Dining Off (and On) the Beaten Path

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Aux Trois Petits Cochons, Ave Maria, Bouillon Chartier, Brasserie Julien, Breizh Café, Café de l'Industrie, Candelaria, Chez Louisette, Coffee, Dinner, Drinks, guinguette, L'Absinthe Café, L'Entrecôte, La Chaise au Plafond, La Crêperie de Bretonne, Lézard Café, Le Bistrot des Compères, Le Gai Moulin, Le Marsangy, Le Pré Verre, Le Relais de Venise, Le Relais de Venise - L'Entrecôte, Le Train Bleu, Les Enfants Perdus, Lunch, Marais, Marché aux Puces, Mariage Frères, Métropolitan, meals, Open Café, Pamela Popo, Pramil, Restaurant Hélène Darroze, Saint Paul, Tellus, Ze Restoo

Many Paris restaurants allow online booking on the TripAdvisor-owned website (and app) The Fork, and not infrequently substantial discounts will be offered there.

I had so many great meals in Paris the past few years that it’s difficult to select just a few restaurants to recommend. But here are some relatively inexpensive favorites:

• Niçoise salad at La Rotonde, 105, Bvd du Montparnasse.
• 
• Dinner at gay-friendly Lézard Café, rue Tiquetonne, 2ème. Sadly, Le Loup Blanc closed in 2014.
  

  Bob at Le Loup Blanc

• I particularly liked a neighborhood place near Arts et Metiers, l’Absinthe Café. The food is ordinary but the atmosphere feels very authentic. Update 2014: I was shocked to see an English menu including touristy items. I didn’t eat there but I’m afraid it may have gone over to the dark side.
• I loved Café de l’Industrie, near Bastille. Good food, charming atmosphere and Cambridge-y staff.
  

  Alexis, Lisa, Julien and Colt after brunch at Café l’Industrie, Bastille.

• Dinner at either of two places in the Marais will offer a très-gai clientele and ok food at reasonable prices: Ze Restoo or Le Gai Moulin.
• This restaurant in the Marais is a bit more expensive but probably worth it: La Chaise au Plafond. Same kitchen and menu as the pricier Les Philosophes next door.
• An authentic Breton meal of of gallette (salty) and crêpe (sweet) can be had for peanuts at La Crêperie de Bretonne on rue de Montparnasse. I also enjoyed the more expensive Breizh Café with Zhizhong in the Marais in 2014.
  

  Zhizhong with our galettes at Breizh Café in the 3e.

• Bouillon Chartier is a restaurant whose stated aim is “to satisfy the belly without hurting the wallet.” You’ll be seated with other patrons if it’s busy, and I’ve gotten into some interesting conversations there.
  

  The business professor from Montpellier with whom I was seated at Boullion Chartier.

• Beyond touristy, but also strikingly authentic, is an old restaurant deep in the Marché aux Puces, Chez Louisette. The food is unpretentious and our waiter was downright surly. But the ambiance is gemütlichkeit, evocative of a riverfront guinguette, with a two-man band and a series of quite-good singers belting out French classics.
  

  Chez Louisette

If you feel like spending a bit more — but not insanely much — here are a few fancier options. You will find more tourists here, but they are busy for a reason.

• Dinner at Aux Trois Petits Cochons (The Three Little Pigs), formerly on rue Tiquetonne in the 2ème, has now reopened near métro Abbesses in Montmartre. I had a good (if not great) meal in the new location and it gets nice reviews.
• Steak, any time of day, at Le Relais de Venise – L’Entrecôte  at Porte Maillot.
  

  Alan Ryan Bob with Relais Hostess

• Le Marsangy was a charming neighborhood restaurant on Avenue Parmentier serving traditional cuisine. The service was impeccable: I had the impression that the entire operation was composed of the chef and the waiter, and that they had been doing this for a long, long time. I will not soon forget the millefeuille d’avocat aux écrevisses (photo). Unfortunately, it was sold in 2014 and under the new management it is no longer recommended.
  

  millefeuille d’avocat aux écrevisses at Le Marsangy

• One of the marvelous restaurants that my friend Jacques introduced me is Brasserie Julien, in the 10ème just beyond Porte Saint-Martin. The room alone is worth the price!
  

  Jacques at Brasserie Julien

• Mariage Frères in the Marais is 100% touristy, but also absolutely wonderful.
  

  Bob, Alan and Ryan at Mariage Frères

• Alexis introduced me to a good Provençal restaurant, Le Petit Niçois, in the 7ème (though on a subsequent visit in 2014 it was filled with tourists and the food seemed less distinctive), and to trendy Les Enfants Perdus in the 10ème, near Canal Saint-Martin.
  

  Alexis at Les Enfants Perdus

• I had some fine meals in prior years at Le Pré Verre in the Latin Quarter.  Update: In 2012 found the service brusque and sloppy, and it seemed that all the other diners had been referred by the Rough Guide (as I had been initially).  Off my list.
• Jason and I had dinner in 2014 at Pramil, a restaurant in the Haut Marais that I found in the Michelin guide. The menu was terrific and we thought the food was excellent, and good value for money. The only odd thing is that all the other diners were rich American tourists. If strings of pearls don’t bother you, then you should give Pramil a try.
  

  Bob and Jason at Pramil, in the Haut Marais.

• Jaime and I enjoyed a dinner in 2014 at Métropolitan, in Saint-Paul. We had no reservations so we ate under a strict time limit, but nevertheless really enjoyed ourselves.
  

  Jaime with his main course at Métropolitan, amidst an agreeable group of diners.

• I had a terrific meal with Jacques at Pamela Popo on rue François Miron in Saint-Paul  in 2014. Food, service and ambiance were all excellent. Not cheap, but worth it.
  

  Bob with the main course at Pamela Popo.

For a special occasion, when cost is no object, I can suggest two restaurants where I’ve had extraordinary experiences:

• Quite possibly the most beautiful restaurant in Paris is Le Train Bleu, in the Gare de Lyon. Jacques took me there for my farewell dinner last year.  The room is absolutely stunning, and the service was impeccable.  The food was good, although in all honesty not as impressive as the rest of the experience.  Here are all the photos:  LeTrainBleu
  

  Impeccable Service at Le Train Bleu

• Both 2010 and 2011 I had lunch with friends at the Michelin one-star Restaurant Hélène Darroze. The food in both cases was truly spectacular. Our waiter was the same both times and he was superb.  I had an odd feeling in 2011 that the assisting waiters were a bit abrupt, even surly. Taka and I ate dinner there in 2015 with his partner. I had booked a 65 euro prix fixe menu for the less-expensive downstairs dining room but it was full so we were bumped upstairs, for the same price! The entire experience there was wonderful — ambiance, food and service — right up to the end when there was a long wait for our dessert and again for our check. I’m sorry not to be able to give an unqualified recommendation, since the food itself was wonderful.
  

  One of the two fabulous desserts. Milky Jivara chocolate (in three forms), thyme and lemon flavored cream, lime mousse and cacao shortbread.

Coffee or drinks?

• My gay friends will inevitably find themselves meeting for drinks at L’Open Café, on rue des Archives in the Marais. It’s a wide-open place, friendly in the afternoon and jammed in the evening.
• My favorite gay bar in Paris is Le Duplex (not to be confused with the straight club near Etoile of the same name). It’s a neighborhood place at which you can meet someone and actually have a conversation. The crowd is on the mature side but the fulll age range is represented.
• A trendy restaurant near Canal Saint-Martin is Chez Prune.  They require you to eat a meal during dining hours though, and the servers have a serious case of attitude. The last time I went they were positively rude, though I was wearing my ridiculous floppy hat so I may have deserved at least some of their scorn.
  

  Gerry at Chez Prune

• La Gare at La Muette (16ème) is quite classy. I just have coffee there because the rest of the menu is quite expensive.
• Yet another good place for a later afternoon drink is Café Beaubourg, a stylish bar overlooking the plaza in front of the Pompidou Center (of all places!).
• Later on in the evening if you want to hang with the cool kids — and don’t mind paying $15 for a cocktail — check out the Experimental Cocktail Club in the 2ème (or several other places). It’s actually friendly! Update 2013: I gather that on weekends they now have a rule that men must be accompanied by women. I would like to think that this is to keep out rowdy straight guys but it has the effect of keeping out gays.
  

  Experimental Cocktail Club

• Alexis introduced me to a similar cocktail bar in 2014: Candeleria. You enter through a tiny, garishly-lit taco place, then go through a door at the back (like an old-time speakeasy) to a large, classy bar. The cocktails are dauntingly complex, and pricey at 12-14 euros. But the overall experience is special. Reservations are recommended, but when Jaime and I were turned away we were redirected to the Mary Celeste, a few blocks away, whcih is similar.
• Almost as cool, and much cheaper, is Avé Maria in the 11ème. Can be a bit of attitude here, tho.

Suggestions from other sources, that I haven’t tried myself:

• New York Times piece from Jaffar: In Paris, Restos for Fashion’s Restless
• I ran across Abri at Paris by Mouth.  Alexis and I almost walked by it because the space is a sandwich shop during the day.  Worth a try sometime perhaps but the ambiance is fast food.
• Alexis suggested Albion.
• Elliot’s suggestions:
  • Le Grand Véfour – At the Palais Royal.  Expensive but worth it.
  • Michelin three-star Epicure at the Hotel Le Bristol – Crazy expensive but one of the best restaurants in the world.
  • Le Berbère – Moderate but very good.
  • Le Temps en Temps – Also moderate but very good.
• Looks like I’ll have to come back to Paris!

Monet’s Water Garden in the Rain

Tags

Ave Maria, Giverny, le mar, meals, Monet, Paris, water lillies

Michael and I chose Friday for our visit to Monet’s house and gardens at Giverny because it had the best forecast, partly cloudy with no rain (hah!).

Transport glitches — feel free to skip.  Giverny is about 45 minutes by train (to Vernon) then a local bus.  It sounded simple, but we encountered some transportation issues. The first was the fact that Giverny is not in the Ile de France (the region around Paris) so we had to buy our ticket from the national SNCF, rather than from the regional Transilien system that I had been using for other day trips. Michael’s Swedish credit card came with a chip (puce) so we were able to use the ticket machines, but Vernon wasn’t on the list of destinations for the Transilien machine. We got in the long line at the Transilien ticket counter but fortunately we didn’t wait long because there was a big sign explaining where to buy tickets to Giverny. There was another glitch after we bought the tickets from the SNCF machine. In France you have to “compost” the ticket by inserting it into a different machine before getting on the train. We each dutifully composted our tickets before realizing that one was for both of our trips from Paris to Vernon and the other was the return ticket. I held on to both tickets in case there was an issue on the return train but in fact tickets were checked on the outbound leg but not for the return. When we arrived in Vernon nearly everyone on the train got in line for the local bus. The bus filled very slowly, then left. Fortunately there was a second bus, which also filled very slowly, then also left. We, along with perhaps two dozen others, were still in line, and there were no more buses. We ended up waiting nearly an hour until one of the buses returned again from Giverny, after many failed inquiries, calls to taxi companies, etc. (Another option was to rent a bike but the clouds had been gathering all morning and I had an intuition — which turned out to be correct — that the ride back would have been awfully wet and cold.) Once the bus finally arrived there were no further glitches until the return trip, which arrived seconds before our train to Paris was scheduled to depart. But instead of stopping at the station the bus continued slowly along the fence between the road and the tracks, to the considerable distress of several passengers! But all was well, since the bus pulled up to a gate and an official opened it up to let us walk directly onto the train without even going through the station. The assumption, probably correct, was that we all already had return tickets.  Nobody composted, and nobody seemed to care.

When we finally got to Giverny rain had started in earnest so we went first to the Musée des Impressionisms, gambling (unsuccessfully) that the rain might have wound down by the time we finished. We saw a good exhibition on Bonnard’s years in Normandy, but there’s no permanent collection so make sure you’re going to like the exhibition before going.

Monet’s house was mildly interesting (also dry!). I had read about the fact that Monet took an interest in Japanese prints but I was surprised by the large and excellent collection of Hiroshige and other Ukiyo-e artists. A recreation of Monet’s studio was lined with replicas of his masterpieces, but the Japanese prints afforded a more authentic aesthetic experience. Photos were prohibited inside the house but I bent the rule to shoot the gardens from a second-floor window.

Monet Garden from Window of House

Monet’s water gardens, with the famous water lillies, were pleasantly atmospheric in the rain.

Water Lillies in the Rain

Monet would have been horrified by the throngs of tourists who mob his otherwise-peaceful gardens, but he would have enjoyed, I think, their colorful umbrellas and raincoats.

Water Lilly Visitors

Two motherly Swedish ladies presented an interesting feature of the trip. They sat down next to us on the train, and when they began speaking Swedish to one another Michael couldn’t help introducing himself. We also found ourselves in line with them waiting for the bus, and the four of us were at the front of the line when the second bus left. Naturally we got to talking and pretty much knew each other’s life histories by the time the third bus finally came. We ate lunch separately, but then ran into them in the museum, and from that point on scarcely went fifteen minutes without encountering them again — in Monet’s garden, in his water gardens, in a pub, in the line for the bus back, etc. Giverny is not a large place, so this wasn’t astonishing, but it did seem improbable. When we finally parted in Paris there was a moment when we all silently considered whether to propose an exchange of emails. We mastered the impulse, however, and just said a warm goodbye. (The following day, in a remote non-touristy restaurant, I feigned a startled look and said to Michael, “Would you believe that the Swedish ladies are sitting right behind you?” Fortunately, I was kidding.)

After getting home and warming up we had a drink at Avé Maria, which Michael’s friends Dan and Ric had introduced us to last year. Then, after a map-reading glitch, we had dinner at Le Marsangy (2015 update: under new management and no longer recommended). Michael very much enjoyed his main course, but the pig-stomach appetizer alas proved a bit too adventurous even for him.

Michael with Appetizer at Le Marsangy

I enjoyed the same appetizer I had had the other week as well as my main, and we both liked the atmosphere and service. Even though it was Friday night in the big city we got a good night’s sleep instead of going out.

Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature

Tags

Ave Maria, boar, cerf, deer, Marais, meals, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, sanglier, taxidermy, trophies, wild boar

Friends kept telling me that I should visit the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Museum of Hunting and Nature), so I stopped by on Sunday afternoon. It’s a quirky but very cute little museum, in a beautifully restored hôtel particulier (private mansion) in the Marais. You don’t have to like hunting to appreciate the sumptuous displays of taxidermy and animal-related art (with as much space devoted to the quarry as to the dogs and other animals used by hunters) as well as lots of lovely old guns. There are also quite a few contemporary art pieces interspersed with the more traditional material to keep you on your toes. My only complaint is that so many of the ambitious video elements were out of order.

Cerf (Deer)

Trophy Room, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature

Monday morning I had to work (!?), creating a web page and announcement looking for a new roommate as of September 1. My current roommate is leaving after more than five years to start a tenure-track career at the University of Texas. I’m happy for him but sad about losing his companionship, and a bit anxious (as always) about whether I’ll be able to find yet another congenial roommate.  For lunch I met up with an interesting Parisian sculptor, whose work is shown in a Boston gallery that I have visited.

That afternoon I wandered again around the Parmentier quartier, which is zippy but a bit too edgy for me to feel comfortable staying another year. I had a drink at Avé Maria, which Dan and Ric had introduced me to last year, and dinner at Le Marsangy (2015 update: under new management and no longer recommended), a charming neighborhood restaurant serving traditional cuisine. The service was impeccable: I had the impression that the entire operation is composed of the chef and the waiter, and that they have been doing this for a long, long time. Not to be missed is the millefeuille d’avocat aux écrevisses, which was as good as it looks:

millefeuille d’avocat aux écrevisses at Le Marsangy

mot du jour: “sanglier”. French for “wild boar.” What I hadn’t realized is that these guys can be quite fierce. In classical times they were considered as formidable as the wolf, bear or lion. And they are rather common in the countryside; we didn’t see any at L’Ejumeau but we saw lots of places where they had been rooting around. Lisa’s aunt Sofie told us that the locals call them “cochons” (pigs)  instead of “sangliers,” but she was at pains to clarify that the term was used purely descriptively, without the pejorative connotation that the word “cochon” often has. I had assumed that the etymology of “sanglier” was — rather dramatically — based on “sang” (blood) but fr.wikipedia.org tells me that it’s from the Latin for “alone,” since they are solitary after the first two years.

Sanglier, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature

Musée Carnavalet, Michael and the Louvre

Tags

Art, Ave Maria, Louvre, Marais, meals, Musée Carnavalet, Place des Vosges

Michael went for a run this morning — all the way to the Eiffel Tower — while I got breakfast ready like a good host.  Then we went out to the Musée Carnavalet (closed for renovations until the end of 2019), a free museum of the history of France that I had never seen in all my time here.  It proved to be a lovely mish-mash of artifacts and art, that I really enjoyed.  Here’s a glimpse, and there are more photos in Paris-13.

Pont Neuf seen from Place Dauphine on l’Ile de la Cité, about 1665. (Musée Carnavalet)

We then wandered on through the Marais to Place des Vosges, where we had a picnic lunch.

Michael at Place des Vosges.

Then we walked to the Musée d’Orsay, but since the line was too long we crossed the river and visited the Louvre instead.  Even though it was my third time there this trip I still found lots of new things to see and enjoyed myself thoroughly.  For the first time in thirty-some years I saw the Mona Lisa!

The Mona Lisa!

Seriously, though, the museum is magnificent and there are highlights in Paris-Louvre.

We then had dinner at Ave Maria near Oberkampf with an old friend of Michael’s (Daniel), and his friend’s sister and boyfriend (Ric).  We had a great meal, then repaired to a local bar for a few more after-dinner drinks.  Michael and I got home on one of the last métro trains of the night and we’re expecting to sleep very well.