Paris with Lois, Part 1

You’re going to Paris for the weekend with your mother, who has never been there.  And it’s been many years since you’ve been there yourself.  How do you possibly decide what to do with your precious 48 hours?  In my experience, it helps a great deal to have a focus.  If you concentrate on one or two categories of activities, rather than trying to do everything, you can decide among the things that fall into your chosen activities, and save the rest for another visit.

One of the great things about traveling with my mom is that she doesn’t have strong opinions about what to do.  Which left me to basically plan the trip.  My control freak tendencies were, in this case, the perfect complement to my mom’s indecisiveness.  Of course, I did make the plans with her in mind.  Our focus, not surprisingly, was food.  Specifically, chocolateries, neo-bistros (for dinner) and tea salons (for lunch).

My research and planning included recommendations from friends who have spent much more time in Paris than I have, and the internet.  For the chocolate part of our agenda, I found a website, chocoparis.com, that includes itineraries for three self-guided chocolate walking tours.  I then read about the various chocolateries on David Liebovitz’s website, which is fantastic.  I picked up tips from Liebovitz on other things as well, such as a place near our hotel famous for its croissants.

After a short flight from Barcelona, we arrived in Paris and had checked into our hotel by 12:30 on Friday.  I found the Hotel Caron de Beaumarchais in a guide book, and then checked TripAdvisor, where it got excellent reviews.  It was a little precious for my taste, but I wanted to be in the Marais.  Aside from the lace-and-flowers décor (I tend to go in for quirky, modern hotels) it was fine.  Reasonably priced, very clean, well-located, and with a helpful staff.

We unpacked quickly and set out for our first meal at the Breizh Cafe, about a 10 minute walk from our hotel.  Breizh Café is a creperie that uses mostly organic and local ingredients—organic buckwheat flour, homemade ice cream, Bourdier butter.  While we waited for our table to be set, we watched the crepe maker standing in front of four large, round griddles—two for the savory crepes and two for the sweet.  He was the picture of efficiency as he poured on and smoothed the batter, flipped, filled, and folded the crepes.

We ordered a jug of the cider of the month, a couple of savory crepes, and a green salad with a delicious wasabi dressing.  We sipped our cider from bowls and tucked into our crepes filled with eggs, cheese, vegetables and ham (for me), and anchovies (for Lois).  We couldn’t resist sharing a dessert crepe—bananas, salted caramel, and chocolate.

My sister Jody had sent me a recent article in the New York Times about chocolatier Jacques Genin, whose shop was a short walk away.  Genin is making a reputation for himself because of his caramels, which a small staff turns out during the night; they are gone by day’s end.  Each day the shop stocks about 8 of the 40 varieties Genin makes—the conventional, such as chocolate, and pecan, and the more unusual, such as passion fruit/mango.  Genin places a huge emphasis on freshness; the caramels, he says, should be consumed within a few days of their purchase.  This helped me to restrain myself.  I bought a small sack of 12, and we headed out.

At this point, we had to get to the Louvre for our 4 pm walking tour.  The Louvre was the one thing my mom said she thought she should do.  It is an enormous, awesome place—one that I felt inequipped to lead us through.  Paris Walks is run by a lovely British couple who lead walking tours throughout Paris in English.  I had booked us for the Louvre Highlights tour, which lasted a little more than two hours; that seemed like about the right amount of time for this trip.  Our guide, Oriel, showed us some of the obvious hotspots—the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace.  But she also took us less well known places and works, such as the remains of the castle that first stood on the site of the Louvre and were uncovered during the 1989 renovation that produced the famous I.M. Pei glass pyramids.

We were both tired when the tour ended and we had looked around the shop.  It was quarter to 7, and our dinner reservations were not until 8, but there wasn’t really time to go for a lie down back at the hotel.  So we hung out in the lobby of the museum and people-watched until it was time to go to the restaurant.

A friend had recommended La Gazzetta, and it fit the neo-bistro criterion.  When we arrived, the room was empty and I wondered if perhaps the restaurant was too much of a secret.  We were seated at a cozy corner table with a view of the whole dining room. I had not realized that the menu was prix fixe, and that there were no choices.  Lois does not eat meat—well, with the exception of a ham sandwich every nine years or so.  Our waiter was lovely, offering to substitute sea bass for the veal on the menu.  We had a choice of 5 or 7 courses.  “What do you want to do, Mom?” I asked, figuring she’d opt for the 5 course.  “Well, we’re only here for two days,” she reasoned.  “Let’s go for it.”  You never need to twist my arm to go for the larger menu.  We ordered some oysters to start as well.  By the time we were into our second course, the room had started to fill.  It was lively, warm, un-touristy—Paris  on a Friday night.

As in Spain, dinner can last a long time in France, and it was well after 11 when we got back to our room.  I briefed Lois on the next day’s activities, giving her a stack of restaurant reviews and other literature to read, and crashed.

We opted to skip the hotel breakfast in the morning in order to get out and see as much as possible.  In David Liebovitz’s post “Ten Insanely Delicious Things to Eat in Paris”, he writes about the croissant at boulangerie Au Levain du Marais.  Fortunately for us, it was less than a 15 minute walk, and on the way to a shop I wanted to check out.  As we approached the boulangerie, we noticed a small line of people snaking out the door.  These were not Americans I see several times a week in Barcelona waiting to get into the Hard Rock Café.  They were locals buying their daily bread.  The line moved quickly and we bought our croissants.  I had thought perhaps we could get coffee there, too, and sit on a bench to eat, but no luck.  We considered saving the croissants until we could find some coffee and a place to sit.  But the bag was warm, the smell of butter was heavenly, and we could not wait.  This croissant was indescribably good.  It stopped me in my tracks right there on the Boulevard Beaumarchais.  It makes all other croissants I’ve ever had taste like Wonder Bread.  I could have eaten another.  But then I would not have been hungry for lunch.

That stretch of the Boulevard Beaumarchais is not too interesting—lots of motorcycle and camera shops.  No coffee.  When we got to Merci, a shop my friend Tim had told me I needed to visit, we were happy to find a small café in the front room.  We sat and drank coffee on mismatched tables and chairs, in a room lined floor to ceiling with used books.  Merci inhabits nearly three floors of a large building.  The inventory changes regularly, and part of the profits from the store go to charity.  On this Saturday morning, it was full of casual/chic Parisians; most left with packages under their arms. In addition to the café/bookshop, the store sells mens and womens clothing, jewelry, furniture and housewares—all created by small designers and innovative design firms.  I had intended that we would just pop in and have a look around, but we had so much fun looking at everything and exploring that we were there for well over an hour.  I could have spent A LOT of money there on dishes, furniture, rugs, if I had a lot of money and if I didn’t have to get everything back to Barcelona and then to Brooklyn.  In fact, I did spend more than I had planned.

When I first walked back from the café to the clothing section, I was immediately drawn to a short, cream-colored jacket.  A fur jacket.  I have never worn or wanted to wear a fur anything in my life, but something made me put it on.  It felt amazing.  Waist-length, with three quarter length sleeves, and a silvery placket running down one edge of the front.  And pockets.  I think it’s the pockets that finally got me.  The saleswoman on the floor stood looking at me, looking at myself in the mirror.  “C’est tres, tres jolie,” she purred.  Of course.  “What is it made of I asked?”  She fumbled for the word in English, telling me it was an animal that lives on the farm. 

“Cow?” I asked, “Moo?”

“Non.”  She shook her head in frustration.

“It’s definitely not sheep,” I said, fingering the smooth fur.

“Non.  Sheep, non.”  She stuck her fingers on her head, miming horns.

“Goat?” I tried.  “Chevre?” I did not know the word for goat, so I figured I’d try goat cheese.

“Oui!” she said excitedly.  “C’est goat!”

“Huh.”

I had never even heard of goat used as fur.  I hoped it might mean that it was humane.  I couldn’t imagine a ranch of goats raised for fur, like minks are.  Just then Lois approached.  “That is gorgeous,” she said, looking me up and down.

“It’s goat,” I told her.  “It’s a goat coat.”

“Huh.  How much?”

“Too much.  It’s staying here.”

By this time we were running late for lunch.  Our next activity was our self-guided chocolate tour.  The plan was to visit the two farthest along the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore and then stop at Laduree—the original shop, at 16 rue Royale—for lunch.  But given the time, we went straight to Laduree instead.  The tiny shop and adjoining dining room were packed, and I was glad I had made a reservation.  We had large, delicious salads and wonderful, lightly fizzy lemonade.  Laduree’s claim to fame is that the shop invented the brightly colored, moon-pie shaped macarons one now finds all over Paris and, indeed, all over the world.  I remember when they came to the Upper West Side in New York City several years ago.  I would walk the 12 blocks to the Silver Moon Bakery just to buy them.  We shared a dessert that consisted of a large macaron filled with Jonagold apple and caramel cream.  Unbelievable.  Then we ordered boxes of macarons to take home with us.  If you find yourself eating at Laduree, you can order your macarons from your table and, when you are ready to leave they’ll have them waiting for you at the door, thus avoiding the crush of people in the pastry shop.  Lois got a box filled with one each of the 18 flavors, and I got a smaller one with chocolate, salted caramel, and coffee macarons—the classics.  I did try a green apple, too, and it was divine.

Fortified and sugared, we took a cab to the first Maison du Chocolat shop—what was to have been the beginning of our walking tour.  Liebovitz waxes rhapsodic about the rigoletto noir chocolates at this shop—he says its one of his four favorite chocolates in Paris, which is saying something.  I bought a small bag of about 10 chocolates, mostly the rigolettos (milk and dark because Alec prefers milk) and a new one called crystal, which is a milk chocolate with praline and salt.  The clerk offered us samples as we left.

By now a fine drizzle had begun to fall.  We walked down the rue du Faubourg Saint Honore and passed by Patrick Roger without even noticing it.  The numbers on either side of the street were very different, so we had to backtrack to find it.  The small shop, known for its window displays, was all green, white and chrome, with chocolate accents.  Beautiful, ready-to-buy boxes line the shelves and, in the back, large tins of more than 20 varieties of chocolates sit.  None of them are labelled—I can’t imagine how many times a day the young man who works the store has to go through the list.  Leibovitz likes the feuillatine at Patrick Roger.  Now I do, too.  I bought another small sack, and we were off again, the pastel-colored shopping bags dangling from our arms like prizes from a scavenger hunt.

The walk from Roger to the heart of the chocolate store takes awhile, and takes you past all of the luxury shops—Prada, Cartier, Burberry.  Satisfying eye candy.  We window-shopped exclusively, which was fun.

Next stop—Pierre Herme, the “Picasso of pastry,” another master of the macaron.  I bought a few just to eat in the next day or so, figuring I’d save my Laduree box for Barcelona.  Salted caramel (are you sensing a theme here?), mandarin orange and olive oil, and my favorite—milk chocolate passion fruit.  I don’t know what it is about those little biscuits, but they are SO GOOD!

Just a few blocks down from Herme is Jean Paul Hevin, a chocolaterie with a tea room upstairs known for its hot chocolate.  Lois’s dogs were barking, and we needed a break, so we sat for a bit and ordered hot chocolates, served in white ceramic pitchers.  New York City now has very good hot chocolate—my favorites are at The City Bakery, which is dangerously close to my office, and Jacques Torres.  It is thick, rich and sweet.  The Genin chocolate is thinner, not as sweet, more intense.  I liked it.  As we sat there sipping, my mom said, “You know, Lisa, I’ve been thinking about your jacket.”

“What jacket?”

“The jacket you didn’t buy—the goat coat.”

“Oh!  What are you thinking about it?”

“That you need to have it.”

“It’s too much.  And how often will I really wear a goat coat?”

“You live in New York.  You can wear it with a black dress.  You can wear it with jeans.  It’s fabulous and it’s perfect on you.”

“I don’t know.”

So we kept talking about other things.  But in truth, I had been thinking about the goat coat, too.  I looked at my watch.  It was after six already.  Merci closed at 7.

“Would you mind if we skipped the last shop on the tour?” I asked.

“Not at all.”

“Then drink up.  We’re going to buy me a goat coat.”

TO BE CONTINUED . . .