Paris: A Food Diary

This past summer my mother turned to my sister and me. "I have a conference in Paris in November," she said. "You guys want to come?"

Mind you, she phrased this as if it were a question.

A few months and about half a billion helpful free airmiles later, we found ourselves in the middle of a drizzly, cold, gray Paris November. As someone who lives in Austin, Texas (and was horrified to hear on the plane ride coming back that the temperature was a balmy 86 degrees) and who grew up with New England falls, I was overjoyed to finally get a little bit of chill. Perhaps not the degree of chill we wound up facing, but nevertheless...

While mom attended her conference by day Piper and I tooled around Paris with our Italian friends, the Lacalandras. It was filled with wine, croissants, fall-out-of-your-chair laughter and, of course, some pretty memorable meals.

At Bistro Marguerite

Tuileries

•  The first night, on the recommendation of the Lacalandra's friend, we went to Restaurant Polidor, a little bistro relatively near Saint-Sulpice. While the food, in my opinion, was only middling the ambiance was nevertheless great--my mom was particularly tickled by a sign that read "We have not accepted credit cards since 1846" and the fact that the bathroom was essentially a hole in the ground.
• The next day we stopped for crêpes at a little place that is becoming a favorite of mine--Bistro Marguerite, right on the Seine. Its location would indicate that it's a tourist trap, yet I've always received good service, the food is good, prices are fair and the waiters continue speaking to me in French even after they realize I'm American. All in all, a great place for a meal. 
• That night I bullied everyone into going to Bistro Paul Bert, which has been recommended by everyone from Dorie Greenspan to Anthony Bourdain. Our reservation was at 10 pm (pretty much standard dining hours for our Italian friends) but we nevertheless found ourselves waiting for nearly 45 minutes for our table (we had been promised a wait of "cinq minutes.") Luckily, the food was both amazing and adventurous. I had a scallop dish that was one of the most blissful concoctions I've ever eaten, tried tongue for the first time and munched my way through a steak with Béarnaise sauce and steak-frites, and a gigantic macaron. And a little bit of my mom's crème-caramel. Our friend Angelo got a dish that was rabbit cooked in a sauce of chocolate, foie gras and blood. You don't see too many meals like that nowadays.
• The next night we had another cinq minute (45-minute) wait in Montparnasse at Crêperie Josselin, which, on a street filled with crêperies, was the only one with a gigantic wait outside. The crêpes were pretty impressive, even if I wasn't terribly overwhelmed by mine--a sausage cooked into a massive, crunchy crêpe, and a dessert crêpe of bananas flambéed with rum that essentially tasted of pure alcohol. I did like my mom's, which was an apple crêpe with Calvados. 
• The next day we made a pilgrimage to Pierre Hermé near the Opera. The treats were like perfect little jewels, shiny and all the colors you could imagine. I got a selection of six macarons, ranging from chocolate and foie gras to vanilla and caramel. They were perfect, and that's all I'm going to say about that. 
• I stopped off at a beer shop near the Lacalandra's hotel (again, having trouble tracking down the name) to get some beer to bring home to Peter. I was amused both to see that they carried both Rogue and Sierra Nevada and to observe that no matter where in the world you are, beer fanciers will inevitably be wide-set, bearded, and decked out in a button-down shirt.
• Our last night we weren't terribly interested in another "cinq minute" wait, so we met up at an Indian restaurant in Montparnasse. The name escapes me but the food was delicious, the mango lassis were gobbled down and we laughed and talked away our last night in Paris. I couldn't have asked for a better goodbye to one of my favorite places in the world. 

Crêperie Josselin

Pierre Hermé Opera

Opera

Paris...je t'aime.