Deliciousness

Our plan in Paris was this:

1. Eat French food as much as possible.
2. Eat lunch out and dinner in the apartment.

We executed both plans to perfection, eating only two dinners out (the first night and the one night we just couldn't deal with shopping because all the shops were closed - Sunday).

Dinner worked like this: we bought a few staples at the monoprix: butter, balsamic vinegar, milk, tea, coffee. Then we supplemented with delicious things bought on our ramblings. I modeled it on the dinners Charles and I ate with Brian and Dominique, except that they usually had real food (stuffed tomatoes, poached fish, noodles), whereas we did not.

So we bought raspberries and figs and cherry tomatoes and cucumbers and plums and nectarines and blood peaches, and apricots and a huge head of lettuce and a melon at Au 4 Saisons on Rue Rambuteau. And then we bought (every day) a fresh baguette.

Down the street from the bread place (because of the prejudice that one can be good at bread or good at pastry but not both, which was entirely confirmed by us), we bought tarte au citron, tarte au raspberry, eclairs, tarte au pommes (pattern?), tarte au abrigot (? apricots, anyway), tarte au chocolat...

Then we bought cheese. I picked up two cheeses at the monoprix, including a comte that Brian got me when we visited Angers. I love that comte. The other was a rebluchon. We bought supplemental cheese at a shop on Rue des Archives, mostly goat cheese in that case, a cheese from Rocamodur and a St. Marillac. Or something. It was from Dauphine, anyway.

We bought a non-pork duck pate at the grocery (thanks to Dominique for showing me how to find them and making me brazen enough to buy pate in the grocery) because there I could read the ingredients and confirm the absence of oink.

Then we bought wine at the Nicholas on Rue Rambuteau. So for dinner every night we spread out fruit, salad, wine and cheese, pate and bread. The crumbs were something to see.

[Possibly there was also dark chocolate with hazelnut filling and Italian cherries soaked in armagnac and then dipped in dark chocolate and fruit jellies with sugar coating. But I'm not saying so.]

Lunch was more formal. There were tablecloths, waiters, and cutlery, for example.

We ate twice at Le Bouldogue, a fantastic brasserie on Rue Rambuteau (our food stomping ground, obviously). Cold pea soup, grilled veal chop, cream-poached leeks, country pate (yes, you can eat pate at every meal), salmon tartare (raw salmon, my favorite!!), little demi-liters of Sancerre...it was lovely. Watching the daily parade of French bulldogs added to the pleasure, though in future I wish they'd come over for a little kiss before waddling up the cast-iron spiral staircase.

We also ate at a cafe across the street from the BHV department store, at the cafe of the National Archives (the Terrasse, only ok but very friendly and helpful) and at the cafe I've already mentioned by the Bourse.

Our lunch there beat all previous records. First, I had those broiled crawdads on artichoke hearts. Mother also had artichoke hearts, but hers came with poached eggs wrapped in smoked salmon.

For the main course, Mother tried her best to eat the goulash. It was truly amazing beef stew, with the kind of thick, smoky sauce you never quite achieve in real life. The only problem was that they brought enough for a family of four, and Mother had ordered the formule. So she had dessert coming!

My main course was spectacular. They took a square plate, heated it up to supernova, then laid super-thin slices of salmon across it. They added a pile of buttery spinach to one corner, then poured on a light, garlicky cream sauce. The salmon cooked on the plate, all flat under the sauce.

Dessert? A soup made from citrus fruits, with supremed orange and pamplemousse (grapefruit) and a scoop of lime sorbet. And for me, though we shared dessert, what the cafe called a Cafe Gourmand: an espresso, a tiny pot of dark chocolate pudding with fresh whipped cream, two tiny cakes (small as your thumb) and an almond tuile cookie.

Oh, and wine and cafe creme and people watching and bread.

Eating in Paris? You'd have to be criminally stupid to mess it up. We did have one bad lunch, near Rue Rosiers in a place recommended by Rick Steves (grrr...). But there the service was very sweet, and I should have known better when I saw the menu. There was a cheeseburger on it.