My perfect day in Paris is one that starts at the Marché d’Aligre. I’d get there first thing in the morning, around 9 A.M. as the flea market vendors are unloading their trucks, scoping out treasures as they unpack them. (Before the rest of humanity descends on the market.) I’d rifle through the boxes of knives, cast-off kitchenware, and perhaps score a vintage Le Creuset…
It’s hard to pick a favorite café in Paris. Contrary to what people think, few people that live in Paris will cross the city to stop into a casual place for a drink, or something to eat. Most go to a local spot where the servers know you, where you’ll get a friendly greeting because the staff recognizes you as a regular. It’s is a…
(UPDATE: Café des Musées changed owners in the Fall of 2014 and I’ve heard mixed reports from locals and visitors. I haven’t been back since the change of chef and ownership but from all reports, it is a completely different restaurant and you should not expect to find the same dishes mentioned in this post.) I’m not the only one who is sometimes confounded by the…
I fell madly in love with mussels in France when I was cooking with a French chef, who prepared moules de bouchot, small mussels which have protected AOP status in France. After cooking all day, that evening was sat around a big pot of moules à la marinière, which we all heartily dug into for dinner, extracting the tasty mussels out of their shells, cooked in a…
Two trends have swept across Paris over the past few years, which, paradoxically, are somewhat at odds with each other. Who would have predicted a decade ago that hamburgers and vegetarianism would both be buzzwords on the Paris food scene? One of the good things about the burger movement is that instead of the wan, overpriced (€15 and up) burgers that had been served in…
The French really have it right with the five weeks of paid vacation a good number of them get a year. It’s a great way to truly relax and one week isn’t enough. I know, because my stingy boss (…and that would be me) limited my vacation to a measly seven days. But for that one week, I took part in the annual mass exodus…
[Update: Aux Tonneaux des Halles changed owners in 2016. They no longer feature natural wines and the food on the current menu differs from what is shown and described here.] Every once in a while, it hits me: I need steak-frites. It’s an infrequent indulgence, but when I do have it, I like my steak with a crisp exterior, pan-seared until saignant (medium-rare), with a large…
Aside from a few crêpe stands here and there, Paris isn’t a city known for street food. And malheureusement, that Pierre Hermé truck isn’t open for business…although wouldn’t that be nice. (However if it was, I would probably race around my house in search of spare change every time I heard it coming toward me, like I did when the Good Humor ice cream truck…
“Three weeks?! Is that all?” they laughed uproariously, as a response to my telling folks at a dinner party the other night about how much trouble I was having finding things like sinks, tiles, light fixtures, and so forth, for the renovations of my apartment. I literally spent weeks and weeks combing plumbing catalogs, scoping out a myriad of stores devoted to kitchen fixtures, and…
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