throat). It is a tiny wine bar on the Rue St Paul in the Marais. The wine was good. The food terrible. Even the cheese plate was bad. They only had Chevre (goat cheese) although they had 6 varieties. The cheese looked a little bit like leftovers from a better restaurant.   8:05:38 AM    comment []

Many people have died in Paris Today we visited the Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise www.gargl.net/lachaise, the largest and best known cemetary in Paris. We spent most of the day looking at the tombs of some very famous people: Chopin, Moliere, Piaf, Heloise & Abelard (famous 11th century lovers), to mention a few.  There were also a number of very moving memorials to WW II resistance fighters and to the many French Jews who died in concentration camps. Our personal favorites however, were Victor Noir, a 19th century journalist shot by Napoleon's cousin, and Oscar Wilde.  Noir's tomb is marked by a bronze statue of him lying just as he fell in death on that very spot with top hat by his side. It has become the Parisian "fertility god". Women wanting to become pregnant bring flowers to his grave and rub his genitals for luck! The numbers of visitors is obvious if you note the shiny spot on his trousers. We also enjoyed the Oscar Wilde site. His tombstone was replaced in 1992 (it wore out?). The new tombstone is covered with lipstick kisses. It's not clear to us why, or who is doing the kissing. He's hardly a romantic figure to women and we can't imagine that many guys wearing lipstick, kissing a tomb.   6:31:21 AM    comment []

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