Grazing Through Paris ...

What follows is unadulterated, unmitigated food porn. Bring Zocor.

It was a lazy Sunday spent first dozing off on the RER suburban rail line out to Versailles. Overwhelmed by the opulence, the overcrowding and the realization that we don't really like looking at overly ornate living quarters, we bid adieu to the palace and headed back to the city.

Bob was still jet-lagged so went off or a nap, I went for a walk along the Boulevard Saint-Germaine and stopped in for lunch at Le Grand Bar Cluny.

The weather was perfect, sunny, some clouds, low-70s. So I had a half-bottle of Muscadet with a salmon carpaccio salad and a half-dozen escargot.

The salmon had been prepared like a ceviche in lemon juice, than served with a tossed salad, with a garnish of chopped red peppers and basil. A balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing was splashed on top.

The escargot were prepared simply, tender, in garlic, herb butter. It was a relaxing meal. A soft breeze moved down the boulevard, it was a quiet Sunday afternoon. Perfectly pleasant.

Common sense is telling me I shouldn't be eating like this; but since when has common sense got between me and a tasty dish? That's just silly.

We had a 7:30 reservation for dinner at another of Jon Bonne's suggestions, the classic Bouillon Racine, just around the corner from the Sorbonne, and only a five minute walk from our hotel.

Founded in 1906, it's a traditional French brasserie famous for both its traditional cooking and its amazing Art Nouveau interior.

The interior was just spectacular, the leaded glass, the flowing arcs and curves, the pale green hue of the walls and the warm wood of the table tops and the bar. Check out the website for the history.

Still, we were concerned the decor and history might detract from the food. Now here Bob and I are split. We ordered each a three-course set meal from the 1900 Menu. Bob started with the Verrine of fresh crab meat with avocado and grapefruit, which while not the prettiest of platings, tasted wonderful.

I opted for the homemade duck foie gras with cherry compote and toast. The compote has the perfect amount of tartness to balance the rich creaminess of the foie gras. It was spectacular.

At the waiter's suggestion, we orded a bottle of the Chateau de la Chaize Brouilly, a 100% Gamay grape wine from Beaujolais, perfect for the main course, the stuffed and spit roasted suckling pig.

Now, this is where Bob and I disagreed about the meal. Bouillon Racine offers up traditional, almost peasant-like meals, as well as more refined fare. In fact, the history on the front of the menu recalls how it grew out of a trend of "bouillon" fast food-like stalls and bistros which popped up at the turn of the 20th Century as more and more workers came to the fast-growing industrialized Paris.

The pork was tender, savory with a bread stuffing, full of un-brined olives, carrots, onions and some dried fruit, possibly apricots. I thought it was a great dish. Bob, however, was expecting something a little more rustic, with the skin crispy and the meat, just as tender, but flakier, like the kind of spit-roasted meats we had in Croatia.

For dessert, Bob ordered the special of the day and chocolate and candied cherry cake. The cake was a dark, not too sweet chocolate and the cherries were folded into a light cream. Not too sweet, but nothing to write home about. I, on the other hand, felt that the foie gras had not introduced enough fat into my diet, so I went with the cheese platter.

From left to right: Roussin au Marc de Bourgogne, a Chevrac du Perigord and a Saint Marcellin. The Roussin's rind is soaked in a brandy, yet the flavor is remarkably mild. The Chevrac was a stronger, creamy goat's cheese and the Saint Marcellin is an insanely creamy cow's milk cheese from the Rhone region that, once you broke the rind, just oozed tart, aromatic cheesy goodness all over the slate cheese board.

Bob finished with a coffee, then we walked back to the hotel in a food coma. 

From Persepolis to Provençal

Our love for Paris is eclipsed only by our love for the Louvre.

To be more specific, it's not so much the art within the museum (though it's a treasure trove of history and beauty), it's the structure itself. We are huge I.M Pei fans, having once trekked to Kyoto, Japan specifically to visit the Miho Museum.

Commissioned by President François Mitterrand in 1984, and completed in 1989, the Louvre Pyramid (technically a large pyramid with three smaller ones, an inverted pyramid and mirror pools) was built in the center of the museums main courtyard, the Cour Napoléon, as the main entrance into the museum's giant underground lobby.

It was a stroke of genius, the design. How could you expand upon the core structures of the building, the former palace of Louis the XIV (not known for his understatement when it came to construction, check out Versailles), without aping a 17th Century style?

By using simple geometric forms, that's how. Some people find it jarring, but Bob and I just love its openness and simplicity.

And the subterranean lobby is bright, expansive and quite timeless in its design, allowing easy access to all the wings of the older building.

This was the fourth time I had been to the Louvre, for Bob, his fifth. We avoided the Mona Lisa because it's usually a madhouse and once you've seen her enigmatic smile and bought the mug/t-shirt/college dorm poster, you've kind of figured out the whole thing.

Winged Victory, or the Nike of Samothrace, is one of the highlights which we usually enjoy when we visit, but sadly this time around she was not on display as the lady at the ticket counter joked, "she is getting her make-up done."

Still, we hightailed it to my favorite part, Near Eastern Antiquities. Ever since I read The Epic of Gilgamesh in college, I've found the ancient world of the Levant, Mesopotamia and Persia fascinating. Mostly because the complexity of the cultures, many which pre-date the Judeo-Christian era, but whose myths and stories inform what we now call the Old Testament.

Also, it was a ruthlessly violent world, and not just in terms of the geopolitical nature of the emerging empires of the time.

The structures, the mythological, magical beings, to me at least, are a testament to ancient man's attempts to put order into their world, with so many of these ideas – Gryphons, sphinxes, the original writings in clay tablets, the tale of Gilgamesh, the baby found in the reeds – just still informing Western society today.

It's also the scope of one man's vision which I find intriguing. Darius 1 or Darius the Great, commissioned two giant halls, called Apadana, in both the Persepolis, the capitol of the Achaemenid Empire, and Susa, a kind of second, administrative center sometime around 510 B.C. Check out the size of the capitals that supported the building's ceiling:

The columns were 62-feet high! And there were 72 of them at the palace in Persepolis supporting ceiling beams, built from cedar trees from Lebanon. Not bad for 2600 years ago, I would say. Amazing.

Above all else, I see the Louvre as this weird shrine to Empire, ancient and modern. When Louis the XIV moved to Versailles, this, his former palace, became home to the art and plunder of his empire. When Mitterrand commissioned the Louvre, detractors said the pyramids were an attempt to enshrine his image like the pharaohs of old.

Bob and I decided to walk through the Tuileries Garden towards the Champs-Élysées, but not before getting a quick photo of the rollerblading gendarmes.

We also stopped to get a photo taken because, as we keep on being reminded, there are few photos of Bob and I together:

We stopped at the Musée de l'Orangerie, a museum on the Tuileries, just off the Place de la Concorde, that is home to Impressionist and post-Impressionist works by Cezanne, Matisse and Renoir. But the highlight are the two elliptical rooms where eight of Monet's Water Lilies paintings grace the walls. Calming and beautiful, it's definitely worth the visit.

We made it back to our neighborhood and had wine and charcuterie. Bob took a nap, I wrote a blog and did some reading. Then, at the hotel manager's recommendation, we headed for dinner to Chez Janou Bistrot in the Marais.

Now this was a packed, local restaurant where people were crammed into tables and the wait staff were run off their feet. A "restaurant Provençal" with a reputation for both great and mediocre meals, a large assortment of Pastis cocktails (81 according to the menu!) and an allegedly rude wait staff, Bob and I appeared to have split the difference meal-wise.

We both had the fish soup, which was a hearty bisque served with croutons, remoulade and parmesan cheese. Tasty.

Bob ordered what turned out to be a very fatty veal chop with dauphinois potatoes (unintentionally cold), in a mushroom sauce (also cold).

I decided to throw caution to the wind and ordered the tagliatelle avec escargots. Now this was awesome, the pasta was cooked perfectly and it was folded, along with the escargot, into a rich butter and cream sauce with toasted pine nuts, chopped fresh basil and star anise.

Pastis is an anise flavored liqueur that's about 45% alcohol by volume, and you drink it with added flavors like orange or melon, diluted with still water. It is, by and large, potent and nasty.

I'm glad I tried it, so now I never have to do it again.