Friday, 13 September 2024, Paris: Bocuse, the Louvre, David Toutain

Written 8 October 2024

Night before last we got in pretty late, and I got up early for the market, so this morning, I slept in to catch up a little. The breakfast room was much calmer at 9:15 am than at 8 am!

Our excursion for the day was to the Louvre, 2 pm admission, so when David appeared as usual about 11:30 am, we headed for the metro at Bastille and caught the good old #1 line to Palais Royale, just one stop farther than Louvre-Rivoli, where we got off for our dinner at La Régalade on Tuesday. The previous night's dinner was so over the top, and Friday's promised to be as well, that we really wanted only a light lunch. "Chef of the Century" Paul Bocuse of Lyon has authorized the chef at the Brasserie du Louvre (the restaurant of the Hotel du Louvre), just a few steps from the museum, to recreate some of his classic dishes and to call the place a Brasserie Bocuse. We'd had dessert there once but never a meal, so we gave it a try. The hostess gave us rather a disapproving look for not having a reservation, but she seated us anyway.

We chose only from the starters on the menu; we both had the "salade Lyonnaise," consisting of frisée lettuce, lardons, croutons, and a poached egg. The salad was great: the frisée was very frisée, almost prickly it was so curly and crisp, the vinaigrette was superb, the croutons crisp and tender, the lardons not so much crispy fried bacon strips as extremely tender and succulent cubes of braised pork belly, and the egg not only perfectly poached but perfectly egg-shaped, not even slightly flattened! The lettuce was left in inconveniently large pieces, so we had to take our tables knives to it, but otherwise, it was outstanding.

Okay, but how did they do that, with the egg? I can think of two possibilities. They might cook them in the shell, sous vide, until they're firm enough to hold their shape, then crack them into seasoned boiling water to continue poaching. (If they cooked them all the way in the shell, they would have to call them "oeufs mollet" rather than "oeufs pochés." ) The other possibility is that they froze the eggs in the shell, then peeled them (easier than it sounds; I've tried it), and dropped them still frozen into seasoned water to poach. I'd be very curious to know what method they did use, especially if it's one I haven't thought of!

While we ate our salads, a lady of about our age came into the restaurant, using a cane and accompanied by a young man. She was greeted with great effusion and clearly genuine pleasure by the maître d', and they happened to be seated next to us. We struck up a conversation, and it turns out she was American, from Minneapolis, I think she said. She travels to Europe three times a year and is thinking of moving over permanently, as the rent probably wouldn't be more than she pays in airfare. The young man was her full-time personal tour guide. Each time she comes, she hires him to plan an itinerary, in Paris and elsewhere, make all the reservations, etc. She then just shows up and enjoys the tour. The maître d' knows her because she used to be a regular at the Hôtel du Louvre. She currently stays elsewhere, somewhere over on the left bank, but she dropped by the restaurant for lunch and for old times' sake.

The salad was all David wanted, but I couldn't resist following up with six snails in very hot garlic-parsley butter. They were also excellent, so garlicky, you could smell them coming from the kitchen.

For dessert, we split a "sablé aux fraises," a tender shortbread cookie topped with vanilla cream, sliced strawberries, and a mint-basil pesto. Decidedly yummy.

Throughout the meal, I was puzzled by just what I was seeing out through the restaurant's front window, so as we left, we checked it out. The restaurant faces on the Place du Palais Royal, and in the square, right in front of the hotel and in plain sight of the Louvre, is a construction site. To disguise it, rather than encasing it in painted scrim as is often done, they enclosed the whole thing in a huge mirrored cube, fifty or sixty feet high and presumably open at the top. The entrance is a little bitty door near one corner. But when you look at it, you see only the architecture of the surrounding buildings—the Louvre, the hotel, the buildings lining the rue St. Honoré—and the illusion is amazing. When we arrived and walked into the hotel, we didn't even notice it was there! From my seat in the restaurant, I studied it carefully, searching for confirmation that I was seeing reflections, and finally caught a passing cloud disappearing behind it. Incredible. You can see a photo of it at https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/17cxviq/walls_of_mirrors_concealing_the_construction_site/. The truck entrance seems to be on the back side, off a narrow alley up against the building beyond it. Looking for photos of it, I learned that there's another installation featuring mirrored cubes in the Place Vendôme; just Google "mirrored cube in Paris."

In preparation for our visit, I had mapped out the sections of the Louvre we wanted to see: (1) the Orientalists ( à propos of the immersive show we'd just seen), (2) the Dutch old masters (which we like a lot), and (3) the masterpieces of the Torlonia collection on loan from someplace in Italy I think. We started with the Orientalists and, as often happens in the Louvre, we never made it to priorities 2 and 3. They had a ton of Orientalist work, so we just looked at as much of it as our feet and backs would stand.

Because that section is on the top floor and not in the same wing as the big three (Venus, Vicky, and Mona), it was much less crowded than the areas we passed through to get there and then out again. So far all the museums, including this one, have had free lockers for hats, coats, and whatnot. (A few, like the Cluny, still have the old-fashioned kind of free locker where you have to insert a euro coin that you get back when you leave, but they generally supply free plastic tokens for the purpose.) Now if they just had those little folding stools the German museums have . . . .

Here are a few of the approximately 2 zillion photos I took. I never thought of Camille Corot as an Orientalist, but here's his "The woman with the pearl." He didn't paint a lot of portraits and was mostly known for his landscapes.

At the left is "Moorish burial" by Eugène Fromentin, an artist I've probably seen but never taken particular notice of.

Here's Eugène Delacroix, being a little less dramatic than usual, protraying "A Turk smoking on a divan."

And Louis Hersent, being very dramatic, showing "The monks of Saint Gothard (Switzerland)" rescuing a lightly clad young mother and her infant from a snowy mountainside. One of the two figures below the ledge is another monk, and the other may be the young father, being helped up to join his family.

Written 10 October 2024

Th. Gechter was apparently an Orientalist sculptor (or rather, modeler; French distinguishes between sculptors, who cut figures out of solid blocks of something, and modelers, who shape clay into figures). This work portrays the combat of Charles Martel and Abdherame, king of the Saracens. I think that's Charles on top, about to bash Abdherame with his hammer.

At the right is "Portrait of Adèle and Aline Chassériau, sisters of the artist," aka "The two sisters." It's by Théodore Chassériau, whose works (including this one) featured prominently in the show at the Atelier. He was accepted as a student of Ingres when he was only 11 and was later heavily influenced by Delacroix. A portrait he painted at age 15 is in the Louvre, making him the youngest artist to be represented there.

This portrait by Claude-Marie Dubufe is of Hassan, keeper of the young giraffe Zarafa who was presented to Charles X in 1825 by Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt Mehmet Ali Pasha. You can read more of Zarafa's charming story in my diary entry for 9 May 2013. Or just Google "zarafa giraffe."

At the right is a work by Marie-Denise ("Nisa") Villers entitled "Study of a woman from nature," aka "Self-portrait of the artist lacing her shoe."

Finding out way out was not as easy as getting in. We just kept wandering around, going down any stairs we came to, and looking for exit signs. At one point, we passed through this lovely frescoed gallery, clearly not the famous Apollo gallery, but extremely decorative nonetheless.

I suspect the young man carrying a torch on the ceiling is somehow symbolic of French liberty, since his helmet sports a tricolor set of plumes.

David was pretty intent on getting out of the place and into metro, where he could rest his feet, so we were truckin' right along, but I managed to snatch a couple of photos on the way. At the left here, spotted in an Egyptian gallery we passed through, is a "falcon protecting a king, doubtless Nectanébo II."

And without even trying, we managed to pass by Vicky, on her tall pedestal parting the waves of tourists passing up and down her stairway.

Written 13 October 2024

We stopped following exit signs when we encountered one pointing us toward the Carousel du Louvre, the underground shopping hall just outside the Louvre's lower level, where we could walk straight into the metro without going outdoors. We did so, though they had once again rearrranged things, so the metro entrance was a little more complicated to find, but I noticed in passing out through the underground entrance/exit to the Louvre that they've finally replaced the little wooden table with one guy inspecting handbags with the aid of a little wooden stick with a modern two-lane checkpoint with metal detectors and x-ray scanners, just like the one in the glass pyramid.

The metro holds an annual poetry contest and posts the winners in their cars (much better than, e.g., advertising). In the car that took us back to Bastille was a piece entitled "Jesse Owens" with which a 16-year old won the grand prize in some previous year:

Cours! Jesse Cours! Vers tes lauriers.
Année trente-six, ciel menaçant.
Cours! Jesse cours! Or contre acier,
Éclair d'Olympe, semelles de vent.

Here's my translation, which alas does not rhyme like the original:

Run! Jesse run! Toward your laurels.
Year thirty-six, menacing sky.
Run! Jesse run! Gold against steel,
Olympic lightning, shoe soles of wind.

Wonderful.

Friday's dinner was at David Toutain, just a block or two west of the esplanade of the Invalides. We've been there twice before and really like it. It's only a two-star, probably because the owner/chef leans more toward the rustic than toward the hyperformal service Michelin likes to see at the highest levels.

We were seated in the loft area, next to the railing overlooking the main dining room below. You can see that the wall at the left side of the left photo is another like that at Jacques Faussat's place, a mosaic of many irregular little pieces of wood. The lower part of the wall looked just like the upper, but several times during the evening, I saw waiters grab a section of it and pull it out to reveal a drawer full of silverware.

The ceiling (right photo) sported this accoustic dampener consisting, so far as I could tell, of a framed arrangement of dead weeds.

The chef likes weeds, incorporates them into some of his dishes, and whether it's wild or domestic, likes to garnish each dish with some relevant foliage.

Case in point: at the left here, you can see the elegantly drooping vase of foliage that decorates one wall of the downstairs dining room, which is, in fact, nothing more than a good-sized pokeberry plant, good old Phytolacca americana, complete with ripening purple fruit, which no doubt sprouted as a weed on the margin of the chef's farm in Normandy and which he cheerfully hacked off and brought to the city as a flower arrangement.

We ordered the 10-course tasting menu, though we know from experience that Toutain tends to offer a 10-course tasting menu and then to bring you 12 to 15 courses. This one started with four amuse bouches, then seven savory courses (interspersed with three different bread services, each with a different butter), a cheese course, and three desserts, plus mignardises. All superb.

The first amuse-bouche consisted of two parts. One was this little wooden bowl of highly flavorful tomato water. It rests of the gracefully carved wooden service plate, which incorporated a recess intended to receive the bowl.

The other half was this pair of peeled heirloom cherry tomatoes (each on a long wooden spoon), poached, stuffed (from the bottom) with a preparation of "berce" (cow parsnip, Heracleum sphondylium, a common roadside weed), and painstakingly studded with tiny poached yellow mustard seeds. Scrumptious! The waitress specified that the green calyx was decorative only and not meant to be eaten. She also assured us that the neatly tied bundle of dried stalks she brought to the table with the tomatoes was dried berce, which they use for demonstration purposes when the fresh foliage is out of season.

The second amuse-bouche was tiny tarts of "choux de pontoise" (Savoy cabbage) with chervil and preserved lemon on them. Yes, it was clearly cabbage, but wow, how does he make it taste that good?!

Next came oysters from Oléron (an island off the atlantic coast of France, opposite Rochefort) with nectar of raspberries and cream of shallots. Note the chef's characteristic garnish of raspberry leaves and seaweed. The white stuff has the texture of whipped cream (maybe creamed shallots?). The raspberry nectar was just a little bit fizzy. The reddish-brown object between the oyster shells was a rock. You can see the wooden service plate in the background.

With it we were served these fat little bread buns topped with pumpkin seeds, which came with a little silver dish of pumpkin-seed oil infused with bay leaves—neatly tied bundle of dried bay leaves on the side. The bread was good, and I love pumpkin seeds, but when we tried to tear off pieces of the bread to dip, the seeds tended to pop off and scatter everywhere.

We were then served bite-sized beignets of artichoke on a stick (looking like miniature corndogs), with special bacon and something (maybe citrus), to be dipped in a fluffy mashed-potato-based sabayon sauce. Alas, I forgot to take a photo. I found a small piece of nut in mine, maybe a pistachio or a hazelnut.

Next up was a painstakingly assembled octagonal "log-cabin" made of tiny crispy-tender green beans and tiny batons of fresh peach, two layers of each, garnished with bits of leaf (basil maybe?). It arrived empty, but at the table, the waiter poured in the emulsion you see in the middle, made from mint. Odd sounding, but incredibly delicious! We've had a similar dish before in this restaurant, and it's one of my favorites.

With it we each got a bowl of carrot purée with a small quenelle of fig-leaf ice cream. It arrived covered with a large fresh fig leaf, whisked away before the bowl was set on the table.

Throughout the meal, all the dishes, full and empty, were hand carried up and down a spiral staircase—no dumbwaiter, just fit and athletic young servers.

The first fish course was a small cylinder of cold, very lightly poached cod napped with a bright green sauce of lovage (a celery relative). The crown of leaves seemed to be clover and parsley, but the parsley might have been lovage instead.

The next course was described as "courgette violon" (violin summer squash) in three forms, in chunks, finely sliced into ribbons, and in velouté (a smooth sauce) with pistachios and a bunch of herbs, chervil maybe? As far as I can tell "courgette violon" is a variety of yellow or green summer squash that's reminiscent in shape to a violin—bulbous at one end and with a skinny neck. Anyway, it was very good.

With it came brioches with "reine des près" and almonds, served with butter decorated with tiny white dots of something sour. We've encountered rein des près (meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria) before, served to us by another weed-fancying chef; I'm trying to remember where. Of course, Toutain supplied a dried bouquet of the stuff to decorate the table.

Then came a hollowed out poached onion half filled with a creamy mixture based on goat cheese and garnished with bacon bits. The streamers radiating from the onion are thin strips of cuttlefish, plus more of the goat-cheese mixture. I think the waiter said that the fluffy white stuff he sprinkled on at the table is powdered onion.

Next, we each got a bite-sized abalone with a green sauce and what looks like a tiny disk of butter on top. Tasty enough, but tough.

With the abalone came a tiny salad in a small abalone shell, balanced on top of larger abalone shells. The salad included toasted buckwheat and concealed a purée made from the abalone coral (which David didn't care for). They knew about David's buckwheat intolerance, so they assured us they just used more spelt in his salad.

The next course was a classic of the house, which we've therefore had twice before. Surprisingly, the chef has tinkered with it since our last visit, and I think it's even better than before. In the past, it's always been a purée of apple and black sesame with three little squares of smoked eel on top. This time, the eel had been replaced with smoked herring, the purée included tiny cubes of raw apple, and he'd added little dollops of yellow beads, lemon-flavored I think. Those little beads enjoyed popularity a few years ago as "artificial caviar"; now they come in many flavors and occasionally turn up as a garnish. A very yummy course in any case.

The meat course was pigeon. It arrived under this tall, elegant tagine cover, just used as a cloche here. In the left background you can see the bread that came with it—thick slices standing in slots in a wooden dish and accompanied by yet another special butter.

Here at the right is what was under the cloche—half a rare roasted pigeon breast, a large stuffed mushroom, a thin slice of raw mushroom leaning on it, and some streaks of artichoke purée. The little square thing at 1 o'clock is the pigeon's liver; each table got half a pigeon, and at each table, the breast was divided, the gentleman got the leg, and the woman got the liver. A moment after I took this picture, the waiter poured on a dark, rich sauce at 12 o'clock that filled the arc of the artichoke and surrounded the liver.

Presumably, if you ordered the pigeon as an à la carte course, you got the whole half bird to yourself, but for the tasting menu, they have to keep the courses small.

With the pigeon came this side dish with two sauces, some crumbles, and three blueberries.

The cheese course (right-hand photo) was an emulsion of bleu d'Auvergne with pear sauce to make it milder. It was topped with a little quenelle of pear sorbet, flower petals, and herb leaves.

Next came a sablé (shortbread) cookie with salted caramel, covered in a veil of milk (another of those "veils" we kept running into this year). Yummy.

Then came this rose made of yogurt ice cream, which I stuck a spoon into before thinking to take the photo. Its syrup included miso, cardamom, maybe white tea—the descriptions started running together.

At the left here, peaches in syrup with drops of herb oil.

At the right, Breton sand tarts with some sort of cream in them and a lemon-colored balloon of goo on top with bits of fruit chopped up in it. The bouquet of reine des prè is back, so the cream is probably flavored with it, though the yellow petals are too large to be reine des près.

Finally, a mignardise of crêpes layered with pecans and something creamy, cut into cubes, and skewered.

Altogether a much better dinner than we got at Pierre Gagnaire.

Then, as we waited for our Uber, half a block away on the rue St. Dominique, the shot of the Eiffel tower that I usually get as we leave David Toutain, whether waiting for a ride or walking back to the metro.