Saturday, 14 September 2024, Paris: Lazy day, picnic lunch, Restaurant Anne

Written 14 October 2024

David's alimentary tract gave him fits in the night, so he got no sleep and didn't want to go anywhere or do anything today until he was sure it wasn't going to flare up again. It acted like food poisoning, but since we ate all the same things yesterday, that seems unlikely. I too was feeling rather sleep deprived (staying up too late and getting up too early), so we decided just to blow off the Museum of Man, which was supposed to be our afternoon excursion, and spend the day resting up. (Boy, have we gotten old!)

The museum is the one in which the TV anchor man for the Olympics was stationed, with the great view of the Eiffel Tower behind him, and despite our many trips to Paris, we've never been there. And it will still be there another time, though we will miss its current special exhibition: "Silex and the City." "Silex" is French for "flint," and the exhibition is centered on a long-running humorous French comic strip, animated series, and movie (all called Silex and the City), set in the stone age. The exhibition features the museum's large collection of flints and other stone-age tools.

Rather than venture out to a restaurant for lunch, I walked over to a nearby bakery that I'd been admiring and that advertised "sandwiches à tout heurs" (sandwiches at all hours) and picked out our usual French train-trip picnic—baguette sandwiches and "viennoiserie" pastries. Actually, I suspect the sandwiches are stocked in time for people on their way to work and again in the evening, as the selection at 11:30 am was pretty sparse. They didn't have the classic "jambon-beurre" (butter and plain raw ham), but I got David a "jambon Emmenthal" (cooked ham and cheese) and myself a "jambon crudités" (cooked ham, lettuce, tomato, and sliced hard-cooked egg), and, as usual, an apple turnover for David and a big pain au chocolat for me. All excellent. Alas I didn't think to take a photo before we gobbled them up.

In the afternoon, I went out to replenish our supply of bottled water. David always has trouble with the transition to European tap water (and, if he stays in Europe long enough, with the transition back to Tallahassee tap water), so he's taken to drinking only bottled water when we travel. Last year, my stomach, although not actually upset, had a funny cottony feel to it throughout our time in Paris, so this year, when it started to feel cottony again, I decided to try bottled water as well, and it seems to have worked. We don't worry about things like brushing our teeth with tap water, but we don't drink a lot of it.

The previous day, walking back to the hotel from a new direction, we came across a "U" supermarket—the kind where we used to shop on sabbatical—just a block from the hotel. It was only a "U-express" rather than a full-scale "Super-U," but we stopped to pick up more bottled water, which we'd been getting at the Bastille Carrefour City at 2.00 euros for a 1.5-liter bottle of "Cristaline." We were stunned to learn that those bottles—same size, same brand—at U cost 0.21 euros! Yes, 1/10 as much! And the U is closer! Not just a bargain but an easy way to get rid of the little copper 1-, 2-, and 5-cent coins we keep accumulating. Live and learn.

David's insides tolerated our picnic lunch just fine, so by supper time, he was willing to venture out.

We dined at Restaurant Anne in the Pavilion de la Reine (the queen's pavilion), once an actual royal residence—the queen's apartments in the Place des Voges—now a hotel. It was less than a 10-minute walk from the hotel, so we just strolled over there at the appointed hour.

We chose the four-course surprise tasting menu, which turned out to include two amuse-bouches, starter, fish course, meat course, cheese (which we opted to add), predessert, dessert, and magnardises. Fortunately all the courses were small. My photos came out pretty dim—the room was lighted other than by the candle on our table, but not brightly enough.

Left to right, the initial amuse-bouches are a crispy cushion full of tuna tartare, a purée of carrot with little lemon-lime beads, and a little tartlet with a veil of beet covering a strong dry cheese of some sort.

We were offered three kinds of bread; we both picked "épautre," spelt. With it we were served demisel butter from a named house. Note that, although American gourmets are always going on about unsalted butter, the butter served by high-end French restaurants in Paris is always salted.

The next amuse-bouche was a dome filled with a mixture of green pea, sheep's-milk cheese, lumpfish caviare, chives and shallots. It was topped with a crown of crumble (I don't know crumble of what; something crispy). The vast area of dimpled white around the edges is the broad rim of the soup plate. It and all the dishes in this establishment rang like bells at the slightest touch of flatware, so we had to eat very carefully to avoid making a lot of noise.

At the right, a tartare of tuna with a fruit "veil" and a calimansi (sour citrus) vinaigrette.

Next up with filet of St. Pierre (Zeus faber, John Dory, a fish) with an artichoke filled with sheep's-milk curd, all napped with a caviar-laced beurre blanc (lemonly butter sauce).

Then aged "noir de Baltique" beef with carrots glazed with ginger and honey and a bonita-infused port sauce. The round object in the middle is also a carrot, of a spherical variety.

The cheese assortment included only four varieties, so every diner got some of each. Left to right: St. Nectaire, brebis de Corse (Corsican ewe's milk), chèvre de Charolais (a goat cheese; the Charolais region doesn't just raise cattle), and Pont l'Éveque. All were very good. David's favorite (as usual) was the brebis. Mine (as usual) was the chèvre. That last was one of those that are so dry that each bite seems to suck all the moisture out of your head as it melts in your mouth!

At the right is the predessert: a pool of custard sauce floating (well, surrounding) a little boat-shaped apricot and bitter-almond financière cake topped with apricots and almond butter. Delicious.

Dessert combined a quenelle of black sesame ice cream, little toasted meringue puffs, and lemon sorbet on three different bases: a sablé cookie, cookie crumbs, and a gooey lemony thing.

The mignardises were, left to right across the bottom row, a tiny financière of dried apricot; a Breton cookie with lemon custard on top, a quenelle of white chocolate on top of diced dried fruit. That last is a great improvement over the annoying trend of putting ice cream on top of cookie crumbs. I know it's supposed to retard melting, but it ruins the texture of the ice cream!

All in all, a good dinner, but not one of the most memorable. We enjoyed the stroll back to the hotel.