Sunday, 8 October, Jules Verne, the Paris Aquarium

Written 11 November 2023

Sunday was the other day on which our chosen restaurant could take us only at lunch time, so we booked Jules Verne—the restaurant on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower—for 12:30 pm. The new Paris Aquarium is conveniently located just across the river from the tower, in the Gardens of the Trocadero, so I bought timed-entry tickets there for 3 pm, figuring we'd have time for lunch, then stroll over the bridge to look at the fish.

But when I tried to get an estimate of the walking time, I couldn't get Google to admit that you could cross the intervening major roadway and walk over that bridge. Zooming in on the aerial views revealed crosswalks, stop lights, walkways along the sides of the bridge, and even people on those walkways, but the only walking route Google would show was to parallel the river eastward for a good long ways, walk over a different bridge, then hike all the way back along the river to the aquarium. Well, maybe Google knew something I didn't, so I figured we'd just get an Uber to take us over there.

So after a pleasantly lazy morning, we hopped the trusty 92 bus, headed once more for the rue St. Dominique, an easy walk along shaded streets to the Eiffel Tower, only to discover that, on Sundays, not every bus ran the whole route. The one we were on kicked everybody off at École Militaire, two stops short. Okay, we consulted the time and decided just to walk from there—it wasn't that much farther. Indeed, after a pleasant stroll down the length of the Champs de Mars, we were headed for the south pillar of the tower (where a private elevator takes you straight to the restaurant), just about on time, when we squinted ahead in surprise. Since we were there last, someone had surrounded the entire Eiffel Tower with a 10-foot wall! Transparent panels alternated with opaque ones, but we could see this side of it, end to end, and no gate was in sight. Drat!

We guessed that turning left (toward the south pillar) made sense, so we followed the wall that way, and when we turned the corner, sure enough, there was a gate, equipped with the usual x-ray and metal detector, where a line of people half a block long waited to get in. Fortunately, we spotted a small sign pointing to a separate security checkpoint for customers of the two restaurants in the tower. They checked us through promptly, and a young woman in a smart suit and heels led us to the special elevator and sent us up to the restaurant's desk.

Here's the view from our table. The low red building in the foreground, with the black-and-white shield-shaped canopy on top, is the MusÉe Jacques Chirac—indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. The black and white shield apparently shelters the café on its roof.

On the horizon in the hazy distance, you can make out the Basilica of the Sacré Coeur, on the Butte de Montmartre.

Written 12 November 2023

Shortly, the "books" were whisked away and replaced by the first amuse-bouches—one for each of us—a shiny sphere of panna cotta of preserved chestnuts with a glaze of madiera and something I didn't catch, on a bed of bacon emulsion and sherry vinegar, all resting in a crisp little tartlet shell. Tasty.

At the right is the bread service, the now predictable crusty spherical loaf cut into quarters, accompanied by tasty salted butter. Note (you advocates of unsalted butter as "more gourmet") that none of the extremely highly rated places we ate provided unsalted butter; it was always "demisel," which means "half salted" but which is generally saltier than American salted butter. I think it's "demi-" in the sense that it's not as salty as butter salted down for long-term storage.

The second amuse-bouche was a "royal" (i.e., delicate custard) of foie gras with sweet onions and froth on top and tiny croutons and little herbs. I'm afraid we ate it before I remembered to take a photo.

First course: an emulsion of crab flavored with tarragon and topped with a "zephyr pomme Granny"—that is, a "breeze of Granny Smith apple."

At one point, between courses, the two parties sitting behind us (one of which was two women traveling together and having, very vocally, an excellent time) introduced themselves to each other and were laughing aloud to realize that they were both from North Carolina—the women from Wilmington and the couple from Winston Salem. Then I really cracked them up by turning in my seat to say, "And I'm from Chapel Hill." They declared it a full-scale invasion of France!

Third course: langoustine surrounded by a cream of Parmesan and draped with a "fine jelly" of beets. Yummy.

Fourth course: turbot napped with sabayon of pencil-thin leeks. It was decorated with nasturium leaves, a couple of grilled whole (pencil-thin) leeks, and a little red leaf of some kind. At the table, the waitress sprinkled little drops of yuzu juice over it.

Fifth course: Bresse chicken poached with miso and mushrooms, with eggplant and rich juice. The yellow sauce is the miso mixture, the dark-colored one the rich juice, and the eggplant is the little pieces hiding under the crispy object on top which we never identified.

Sixth course (first dessert): a confection of crisp meringue covered with a light honey mouse (decorated with a leaf of clover) enclosing a fig marmalade, with a sauce of sour black currant on the side.

Seventh course (second dessert): chocolate. The long dark object is a crispy half-cylindrical chocolate crêpe with a little baton of white ice cream rolled in ground up cocoa nibs in the middle. In the bowl is a hot chocolate soufflé with crispy flakes of Maldon sea salt lurking in the bottom (the waiter warned us it was there). A hot chocolate dessert is usually too much for me after a multicourse meal, but I scarfed every bit of this one.

At the right is the array of wine David accumulated in the course of the meal's wine pairings. As you can see, he was wise enough not to drink all of any of them.

At the left here, the mignardises.

After the mignardises, they brought us each a parting gift to take home—a little flat white box containing a very dark chocolate bar and designed to look like the ceramic Verne books. The left-hand one bears a quote from Le Secret de Wilhelm Storitz (not one I'd ever heard of), and the right-hand one a quote from Around the World in Eighty Days.

The service hadn't been very rapid, but we were still in fairly good time to make our 3 pm reservation at the Aquarium. We headed down in the elevator, out through the gate in the new wall, and on to the nearby corner designated as the drop-off point for people arriving by taxi or limo.

There, we ordered up an Uber and, as we waited for it, realized that traffic all around the Eiffel Tower was disrupted by road closures for a footrace associated with the Rugby World Cup. The Uber found us though, and after being turned back only once found a route across the river and then back toward the Aquarium. As we passed, we could clearly see people walking from the Eiffel Tower across the bridge toward the Trocadero—I still don't know what Google's problem was. At the left here is a view from our Uber across the river.

In the telephoto'd version at the right, just above the rows of people lining the railings on the second landing, you can see a flat gray box—that's the restaurant.

In the end, we were a little late for our entry time, but the place wasn't busy, so they let us in with no problem.

Written 13 November 2023

Zoos, and even large flight-cage aviaries, somehow manage to make clear what species you are looking at, but the same is not true of aquaria. Only occasionally (well, a little oftener than you'd expect by chance) do the labels match up with the fish tanks. I'm pretty sure the large fish at the left here is a seabream (Sparus sp.) Below and to the left of it, you can make out a little spotted shark called a "roussette" in French. The red object is a bouy, below which dangles a line with little bundles attached—fish food maybe? In the upper right corner, the reflection of my hat and my fingers wrapped around the camera.

The photo at the right is pretty dark, but maybe you can make out the six-foot-wide model of a crab lurking in the corner with the fire extinguisher.

The little guy at the right might or might not be "Callionymus reticulatus," the reticulated dragonet.

Here's a cute little Macroramphosus scolopax. In French it's called a "bécasse de mer," literally a "sea woodcock," because it's long nose looks like the long beak of the bird. In English, named for a closely related bird, it's the "longspine snipefish."

And of course, the jellyfish are always beautiful. I don't have a name for this one, but I display it because it came out in focus. Any readers know what it is?

This one also came out well. It's Chrysaora fuscesens, the Pacific sea nettle.

The collection included much more and was definitely worth the visit, but my photography was not terribly successful. When we'd covered the whole thing, we made our way back out to the point where our driver had dropped us off and called for an Uber to take us back to the hotel. Unfortunately, there was no place to sit and not even any shade. A driver four minutes away responded promptly and started toward us. We were able to track his progress on my phone, but he didn't seem to get any nearer. After a couple of strange epicycles, he must have gotten stuck in the wrong lane. Although we never saw him, the tracking map showed him shooting past us and over a bridge to the far side of the river, farther away than when he started. From there, he wandered around the streets near the Eiffel Tower, apparently caught up in the maze created by the street closures and unable to get back. After 20 minutes of standing in the sun, we were wondering how to cancel him without being charged when Uber Central pinged us with the message "We're finding you another driver." That driver started six minutes away but came straight to us without difficulty.

At the right here is a view of the new wall around the tower, which I got from the Uber; you can see the interspersed clear and opaque panels bewteen the pedestrians and the pillar of the tower. This side (toward the Seine) also had no gate. Apparently, our gate and one opposite it are the only two entry points.

Our driver was French, a Parisian all his life but of Moroccan extraction, and we spent the ride deep in conversation about French food, Moroccan food, and related topics. I think I've already mentioned the topic in a previous diary, but Paris Uber seems to have come full circle in the four visits (not consecutive years) we've used it. The first time , all the drivers were French and were a rich source of information, answering questions we had accumulated in our time in the city (emergency phone numbers, cost of medical care, etc.). The second year, all the drivers were north African and much less talkative. The third year they were east Asian and didn't seem even to speak French. This year, we were back to chatty French drivers!

For supper, we just walked back to Chez Papa, which David wanted a second chance at. At the left here is his breast of duck with cream of leek sauce and another huge heap of those yummy garlic potatoes. A little overcooked to my way of thinking, but he said it was delicious.

At the right is my appetizer salad, showered with sautéed chicken livers and a creamy vinaigrette.

With my salad, I ordered a second appetizer (since David was having only a single course), traditional snails in parsley-garlic butter. And like everything else in this restaurant, it was served volcanically hot. It took a while for it to cool enough to eat; then I sopped up the left-over butter with the bread that came with everything.

For dessert, we split a wedge of tart Tatin with whipped cream. Again, the tart was served really hot in a cast-iron dish that kept it that way for a long, long time.