Around Paris

DUCK in the Gourmet Food Hall, with their heads still on. Washing and removing the giblets from a raw 20 lb. turkey is one thing, but decapitating a duck is beyond the scope of what I am willing to do in the kitchen to enjoy poultry.

The ultimate pork treat: sausage stuffed with ham, and wrapped in bacon. It's like the all-pig version of turducken. It was hard to walk away from this without buying it.

Then after we tired of oogling, we continued walking down Boulevard Haussmann, and made our way to the La Madeleine Church, which is designed like a Greek Temple and reminds me of the Parthenon. From the church there is a terrific view down to the Place de la Concorde.

Place de la Concorde from La Madeleine.

After checking out the inside of the church (not as pretty as the outside), we headed back to the hotel to relax a bit before our first big dinner out. Jared had done extensive research on where we should eat in Paris, since it is one of the top foodie locations in the world. In his research, Jared came upon a movement called "Bistronomy" in which classically trained French chefs who have experience working at big-name restaurants, are setting out on their own classic bistros "that seek to bring an eating experience rivaling or even surpassing the classic gastronomic restaurants on a vastly more moderate budget by stripping away some of the more expensive extras normally associated with these restaurants and more or less only focusing on the food." (quoting from www.thecheapgourmand.com for accuracy). So, read, delicious gourmet food, in a bistro atmosphere.

So, for night 1 of our Bistronomy tour of Paris we headed to a new restaurant called "L'Agrume."
L'Agrume is a tiny little restaurant south of the Latin Quarter, near Jardin des Plantes. It only has about 10 tables, and the kitchen is open so you can see the chef Franck Marchesi-Grandi and his 1 helper working away in the kitchen (his wife is the waitress). And since we can't read the French menu anyway, we ordered the 5-course prix fixe, which turned out to be tied for my favorite meal of the week. Everything was made with the freshest ingredients, and it was a light summery menu, which I loved. We started with a gazpacho with a variety of fresh tomatoes and basil. Our second course was a smoked eel and beet salad with foie gras cream dressing (which, I surprisingly really enjoyed, despite my previous aversion to eel), followed by a prawn and white bean/legume soup with dill. Our main was a poached white fish with lemon in an herb butter with leek (or fennel, not sure which). And for dessert there was Vanilla panna cotta with strawberry coulis and cocoa covered chocolate mousse in a mint flavored sauce. We enjoyed a nice bottle of Bordeaux with dinner, and I was just really impressed with the high quality of the food, and that the progression of the meal flowed perfectly. A delicious way to end our second day (all of our dinner bookings were for 9pm, so it really was the end of the day). Yum.

The Opera House, just a few blocks up from our hotel.

On Wednesday, 7/28, we enjoyed breakfast at the hotel again, before deciding that it was finally time to face the crowds and go to the Musee du Louvre. I had been before, but I figured Jared's first trip to Paris would not be complete if he did not at least see the Louvre. It took 30 minutes to get through the line to even get to the metal detector to get in the door, and once we were in, Jared quickly tired of the crowds, so we only lasted about 2 hours (you could spend days in the Louvre). We hit up all the prerequisites like the Mona Lisa (Jared was far from impressed), but the highlight for us was the Napoleon Apartments...

Dining Room in the Napoleon Apartments. Just in case you wanted to host an intimate dinner with 30 of your closest friends... This is probably the biggest dining table I have ever seen.