Jeffrey Tao's Travel Impressions                   

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              My department head told me that there was a sum of money that I could use to go abroad for two to three weeks to bone up on one of my languages which were Russian and French. But I had to do it in January or February of 2004.  The severity of the Russian winter tipped the scales in favor of going somewhere in France. I found a language school easily on the Internet, booked my flight, rented an apartment owned by a New York-based friend, packed some French grammar books and I was all set. Moreover, the end of my course coincided with President’s Day weekend, so my wife Margaret and 10-year-old daughter Rachel (who’d never been to Paris), decided to seize this opportunity to join me there for four days.

             It had been bitterly cold in New York throughout December and January. There had been a few snowstorms followed by an interminable number of clear, bright days with subzero temperatures and a biting wind. The weather forecast on the Internet was showing much milder temperatures, so I brought with me a lined Burberry rather than my heavy cloth coat or down jacket. I boarded the Air France evening flight, and before long I was sipping champagne.

 Arrival and Settling In

             Upon arrival at Charles de Gaulle I took an Air France bus to Etoile, and then a taxi from there to rue de Penthievre, where I was going to be staying for the next couple of weeks.  As the taxi sped along the Champs Elysees, before turning left onto Avenue Matignon, which leads directly to Penthievre, I saw flags of France and China mounted together all the way along the great boulevard, symbolizing the friendship between the two countries.  Apparently, the Chinese community in Paris had just celebrated its New Year (or Spring Festival) by marching along the avenue, with the usual drums and gongs and lion dances and traditional festivities. This marked the beginning of a whole year of celebrating and learning about Chinese civilization known as “l’annee de la Chine en France”.  A large exhibition about China was mounted at the Centre Pompidou, there was a temporary exhibition on Confucius at the Musee Guimet, which specializes in Asian art.  No doubt, this also afforded Chirac and Hu Jintao an opportunity to cement their bilateral diplomatic and trade ties, which had always been quite cordial.

             My friend’s apartment was in a beautiful house on a side-street off Avenue Matignon, very close to the elegant rue du faubourg -Saint-Honore, the Madison Avenue of Paris, where the world-renown Hotel Bristol is located. This is a very upscale neighborhood with expensive art galleries and boutiques; the house is charming, with shuttered windows, a courtyard and an elevator that could barely accommodate my suitcase and myself.  My friends had purchased this apartment in mint condition. It had a living room, separate dining room, two bedrooms, a study and a kitchen (which one accessed via a long, winding corridor) that was fully equipped with appliances, a small table and chairs.

             Sunday is the not the best day to arrive in a European city – everything’s closed. I had a hard time finding a restaurant in the neighborhood but eventually found a brasserie off the Champs Elysees with tables outside where customers sat sipping coffee or wine or having supper. It was a mild evening, and the streets were bathed in a soft bluish light so typical of Paris. To take the chill off the air, the café had put gas heaters near the tables outside, and I soon discovered that that was standard practice in Paris.  I ordered saucisson de Lyon and a glass of wine and soon my hunger was appeased. I was feeling good and glad to be in Paris. I walked around, locating the ATM machines, the Metro station, the bakery, and restaurants near the apartment for future reference.

 A Stimulating Environment

            The language school was centrally located near Grands Boulevards Metro station. I soon got used to the daily schedule of classes from nine in the morning till one in the afternoon. I was placed at the high end of the intermediate level, and there was a good mix of exercises in aural comprehension, grammar, reading literary texts or material from websites and group discussions. The students came from all corners of the world, were mostly about half my age, not long out of college, and studying French before charting a course for their futures. There were also a couple of young attorneys who were doing it to enhance their career prospects. Many of the class discussions revolved around the burning issues of the day, say, accusations of improper campaign fundraising leveled against Alain Juppe, or public perceptions of Nicholas Sarkozy, then the Minister of the Interior. I found it interesting to learn about Boris Viand, novelist and jazz trumpeter, who published some highly controversial books and also captivated audiences in jazz bars up and down St. Germain for many years. It was stimulating and refreshing to be in this learning environment.   

 Enough Time for a Long Lunch

            The advantage of classes ending at one was that there were no constraints on the length of one’s mid-day meal. I would generally return to my own neighborhood for lunch. Some days, when I was tired and hungry, and running late, I would go straight to a sandwich shop just a few steps from the apartment, on rue de Miromesnil, order a poulet a l’estragon (chicken in estragon sauce) sandwich in toasted baguette, followed by a delicious tarte au citron (lemon tart) or tarte aux poires (pear tart).  A light meal like that, including a bottle of Vittel, would cost no more than 7 euros. When I’m in the mood for a more leisurely pace, I would go to a spice shop cum restaurant called Grand Terroir, on 30, rue de Miromesnil, just opposite the sandwich bar. This marvelous little shop, lined with shelves filled with a variety of spices, herbs, confiture and fine wines from all over France, also functions as a restaurant at lunch time, when its long tables are occupied by suited businessmen and local residents alike. This charming eatery has a small but enticing menu which includes such items as a beautifully seasoned mesclun salad served with morsels of foie gras de canard,(duck liver) gesiers de canard confits (duck innards cooked in their own oil) and magret fume (smoked sliced duck breast).  The menu suggests combining this delectable dish with a glass of Bordeaux, St. Emillion, Grande Lassalle, so this became my favorite choice whenever I lunched there. And as if this massive intake of guilt-engendering cholesterol were not enough, the staff would invariably suggest a dessert, their piece de resistance being  fondant au chocolat, a rich, silky chocolate soufflé swimming in an absolutely sinful light-yellow sauce, whose exquisite taste I had never experienced anywhere in the world.  Occasionally, the restaurant would offer an alternative such as tartine aux fruits exotiques (exotic fruit salad), but that would come again in a delicious sauce which could hardly be termed dietetic!  On one occasion I had arrived late, around quarter to two, when most of the tables had already emptied out and the family running the establishment was just sitting down to lunch themselves, but I was still warmly welcomed, seated at a small table adjacent to theirs and we proceeded to enjoy our lunches without any sense of awkwardness.

             Some days I would just find a convenient brasserie and have a plat du jour and a glass of Beaujolais or Bordeaux. Right in my neighborhood is Le Mirasol, run by friendly Italians, where boudin noir avec pommes frites (blood sausage with French Fries) or couscous aux trois viandes (couscous with three kinds of meat) would cost no more than 22 euros.  There is always a constant steam of customers here, and plenty of informality and friendly chatter amid thick clouds of smoke from Gauloises.  They also do a take-out business here, as evidenced by the fact that customers from nearby shops bring back plates, wine glasses and coffee cups whose contents they had consumed. The practice of using paper plates and food cartons never caught on in this country!  Just across the street from the brasserie is Les Gouts d’Asie, a tiny but immaculate Chinese restaurant run by a young Chinese couple who emigrated from Cambodia and serving simple dishes as well as Cantonese dim sum.  I once had a late supper there on a Sunday night when nothing else was open but was never able to get in there at lunchtime, when the place is always filled with office workers.           

             And then there is the famous Le Rubis, a tiny, enormously popular wine bar located in the Tuileries area, on 10, rue de marche Saint Honore. On the ground floor, where there are very few tables, many customers come and lunch standing at the bar, but on the next floor there is additional seating, and larger groups can sit together at long tables in a convivial and informal atmosphere. It is reputed to have the best Beaujolais in Paris, and also very good cheese. The plat du jour is usually an appetizing and hearty dish. This is an experience not to be missed. The neighborhood is quite salubrious and attractive, and there is a wide choice of interesting restaurants around the square nearby.

 Exhibitions in the Marais

             Such was the nature of my French course that each lesson generated plenty of new grammar rules to learn, vocabulary to absorb, and homework to complete. But some afternoons, when the weather was mild and only partly cloudy, I couldn’t resist the temptation to get on the Metro and explore the multifarious neighborhoods of the great city. Generally, I found it easier to have a purpose and a specific destination, and enjoy the quartier as an incidental bonus. On one such afternoon I took myself off to the Marais to see an exhibition of photographs of the Algerian War sponsored by the patrimoine national de photographe shown at the Hotel de Sully, a beautiful 17^th century mansion with a courtyard and manicured garden. The photographs, in black-and-white, evoked not only the horror and futility of the War, but also the inevitable clash between the French colonial establishment and Algerian nationalism. In the 60’s, De Gaulle’s government in Paris abandoned the policy of hanging on to this large, oil-rich, almost contiguous territory, and started negotiating the terms of a cease-fire and future independence with Algerian representatives. But die-hard opponents of his policy, such as the French generals conducting the War in Algeria, refused to give in and staged a mini coup in Algiers in defiance of the metropolitan government. The War was to take a tremendous toll in French and Algerian lives, with escalating demonstrations by Algerian residents of Paris brutally put down by the police and military, resulting in a sense of outrage and further exacerbation of relations. Before the end of the War and the attainment of Algerian independence, the “Pieds Noirs,” or French people who had lived in Algeria for generations, put down roots there and considered it their home, streamed out of the territory to return to metropolitan France, leaving behind their businesses and properties in bitter disappointment. The exhibition makes the point that the French government and people have never properly faced or came to terms with the legacy of the War, and there is no annual commemoration in France of its end, whereas the Americans, they say, immediately transformed the War in Vietnam into part of American history after it ended.

             Another interesting temporary exhibition was one called “Shanghai d’hier et de demain,” held at the Musee Carnavalet, whose permanent exhibition is dedicated to the history of urbanism and architecture in Paris. The museum is housed in two Renaissance mansions located on rue de Sevingne. The current exhibition displayed photographs of the great Chinese city from the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, when it was a cosmopolitan metropolis run essentially by foreigners, mostly Europeans. There was one photo of the wife of the mayor of Shanghai, on International Children’s Day, giving a doll to a school-child, but the doll was of a European, not Chinese girl.  There were photographs of Art Deco buildings, elegant department stores, huge cinemas and beautifully-appointed restaurants. These were juxtaposed with photos that projected into Shanghai’s future, which had been taken recently by Marc Rimbaud, the celebrated French photographer who had traveled twice to China. His photos and narrative evoke the commercial and industrial juggernaut that the city represents, symbolizing the ambitions and self-confidence of the China of the 21^st century, no longer struggling with the legacy of Western domination.

Place des Vosges

One of the side benefits of coming to the Marais is being able to take a stroll around the Place des Vosges, constructed in the early 17^th Century by King Henry the Fourth. It is of stone and red brick, tree-lined, with arcades surrounding it, and is one of the most venerated and loved squares in Paris. The arcades are full of boutiques, restaurants and wine bars, including a well known one called Ma Bourgogne.I like coming here on a Sunday, when my own neighborhood basically shuts down, but here the eateries are always open and doing a roaring trade.



 

Impromptu musical performances take place under the vaulted ceilings of the arcade (see left), whether it’s someone playing the accordion, the violin or the guitar. The atmosphere is informal but richly cultural. Victor Hugo’s house is a museum and is open to the public. Right off the square is the rue des Francs Bourgeois, a typical Marais street full of chic boutiques, toy shops, bookshops and the like. One section of the quartier, basically, on and around rue des Rosiers, is a distinctly Jewish area, replete with synagogues, kosher restaurants, and Jewish delicatessens such as the Café Goldenberg which suffered a terrorist bombing attack some years ago. One can also find shops selling Jewish religious paraphernalia such as menorahs and ceremonial objects, or bookshops specializing in Jewish history and culture.

 

 

 

Dining in the various neighborhoods           

             I was able to find a very pleasant restaurant, called Yvan, at 1bis, rue jean Mermoz, some ten minutes walk from my apartment on Penthievre, not far from the Carousel des Champs Elysees. It offered a varied and appetizing prix fixe menu with numerous choices of cold and hot hors d’oeuvres, main courses and desserts, all for 37 euros.  A typical meal would consist of  ravioles aux moules (mussel ravioli), magret de canard (sliced duck breast) and mille feuille aux poires avec sorbet de poire (thin layers of pastry with pear and pear sorbet) .  The magret was lean and deep pink in color, with a crisp, seared skin and rich, gamy taste. The wine list is reasonable and varied and many different half bottles and wines by the glass are available.  This unassuming eatery became my local, and I dined there as much as several times a week, so that the staff got to know me really well, and I was greeted and served warmly, as if I’d been a regular customer for years.

             Another neighborhood restaurant is Le Berkeley. 7 Avenue Matignon, where terrine de foie gras (liver terrine) and souris d’agneau (lamb shank) washed down by a half-bottle of Brouilly would run about 60 euros.

             Near St. Augustin Metro station, again a short walk from Penthievre, is a very picturesque Moroccan restaurant, Villa Mauresque, which we were able to enjoy en famille. There were richly carved doorways and lintels, thick carpets woven in strong, arresting colors and designs, and embossed brass objects everywhere. The food is many variations on lamb, and my favorite was lamb braised with a mélange of dried fruits such as raisins, apricots and tangerines, served with couscous. There is a good selection of French and Moroccan wines, and the waitress was very helpful about indicating which one was dry, fruity or full-bodied, while assuring us that they were all good.

 In the Marais, I lunched a tiny family-run restaurant called Un Piano sur le Trottoir, 7, rue des Francs Bourgeois, where guests are greeted with a morsel of delicious cheese served in a porcelain Chinese spoon and a basket of warm, crusty, freshly-baked bread, and a lunch would include maquereau (mackerel), gratin raie (skate baked in cheese sauce), followed by a dessert such as custard caramel.  It was also here that I dined with my wife Margaret and my daughter Rachel on the night of Valentine’s Day when it was practically impossible to get a table anywhere in Paris at short notice, even in the Marais. The American custom of celebrating Valentine’s Day has been successfully exported to France, as has Halloween.

 It was also on a Sunday that I took the Metro all the way to the 13^th Arrondissement, the Chinatown of Paris. Between Porte d’Choisy and Porte d’Ivry is a conglomeration of streets, restaurants and food shops. This was where the Chinese and southeast Asian community first settled in Paris. Many of the restaurants here offer both Chinese or Indochinese cuisine (such as Vietnamese or Cambodian) but I dined that night at a typical Cantonese restaurant called Le Tricotin, just a few blocks from Porte d’Choisy metro station. It was a large, well-lit restaurant with many tables and one could see that little effort had been made at creating any kind of ambience. But the food was appetizing and varied. I started with a couple of orders of dim sum – steamed shrimp dumplings and steamed minced pork and vegetables wrapped in bean-curd skin. Then I ordered frog’s legs sautéed with ginger and scallions and a plate of roast duck, which in France is always called canard laque. There was an appetizing soup served gratis, a tradition in Cantonese restaurants, and I ordered a half bottle of red wine. All of this came to a mere 32 euros. The staff was multilingual, equally at home in Cantonese, French or Cambodian.

 Touring the Eiffel Tower and Museums

It was Rachel’s first visit to Paris, so during the long weekend we did all the usual touristy things like queuing up to be transported by lifts to the top of the Eiffel Tower (see Margaret and Rachel on left), taking the obligatory ride on the bateaux mouches, and, of course, touring the Louvre and viewing the Mona Lisa and other major paintings. The Guimet museum, though recently and attractively renovated with skylights and an immaculate interior, was a bit more of a challenge for Rachel, since the exhibits were of a much more esoteric nature, with Cambodian and Vietnamese sculptures and art objects occupying a preeminent position. Margaret and I enjoyed browsing through the bookshop of this excellent museum specializing in Asian art. Its collection of art books on Cambodia was as extensive as it was dazzling.I chanced upon a highly-informative, thoroughly-researched and beautifully-illustrated book by a French expert, Jacques Claude, on Angkor Wat, and bought it immediately. I had visited Angkor in 1997 and some of the photographs I looked at afterwards baffled me and I was hoping this book would solve some of the mysteries.

Outdoor Market

One of the incidental pleasures of visiting the Guimet is that nearby, on rue President Roosevelt, is one of the major outdoor markets in Paris. Here, the locals come to buy fresh-cut flowers, potted plants, meat, seafood (see left), farm-fresh vegetables, dairy products, pates and terrines, sausages and salamis, loaves of bread and baguettes, household utensils, silk shirts imported from Thailand, and practically anything you can think of. On one stand you find huge oysters, shucked and almost bursting out of their shells, paired with some fine wine of elegant vintage. On another there is a profusion of cheeses, emitting pungentand enticing smells, with the bries and the camemberts ripe and runny and ready to be brough t home and devoured. On yet another stand, Asian ladies in stylish jeans and sweaters are selling an array of cooked Chinese foods.

Cafes and Tea-rooms

             I made my usual pilgrimage to the famed Deux Magots on the Left Bank, sat on a leather banquette, sipped a very expensive coffee, watched the Parisian throng go by and used the elegant wood-paneled Men’s Room downstairs. Much has been written about the two legendary cafes on place Saint-Germain-des-Pres, Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore, separated only by a narrow street.  Both date back to the late1800’s and have been inextricably linked with the leading lights of France, England and America in literature, politics and art. Names like Verlaine, Oscar Wilde, Joyce, Hemingway, Picasso, Camus, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir come readily to mind. Adam Gopnik, author of the best-selling book,” Paris to the Moon,” devotes a whole chapter to examining which of the two is more fashionable among Parisians and possible explanations for this.

             One afternoon, I had just finished viewing vintage Renaults dating from the 30’s and 40’s in the car-maker’s showroom on the Champs Elysees, when I chanced upon Laduree, one of the grand tea-rooms (salons de the) of Paris, at number 75, with several ornately-decorated salons and waitresses formally dressed in black uniforms. This is the newest of four Ladurees in the city, having opened in 1997. It specializes in macaroons, chocolates, ice-creams, fruit tarts and pastries and offers a wide variety of coffees and teas. It is perfectly possible to sit down to a delicious full lunch or dinner here, but the tea-time menu alone runs to nine pages. The menu draws on the diverse regions of France and changes with the seasons. For example, for macaroons, (two small, crunchy cakes made from almond, sugar and egg-whites, combined like a sandwich and filled with ganache) year-round flavors include hazel praline, and black cherry-Amaretto, summer flavors are coconut and lime-basil, and winter flavors could be chestnut and orange. According to the house’s own promotional material, the Laduree family invented tea-rooms. In 1862, Ernest Laduree, a miller from the Southwest, opened a bakery at 16, rue Royale in Paris. In 1871, a fire in the bakery provided the opportunity to convert it into an elegant new pastry shop. This was during the Second Empire (1852-1870), when great changes in Paris were being wrought by Haussman, and cafes began developing in opulence and popularity. So at his wife’s suggestion, Ernest Laduree decided to combine the pastry shop and a café, leading to the founding of one of the first tea-rooms in Paris. The original one on rue Royale is still flourishing today.

              Rachel’s favorite drink is hot chocolate. What better place to savor it than at Dalloyau, a tea-room on rue du faubourg Saint Honore?  So off we went one morning to have breakfast there. It dates back to 1802, but the current establishment is modern and immaculate with a shop downstairs, an attractive tearoom and a bar for light meals on the upper floors. We were seated on dark pink banquettes in the upstairs tea-room, which has views of the street through Chinese-inspired moon-shaped windows. All three of us ordered hot chocolate and croissants. Both were excellent. It is said that the founder, Jean-Baptiste Dalloyau, born in 1747, had the foresight to imagine that if the Revolution had put an end to the decadent life of the Court, the emerging middle class would be obsessed with the idea of living like the aristocracy. So he founded in 1802 an establishment conceived as a “Maison de Gastronomie,” a kind of temple to gastronomic pleasures, combining all the trades related to eating well. We find sumptuous expression of this concept in the shop downstairs, where one can find every imaginable kind of chocolate, pastry, ice-cream, bread, tart and also mouth-watering savory creations (goose liver with truffles, lobster in minestrone, roast lamb with mushrooms….) that can be purchased and taken home or packed for a picnic on a beautiful summer’s day. Here, tradition, luxury and practicality have come together in a seamless manner. Like Laduree, this house of distinction has several branches in Paris, including one in the Luxembourg Gardens.

 A Rewarding Cultural Experience

             The need to study French brought me to Paris. But I was delighted to have been able to take in the sights, sounds and smells of the City of Light, and not just as a tourist. By the end of my stay, I had come to appreciate more deeply than ever before, the mellifluousness of the language, the newspapers, the Metro and its Art Nouveau stations, the awesome quality and variety of foods, the places redolent with history, the outstanding museums, the unfailing courtesy of  Parisians, the rhythm of the streets, the quiet melancholy of the Seine and all the wonderful, simple every-day things that make this city friendly, habitable, vibrant, sophisticated and endlessly fascinating.

 Jeffrey Tao, May 25, 2004