[aageneral] Paris: eating inexpensively
This is Paris and it is raining, which is as it should be. Paris rain
is not as the rain of other cities. It is softer, benevolent. It
caresses, rather than soaks.
First let us nail a lie. Parisians are haughty, stand-offish, have no
time for people who do not speak perfect French. This may have been
true when Jacques Tati starred in M Hulot's Holiday and the
Beatles
were appearing in Paris as a support group for the main star Johnny
Halliday. It might have been true then. It is certainly not true now.
Parisians are not stand-offish. Certainly not to strangers. In hotels,
shops, restaurants most people you will deal with will speak
English. Indeed, they are quite pushy about it. And it is not just in
the tourist-frequented areas.
I am staying in an area called Republique which is a little way out of
the centre. The same availability of English still applies.
Perhaps the main reason I come to Paris is because of the food. Not
that I am a true gourmet. More a gourmand. It is perfectly possible to
spend an arm and a leg on food in Paris. I am still in a state of
shock after paying $17.50 for a single glass of beer. Granted, I was
sitting on the pavement on the Champs Elysees and granted, I could
have sat there all day. But I am still in shock. Normally I steer well
away from such high-priced nonsense.
When you go to Paris - and you should go at least once in a lifetime -
make your own discoveries. I am assured it is possible to get a bad
meal in Paris. It simply has never happened to me. At the following
restaurants you will only get great meals.
First and foremost, La Crémerie Polidor. If it was good enough for
Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Andre Gide, Paul Verlaine and Paul
Valery, it is good enough for me. For lunch yesterday I had the plat
du jour, which was cassoulet in the classic style. This restaurant has
never heard of nouvelle cuisine. Its style of cooking is still firmly
embedded in the twenties. As are its decor and standard of service.
With my meal I had a pichet, a small jug, which is about a third of a
bottle of Chateau Magondeau, a 1984 Grand Bordeaux, which has won a
Medaille Concours Agricole and is well spoken of. A full bottle would
have been silly, but a pichet was just right. This system of serving
excellent wines in less than bottle quantities is well worth cottoning
on to. In most restaurants you can have a carafe of house wine, which
normally will be singularly nasty and probably will have come from
Algeria or Morocco and be chemically treated. Sometimes you can detect
that someone are the grapes first. You can drink it at a pinch. But
you have to be desperate.
A step up from that is réserve maison, or réserve du patron.
This is
much better and very drinkable. At the top in quality and price are
the wines which qualify for the title vin delimité de qualité
supérieur (VDQS), or appellation d'origine controlée (AOC).
These can
be truly splendid wines, but can be pricey and a bottle much too much
to drink for one person.
Some restaurants serve great wines by the glass or small jug and the
good ones get the Coupe de Meilleur Pot, which is a much-coveted
award. This means that you can sample the grand wines of France - and
grand wines, indeed, they are - without doing dire damage to either
your wallet or your liver.
The best places to experience this superior plonk by the glass are in
bars run by the Ecluse chain at 15 Quai des Grands-Augustins; 64 Rue
Francois-1er and 15 Place de la Madeleine, both in the eighth
arrondisement. On offer are Bordeaux wines by the glass, some of them
grand cru. Odd note: these bars also have, beyond argument, the best
chocolate.
Back to Polidor for the moment. The ideal time to front is around
1.30, when the first mad rush is over, but the atmosphere is still
there. They don't accept telephone bookings.
To get to it, take the Métro to Odeon on Boulevard St Germain de
Près
and walk through Carrefour Odeon and then up Rue Monsieur le Prince to
number 41. It is not a flashy frontage and easy to miss. The unisex
toilets are very probably a historic monument.
After eating a literary lunch, go back down to St Germain des Pre`s
and turn left. You will shortly come to three great Paris
institutions: Aux Deux Magots, the Café Floré and Brasserie
Lipp. It
was at Aux Deux Magots in 1964 and 1965 Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de
Beauvoir hold literary court.
You can have a glass of wine or a tea, typically with lemon, or a
coffee and huddle over it for hours without disturbing the waiters of
Aux Deux Magots, who have seen it all.
Always and ever you will see some tables occupied by Parisian lovers.
They lean forward over the table with their spines concave, their
buttocks jutting and their legs intertwined under the tables. Looks
damned uncomfortable, but they do it by the hour. In Aux Deux Magots
there was a dark-haired couple - both handsome - who were seemingly
frozen eternally in this posture of adoration.
Let us, for the moment, move away from this passionate literary scene
and look at a typical down-market Paris restaurant.
Near my hotel is a restaurant called Le Chateaubriant on Avenue
Parmentier. It specializes in the North African dish couscous. The
clientele are basically the hard men of the town. Several of them look
as if they have frequently ridden all four horses of the Apocalypse. I
sit down, order couscous and half a flagon of the house red. The
owner, le patron, serves me himself. The food is excellent, but
massively too much, the wine is Algerian rotgut and the bill a few
euros.
If you are on a tight budget, there are many restaurants which serve
better than acceptable food at these ludicrously low prices.
One example is Chartier, in Montmartre, which is at 7 Rue du Faubourg
Montmartre. Take the Métro to Montmartre, come out into Rue
Montmartre
and take the first turning on your left. This is an immense
restaurant, which looks like a set designer's idea of a waiting room
for the Orient Express - always crowded, always noisy. In the old
French tradition, the waiter writes your order on the paper
table-cloth. At dinner for two, one had fish soup (great), the other
fresh shrimps (likewise), followed by veal (better than good) and
shashlik (dreadful). To go with this, a bottle of Côtes de Provence
rosé and some cheese to follow. Total price was under 20 euros.
If you are on a very tight budget the answer is to picnic.
Start off with a loaf of bread. These are called baguettes, cost three
francs each, and were the glory of France. Sadly, they have in recent
years deteriorated because the bakers do not like working through the
night to make fresh batches. So they make them the day before and deep
freeze them. Another black mark to progress. Baguettes, nevertheless,
are still better than any other bread.
To buy it, head for a boulangerie. Easy to find - they are everywhere
and emit a glorious smell of warm bread. If you want the best
baguettes, head for the shop with the biggest queues, Parisians know
their bread.
Nearby will be a charcuterie - food shops in Paris come in clumps -
where you can buy pâte, quiche, ham, saucissons (sausages) in all
varieties, especially the dried, smaller kind. They will slice up the
sausages for you. Many charcuteries also sell hot take-away dishes in
plastic containers although I tend to avoid these as being too messy.
An example: for lunch in a charcuterie in the Rue du Faubourg du
Temple I bought a portion of feuillette de jambon; a portion of museau
de porc vinaigrette; some potato salad and a portion of salade
Chinoise. There was enough there to feed me until I was full to
groaning.
Now, if you are a greater glutton than I, nip into the fromagerie,
which will be somewhere on the same block, and experiment with cheeses
you have never tried before. If you are quite open with the shopkeeper
and confess ignorance you will sometimes find a selection of small
portions being made up for you as a sampling kit.
Lastly, the wine. Treat yourself to a bottle with a cork in it. Again,
tell the wine merchant the type of wine you want and that you are
learning about French wines and you are poor. You will be pleasantly
surprised at the friendly advice and assistance you will be given.
Where to eat your picnic? On a recent trip I ate my picnic meals in
the little park at the Pont Neuf end of the Île de la Cité.
Behind me,
the Gothic wonders of Notre Dame. In front of me, the Seine.
I ate like a king in solitary splendor. I was alone, but I was not
lonely, I had all of Paris around me.
Gareth Powell is a travel writer and much of his writing can be found
at his site, http://www.travelhopefully.com. Paris is his favorite
city.
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is not as the rain of other cities. It is softer, benevolent. It
caresses, rather than soaks.
First let us nail a lie. Parisians are haughty, stand-offish, have no
time for people who do not speak perfect French. This may have been
true when Jacques Tati starred in M Hulot's Holiday and the
Beatles
were appearing in Paris as a support group for the main star Johnny
Halliday. It might have been true then. It is certainly not true now.
Parisians are not stand-offish. Certainly not to strangers. In hotels,
shops, restaurants most people you will deal with will speak
English. Indeed, they are quite pushy about it. And it is not just in
the tourist-frequented areas.
I am staying in an area called Republique which is a little way out of
the centre. The same availability of English still applies.
Perhaps the main reason I come to Paris is because of the food. Not
that I am a true gourmet. More a gourmand. It is perfectly possible to
spend an arm and a leg on food in Paris. I am still in a state of
shock after paying $17.50 for a single glass of beer. Granted, I was
sitting on the pavement on the Champs Elysees and granted, I could
have sat there all day. But I am still in shock. Normally I steer well
away from such high-priced nonsense.
When you go to Paris - and you should go at least once in a lifetime -
make your own discoveries. I am assured it is possible to get a bad
meal in Paris. It simply has never happened to me. At the following
restaurants you will only get great meals.
First and foremost, La Crémerie Polidor. If it was good enough for
Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Andre Gide, Paul Verlaine and Paul
Valery, it is good enough for me. For lunch yesterday I had the plat
du jour, which was cassoulet in the classic style. This restaurant has
never heard of nouvelle cuisine. Its style of cooking is still firmly
embedded in the twenties. As are its decor and standard of service.
With my meal I had a pichet, a small jug, which is about a third of a
bottle of Chateau Magondeau, a 1984 Grand Bordeaux, which has won a
Medaille Concours Agricole and is well spoken of. A full bottle would
have been silly, but a pichet was just right. This system of serving
excellent wines in less than bottle quantities is well worth cottoning
on to. In most restaurants you can have a carafe of house wine, which
normally will be singularly nasty and probably will have come from
Algeria or Morocco and be chemically treated. Sometimes you can detect
that someone are the grapes first. You can drink it at a pinch. But
you have to be desperate.
A step up from that is réserve maison, or réserve du patron.
This is
much better and very drinkable. At the top in quality and price are
the wines which qualify for the title vin delimité de qualité
supérieur (VDQS), or appellation d'origine controlée (AOC).
These can
be truly splendid wines, but can be pricey and a bottle much too much
to drink for one person.
Some restaurants serve great wines by the glass or small jug and the
good ones get the Coupe de Meilleur Pot, which is a much-coveted
award. This means that you can sample the grand wines of France - and
grand wines, indeed, they are - without doing dire damage to either
your wallet or your liver.
The best places to experience this superior plonk by the glass are in
bars run by the Ecluse chain at 15 Quai des Grands-Augustins; 64 Rue
Francois-1er and 15 Place de la Madeleine, both in the eighth
arrondisement. On offer are Bordeaux wines by the glass, some of them
grand cru. Odd note: these bars also have, beyond argument, the best
chocolate.
Back to Polidor for the moment. The ideal time to front is around
1.30, when the first mad rush is over, but the atmosphere is still
there. They don't accept telephone bookings.
To get to it, take the Métro to Odeon on Boulevard St Germain de
Près
and walk through Carrefour Odeon and then up Rue Monsieur le Prince to
number 41. It is not a flashy frontage and easy to miss. The unisex
toilets are very probably a historic monument.
After eating a literary lunch, go back down to St Germain des Pre`s
and turn left. You will shortly come to three great Paris
institutions: Aux Deux Magots, the Café Floré and Brasserie
Lipp. It
was at Aux Deux Magots in 1964 and 1965 Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de
Beauvoir hold literary court.
You can have a glass of wine or a tea, typically with lemon, or a
coffee and huddle over it for hours without disturbing the waiters of
Aux Deux Magots, who have seen it all.
Always and ever you will see some tables occupied by Parisian lovers.
They lean forward over the table with their spines concave, their
buttocks jutting and their legs intertwined under the tables. Looks
damned uncomfortable, but they do it by the hour. In Aux Deux Magots
there was a dark-haired couple - both handsome - who were seemingly
frozen eternally in this posture of adoration.
Let us, for the moment, move away from this passionate literary scene
and look at a typical down-market Paris restaurant.
Near my hotel is a restaurant called Le Chateaubriant on Avenue
Parmentier. It specializes in the North African dish couscous. The
clientele are basically the hard men of the town. Several of them look
as if they have frequently ridden all four horses of the Apocalypse. I
sit down, order couscous and half a flagon of the house red. The
owner, le patron, serves me himself. The food is excellent, but
massively too much, the wine is Algerian rotgut and the bill a few
euros.
If you are on a tight budget, there are many restaurants which serve
better than acceptable food at these ludicrously low prices.
One example is Chartier, in Montmartre, which is at 7 Rue du Faubourg
Montmartre. Take the Métro to Montmartre, come out into Rue
Montmartre
and take the first turning on your left. This is an immense
restaurant, which looks like a set designer's idea of a waiting room
for the Orient Express - always crowded, always noisy. In the old
French tradition, the waiter writes your order on the paper
table-cloth. At dinner for two, one had fish soup (great), the other
fresh shrimps (likewise), followed by veal (better than good) and
shashlik (dreadful). To go with this, a bottle of Côtes de Provence
rosé and some cheese to follow. Total price was under 20 euros.
If you are on a very tight budget the answer is to picnic.
Start off with a loaf of bread. These are called baguettes, cost three
francs each, and were the glory of France. Sadly, they have in recent
years deteriorated because the bakers do not like working through the
night to make fresh batches. So they make them the day before and deep
freeze them. Another black mark to progress. Baguettes, nevertheless,
are still better than any other bread.
To buy it, head for a boulangerie. Easy to find - they are everywhere
and emit a glorious smell of warm bread. If you want the best
baguettes, head for the shop with the biggest queues, Parisians know
their bread.
Nearby will be a charcuterie - food shops in Paris come in clumps -
where you can buy pâte, quiche, ham, saucissons (sausages) in all
varieties, especially the dried, smaller kind. They will slice up the
sausages for you. Many charcuteries also sell hot take-away dishes in
plastic containers although I tend to avoid these as being too messy.
An example: for lunch in a charcuterie in the Rue du Faubourg du
Temple I bought a portion of feuillette de jambon; a portion of museau
de porc vinaigrette; some potato salad and a portion of salade
Chinoise. There was enough there to feed me until I was full to
groaning.
Now, if you are a greater glutton than I, nip into the fromagerie,
which will be somewhere on the same block, and experiment with cheeses
you have never tried before. If you are quite open with the shopkeeper
and confess ignorance you will sometimes find a selection of small
portions being made up for you as a sampling kit.
Lastly, the wine. Treat yourself to a bottle with a cork in it. Again,
tell the wine merchant the type of wine you want and that you are
learning about French wines and you are poor. You will be pleasantly
surprised at the friendly advice and assistance you will be given.
Where to eat your picnic? On a recent trip I ate my picnic meals in
the little park at the Pont Neuf end of the Île de la Cité.
Behind me,
the Gothic wonders of Notre Dame. In front of me, the Seine.
I ate like a king in solitary splendor. I was alone, but I was not
lonely, I had all of Paris around me.
Gareth Powell is a travel writer and much of his writing can be found
at his site, http://www.travelhopefully.com. Paris is his favorite
city.
########################################################
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for your website that are automatically updated each week.
Syndication feeds include:
Business/Sales
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Web Design/Development
Biz Tips
Web Design Tips
Home & Family Matters
Dinner Ideas
Health & Fitness
Horoscopes
AngelVoice
Headlines
and more...
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