Thursday, 12 September 2024, Paris: Marché Bastille, Atelier des Lumières, Pierre Gagnaire

Written 6 October 2024

Thursday is market day along the Boulevard Richard Lenoir between our hotel and the Place de la Bastille, so I got up earlier this morning to beat the rush in the breakfast room (I was just in time; when I left, the line at the coffee machine was six deep, and the line at the buffet was so long 10 people were still waiting just to get into the room!

Then I walked over to the boulevard and started browsing. I brought money, just in case I encountered something I just couldn't live without, but I'm proud to say I resisted even the three kinds of breautiful ripe figs (purple ones at the left here, along with melons and a couple kinds of plums) and the egg-sized wild mangos. I kept hoping that fresh figs would show up on a breakfast buffet somewhere along the way, but they never did.

At the right here are prickly pears and fresh dates; that's how dates look right off the tree, before being dried. Prickly pears are called "Indian figs" in French and, as I learned on this trip, in Italian as well.

I always go on about how much better the salad greens look in French markets, and here are a couple of examples. As you can see, the heads of leaf lettuce are always displayed spread open and unrestrained, as they are here. Not only are they more attractive that way, but they're in better condition because the outer leaves are not all crushed, bruised, and broken by those giant twist-ties American shippers and retail stores use to constrain them.

Several stands were selling flowers, both living plants (from little window-sill-sized cyclamens to six-foot clumps of bamboo) and cut blooms.

This poultry butcher was displaying (left to right, in just this one shot), rabbit (whole, in pieces, and just the giblets), turkey breast, guinea fowl breasts and legs, breasts and legs of duckling and of mature duck, "ordinary" chicken (breasts, legs, wings, livers, and gizzards), raw chicken "frames" from which the above parts had been cut, presumably for making stocks and soups), and special blue-footed Bresse chickens.

Several other butchers and charcutiers had stands selling beef, pork, lamb, veal, and all sorts of sausages, terrines, and other items made from them, as well as (shown here at the right) one selling "chevaline," horsemeat.

Of course the cheeses were myriad and marvellous! The display at the left includes many cheeses labeled "fermier" (i.e., from the farmer, not factory made), including Époisse, St. Nectaire, Camembert, and Barisien (not one I know!).

The large, cut wheels are mostly variations on Tomme—the odd-colored ones are Tomme with dried flowers and Tomme with bear garlic. You can make out the violent orange of Mimolette and the paler orange-yellow of aged Gouda. The small white disks in the front are St. Marcellin, and behind them are Roqueforts, goat's-milk and sheeps-milk Tommes, and even a fine sharp cheddar from England. One of the large cut wheels at the right is labeled "Hercule," another one new to me.

At the right is the next case over, which starts out with yogurts and butters in the foreground, then proceeds through many kinds of ashed and unashed goat cheeses, a large Gorgonzola with a spoon in it, to Swiss-y looking things in the distance.

And of course, I'm always interested in the seafood, and the half-dozen large seafood displays made me seriously wish I had a kitchen in Paris, or even dinner slots that weren't already scheduled for fancy restaurants!

We start right off at the left here with langoustines (Nephrops norvegicus, worth the trip to Europe all by themselves), shrimp from Madagascar, cooked bulots (little whelks, Buccinum undatum, eaten cold with mayo, of which I am very fond), Spanish mussels, live palourdes (Venerupis decussata, the cross-cut carpet-shell clam—the French are very specific about the names of many kinds of bivalves that Americans just lump under the common name "clams"), bigorneaux (periwinkles, Littorina littorea), and live oysters from Normandy (though not the original local species; it's pretty blurry, but I'm pretty sure the label says Crassostrea gigas, an introduced species farmed in Normandy). I love, love, LOVE, that French seafood labels include the Latin, so you know what you're getting regardless of local common names!

At the right, we have only a small selection of the many species available: maigre (Argyrosomus regius, corvina), dorade rose and daurade royal (Pagellus bogaraveo, blackspot seabream, and Sparus auratus, gilt-head seabream, respectively—only the latter can be spelled "daurade" on French menus; all other seabreams must be spelled dorade), barbue (Scophthalmus rhombus, brill), limande sole (Microstomus kitt, lemon sole), and behind the right-hand "barbue" label, raie (Raja clavata, skate's wings). Yum.

Written 7 October 2023

A thing I hadn't seen before is that some stands had caught on that today's customer doesn't always want to pick out a whole fish, guessing how much its filets will weigh, then wait while it is weighed, scaled, and dressed, etc. They've taken to laying out plastic trays on which they place sheets of paper bearing ready-trimmed and weighed portions with the price already figured and written on a corner of the paper. You can just point to the one you want, they pick up the paper (leaving the reuseable tray in place), package it for you, and hand it over.

The vendor shown at the right here has set out a particularly attractive array of sea scallops, with their orange roe still attached, as is normal in France. American fish markets cut off the roe and throw it away, drat them. They're 18.5 euros per tray. In the foreground, several ginomous shrimp-like "gambas royales" (labeled only to superfamily, Aristeidae Penaeoidea), filets de mérou (Epinephalus guttatus, red hind, a grouper, these from the Indian ocean), and something bright orange labeled "haddock." In French, fresh haddock is called "aigelfin"; only smoked haddock, what the Scots call "finnan haddie," is labeled "haddock.

I know, I know, enough with the market already! And what is is it with this woman and fish? Sorry, I just really like European markets, especially fish markets . . . . Just a few more interesting features, I promise.

At the left here is, would you believe it?, an entire flat of black chanterelles, which even though the French call them "trumpets of death" are not toxic and are highly sought after. I've never seen so many in once place.

It was definitely mushroom season. At the left here, in addition to asparagus and Hass avocados, are crates of large orange chanterelles and, under the grocer's knife, a heap of fat boletes (called "cêpes in French and porcini in Italian). These were small compared to some I saw in shops and other markets.

One fish stall was selling some ready-to-eat raw items. Here's a platter of Icelandic sea urchins, with their tops cut off to reveal the tasty orange roe inside—3.5 euros each for these open ones or about 31 euros a kilo for uncut ones. The same vendor was selling plates of a dozen raw oysters with little cups of mignonette sauce in the center; groups of burly truck-driver types were standing at her tall folding tables slurping down oysters at 10 am. On nearby benches, more touristy types were munching on chocolate banana crêpes or baguettes stuffed with pâté or rotisserie chicken legs, hot off the spit, from other stalls.

Interspersed among the food vendors were stalls full of post and pans, cleaning products, and hardware, as well as craftsmen selling, e.g., jewelry and wooden items, like the olive-wood trays and bowls (and spoons, and mustard pots, and honey servers, and mortars and pestles) at the left here. Antique china in the background.

And at two or three locations, bins like this, emblazoned with "Bring your food scraps here!" So you can save up your compostable cores, peelings, and what not and a couple of times a week take them to the market with you to shove into the bin before buying your next supply of fruits and veggies. The contents are collected and taken away to be composted elsewhere. Good idea!

Other items for sale included scarves; posters and fridge magnets of antique postcards and veggie labels; lots of clothes, belts, and hats; pasteis de nata (I didn't buy any); fresh pasta and sausages; fresh strawberries they claim come from France (at this time of year?); lots of fresh walnuts in the shell; baggage and backpacks; kitchen equipment, like pots and pans, kitchen products, detergent, paper towels, etc.; dashikis; shoes; some sort of motorized vegematic with demonstrator; children's books, coloring books, manga, sticker books; toiletries, cleaning products, toilet paper and paper towels, shampoo; earrings; painted lampshades, furniture; nuts, rices, glacé fruit, bagged and in bulk; loukoom; spice mixes, fleur de sel, and sel gris; Breton pastries, sausages, and crêpes; sunglasses; bundles of fresh-cut herbs; fougasses and flatbreads; miniature Eiffel towers, macaron keychains, other souvenirs; phones, batteries, wallets, toys; Lebanese quesadillas (large thin flatbreads with spread with stuff, folded over and sealed, and baked on a griddle).

But all good things must come to an end, or in this case, be succeeded by other good things. Back at the hotel, I rendezvoused with David, and we set off on our afternoon excursion.

I'll just pause here a moment to comment further on the lobby of our hotel. It was full of plants, and I mean FULL of plants. Mostly succulents and common greenhouse tropicals. Many of them were disheveled and a little battered, but they were all real. I assumed they were accumulated over the years by the staff, and (like me) nobody could bear to discard any just because they looked a little woebegone. At the left here is a row of palms, dracaenas, and philodendron relatives in mismatched pots on a low windowsill.

But then we happened to pass just as a whole huge new assortment was delivered and set up to face the main entrance. At the right, you can see the finished arrangement, standing in a whimsical collection of old chests of drawers. When these start to look a little the worse for wear, I guess they'll join the existing enormous collection and be replaced with new ones.

But back to the day's excursion, which was to the Atelier des Lumières, Paris's venue for these new "immersive" art experiences, where images are projected on huge blank walls. We've been there before, so we know that our preferred style of eatery can't be found very near it, and it's not near a good metro stop, so we've developed a strategy for visiting it. We take the bus or metro to Père Lachaise, the big intersection at the southwest corner of the cemetery of that name, to have lunch at a nice old brasserie there called Au Rond Point ("At the traffic rotary"). Then we walk downhill along rue du Chemin Vert to rue Saint-Maur, where the Atelier is just half block away.

This year, though, I was a little dismayed that Au Rond Point seemed to have been replaced by something called "Batistou." What the heck is a "batistou"? [I looked it up later; it's a kind of dried sausage from the south of France.] But the menu looked good, so we caught the #69 but up there to check it out. Along the way, the bus stopped to let a wheelchair user off—at the back exit door, the bus had a handy retractable wheelchair ramp, which it extruded hydraulically to meet the sidewalk and then pulled back in once she was safely disembarked!

Sure enough, when we reached the restaurant, we found the exterior signage had changed, and the menu had been revamped, but the interior was still lovely. The art nouveau staircase, in particular was displayed to better advantage. Note that the colorful stained-glass "funnel" at the top, is only partly real—a 90-degree section is filled out to the full circle by the artful placement of mirrors.

David ordered the beef tartare and was dismayed that it came "deconstructed." That is, a lump of pure, raw chopped beef was arrayed on the plate together with little piles of minced onion, pickles, capers, and parsley and a raw egg yolk in a cup. Bottles of Worcestershire and Tabasco were placed on the table. Rather than just mixing it all together, as a French diner would, he tooks little bites of the beef with each of the component ingredients separately and found it all rather bland.

I, on the other hand, scarfed down my perfectly sauced and seasoned salmon tartare. Each of us requested and got a little dish of mayo for the fries.

For dessert, we each got a little "financière" cake with chunks of fresh pear baked into it, individually baked in a canning jar.

On the way out, I got this shot of their imposing gas-fire pizza oven.

I also noticed that the blackboard listing the day's specials still had the little note at the bottom saying "Family-owned since 1649," so I asked our server. She said the place had not changed owners, just managers, so I guess they can still make the claim. I'm sure we'll go back any time we visit the Atelier.

On our way to the Atelier we spotted what had to be the world's tiniest UPS truck. It looked just like a normal UPS truck except that it was only about 5 feet tall and so laterally flattened that it could have been driven through an ordinary interior doorway! For deliveries in narrow back alleys, I guess.

The show we had tickets for at the Atelier des Lumières was a triple feature (alternating days with another triple feature, which we'd already seen): Egypt of the Pharoahs, Foreign Nature, and The Orientalists. That last is what drew us in; we're fans of Orientalist painters Delacroix, Ingres, and others. Foreign Nature turned out to be a short shown in a side theater, which we skipped (from the trailer, it seemed to be a montage of microscopic views of nerve cells, viruses, and whatnot), but the other two were great.

The show on Egypt (two images shown here) was the more educational of the two. The full title was "The Egypt of the Pharoahs, from Kheops to Ramses II." That's a span of about 1350 years. The sequence of images displayed seemed to be intended to highlight the changes in the art, architecture, and writing over that time period, but I would need to sit through the show at least two or three more times to absorb it all. In the projected image of the painting at the left, note the size of the human figures standing in the lap of the most prominent carved figure.

Here are some of the more striking images that I managed to capture snapshots of—they were all shifting, moving, and fading into one another.

These are a couple of the last images in the show. Gorgeous, but as I say, I would need a lot more viewing, and probably study, to understand what the sequence was trying to convey.

More seating was available this time than on previous visits. Here's David sitting on one of a number of wooden cable spools that had been scattered around the space for the purpose. Standing through the whole show is hard on the feet, but the minute you sit down, things are going on behind you that you might miss. My neck is always sore from swiveling my gaze back and forth between walls, but a round bench makes more sense than most in that situation.

If the Orientalists show had an educational message, I'm afraid I missed it. Images of artworks simply replaced one another, fading in and out, sliding along walls, etc. After the Klimt show a few years ago, I felt I understood his work better—the animators had isolated aspects of each work, adding them sequentially to form the whole, adding motion where the artist seemed to wish to convey it, highlighting important features. Here, none of the images was altered in that way—perhaps the artists' messages were clearer in the images than they sometimes are in Klimt's work.

But they certainly are decorative.

And dramatic, not to say melodramatic.

If nothing else, I'm now much more aware of the Orientalist school and have a new list of artists whose work I will look for.

Shortly before leaving for Paris, I acquired a Kindle book called Hidden Gardens of Paris (by Susan Cahill). Not all of them are very hidden—for example, she lists the Tuileries, which is about as hidden as the Louvre or the Champs Elysées—but many I didn't know about. One of them was the Square Maurice Gardette, described as a pleasant neighborhood part with playground equipment, a boules court, and very diverse plantings. It turned out to be just a block from the Ateliers, so we strolled through it on our way back to the hotel. From the garden, it was only a short walk, still downhill, to the Ibis.

It rained while we had lunch but obligingly stopped while we walked to the Atelier. We emerged from there to find that it had rained again, but it again held off while we walked, then rained while we got ready for dinner but stopped when it was time for us to walk to the metro. Very obliging weather altogether.

Dinner was at Pierre Gagnaire, our highest-rated restaurant of the trip—Pierre has 15 restaurants around the world (London, Shanghai, Dubai, Tokyo), including three others in Paris, but this one's his flagship, a Michelin 3-star.

It's right off the Champs Elysées, so we strolled to Bastille to catch the #1 Metro line to George V, one stop short of the Arc de Triomph. As we emerged from the metro station, we cracked up to see that the Louis Vuitton people had dressed their entire building (right across the street) as a giant steamer trunk! You might have to look twice at the photo to see it, because the background color of the trunk is just the same as the color of the sky, but the riveted straps and giant buckles just above the trees are the give-away. It could just be decoration on scrim hiding construction work, but I suspect it was done a propos of the Olympics. You can also see that the Champs Elysées in between is still clogged with bleachers and crowd-control barriers.

Written 8 October 2024

At the right here is the first waiter to arrive at our table, bringing a cart bearing a large crock of butter and a smaller pitcher full of warm water and spoons. Above his head you can see part of a circular section of ceiling that was decorated with a variety of drawn in charcoal—both barnyard livestock and cute puppies and kittens. We found it reminiscent of the new Chagall ceiling of the Opéra Garnier, not our favorite style.

At the left is the large curl of butter he scooped out for us, together with a couple of the breads we were served. The squarish breads in the background were just nice breads, but the crispy toasted fruit and nut bread to the right of the butter was outstanding.

At the right is the crock of butter, showing the furrow where he scooped out our serving. Very good butter!

We also got the little breads shown at the left here. Good but not great. Not pictured is a little pot full of flax seed in which stood some sprigs of heather, a couple of crispy sticks of Parmesan-flavored pastry, and breadsticks with tomato. All very tasty (except the heather, which we didn't eat).

We ordered the tasting menu, so we ate all the same things, and at this point, the dishes just started coming. The one at the right here is described on the menu as (in my translation) "cardinalized" Royal Breton spiny lobster; mousseline of yellow zucchini with lemon, emulsified with oil of kernels (species not specified), kabu turnip, nasturtium sprouts, buttermilk. Carrot juice, modest pieces, red orach spinach (Atriplex hortensis). Tartlet of dog cockles ("amandes," Glycymeris glycymeris), topped with cauliflower and flat parsley.

The little white cubes were delicious, but we never figured out what they were. Dairy, we thought. Maybe "lait ribot" can also mean something other than buttermilk."

The dish in the back, next to the water glass, was not described separately, so I guess it was part of the dish just described. Maybe the red thing is a cardinal's cap? And it's topped by a slice of yellow zucchini. Anyway . . .

Next was another seafood dish (served in two dishes) described as (again, in my translation) cream of spider crab, Legris oyster, murex (a sea snail), vernis (Callista chione, smooth Venus, another little bivalve), dried salt cod, cocos (little white beans) from Paimpol, green beans, oyster ice cream with plankton, wild algae from the coast of Croisic, Salicornia, and little squids. The soup with seafood chunks in it was particularly good.

The third seafood dish (at the left here) was slab of European sea bass (old friend Dcentrarchus labrax) wrapped in a sheet of cuttlefish cooked with its ink and poached at low temperature, with New Zealand spinach, thinly sliced stewed artichokes, and poutargue (dried fish roe). Sauce of octopus stew heightened with Cognac X.O. The poutargue is the little orange slice on top of the black cylinder of wrapped fish. It's highly prized, but I find it to be fishy-flavored orange wax, not usually an improvement to the dish it's in.

Next up (at the right) was heart of Mediterranean red tuna lacquered with orange juice and turmeric, bouillon of sardine escabèche; chanterelles, grilled new onions, and compote of red onions.

Then came a meat and vegetable dish, tomato steak with "griotté" lamb sweetbreads and green shiso, with a veil of green pepper and pointed-head cabbage. The dollop on top is whipped cream of truffled duck foie gras.

We couldn't imagine what a "veil of green pepper was, but sure enough, the dish was drapped in a thin, translucent sheet of puréed green pepper gelled with agar. This "veil" thing turned out to be this year's new fad among chefs; we ran into it elsewhere as well.

I still haven't figured out what "griotté" (sour cherried?) means in this context, but the bits of sweetbread under the veil were not such a much. They were small, overcooked, and hard, and at least half of them weren't sweetbreads at all but small quartered button mushrooms, not mentioned in the description.

At the right here is Gagnaire himself, who came out of the kitchen to greet diners. A few minutes later he dropped by our table, shook our hands, and wished us a "bonne dégustation." I'm actually pretty impressed that he was there in person rather than at some other one of his establishments.

I almost laughed out loud when he approached a table that was already attended by several servers and, out of sight of the diners, pantomimed to the commis waiter that he wasn't holding his silver tray high enough. Waiters are supposed to carry their trays at chest height, elbows out, tray away from their bodies, and those suckers are heavy! The commis immediately came to attention and lifted the tray three inches.

This is the lamb course, again served in two dishes: A slice of saddle of lamb (from the Lozère region) roasted with purple basil and oregano and laid on top of a slice of grilled eggplant (of a particular striped variety) and garnished with sweet corn, jam of mild chiles and raspberries, leaves of special pointed-headed cabbage, and infinitimally thin perfectly square potato chips, smoked in a bell jar on the way to the table over smoldering rosemary sprigs.

In the second dish were, among other things, slices of nectarine, described on the menu as "nectavigne." I think it's a typo, but maybe it's some kind of nectarine analogous to "peches des vignes"?

Here, the printed menu ends simply with "le grand dessert," which took the form of three flights of three desserts each, followed by mignardises. I took notes for all I was worth as they were described to us, but I'm afraid it all gets pretty sketchy. I'm just going to include a bunch of the notes I took, which I can't necessarily align with the photos I have:

Then a bowl with peaches, nectarines, and a granite of something, at the right I think.

I don't know what the pointed thing at the left is, but at the right are a couple of different fruit compotes: a mixture of plums and nectaries with a plum on top, or maybe an apricot; red plums in plum sauce, mirabelles in mirabelle sauce, and (in the little square dish behind the other two, a clear square of jelly with fresh walnuts on top.

Under the mirabelles was a piece of some sort of meringue and a cream of something (chestnut, maybe?).

Somewhere in there was house-made tofu with caramelized algae and a little cylinder filled with strawberry soup.

Also a chartreuse-flavored nougat ice cream, chocolate and caramel beurre sale, and a sorbet of something with black olive nougatine and a raspberry.

The finale was a chocolate cookie covering a sheet of chocolate in turn covering a ring of nut paste filled with a caramel cream and three glazed hazelnuts. It was accompanied by a dot of syrup with a single freeze-dried green peppercorn in it.

During dessert, a waiter appeared to ply David with a special wine from this gigantic bottle from Pierre Gagnaire's own Domaine de la Rectorie. He couldn't pour from it, so he had to in dip a long glass tube, put his thumb on top, and lift the wine out that way.

Finally, at the right, here are the mignardises.

I'm afraid I have to say that this meal was not our favorite of the trip, though it was certainly the most expensive. The food was good, and the chef certainly set records for number of ingredients per dish, but not a single course knocked our socks off. Nothing made us say, "Ooh, how does he do that?" Worth a visit, but we probably won't go back.