boco

So I woke up this morning with a craving for takoyaki so I headed over to Happa Tei for lunch but unforch it was closed for renovations.  I settled instead for a Taiwanese bento box and taro bubble tea from the place next door.

On my way back to the apartment I decided to drop by Boco to pick up dinner.  Boco is a take out restaurant with a "french touch" (the recipes come from well known French chefs made with organic products).

For an appetizer I choose a pink hibiscus tabbouleh with shrimp and orange and grapefruit jelly by Emmanuel Renaut:

For a main dish a cod in a parsley sauce with mashed potatoes with olives by Vincent Ferniot:

And for dessert a dark and milk chocolate two layered moose by Frédéric Bau.

Quite good but still on the pricey side for take out (about 20 euros).  

he's back

So famous people can be spotted in Paris even if you're simply just walking around.  Like when we saw Dominique Pinon at a Montmartre café.  Sandrine Quétie at the couscous restaurant downstairs from our apartment.  Charlotte Gainsbourg at the Montparnasse cemetery on All Saints' Day.  Cristina Córdula dining at Chez André.  Tomer Sisley brunching with his family at Joe Allen's.

I once even saw Laetitia Casta  and Stefano Accorsi having a romantic stroll in Parc Monceau.  And then today at Parc Monceau:  Nicolas Sarkozy jogging.

The ex and perhaps future president of France.  

velib

So I rarely get Chinese food in Paris as most "Chinese" restaurants in my area are Chinese/Vietnamese/Thai all rolled into one super unappetizing Asian catch all.  Then I heard about Le Tavern de Zhao in the 10th that serves authentic cuisine from the Shaanxi province.  The fact that it was across town gave me the idea to do something I've always wanted to try but never dared.  The velib mostly because it mixes two things I'm not good at: knowing where I'm going and multi-tasking preferring to leave the chances of getting to my destination to the metro.  

But it was a beautiful day and I had time so I did some research on line and realized it was basically a straight shot to the canal and then I just had to follow it down to the restaurant so I decided even I could probably manage that (I drew a map anyways just in case).

The idea of the velib is that you can pick up and drop off at stations conveniently located all over the city and there's one just across the street from my apartment and also one right next to the restaurant (like I said - very convenient). 

Paris is actually very biking friendly with biking lanes connecting major streets.  

30 minutes of dodging pedestrians, badly parked cars, flying pigeons and one wrong turn later I was at the restaurant to enjoy Biangbiang noodles and pork-filled flatbread.

Afterwards I met up husband at Holybelly for coffee and dessert.

Together we biked back to the apartment. Tired (the way back was more uphill then the way there) I I rewarded myself with the two escargots (pistachio chocolate chip and red fruit creme cheese) from Du Pain et Des Idées downed with a glass of cold milk.

All in all, a perfect Friday afternoon.  

butte aux cailles

So have you ever had that strange feeling when you walk into a place that you're not where you're suppose to be, that time stands still and the people around you stare at you expecting you to disappear?  That's what happened to me today when I went to check out the butte aux cailles neighborhood.  The minute I got there I noticed the strange garbage truck.  Stranger still was that there appeared to be a man in the back of the garbage truck hiding among the trash.  My eyes panned out and noticed the numerous cameras pointed right in my direction.  That's when I realized I had walked right in the middle of some kind of filming. 

Curious I installed myself in the brasserie across the street and ordered a café creme hoping to check out the action.  

Most of the crew was Japanese and 50CIMA is a apparently a Japanese car brand so I figured this film/commercial/show is Japanese.

The story line involves that briefcase getting accidentally tossed in the garbage truck and a Annie-like little boy.

It also somehow includes a pretty girl holding a carton of Orangina.

Unfortunately at this point they moved the giant truck blocking a fifth of my view to completely blocking any view from the brasserie (perhaps the girl furiously taking pictures of the action was bothering people).

So I continued on my way to check out the village-esque neighborhood and it's surprising architecture.

Before heading back to the rive droite, I decided to try again for the best Paris baguette 2014.

To make things interesting I decided to pick up two other baguettes and subject husband to a taste test.  The one up top is the baguette I normally get from our local bakery.  The one in the middle is a baguette is from another local bakery that won the best baguette in 2007.  And finally the one at the bottom is the one that beat 152 other qualifying baguettes this year to become THE best worthy of being eaten daily by the French president.

The best baguette is judged based on aspect (appearance), cuisson (cooking), mie-alveolage (texture), odeur (smell) and gout (taste).

Husband choose the middle one.  Tant mieux, the best baguette 2014 is hella far.

soufflé

So even after all this time in France there's still the American in me that thinks stores are open all the time.  This has lead to a lot of disappointment as it did today when I shelped all the way across town to pick up the best Paris baguette 2014 only to find the bakery closed on Wednesday.  

To console myself I decided to check out a restaurant called Le Soufflé.  I love dessert soufflés but for some reason you don't find them often on Parisian menus.  Le Soufflé specializes in them so I thought I'd give it a try even if the place had some signs of being a tourist trap. 

Sure enough when I got there were no French customers, only tourists.  I passed on the menu (soufflé for appetizer, main dish, and dessert seemed a bit much) and opted instead for their signature savory soufflé inspired by Henri IV (perhaps because it is he that is known to say "a chicken in every pot"? - the soufflé was served with a creamy chicken and mushroom sauce). 

I of course had to end with a dessert soufflé:  Soufflé crème brulé with a white chocolate interior.

Both were not bad but not great either, giving me further excuse to eat my way through Paris some more.

canal st martin

So for the first day of autumn I decided to head to Canal St Martin.  I've been in the area often to have dinner at Hotel du Nord always meaning to come back on a sunny day to sit by the canal.

And sunny it would be so I decided I would grab a pizza at Pink Flamingo and lunch by the canal.  Unfortuntely Pink Flamingo was closed (sacred France!) so I ended up grabbing a Shawarma instead.

After lunching by the canal among the Parisian working class and students I decided to follow the canal all the way up to Parc de Villette.

It was a rare insight into what goes on in Paris for the non 9 to 5ers besides the tourists (there were hardly any in sight):  pregnant women taking a stroll, young mothers with their babies in strollers, young men using children's playground as a poor man's gym, young women chatting next to the canal, feet dangling, the elderly playing pétanque.

Finally I reached Parc de Villette.  Despite it's meticulously manicured lawn and the cool futuristic look, it lacked the charm of some of the other parks Paris has to offer.  But that was fine, sometimes it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.  

angelina's

So the other day husband and I were reminiscing about how, when I first moved to Paris, we would book a hotel almost every weekend so we could discover the city together.  Since then Paris has faded into the background, overshadowed by the normal routines of daily life and reduced to the "quartiers" most convenient to us.  Paris had become familiar.  Exploration stopped and preference given to other destinations.

So when I found myself unexpectedly off for two weeks I decided to use this time to rediscover Paris.  To do the things I had always wanted to do but for one reason or another never got to, like Angelina's famous hot chocolate. The best in Paris they say.

Angelina's.  Every time I was in the area the line was out the door and I couldn't justify waiting for more than 15 minutes for a cup of hot chocolate.  But I always remained curious as obviously the majority of people felt differently.  So when I woke up today on the last day of summer to autumn's chilly welcome I thought it ideal to go to Angelina's.

But first lunch.  I had a craving for dim sum and the only decent dim sum I know of in Paris is on one of my favorite streets in Paris.  Rue Saint-Denis.  I was introduced to this street when husband took me to a restaurant called "Chez Mimi's" for New Year's eve one year not knowing how much attention he was going to get as it turned out to be run by transsexuals.  The street is a bizarre mix of clothing boutiques, restaurants (mostly Asian) and sex shops.  It's notorious for prostitution even in broad daylight.

Unfortunately when I got there the dim sum restaurant was closed for renovation so I tried my luck at the Hong Kong noodle place next door even though it was almost empty (I don't trust empty restaurants).  I was reassured by the flux of customers that came in after me most of them speaking Chinese to the waiters who could hardly speak French.  I was further assured as I ate my noodles among slurping sounds (a sure sign of an authentic Asian restaurant).

Next I headed to Angelina's and was delighted to see that the line was only halfway out the door.  Ten minutes later I was shown to my table with it's crisp white table cloth, made myself comfortable in the Louis XVI dining chair, and ordered the 8 euro "L'Africaine".

It was actually quite good.  Smooth and creamy but not too thick (unlike the chocolate syrup that is the Ladurée's hot chocolate) topped nicely with the side of Chantilly creme.

I ended the afternoon digesting the copious chocolate while lounging in the Jardin de Tuileries warmed by the sun to my right while simultaneously being cooled by the fresh autumn breeze to my left.

Paris, je (re)t'aime.  

greece sunsets