Category: food and drink

Paris: Day 5

November 11, 2023 • 9:30 am

Another rainy day with just a food report.

We finally went to the restaurant that had cancelled our reservations a few days ago, and also happens to have won the Pudlo Trophy for the Best Bistro in Paris in 2023. Would it live up to that award? Sadly, no, though it was good.

Here it is again: Au Moulin À Vent (“At the Windmill”), located near the Sorbonne on the Left Bank.  (I forgot my camera, so these are iPhone photos):

The menu, a veritable encyclopedia of French bistro classics:

It was cozy inside, with tables jammed near each other (a good way to see what other people have ordered and what the food looks like). Here’s a view from another site, Restaurants Paris:

The most popular entrée seemed to be bone marrow, which came in two huge beef bones served on a wooden plank. I wished I liked the stuff (I had it once and was almost sickened), for people were scarfing it down

My starter, however, was pâté en croûte. It was tasty, but there was not enough of it—a bad sign. It was pretty, though, and by eating a lot of baguette on the side I managed to get enough food to begin with

Winnie had fresh frog legs with parsley, also a popular entrée. I had them years ago in another place, and didn’t much care for them: they tasted like slimy chicken with overtones of fish. Winnie liked them, though, and they were in a pool of parsley and butter:

We both had the same plat—their speciality, “poitrine de veau confit 15 heures, gratin”. This was veal belly cooked in its own fat (15 hours, they say), along with gratin dauphenois, potatoes cooked with cream, milk, cheese and garlic. It was good veal, though quite fatty, and overall a very good dish. Again, though, the portion was small (remember, I eat one meal a day here):

My dessert: profiteroles, or cream puffs, with ice cream and chocolate sauce. I was disappointed as not only was there just one small puff (other places, like the Auberge Pyrénées Cévennes, give you three), and the chocolate sauce was thin and not that fudge-y.

Winnie skipped dessert (she stopped by a patissierie on the way home) and had a dish that they added to the menu while we were there: leeks with smoked herring:

All in all, I’m mystified why Pudlo found this the best bistro in Paris. The service was okay, but not that attentive, the food was good but not great, and it was a bit noisy. Oh, and the portions were small.

Perhaps if you eat three meals a day this would be okay, but my criteria for a good French bistro is that, as well as the food being good, it’s also copious: you can just have lunch there (with perhaps coffee for breakfast), and you don’t need to eat after that. On this trip so far such places have been thin on the ground, perhaps because of the increase in food prices accompanying the pandemic. But I’d rather pay more and leave full. There’s nothing more dispiriting than leaving a bistro and thinking that you might stop by a nearby patissierie to fill the crannies in your stomach.

It was raining, so I hustled to the nearby Jardin des Plantes to see the Exposition of Félins (cats) at the Natural History Museum, open only until January 7. I missed it twice before so this was my chance. But—catastrophe! It was closed, and there were cops all over the place. I have no idea why it was closed, but there was a sign that it was closed for the day, giving no reason:

The only cats that were seen yesterday were these on a jigsaw-puzzle greeting card that Winnie saw on the way back:

Oh well, tomorrow is another day, another restaurant (this time Le Trousseau d’Or).

Paris: Day 4

November 10, 2023 • 9:30 am

Once again there is only food to report, this time because I drank too much wine at lunch and was incapable of doing much beyond getting home on the Métro.

The restaurant for today was an old friend, the Auberge Pyrénées Cévennes, again in the 11th near Republique. I heard it had new ownership, and was anxious to see whether it had gone downhill. The answer is “a bit,” but it’s still a worthy bistro. Unfortunately, lunch was somewhat disturbed by the arrival of what seemed to be a tour busload (around 40) of young Americans, who were LOUD (fulfilling the French stereotype), making it hard to talk. The food, however, is still good, though the famous cassoulet no longer appears on the 39€ lunch menu.

En suite, the restaurant and its food:

The APC, as we call it, is on a dreary street about a five-minute walk from the Place de la République, the site of many demonstrations (some happening these days). If you didn’t know the restaurant was there, you’d overlook it:

Somehow it’s connected with the wonderful liqueur Chartreuse, and there’s a big display of bottles from various eras and of various types:

The restaurant, but full of noisy tourists. That sounds snobbish, as I’m a tourist too, but these young Americans didn’t know the custom of keeping your voice low so that others could enjoy the meal (the French stereotype is that Americans are loud, and having observed many in restaurants, stores, and on the Métro, there’s a lot of truth in it.) The main rules for getting along with Parisians are 1) don’t be loud, 2) when you enter a store or restaurant, greet the owners, and say goodbye when you leave 3) don’t assume that every Parisian speaks fluent English; ask in French first 4) if a Parisian (or French person in general) doesn’t understand you, they won’t understand you better if you keep raising your voice. Loudness doesn’t equal increased comprehension.

This group insisted on drinking for well over an hour before ordering food, and the alcohol consumption raised the volume. Most of the French diners sat in the other room:

But onto the food, I had the 39-Euro lunch menu, a bargain (but without cassoulet, which I didn’t want anyway), while Winnie order à la carte

My course was a delicious “Frisée salad with bacon, croutons and organic poached egg.” This, at least, hasn’t changed, and there’s a LOT of bacon. Plenty of freshly sliced baguette is on the side to help with the bacon:

Winnie had the pan-fried porcini mushrooms (Boletus edulis) with “sparkling juice and ham shavings”:

Winnie didn’t drink, so when I ordered a pot (60 cl bottle) of the house Brouilly, I knew I had to drink it by myself. That was my downfall. The sparkling water behind it is Chateldon, also known as “the king’s water” as it was favored at the court of Louix XIV. It emerges from the earth naturally carbonated, and the supply is limited. As Wikipedia notes:

Châteldon is known for its naturally carbonated mineral water. It was the first mineral water exploited in France and transported by bottles to the Court of Louis XIV in Versailles. This water is used for its diuretic and digestive properties. It is also rich in potassium, sodium and fluorine. In France, one finds the water of Châteldon in the large hotels and restaurants, and in delicatessens. In 1650, the first doctor of the king, Guy-Crescent Fagon, praised the virtues of Châteldon to Louis XIV.

Les plats:  I had an old French bistro classic, which comes from French home cooking: blanquette de veau, or veal stew with cream sauce, served with grilled basmati rice. It was rich and delicious, with large hunks of veal, mushrooms, and vegetables.

Winnie, who eats three meals a day, went lighter, choosing the “roasted scallops, venerated black rice, sparkling juice” (the latter means “foam”, a sign that this restaurant has gained some modern food.

I wasn’t familiar with black rice, also known as “purple rice” as some varieties turn purple when cooked. The flavor isn’t supposed to differ from that of regular rice, but it sure is attractive:

Winnie decided to have as dessert the same salad I had as an entréee (see above), but I chose a real dessert, the Paris-Brest, a traditional dessert best described as “a big pastry donut filled with cream.” Or, as Wikipedia describes it,

. . . a French dessert made of choux pastry and a praline flavoured cream, covered with flaked almonds.

And it has a sporty origin:

The round pastry, in the form of a wheel, was created in 1910 by Louis Durand, pâtissier of Maisons-Laffitte, at the request of Pierre Giffard, to commemorate the Paris–Brest–Paris bicycle race he had initiated in 1891.  Its circular shape is representative of a wheel. It became popular with riders on the Paris–Brest–Paris cycle race, partly because of its energizing, high-calorie value and its intriguing name, and is now found in pâtisseries all over France.

Well, it was quite tasty.

As soon as I got up to leave the restaurant, I realized that I was tipsy, having consumed more than half a bottle of wine. That usually wouldn’t faze me over the course of a 2¼-hour lunch, but I reacted strongly (half a regular bottle is 37.5 ml, but I had 60 ml). There was nothing to do then but go back to the hotel and have a nap, but since I had to make several Métro connections, which involved long walks, it wasn’t easy. I even fell asleep on one subway ride!

Fortunately, I made it home, and avoided the dangers experienced by Sérge the Métro rabbit in this sign that I was sober enough to photograph:

The proper English translation is “Do not enter after the signal sounds, as you risk by that act something very bad.” (Serge doesn’t pull any punches.) The English translation below is lame, I’ve been bodily pinced this way before, and it is not pleasant!

And so home for a nap under the duvet, which lasted longer than I thought, and it was too late to do anything afterwards. Still, I slept like a baby, and am ready for my next lunch: a the place where they’d previously lost our reservation, the Restaurant Au Moulin à Vent (“At the Windmil”). This was voted the best bistro in Paris in 2013, so I’m looking forward to a good tuck-in.

Paris: Day 3

November 9, 2023 • 9:00 am

Today’s post will be short as it reports just two activities, only one of which is photographed: eating and walking. The eating was at a bistro near Republique named l’Angés du Canal, and the walking was afterwards.

Once again I’d planned to go to the Exhibition of Félins at the Museum of Natural History, but subway work and rain diverted me. (I wonder if I’ll ever get to see those cats!) The weather finally broke and I walked a long way from the Bastille to central Paris, one of the world’s most beautiful walks in the world’s most beautiful city.

But back to nourriture. The bistro l’Angés du Canal is indeed close to the Canal Saint-Martin, one of the small waterways in northern Paris, has a good-looking lunch menu (here), and is highly regarded (here and here).  A short walk from Republique takes you over the canal, where there are MALLARDS as well as cormorants. The water isn’t that clean, but they look to be in good shape, and I watched a cormorant catch a fish.

I was happy to see mallards, which must be all-year residents here. At the earliest, Botany Pond won’t be filled until June, which is late for mallard nesting season.

I believe these are cormorants from the way they dry their wings, but I’m not sure. A reader might provide an ID:

A cormorant (?) drying off:

The Canal-Saint Martin is about 5 km long and a popular wandering spot, lined with restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops, and other places to linger. It’s crossed by many pedestrian bridges: this one looks like the one we crossed to get to the restaurant (source of photo here). As Wikipedia notes:

The canal is drained and cleaned every 10–15 years, and it is always a source of fascination for Parisians to discover curiosities and even some treasures among the hundreds of tons of discarded objects.

The restaurant. They also serve cheese fondue, but you can eat it only outside because of the smell, and it was too cold for that

We were immediately served an amuse-bouche consisting of sausage slices and a cup of peanuts, as well as the local dark bread:

Althugh there’s a 24€ lunch menu, we decided to order à la carte to try some of the specialities.

Appetizers: Winnie had ceviche de crevettes crues de Madagascar, i.e., raw shrimp ceviche. Sadly, it proved to be mediocre.

But my foie gras, on the other hand (please don’t shame me; I eat it once a year!), was tasty, served with two slices of toasted dark bread and a glass of chablis:

The restaurant is known for its beef, so I decided to have it in a form I’ve never eaten in Paris: a hamburger, described as “Le burger au bœuf wagyu, pain Thierry Breton.” I doubted that it would be real wagyu, but I was curious to try a gourmet French hamburger. It came with a basket of freshly-made potato chips, served warm. I swear they were among the best chips I’d ever had, and Winnie couldn’t stop eating them. They were replenished constantly.

The burger was large but the patty was small, and I was supposed to eat it with a knife and fork.  I took one bite, and discovered that although I had ordered it very rare (“saignant”, or bloody), it was well done. (Horrors!) I sent it back, which gave me a chance to order a real steak instead.

The well done burger. There should have been two beef patties, but they stuffed the Thierry Breton bun with veggies.

It turned out, fortuitously, that a Frenchman at a nearby table had ordered a well done burger (how is that possible in France?) and I got his and he got mine.  But when I sent the burger back, I decided to replace it with a real steak instead, “L’entrecôte de bœuf Hershire maturée, chips à la peau, salade, sauce poivre ou béarnaise.”  I think this is beef from Scottish Ayrshire cattle, but I’m not sure, I got the steak saignant again (barely cooked), and with pepper sauce. There was no salad, but I got more chips, which were addictive. The nude steak:

And with the pepper sauce, which although thick was not overwhelming.

You can see below how rare it was; properly cooked and delicious. With it I had a class of  Côtes du Rhône (two glasses of wine was enough for me yesterday). I suspect that many readers would find beef this rare repugnant. . .

And more chips arrived; the wine was free because they’d screwed up my burger order, a double felicity:

Winnie’s plat is not on the online menu: it was salmon and pollack filets on a bed of black rice risotto with saffron foam:

Winnie skipped dessert, as she was meeting another friend later for sweets, but I had the “baba, du rhum et d’la chantilly, nom de Dieu !” (The exclamation mark is on the menu. This classic bistro dessert was the best version I’ve had, as I didn’t overwhelm it with the rum (it was served sans rhum and I did the pour), the cake was delicious, and there were copious amounts of good whipped cream to top it with.

Oh, and it was shaped like a phallus:

I wonder if eating a dessert with a “nom de Dieu!” (“name of God!”) title would erode my atheism. The Martinique rum, left at the table in case you want to pour more on the cake, was also tasty, unlike the cheap bistro rums they often give you.

Soaked with rum and ready to eat:

I enjoyed my meal tremendously, especially after I’d replaced the burger with the steak, but I’m afraid Winnie wasn’t as satisfied as I.

Later she sent me a photo on WhatsApp of what she ate with her friend, simply labeled “dessert!”.  I now find out that it’s cheesecake from a place called “She’s Cake”  The cup contains a latte .

Today we dine at an old reliable friend, the bistro Auberge Pyrénées Cévennes, where they have a terrific salad with lardons and croutons and the biggest cassoulet you can imagine.

Paris: Day 2

November 8, 2023 • 9:00 am

Yesterday, which was again gloriously sunny, nevertheless began with a disappointment, We showed up at what was voted Paris’s best bistro of the year with reservations for four:

It also had a great-looking menu:

I was much looking forward to the menu, even thinking about the assortment of aged cheeses, but they had CANCELLED our reservation: apparently there was a glitch because reservations were made through another site. We were desolated.

Fortunately, there was another restaurant of high repute within walking distance across the Seine. And we could get a table there! So we went instead to Amarante (see here and here for glowing reviews).

I had a small bottle of dry cider since four of us would be splitting one bottle of wine, and I needed something to get the alcohol titer going. Here was the wine: a very good red from southern France:

The ladies had veal tongue, while I had påté. The påté was okay, but nothing special.

Tongue:

Påté:

The dishes. First, pintade, or guinea hen:

Mine: fatty pork belly with polenta. It was excellent, with a crackly outside as it had been cooked twice. But there was not enough!

Winnie and one of our friends had tripe with mashed potatoes and butter on top. I tried the potatoes, which were creamy and about half butter, but I cannot stomach tripe,

For dessert, chocolate mousse (not shown because I screwed up the photo), pain perdu (“French french toast”) with ice cream, and my “dessert”: a piece of St. Nectaire cheese, which was very good but not large enough.

Insufficient quantity! For post-meal cheese, I like to have at least three on the plate, but they offered only one,

But the restaurant did have a nice tidy kitchen:

Altogether, I’d judge the meal okay+, as the quality was okay but the quantity niggardly. When I leave a restaurant still hungry, as I did, the meal cannot not be considered excellent, for a foodie not only wants good food, but LOTS OF IT, and in Paris I eat only one meal per day. I stopped at a patisserie afterwards for a big piece of plum cake, and  then I was satisfied.

Here are other miscellaneous photos from the morning and right after lunch. We stopped by the Tour d’Argent, perhaps the most famous restaurant in Paris (but not the best). It’s famous for its view of Notre Dame and the Seine. We didn’t go in, but they have a fancy food store downstairs and, browsing, we saw the most expensive tipple: a 90-year-old bottle of Calvados (apple brandy) for 1750 euros ($1,870 US)

Below: a famous small street, the Rue Crémieux , sometimes called ” The most beautiful street in Paris ” as it’s lined with small and colorful houses.

From Paris Secret (translated):

But what pretty secrets does Rue Crémieux hide? Bordering this psychedelic street: 35 small terraced houses built on 2 floors at most were once built according to a model of a workers’ town very fashionable in the 19th century. At the time, the apartments were occupied by wealthy workers. In the 1900s, rue Crémieux witnessed an event that marked the capital: the flooding of the Seine in 1910. While at number 8 rue Crémieux, the river level reached 1.75m, a commemorative earthenware plaque has since been placed in the same place. If today, rue Crémieux is one of the  most popular spots in the capital, this has the gift of exasperating its inhabitants.

A photo from the link above:

We stopped in a grocery store to see if they had  petit suisse , a mixture of half-and-half crème fråiche and heavy cream. It comes in small yogurt-sized containers and can be served as a snack or, sweetened with jam or sugar, as dessert. Meanwhile, I was photographing the cat food, as French cat food is always presented as a gourmet item, as you can see. They have påté, delices du jour (“delights of the day”) , filets , and even “soup”! My theory, which is mine, is that the French like their beloved cats to dine as well as they do, and thus name the cat food as if it were human food.

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I was going to go to the Félins (cats) exhibit at the nearby Museum of Natural History , but we spent so much time walking its beautiful grounds, and looking at the latest outdoor instillation, that I decided to go another day. Two photos of the exhibit from the website:

The French Museum of Natural History, or Muséum National d’histoire Naturelle,  is world famous, and I used to visit it and the gorgeous grounds when I was doing part of a sabbatical at the University at Jussieu. From the Wikipedia site (bolding is mine):

The museum was formally established on June 10, 1793, by the  French Convention, the government during the French Revolution, at the same time that it established the Louvre Museum. But its origins went back much further, to the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants, which was created by King Louis XIII in 1635, and was directed and run by the royal physicians. A royal proclamation of the boy-king Louis XV on March 31, 1718, removed the purely medical function. growing and studying plants useful for health, the royal garden offered public lectures on botany, chemistry, and comparative anatomy. In 1729, the castle in the garden was enlarged with an upper floor, and transformed into the cabinet of natural history, designed for the royal collections of zoology and mineralogy. A series of greenhouses were constructed on the west side of the garden, to study the plants and animals collected by French explorers for their medical and commercial uses.

From 1739 until 1788, the garden was under the direction of  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon , one of the leading naturalists of the Enlightenment. Though he did not go on scientific expeditions himself, he wrote a monumental and influential work, “Natural History”, in thirty-six volumes, published between 1749 and 1788. In his books, he challenged the traditional religious ideas that nature had not changed since the creation; he suggested that the earth was seventy-five thousand years old, divided into seven periods, with man arriving in the most recent. He also helped fund much research, through the iron foundry which he owned and directed. His statue is prominently placed in front of the Gallery of Evolution.

Following the French Revolution the museum was reorganized, with twelve professorships of equal rank. Some of its early professors included eminent comparative anatomist  Georges Cuvier  and the pioneers of the theory of evolution,  Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck  and  Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire . The museum’s aims were to instruct the public, put together collections and conduct scientific research. The naturalist  Louis Jean Marie Daubenton  wrote extensively about biology for the pioneer French Encyclopédie, and gave his name to several newly discovered species. The museum sends its trained botanists on scientific expeditions around the world. Major figures in the museum included  Déodat de Dolomieu , who gave his name to the mineral  dolomite  and to a volcano on Reunion island, and the botanist  Rene Desfontaines , who spent two years collecting plants for study Tunisia and Algeria, and whose book “Flora Atlantica ” (1798–1799, 2 vols), added three hundred genera new to science.

That was a panoply of the early great biologists! Here’s Buffon’s statue in the garden, holding a bird. He appears to be sitting on a lion, too:

A photo from Wikipedia, labeled “A perspective view of the  Grande Galerie de l’Évolution  (called in English the ‘Gallery of Evolution’) and the Jardin des Plantes (‘Garden of the Plants’), in Paris.”

As you can see by the name, the exhibits are big on evolution, as the French don’t have the American problem of creationism.

They were setting up a huge outdoor exhibit of plant and animal statues in the gardens, which will begin soon and run through Christmas. They will be illuminated at night, which will be cool. Here are some of the statues; some, like the peacock even have hydraulics so they can move

Can you identify the plants and animals?

This spider is very large: about five feet long. It’ll be a sight when it’s lit up at night!

This is what the creatures will look like at night (not my photo, and no you can’t see the Eiffel Tower from the garden):

This is a real plant; can you identify it?

Finally, on the way home, I saw one of my favorite signs in Paris on the Métro. It has now been translated into four languages. But English translations of French lose something (I always get a French menu in a restaurant). I would translate the French here as, “Do not put your hands into the doors; you risk by so doing getting pinched VERY HARD,”  (Actually, I’d used “pinced,” but I’m not sure it’s an English word.) Isn’t that better than the English translation they give?

It turns out, after my ignorance of decades, that this rabbit has a name: it’s Serge, also known as Lapin du métro parisien, the Rabbit of the Paris Metro. 

From Wikipedia:

The rabbit design has changed over time, with the first version of it drawn in 1977 by Anne Le Lagadec. The rabbit has had an official Twitter account since 2014.

An early version of Serge, with a rounder face and smaller ears:

Serge’s Twitter account is here , and here’s a tweet from October 7, an important day for several reasons.

Translation: [Serge Day] Happy birthday to all the Serges! This special day is an opportunity to see if you really know me  Who will be my biggest fan? #RATP #Sergelelapin

The video shows him winking:

Sadly, Serge, in a “feminist makeover”, is now (unofficially) portrayed as a GROPER :

Parisian artist Zoia, 20, has  created her own set of stickers  warning against groping on the Metro.

In the stickers, Serge is pictured between two lady rabbits, one of whom brandishes a baseball bat while warning him: ” Be careful! Don’t put your hands on my body, you risk getting smashed very hard! ” (Warning! Don’ t put your hands on my body or you risk a very hard wallop!”

Sexual harassment on the Paris Metro is an ongoing problem with  a survey in 2017  showing that almost half of women had suffered unwanted attention, groping of threats while traveling on the Metro.

Finally, a Métro safety video, similar to airline safety videos. Serge makes an appearance at 1:19, but where are his ears?

h/t: Winnie for help with links and research.

Paris: Day 1

November 7, 2023 • 8:15 am

I write in somewhat of a rush as I’m soon to be off for another day out, with lunch at a highly rated bistro and perhaps a visit to the new “Felines” show at the Paaris Museum of Natural History.

My first business after landing in Paris yesterday (and having refused dinner and breakfast on the plane to preserve my appetite), was to head into town and meet my friend Winnie for lunch.  As is our culinary wont, we met at the traditional bistro Chez Denise (also known as the Tour de Montlhèry) in Les Halles.  And I always have the same meal: a salade frisée with hard-boiled egg and croutons, an onglet de boeuf (skirt steak) cooked “saignant” (bloody) with shallots and a huge tray of excellent frites, a liter of Brouilly (you pay only for the portion you drink, and I wasn’t in a drinking mood), and dessert: chocolate mousse.

Some photos. First, the menu written in chalk on a blackboard. For starters, Winnie had the saumon cru mariné and I had the salade frisée (latter not on the menu). We split the appetizers, but, sadly, I forgot to photograph them,

The ray with capers:

And the skirt steak with shallots, which was cooked “bloody”, or really rare (you can see the degree of doneness at lower left).

The whole lunch (liter of wine not visible). As always, there were too many fries to consume. There was also a tray of Pain Poilãne, the sourdough bread that’s famous in Paris. It’s served with butter: a rarity in France

Desserts: chocolate mousse pour moi (a bite is taken to show the inside):

And a giant millefeuille for Winnie:

After lunch I checked into my humble hotel near Montparnasse. A view from my window (I’m across the street from a seafood store and a fruit emporium):

And a panorama of a very humble (but comfortable room). I don’t need luxury: just a good bed, quiet, and an internet connection

After lunch and checking into my digs, we spent the afternoon looking for the graves of famous people at the nearby Montparnasse Cemetery (Cimetière du Montparnasse), where many famous writers and artists are buried. Here’s an aerial view from Wikipedia:

And here are are graves of the notables (the long commentaries below were found by Winnie). First, the grave of poet Charles Baudelaire (the most famous people have their graves adorned with flowers, stones, and Métro tickets.  Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a great poet, but, addicted to opium and alcohol, he died of a stroke at 46 

Baudelaire (photo from Wikipedia):

There is also a cenotaph (an empty tomb, serving for a memorial) for Baudelaire, which is quite haunting. There are two images of him, sitting and recumbent, but remember, his body lies below the stone in the photo above.

The Irish novelist and dramatist Samuel Beckett (1908-1989), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and is perhaps most famous for his play Waiting for Godot, the subject of many internet memes:

Beckett:

A meme:

The grave of Serge Gainsbourg (1928-1991), songwriter, director,  and prolifie smoker of Galouises (the cigarette that killed off many famous Frenchmen),

Gainsbourg:

Although he was not physically attractive, Gainsbourg had passionate affairs with two beautiful women, presumably attracted to his personality and talent. Here’s one (from Wikipedia):

Gainsbourg would have a brief but ardent love affair with Brigitte Bardot. One day she asked him to write the most beautiful love song he could imagine and, that night, he wrote the duets “Je t’aime… moi non plus” and “Bonnie and Clyde” for her. The erotic yet cynical “Je t’aime”, describing the hopelessness of physical love, was recorded by the pair in a small glass booth in Paris but after Bardot’s husband, German businessman Gunter Sachs, became aware of the recording, he demanded it be withdrawn. Bardot pleaded with Gainsbourg not to release it, and he complied.

Below is the song by S.G. featuring B.B., which is erotic but not, to my mind, a beautiful love song.  I guess it was released. Gainsbourg later re-recorded it with Jane Birkin (see below), and that version was so erotic it was banned from radio play in some parts of the U.S. because the sound evoked copulation.

Gainsbourg’s other great love was actress Jane Birkin (1946-2023), who was buried in July of this year. She had survived leukemia and had a child with Serge, Charlotte Gainsbourg, born in 1971, and also an actress. Birkin and her daughter from an earlier marriage, Kate Barry (1967-2013), a photographer, are buried together; Berry died in an apparent suicide ten years before her mother.

The inscription for Jane was hidden behind leaves. Voilà:

Below: Birkin. Winnie found this BBC note on her funeral:

Singer Vanessa Paradis was at her funeral, as well as screen legends Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert and Charlotte Rampling, another British actress who regularly stars in French-language movies. French First Lady Brigitte Macron was also in attendance.

And the gravestone with Barry’s name (both are buried there), adorned with a picture of Birkin:

Existentialist hilosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) rests with his famous companion Simone de Beauvoir, also a philosopher and writer (1908-1986). They are well loved, as you can see from all the lipstick (from kisses) and hearts on the tombstone.  (Similar lipstick smears adorn the tomb of Oscar Wilde in the Père-Lachaise cemetery.)

A close-up of the hearts and lipstick:

Sartre’s funeral was a grand affair; here’s a description found by Winnie:

When Sartre was buried there in 1980, an incredible 50,000 mourners came out to bid farewell to their favourite intellectual. Soon afterwards, Beauvoir, despite her many illustrious achievements as a writer, philosopher and pioneering feminist thinker, would rate her greatest accomplishment as her relationship with her beloved Jean-Paul. Beauvoir died in 1987, and was laid to rest beside her late partner.

I found myself imagining the day when Sartre was buried here, when tens of thousands of mourners filled the whole cemetery to capacity. On that day Paris’s citizens had scrambled across headstones and climbed trees in chaotic scenes, trying to get a glimpse of their beloved hero before his casket was lowered into its grave.

The funeral of Sartre:

Sartre and de Beauvoir:

The sculptor Constantin Bråncuși, born in Romania (1876-1957)

Bråncuși:

His most famous sculpture is “Bird in Space“; there were several renditions in brass and marble; here’s one from the U.S National Gallery of Art:

We missed several other notables buried there, including Susan Sontag and Alfred Dreyfus, but we did find my favorite gravestone, labeled on the cemetery map simply as “Chat” (“cat”). It’s a porcelain cat memorializing a man who died of AIDS (see below). No, there is no cat buried here, but this cat sculpture is well loved and attracts many tourists. The sculpture is by Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002). Have a look at her works in her Wikipedia article.

From the rear:

The story, again found by Winnie:

Niki de Saint Phalle was very involved in the fight against AIDS. In 1986 she published the book, AIDS: You Can’t Catch It Holding Hands in English and later in French, German, Japanese, and Italian. In 1990 and 1991 she participated in the creation of a series of animated public service announcements for France Sécurité Sociale. She did so with her son, Philip Mathews, to help raise awareness about the disease. By this time a number of Saint Phalle’s friends had been diagnosed with AIDS and funerals had sadly become all too frequent.

A Cat For Ricardo

Ricardo was Niki de Saint Phalle’s assistant for ten years. He worked with her in the Tarot Garden, eventually living in the Tower of Babel. He introduced her to the ceramicist, Venera Finocchiaro, who later made all the ceramics for the Tarot Garden. When she experienced debilitating arthritis, Ricardo would feed, carry, and bathe her. They shared an incredibly strong bond. Saint Phalle often warned Ricardo about AIDS worrying that he would catch the virus.

Niki de Saint Phalle found Ricardo to be like a cat, proud, mysterious, and sexy. When he was dying in the hospital she promised him she would make a cat sculpture in his honor and place it on his tomb. He liked the idea and she set about securing an honorable and memorable place for him to be buried.

The death of Ricardo was particularly traumatic for both Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely. Saint Phalle started on the sculpture that would sit on Ricardo’s grave, slowly working through her depression. On the other hand, Tinguely focused on the issues surrounding the end of life. He began preparing for his own death. He stopped taking his medication and ignored his body’s health, dying two years later in 1991. The stone in front of the Ricardo Cat sculpture reads, “Pour notre grand ami Ricardo mort trop tôt jeune, aimé, et beau” (For our great friend Ricardo died too young, loved, and beautiful). There is a similar sculpture at the Tarot Garden so Saint Phalle could keep Ricardo close. 

The making of Ricardo:

 

Me taking pictures of a crow (photo by Winnie). It was a beautiful day, even though rain is predicted all week in Pris. Not so; and even today it’s sunny.

I was photographing this lovely crow (below), which you can make out at lower right above:

Here’s a grave for you to figure out (put your answers in the comments) Gus! You can see my reflection taking the picture.

That was a busy first day in Pais, especially given that I was completely jet-lagged. Now I’m well rested and ready to tackle the City of Light. Lunch today is at Au Moulin à Vent—a bistro in the 5th, and place I’ve never been (menu here). It was recently named the Best Bistro in Paris for 2023, which means it will be full of tourists. But so long as the food is good, I don’t care

Israel: Day 19

September 24, 2023 • 11:30 am

To finish off my photo journal of traveling in Israel, here are some photos from last Thursday in Jerusalem, the day before I left (well, technically I left at 50 minutes after midnight on Saturday).  The four-hour tour involved more walking around the center of town with my local friend Anna and her father Roberto, including lunch in a really excellent but unknown (to tourists) restaurant. Let’s get started.

We went to lunch back at the Mahane Yehuda Market, which gets busy on Thursday when the Orthodox Jews have to get in provisions before Friday’s Sabbath.  Most people at the market then were Israelis, though there were a few tourists. I haven’t found this market, which must be visited in Jerusalem, nearly as “touristy” as the guidebooks describe—and the noms are great.

Yom Kippur begins today, but they were already erecting “sukkah” structures to celebrate the next holiday: Sukkot, which is a weeklong festival starting next Friday and lasting until October 6.  From Wikipedia:

A sukkah or succah (/ˈsʊkə/; Hebrew: סוכה [suˈka]; plural, סוכות [suˈkot] sukkot or sukkos or sukkoth, often translated as “booth”) is a temporary hut constructed for use during the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot. It is topped with branches and often well decorated with autumnal, harvest or Judaic themes. The book of Vayikra (Leviticus) describes it as a symbolic wilderness shelter, commemorating the time God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness they inhabited after they were freed from slavery in Egypt.It is common for Jews to eat, sleep and otherwise spend time in the sukkah. In Judaism, Sukkot is considered a joyous occasion and is referred to in Hebrew as Z’man Simchateinu (the time of our rejoicing), and the sukkah itself symbolizes the fragility and transience of life and one’s dependence on God.

With three holidays in a row, not only was the market doing a land-office business, but the police and IDF were everywhere because, you know, the Palestinians like to do their terrorism on Jewish holidays.  BTW, the significance of all Jewish holidays has been jokingly described this way:

“They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat!”

A crowded market with the IDF patrolling:

I didn’t realize this before, but there are some stores that specialize in precooked food for shabbos, as the act of cooking itself is forbidden to many on the Sabbath. Here’s one place with precooked food (kosher, of course):

Anna told me that this restaurant, Azura, which specializes in Middle Eastern food, is one of the most popular restaurants in the market, and it certainly gets high ratings. It sits in a little hidden plaza in the market, so I hadn’t seen it on my previous visit. Now that I know about it, I’ll surely be a regular if I revisit Jerusalem, and I recommend it highly to visitors:

The menu (remember, it’s about four shekels to the dollar). It isn’t cheap, but it isn’t pricey, either. Think of visiting Jerusalem as financially equivalent to visiting New York City.

It’s certified kosher, of course, but NOT FOR PASSOVER! (Don’t ask me why.)

Noms! We shared a large plate of hummus with chickpeas and tahini (there are no small plates of hummus that I’ve seen).

I had the azura: “Turkish eggplant filled with ground beef and pine nuts in a special sauce with cinnamon.” It was the only time in my three-week trip that I ate animal protein, and the dish was superb (and filling!). It also came with pita bread, of course, which doubled for scooping up the hummus:

Anna had the Jerusalem salad:

. . . and Roberto had “beef head with chickpeas cooked in a piquant sauce”.  It was so filling that he couldn’t finish it:

We ate outside, but I went inside to see the dishes, all displayed on a hot table. Most of these dishes take hours of cooking, and thus they’re ready to eat when you order. Your food comes in less than five minutes. This reminded me of Greece, where in many restaurants there’s no menu: you just go back into the kitchen and see what’s on the stove:

Nearby were two tables of guys playing backgammon. One of them yelled to us (in Hebrew) that the guys at the adjacent table didn’t know how to play!

Another thing I missed on my first visit, but was imparted by Anna, was that there was one north-south “cross” corridor called the “Iraqi market,” where the produce is sold by Iraqi Jews. It’s heavily patronized because the fruit and veg are supposedly cheaper there than in other parts of the market.  They’re good, too.  I swear, I will never be happy with an American tomato again after having ripe Israeli tomatoes, sweet and right off the plant:

They also sold miniature eggplants, which I understand are hard to find:

Pitas are formed by hand but then go through an assembly-line machine that cooks them to perfection. I never had a single pita bread in Israel that wasn’t absolutely fresh. I miss them.

And other breads sold by this store:

I found a cheesecake store I missed on my first trip! I didn’t buy any, as I was full, but perhaps I should have. If you can read Hebrew, tell me what the signs say.

Right outside the market was an Orthodox Jew performing a blessing on a passing woman. (I don’t know what’s in the envelope that he’s tapping on her head.)

These proselytizers will grab you as soon as look at you, for blessing anybody is a mitzvah: one of 613 Jewish commandments whose fulfillment will hasten the return of the Messiah. I’ll show a mitzvah booth shortly:

Here is a store that, says Anna, caters entirely to the religious headscarf needs of Orthodox women, who often shave their heads and then put on a wig and a headscarf. Sometimes, I was told, the women put a hunk of sponge on their heads so that it takes a huge headscarf to cover it (see the one at upper left), adding to their appearance by enlarging the cranium. My reflection is visible in the rear mirror.

Here’s another plaque marking the site of a terrorist attack. If you read Hebrew, please translate it in the comments:

Yes, this is a mitzvah station, where Orthodox Jews will be glad to put Jewish garb on you temporarily (only for men, women get Sabbath candles to light, which is their job). You can get a kippah, a talit, and tefillin (by now you should know what these are).  Once you put them on, you’ve been part of a mitzvah. But when will the Messiah come? (One thing you learn as an atheist in Israel is that religion is not only nuts, but divisive and deadly). Yet still I consider myself part of this group.

By all accounts Kadosh is the most famous and best coffee-and-pastry emporium in Jerusalem. There’s always a line outside, and we were lucky to get a table.

The crowd at about 1 p.m.:

Notice that in this group of what seem to be Orthodox women, one of them was wearing pants. This is supposed to be forbidden to Orthodox women, but I gather there are degrees of Orthodoxy. Notice how high the headscarves ride:

We went inside to assay the pastries, and I was photographing them through the glass when the woman behind the counter offered to take photos for me, for from her side there was no glass. Aren’t they lovely?

I ordered one of these as I had no idea what they were but they looked good:

Roberto, who’s from Italy, had a macchiato: espresso with a tad of steamed milk. I had never had one before, so I joined him.  It was only a tiny sip of coffee, but I had forgotten that in Italy coffee is not a beverage experience but a drug experience.

Here’s my pastry, which not only looked like a Halloween ghoul, but was great, with crispy and toothsome pastry on the outside and a wonderful whipped cream filling.  And it was filling in the other sense, too. Get one of these! Kadosh is on Jaffa Street, not far from the City Hall and Old City.

Anna and Roberto split a chocolate croissant:

Finally, we walked through the “Russian quarter” nearby and I saw my first Israeli prison behind a police station. I asked someone where they put convicted terrorists, and they’re not kept in Jerusalem. Instead, they’re scattered throughout Israel, some in the Negev desert. This is probably a local jail for minor criminals; you can see the fence around the top:

Before flying out I packed my camera away, so the last three photos from Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv were taken on my iPhone. The first is the very last meal I had in Israel: shakshouka with tahini and hummus (of course) with a side of fries. It was remarkably cheap and filling (and good!) for airport food):

The Lubavitchers had a booth in the duty-free area past customs!  It was too late to see them, but there was plenty of literature and cards showing their late rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (I’ve written about him before).  I nabbed a handful of cards showing him in his famous pose.  You really should read the Wikipedia entry about this guy; he was amazing, and did do some good stuff even if he was deluded by Orthodox Judaism. So many great minds and diligent bodies devoted to studying—fiction!

I couldn’t resist putting up this group photo from Wikipedia of Lubavitchers taken in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where their big synagogue is (I’ve been there, and have recounted how I was wrapped in Jewish garb and thrust onto the synagogue floor, thence to be prayed over as a mitzvah).

Not much diversity here, though perhaps some diversity in thought (as interpreting the Talmud).

And so it’s farewell to Israel, where I had a great time. And there’s lots more to see. Will I go back? Perhaps, though my bucket list is pretty full. I’d recommend a visit there very highly, but keep to Jerusalem and other parts of the country, and avoid Tel Aviv unless you like beaches.

Israel: Day 17

September 19, 2023 • 9:15 am

It’s Tuesday, and I fly out just after midnight on Saturday (the Sabbath!), so after checking out of my hotel then I’ll have 12 hours to kill.

Today I decided to visit the famous Israel Museum, home of the Dead Sea Scrolls, only to find out that the place didn’t open until 4 pm on Tuesdays. It was stupid of me not to check in advance, but I now know the way by bus, and I’ll go back tomorrow when it opens at 10 a.m.

As its Wikipedia entry notes,

Its holdings include the world’s most comprehensive collections of the archaeology of the Holy Land, and Jewish art and life, as well as significant and extensive holdings in the fine arts, the latter encompassing eleven separate departments: Israeli Art, European Art, Modern Art, Contemporary Art, Prints and Drawings, Photography, Design and Architecture, Asian Art, African Art, Oceanic Art, and Arts of the Americas.

Among the unique objects on display are the Venus of Berekhat Ram, the interior of a 1736 Zedek ve Shalom synagogue from Suriname, necklaces worn by Jewish brides in Yemen, a mosaic Islamic prayer niche from 17th-century Persia, and a nail attesting to the practice of crucifixion in Jesus’ time.  An urn-shaped building on the grounds of the museum, the Shrine of the Book, houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and artifacts discovered at Masada. It is one of the largest museums in the region.

Doesn’t that sound interesting? I’m especially interested in the archaeology and the Dead Sea scrolls, though I originally heard they were shown only in reproduction.  But Wikipedia says no, some on display are original:

As the fragility of the scrolls makes it impossible to display them all on a continuous basis, a system of rotation is used. After a scroll has been exhibited for 3–6 months, it is removed from its showcase and placed temporarily in a special storeroom, where it “rests” from exposure. The museum also holds other rare ancient manuscripts and displays the Aleppo Codex, which is from the 10th-century and is believed to be the oldest Bible codex in Hebrew.

The Scrolls themselves are said to be “the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons, along with extra-biblical and deuterocanonical manuscripts that preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism. At the same time, they cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and of Rabbinic Judaism.”

We’ll see tomorrow.

Here’s a photo of one scroll from Wikipedia with the caption, “The Psalms scroll, one of the Dead Sea scrolls. Hebrew transcription included. English translation available here.”

Anyway, it wasn’t time wasted, as I walked to the new Jerusalem train station on the way, and found out how to get to the Tel Aviv airport in only half an hour, and for a pittance.

As always, I took my camera in case something interesting appeared. Here’s what I saw today.

A guy with his phone and a smoke by one of the Museum’s pools:

. . . and an old Haredi Jew, also with his phone. Many ultra-Orthodox Jews spurn cellphones as technology that could spread modern (and therefore bad) ideas. In those ways, as in others, they are like the Amish.

On the tram back, a guy was snogging with his girlfriend, either a cop or a member of the IDF. They were clearly bonded, and it was very cute. A woman in uniform!

What twisted mind conceived of this tee shirt?

And, if you’re a Jewish basketball fan and want to combine your team’s tee-shirt with a religious tallit, well, this is a unique item of clothing:

Or, if you’re a fan of the artificial potato chip Pringles, you can get it on a yarmulke from Kippa Man:

Or a kitty keychain:

I went back to Hummus Ben Sira again, but decided to try something besides hummus.

One of their specialities (second to hummus) is sabich, described by Wikipedia like this:

Sabich or sabih (Hebrew: סביח [saˈbiχ]) is a sandwich of pita or laffa bread stuffed with fried eggplants, hard boiled eggs, chopped salad, parsley, amba [mango pickle] and tahini sauce.  It is an Iraqi Jewish dish that has become a staple of Israeli cuisine, as a result of Iraqi Jewish immigration to Israel. Its ingredients are based on a traditional quick breakfast of Iraqi Jews and is traditionally made with laffa, which is nicknamed Iraqi pita. Sabich is sold in many businesses throughout Israel.

This one was made with regular pita, and it was delicious. Here’s the Wikipedia picture showing the dissected sandwich (mine was un-dissectable). And mine had all the ingredients save the samba, as I didn’t detect mango pickle.

A sabich from Wikipedia:

It was FABULOUS. The combination of hard-boiled eggs, tahini, vegetables, and a big piece of fried eggplant was wonderful. Here’s my lunch (I can’t resist the homemade lemonade.) This cost ten bucks. The pickles were dills, and I ate the sandwich with bites of ripe tomato (also in the sammy) and onion.

Dessert: pistachio halva from Halva Kingdom. Even better than plain halva:

Walking home after lunch. This is the street my hotel is on, and I can see the umbrellas from my window. They appear to be a permanent art installation of sorts:

This nearby bar (certified kosher) was apparently once the home of Ze’ev Zabotinsky, a famous politician, a dedicated Zionist, and a military leader as well as a poet and novelist. He also founded the first all-Jewish modern army unit, the Jewish Legion that fought under the British in World War I. Here’s a photo of Zabotinsky from 1935, five years before he died at sixty.

Pictures of Zabotinsky and his family are plastered all over the building. I can’t be sure he lived there or near there, but that’s a reasonable conclusion, especially when you read this (he didn’t live in Jerusalem for very long):

After a short stay at the Amdursky Hotel just inside Jaffa Gate, [Zabotinsky and his family] began residence in the Levy Building located at the corner of today’s Shimon ben Shetah and Ben Sira streets off of Shlomzion Hamalka.

Finally, The Bird of the Day: a hooded crow (Corvus cornix). Here are three ways of looking at a crow. Note the blue nictitating membrane; its eye is not damaged:

One personal note: save for my first night of jet lag, I have had NO insomnia at all since I’ve been here. I sleep like a log every night and am well rested. This seems to confirm that my sleeplessness in Chicago is created by anxieties connected with my work there (including ducks). But please don’t tell me to move to Israel! There are easier ways to deal with anxiety. . .