Offbeat Eats

Well, after a bit less than a week in France spent in Grenoble and Paris, it was time to catch a late morning flight home. Wanting to avoid the miasma of an airport breakfast, I decided to grab breakfast on my way to the airport. I was staying near Gare du Nord and Gare de L’est, an area not particularly known for French bistrots and cafes, much of it being more of the cell-phone-cover, beauty supply stores, and coiffures district, but right next to my hotel on the corner of the busy Boulevard de Magenta and rue de Chabrol was a nice little cafe that showed some potential: P’tite Bougnate (“Bougnate” means a woman from Auvergne, in a word that has a most interesting etymology, but that’s a story for another time and place).

After two days of watching cool aircraft, talking business, and talking business while watching cool aircraft at the Paris Air Show, I had a free evening to explore around Paris on a Monday night before having to head back to the airport early in the morning. I decided to deliberately explore part of Paris that I usually didn’t explore in detail, the 3e arrondissement. The quieter half of Paris’ Marais district (known for museum and fashion houses, the other half of Le Marais lying in the busier 4e arrondissement), it’s a mostly residential area in Paris with a few nice boulevards like Rue de Turrene ahd several nice walking parks (Square du Tempe, Hôtel-Salé-Léonor-Fini Garden, and over the border in the 4e arrondissement, Place des Vosges). A few blocks north of Place des Vosges, I found a splendid spot for dinner, Chez Janou.

My travels in France had me spending a spare weekend in Paris (quelle horreur!), and on Sunday morning, after a stroll through the north end of downtown Paris, ending up in Montmartre, I realized I was starting to get a bit hungry, and I set off looking for a decent breakfast or brunch. The Parisiens definitely do brunch, but in my case it was still 10:00, which is a bit on the early side; so instead of going to one of the many cafes and bistros around the base of Sacré-Cœur for a brunch, I had a bit of time to wander around some of the quieter corners of the neighbor. I ended up looping through Villa Léandre about two blocks of Sacré-Cœur, a fairly quiet residential area that’s got a fair amount of art deco decor, and that’s where I found Marcel.

One of the advantages of having fairly regular trips to certain destinations like London and Paris is that you can occasionally not worry about finding new places, and just revisit some old favorites. In this case, after several days in Grenoble, France, I had a spare day in Paris before the next portion of my trip (the Paris Air Show), so I spent a day visiting the Musée des Arts et Métiers, walking around seeing the various sights in Paris, and eventually wandering over to the 6ème Arrondissement to check up on some favorites, including stopping for a sampling of rum at La Rhumerie, and then wandering over to revisit one of my favorite informal Paris bistros for an Offbeat Eats Health Check: Bistrot d’Henri.

While I’ve had a more than a few truly memorable and enjoyable meals in my life, I’ve had a few that were truly touchstones, memories that I could return to and remember both the simple enjoyment and the thrill of something new. And I long ago learned that too often those touchstones were fleeting moments that can’t be recreated; returning to the same place, and ordering the same item, often doesn’t work. Too often you experience the pain of nostalgia, revisiting an old favorite and discovering that part of the ineffable nature of the experience is gone due to a change in context: the experience itself has wilted, the company is different, or even the fact that the person you are is no longer the person you were, and instead of striking a chord the experience reminds you of change. But sometimes it does work, and it resonates like a bell, and that brings me to… L’Ardoise.

This particular visit to France was a work trip, with visits to both a partner company in Grenoble, France, and another visit to the Paris Air Show (yeah, life is hard, isn’t it?). This time I took a completely different approach on getting to Grenoble; we fly into Paris Charles De Gaulle and took the TGV down to Lyon, catching a local train to Grenoble. This looked great on paper, but two major hitches in that plan: first, the baggage handlers at CDG took a full hour and 40 minutes to unload the aircraft and deliver my bags, which was just slow enough that I barely missed my train to Lyon. But after an hour and half relaxing with an espresso, I caught the next one, with a surprisingly smooth and efficient trip to Lyon (so, travel hint here: take the TGV: it’s one of the best train services out there). But then the trip from Lyon to Grenoble was interesting: recent rains had resulted in a landslide over the tracks, so they had to route us on a very scenic, but very circuitous, trip through the French Alps via Chambéry. However, we still arrived in Grenoble in time to get settled into our hotel and meet up with our hosts at one of their favorite spots in downtown Grenoble: Brasserie Chavant.

After wrapping up our business activities at the Paris Air Show, we headed into downtown Paris to meet up with our hosts for dinner. Our hosts were staying at a nice hotel in the 6e Arrondissement (we were staying at a Comfort[sic] Inn out by CDG; a word of advise for anyone wanting to do the Paris Air Show: reserve your hotel room months in advance!), which is one of my favorite parts of town (twice before I’ve stayed at the nearby Hotel Quai Voltaire on the banks of the Seine in the 7e Arrondissement for a quite reasonable price, but not during the Air Show). The 6e Arrondissement has a nice selection of cafés, chocolate shops, and even a really good rum bar. As we rendezvoused with our hosts, it was just few minutes before 17:00, so our host recommended we see how the line was for the nearby Le Relais de L’Entrecôte.

After two busy and fruitful days of work in Grenoble, we headed back to Lyon and caught a flight up to Paris, joining some more colleagues for a few days at the Paris Air Show. When our hosts offered to take us out to a traditional Parisian Brasserie with an outing to Bouillon Chartier, I was quite pleased. I’ve long maintained a list of classic Parisian restaurants I’ve wanted to try, and Chartier is near the top of the list (as an aside, more than once on our visit I was comparing recommendation lists with our hosts, and pleased to see a lot of overlap). Bouillon Chartier, founded in 1896, is one of Paris’s older existing restaurants.

After a hectic April and May of traveling, I was looking forward to a relatively quiet June, and then work came up with an opportunity; for several days my coworker and I were visiting a commercialization partner in Grenoble, France, culminating in a trip to the Paris Air Show. So yeah, life is tough. After packing up and catching a flight out of Montreal (my general rule seemed to hold; Montreal is cheaper than Boston for French-speaking destinations, I’m guessing because of higher demand and competition?) into Paris, and then catching a flight to Lyon, and then about an hour’s drive, we found ourselves in Grenoble in the western foothills of the French Alps. After an afternoon of actual work and facility tours, our hosts wanted to take us out to a nice dinner. Normally an easy task, much like the US, Monday isn’t the greatest day for restaurant outings; most of the places in Grenoble are closed on Mondays. But our host had a place he enjoyed west of town, up in the Parc Naturel Régional du Vercors, up a winding mountain road outside of the village of Saint-Nizier-du-Moucherotte): L’Auberge des 3 Pucelles (roughly “The Inn of the 3 Virgins”, named after the nearby rock formation).

For our last full meal in Paris, we met up with my brother and sister-in-law one last time for an outing to l’Européen, an impressively large an busy brasserie located directly across the street from Gare de Lyon, one of Paris’ most busy train stations. It also has a reputation for good service, classic French bistro fare, and good seafood. Going inside, Brasserie l’Européen definitely has the brasserie look down pat: the place is filled with shiny fixtures, neatly-made tables with crisp, white tableclothes, and waitstaff darting about in equally crisp, white aprons, delivering food and wine bottles to tables. Also out front is a rather large and impressive seafood counter, with a member of the staff preparing various fruits de mer. We were promptly welcomed, and escorted to a nice corner table by the front window where we could enjoy some people watching as people were entering and leaving the train station across the street.