Weekend

Jamie and Ros visited us at the weekend. It was a top-drawer session of catacombs, cocktails and Clown bar. The waitress in the clown bar made some jokes about our last visit when the Italians left without paying (see blogs passim), before bringing us another excellent meal. On saturday we managed to get a seat for aperitifs at the top of the montparnasse tower. We queued for over an hour to get into the catacombs but it was probably worth it - seeing several million bones is certainly an unusual tourist experience.

Le Tour

I'm sure all the Velib riders have started going abour 30% faster since Le Tour started

week-end

Sam's folks were here at the weekend. We did a lot of shopping in the soldes, at bon marché, and on the rue du cherche midi. Everyone was tired by the time we got to the end of the r.d.c.m., so we got on a bus to get back to sam's folks hotel near to our flat, there being no convenient metro options. The bus was great theatre. At odéon a couple got on with an enourmous and very heavy flatscreen TV they had obviously just purchased in the sales, but the bus was so crowded the girl lost her temper and dragged her boyfriend and the TV back off again at the back door shouting things like 'take public transport you said! no need to get a taxi you said!'. In a few years time I'm sure they'll sit in front of the TV and laugh.. two other passangers were carrying small nervous dogs, one attempting to hold the dog, and a mobile phone, and hold on to the rail. The bus almost squashed a moped on the île de la cité, swerving and throwing passangers and dogs into each others arms, before finally depositing us a few steps from the hotel.

we ate some good food in le pré vert again, and also in Café Jav, where we've eaten a few times now, just south of Bon Marché, offering a winning combination of frites maison, bertillon ice cream and friendly service.

Marche des Fiertés

It's gay pride march day, and the after march party is just kicking off, mostly in the street outside our flat. The lesbian nightclub 3ws and the two lesbian-friendly bars are wide open of course with sound systems open onto the streets and a huge crowd. Ever alert to a business opportunity, the italian pizzeria, one of the yiddish restaurants and the jewish butcher opposite have all set tables up on the street and are selling cold beer and sandwiches to the crowd. In the rest of the marais, highly dressed transvestites stroll about handing out club flyers and the crowds outside the most well-known bars like Cox and the Open cafe are effectively blocking off the streets to traffic - it's an excellent atmosphere of course and everyone seems to be having a good time, but it was quite difficult to get back to our front door with a baguette. Lots of the young ladies in the street outside were keen to enter into conversation with Sam.

Bac

The compulsory philosophy questions from the high-school leavers exam or Baccalaureate were published in the French press today, as they are every year, for armchair philosophers to discuss over aperitifs and dinner. This year's questions included 'can one desire without suffering?' and 'can one love a work of art without understanding it?'. Not exactly Wittgenstein but sure to provoke happy disagreement amongst the bourgousie. More details here.

Grève

The sporadic strikes by RER B/RATP staff continue. Since Sarko passed the minimum service law in january, they aren't allowed to completely shut down, so they've taken to various measures such as cutting one in two trains and stopping every train at every station - which actually makes it impossible to get on at some stations (the trains are all full, so unless a lot of people get off, as they do fortunately for me as St Michel, you can't get on). Yesterday evening I walked up to bagneux RER and it was closed, so I had to get a bus, but that was full, so I got a random bus and ended up in Chatillon (then end of metro line 13), it took me about an hour and a half to get home. This morning I cut out the RER and cycled to Porte d'Orleans on a velib, and took a bus from there. This took about an hour in total. It usually takes a total of 40 minutes more or less - including the mandatory coffee stop on the ile.

Le Pre Verre

We went to the Delacourcelle brothers' latin quarter restaurant last night. We liked it. The decor is modern, the menus are chalked onto the walls, and waitresses use PDAs to send your choices to the kitchen. The freres Delacourcelle stroll about the place looking like celebrities (all their recipe books are for sale in the restuarant as well) and there are obviously a lot of regular customers.

The food was undoubtedly the strong point: I started with hure de cochon aux dates, something of a signature dish, which was excellent, and Sam had guacamole of peas with prawns. We both had roast sea bream, which came with fennel and a Camargue red rice risotto. This was incredibly good, perfectly cooked and beautifully presented. There is a long list of wines from small producers, and the prices are not unreasonable (27.50 for 3 courses, our bottle of provencale rose was 24 EUR).

The service wasn't unfriendly, but it was a little brisk. You certainly get the impression that they don't necessarily need your custom. Which they don't: the place was rammed and people were queuing, even for tables in the basement. But it's certainly the finest food experience we've had at this price range, so I'm sure we'll be going back..

Chocolat

Philippe Conticini, the ex-patisserie chef for the Petrossian restaurants in Paris and New York, has opened a little boutique on the place du marche st catherine, near our flat. We went in yesterday to sample the wares. There are only a few things in the tiny, luxurious shop - it's like being in an exclusive jewelery shop or shoe boutique - and eventually we bought a small slab of chocolat au marteau - chocolate that you break with a hammer. It's incredible stuff, just the aroma is intoxicating, and the taste is amazing. Our little piece - about half the size of a postcard - cost 6 eur, but you only have to eat a small piece to have a mind-blowing chocolate experience. We'll have to ration ourselves to make it last to the end of the month.

le chat

There's a tabby cat in my office. We've just moved office into a new building since our lab has got to big to fit in the old premesis, and my new office is in between the appartments where the caretaking and night security staff live. They have a cat which now wanders in to sniff the network cables occasionally.

Useful

French-English food glossary

Coffee, trains and strikes

L'escale has started opening on Sundays for the isle st louis tourist crowd, and closing on Wednesdays to make up for it. So now once a week I have to take my coffee at the cafe louis IX (the island is named after king louis IX), a corner bar-brasserie in the centre of the island. Advantages: cafe richard coffee, better than the robusta-heavy lavazza served in l'escale. Disadvantages: small, a bit dark, less of a scene of regular customers.

The trains I get in the morning on the RER B have little four-digit code names that tell you where they are going and where they will stop. I can take the KJAR which stops everywhere on the way to Massy-Paliseau, or the SVIC which stops everywhere on the way to Robinson. I have to let the ULLE and UBAN go past (they only go as far as Laplace) and avoid the PLAN which doesn't stop at Bagneux, and is full of scientists on their way to Orsay and Saclay research centres. Some of the other lines have better names in my opinion - the RER A has a ZEUS and a VICK.


Talking of trains there's another strike planned for tomorrow. According to RATP:

la RATP prévoit un trafic normal ou quasi-normal sur l’ensemble des réseaux Bus, métro et RER à l’exception de la ligne B du RER, où circuleront 1 train sur 2 avec suspension de l’interconnexion SNCF RATP à Gare du Nord.

So everything will be running fine, except the line that I have to take. Wonderful.

Mon Vieil Ami

Mark, an old mathematician friend of mine from Cambridge, came to visit for the weekend with his wife Mina. It was excellent to see them both and we had a lovely time - the main activity as usual was flâner, with stops at the fete du pain in front of notre dame, chez georges/le comptoir des canettes in saint sulpice for a glass of sancerre rouge, lunch in lou Pescadou - our fourth visit there, still impeccable rapport qualite-prix, a visit to Richard Serra's exhibition of large steel rectangles in the grand palais (dull), the modern art museum for the opening salvos of the nuit des musees, then a quick transfer to the consistently good experimental cocktail club before dinner at le clown bar. Dinner was excellent again, on I think our third visit here. The menu is small and has changed each time we've been: the standard onglet with frites maison is always available, but this time there was also joue de boeuf, confit de canette, and Mark had an incredible entree consisting of little balls of brandade - that's a sort of cod puree - fried in batter. I think it's called Acras de morue. To drink we had a bottle of Cahors, the 'old wine' drunk by the romans (apparently) and made with malbec grapes now popularised by argentine growers - it was very fine, though I think I enjoyed the Chinon, a loire valley cabernet franc based wine we had last time - a little more. Their wine list is extensive, interesting and very reasonably priced, so I'm sure we'll be back to sample some of the other things on offer.

btw, mon vieil ami is also the name of a highly rated bistro on the isle st louis that we haven't tried yet - it's a little expensive, so we'll have to find a good excuse to try it out..

Liberty Cabbage

Even better than freedom fries!

(seen on Sean Mclaughlin's blog)

Les Fous de l'Île

Had an excellent meal last night on the Île at Les Fous de l'Île- the 3 course menu is 25 Eur including entrees like snails, homemade foie gras terrine, oeuf cocotte or gambas, plats like roast sea bass, brandade, cassoulet, st jacques, bavette, and desserts like brioche perdu, maquise de chocolat, vacherin aux fruits rouges. There's also a large selection of good value wines at 14.50 a bottle - we had a very acceptable Mâcon villages. Our two friends from the nuclear physics research centre were impressed and they've lived in Paris for several years, so it must be good.

Langue de Boeuf

I had beef tongue for the first time last night in a cheap cafe in the 2eme, the Bistro Beaubourg. It was pretty good, served in the traditional sauce piquant, which is not very piquant at all by non-french standards. The walls of the bistro are plastered with posters for plays and films dating back years, the tables are packed like sardines, the service varies from passive to moderately friendly, and the prices are cantine-like. The plat du jour (pork chops yesterday) is always 6.40, and the langue de boeuf was 8 eur something. They also have a large selection of wine available by the 50cl pot, thought how AOC it all is is a mystery.

Velib update

Michelin have released a Velib paris map with all the stations and cycle paths marked on it. I've already bought one, natch.

in Jersey

This weekend was an extra-long pont - referred to as an aqueduc - because by taking Friday off you got a 5 day holiday. Thursday (liberation day) and Monday (pentecost) were holidays anyway. We took the chance to go to Jersey, celebrating their liberation day on Friday - one day after the Germans gave up everywhere else - and then showing Neil around a bit on his first visit to Jersey, which he captured in the video below (non-native British readers may have to search youtube for 'bbc bergerac intro' before this will make any kind of sense). Note the amazing fruits de mer, provided by Sam's parents..

UK Baker sells bread to French

"I nearly fell off my chair laughing," said director John Foster. "Asking a Brit to make French sticks?"

They will ship some 7,000 soft white loaves for use in toasted sandwiches to France every few months.

[..]
"We are selling a square brioche product for making croque monsieur," Mr Foster said.

The square-shaped loaves of bread, purchased by caterers and restaurants, will be used to make croque monsieurs, a hot ham and cheese sandwich snack.

[..]

The French often buy a fresh loaf of bread every day

Note the implication that this British-baked bread will last for several months. In fact croque monsieurs are already a pretty dodgy proposition these days - it's clear they make a pile of them in advance and just microwave them for you. I usually order an omelette if I want a cheap lunch - at least they're forced to make that freshly..

En Bretagne

We spent the long weekend in Brittany, at Marine's parents lovely manor house in Auray. It was amazing to be in such a large place - they had a 'grand salon' which was twice the size of our entire flat. We didn't do much apart from laze about and take a few short trips to the pretty villages nearby, but it was very relaxing, and Marine's parents provided us with some great meals, made by their excellent cook, which we ate in proper French style with cheese before desserrt and plenty of good wine. Even Marine's boyfriend has to call her parents 'vous' though. The journey home was fine despite dire warnings of traffic jams. From about 200km out from Paris, almost all the cars had paris or banlieu number plates.

Send in the Clowns

We had a lovely meal tonight in le Clown Bar, next door to the cirque d'hiver at the top of rue vielle du temple. I had a parmentier made with boudin noir, and sam had a confit du cannette with a sauce au framboise. The waitress was very friendly, as she was the first time we were there in january, and at one point I helped her translate the dish of the day to the Italian couple sitting next to us. Everything was going well until right at the end, when after paying we went to the waitress to say goodbye, she said that the Italians had left without paying. We looked round and it was clear she was right - they'd been really clever about it in fact - they went out for a cigarette after ordering their first course, and has gone for a walk up the street before coming back for the food, giving the impression that that was their normal behaviour. Then after their main course, they did the same thing, leaving the girl's handbag on the seat before leaving. Only the second time, they just went up the street and didn't come back, and the handbag of course was empty - no doubt some kind of free thing worth about 5 euros. I was really surprised, they seemed quite respectable and had a lonely planet guidebook on Paris and everything, but evidently they thought that it was good sport to screw over a small bistro with a staff of 3 by not paying - nice going guys. Hope you're feeling pleased with yourselves.

One good result of this is we got to make friends with the waitress in a place we'll certainly be going back to. But shame on the guys who walked out, considering what good value the food and wine is in that place.

Paris in the springtime

The weather seems to have skipped spring in fact and moved straight to summer, it's still 24 degrees at 9:30pm and it's been gloriously sunny all weekend. we celebrated the arrivale of the beau temps by having a picnic lunch and a moules-frites dinner outside on saturday - the moules frites were pretty good, at the horseshoe tavern in Odeon, and today we took a stroll in the jardin des plantes before lunching on oysters from the market. Sam just made a salad nicoise for dinner.

In the afternoon we saw a parade commemorating the deportation - there weren't many people, just 5 police drummers and a flag carrier from each departement, then about the same number of civilians walking behind. there are lots of plaques on the walls around our area remembering large groups, mostly families with children, who lived in those buildings and were sent to death camps. i'm surprised the parade wasn't a bigger affair. i guess if you deport enough people then there's nobody left to remember them. meanwhile, certain sections of the media are making contemporary comparisons after Sarkozy's interviews on french TV during the week, where he reaffirmed his commitment to deporting all the illegal workers in France (there are about 300 000 apparently). This probably means they lose the argument by Godwin's law, but still, the undercurrent of xeonphobia in french society clearly remains strong..

Le Weekend

Claire, Colm, Maria and Paul were here at the weekend. Highlights included our meal in Bistro L'Oulette, which seems to have slight changed its sauce for snails, and sitting in the sunshine in the jardin du palais royal on Sunday. The face of the waitress when Colm ordered a well-done steak will also live long in the memory.

en panne

Our lab coffee machine, a lavazza espresso point, started leaking into its pod draw yesterday and was swiftly replaced by an engineer, thus managing to avoid a strike or a riot. Apparently the last machine managed 80 000 cups of coffee (counting the number of pods used) before it leaked. The new machine is identical but makes much longer coffees when you press the same buttons - maybe because it's not leaking all its water into the draw any more. I'm sure it doesn't taste quite the same either..

Last night we had an aperitif in chez Georges, aka le comptoir des cannettes, on rue des cannettes - a classic rive gauche watering hole with sub-2EUR glasses of AOC cotes du rhone, a clientele straight out of mai 1968 (which is being commemorated all over town) and free peanuts. It's the place in Paris (that we know) most akin to the little Ombra bars in Venice. Excellent.

The Ile

We've become more interested in the ile st Louis since we arrived here. The west end, close to the ile de la cite, is one of the tourist hotspots of the city, with corresponding high prices and lack of steeze. However, there are always exceptions, such as the friendly cafe med whose 12 euro menu is still imbattable for rapport qualite-prix, and the Alsacien bistro on the corner where you can sit at the bar and drink demis out of earthenware mugs for what in Paris is considered a very decent price. The barman will ply you with salty olives to try to pursuade you to order more. Then there's the bar Louis IX on the corner of the rue des deux ponts, where you can buy a berthillon ice cream without queuing and listen to the barman make jokes about the passing tourists, and then, on the other side of the rue des deux ponts, on what used to be a separate island, there's a sort of mirror image or good self of the road on the west side: where the west side has a beautiful looking cheese shop with incredibly expensive cheese, the east side has an old-school cheese shop with a queue of loyal islanders and very reasonable prices. The west side has a very poor quality bakers full of angry tourists and lousy croissants, and the east side has a bakery with beautiful pain a l'ancienne and affordable and excellent tartes. Apparently the shopkeepers sometimes tell you that something is 'only available in Paris' if they don't have it in stock - they seriously consider themselves to be living somewhere else. People are so keen to live there they are prepared to live in tiny 'studettes' in the rooftops: we saw one with 6 square meters with unrestricted headroom, 18 square meters including the part restricted by the sloping roof, for 175 thousand euros.

Marathon

It was the Paris marathon last weekend, we got up to late to see any runners but a lot of the streets were still closed and there were discarded enery drink cartons all over the place.

This weekend it's London's turn. One stand out entry is the six Maasai warriors from Tanzania, who intend to run the whole course in traditional dress without water in order to raise enough money to deliver clean water to their village.

Morning coffee

I've recently started taking my morning coffee in a bar on the way to work. It's quite cheap to take a coffee at the comptoir, and the coffee from the machines is usually much better than I can make with my bialletti pot, even when I buy very good beans. I started by trying the cafes around our flat in the Marais, but most of them are pretty dead in the mornings, and all of them had very unfriendly staff. I then started taking coffee in St Michel just before I get on the RER. I found a pretty decent place near the Velib stop at the back entrance of the station on the blvd st germain, but the bar is right at the back and it's a bit dingy now the weather has got nicer. So now I stop at a place on the isle st louis, on the rue des deux ponts, called L'Escale. It's a very traditional family-run place, overlooking the rive gauche, with a good crowd of regulars. This morning, for the first time, the patron made me a coffee without me having to order it: this is probably because I have to park my Velib outside his window and lock it up when I arrive, a scene which is watched with a certain amount of amusement by the other customers: they say things like 'did you remember to take out the radio?'. C'est toujours drole. L'Escale translates as something like 'stopover' - it's the word used to describe a period in an airport when you have to change flights - which makes stopping there in the morning seem logical.

Falling pound

The euro hit a record high against the pound today. This doesn't make a great deal of difference to me, but after looking at this graphic on the BBC website, I'm really confused (look carefully at the Y-axis..)

chutes de neige

snow on the toits this morning

Happy brithday to me

Many thanks for the cards. To celebrate we've booked a table at a very serious Japanese restaurant for Friday night. The patron was very insistent that he had only raw fish to offer - maybe some people come in and insist on having their sashimi cooked? strange

Sidra

A couple of weeks ago we made an expedition to San Sebastian for the weekend to visit a cider brewery. This is a traditional thing to do in the mountains of the basque country in the spring. The idea is to taste the cider made from last autumn's apples. The brewhouse consists of a huge open hall a bit like a German beer cellar, and they give you a pint glass when you arrive. Then all the cider is in a special room to the side, dug into the mountain, with the cider in huge barrels. The staff walk up to the barrels and open the taps and the cider gushes out onto the floor, and you put your glass in the stream to take some. There were hunderds of people there, some had arrived on coaches, so every cider stream had a good crowd around it and you have to push a bit to get your glass into the queue. You're supposed to remember which barrel you like most so that when they tap it again you can go back, but this gets a bit difficult after the 6th or 7th barrel. In the meantime, you go back to your table and eat the set menu of omellete, salt cod and t-bone steak (all excellent) and wait until someone shouts Txotx, which means you all have to stand up and go back to the cider room again.. it's lots of fun, and I've been delaying writing about it hoping that Ignacio would put his photos up on flickr, which he just has. To understand these (a bit) you have to know that we were celebrating Eduardo passing his viva exam and getting his PhD. He has also put up the photos from the rest of the night (we went to the cider place at lunchtime) crawling the Tapas bars in Donostia, which are pretty good too.

We took the IDTGV to get to Hendaye on the border, and then the 'mole train' through the mountains to Donostia. It was very cool to go to another country for the weekend without getting a plane. The IDTGV is some kind of internet-only cut price TGV - we're now big fans.

Psychologie

There are 65,000 psychology students in France - that is a quarter of the European total for that subject.

Fled to Jersey

I've just finished reading metrostop Paris by Gregor Dallas - very enjoyable. As a result I've been inspired to create a website cataloguing people of historical importance who have fled to Jersey at one time or another.. my theory is this will eventually account for all the most interesting episodes of Anglo-French history

In the municipal elections, the 4th voted for the socialist party candidate, though not by a huge amount so it will go to the second round. I didn't get to vote despite my attempts to register last December - none of my documents were deemed convincing enough, which is very annoying.

More heartening is the discovery of an excellent Vietnamese restaurant/take-away near to us - we just had a very decent two course dinner and beer for 10 Eur each. It's about the size of the main room in our flat, but they somehow still manage to seat about 30 people.