Tuesday, 23 September 2025, Paris, Greuze at the Petit Palais, Paul Imbert au Plaza Athenée

Written 4 February 2026

I couldn't resist once more showing you scenes from the lobby of our hotel, which truly is full of flowers and plants.

At the left is the display that greets you as you enter from lobby from outdoors. That's where they always keep the most "presentable" specimens. But they never get rid of a specimen that's still alive, so you find flowers and foliage everywhere you turn. This year, as you can see, they had set aside a whole white metal étagère just for colorful bromeliands.

But on with the day . . . Bastistou, where we had lunch on Sunday, in on one of the corners of a very large and very busy five-way intersection, which functions as a rotary, whirling around a very small central traffic island. That intersection is very popular with advertizers, and from our table, by a window, I could see a couple of big bulletin boards facing the roads outside. They predated the age of LED screens, so they were each loaded with four posters on rollers that scrolled up and down every minute or two, and one poster that went by several times was an ad for an exhibition of paintings by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. I didn't know his work, but the painting on the poster looked as though we'd like it. With binoculars, I was able to ascertain that it was currently on view at the Petit Palais (the art museum of the city of Paris). We already had plans for the following day, Monday, but today (Tuesday) was open—I didn't overplan our time, because we always come across unexpected stuff like this (though I could have sworn I checked the Petit Palais website last spring to see what was on, and it wasn't mentioned). Just as well our opening was on a Tuesday, because city museums are closed on Mondays.

So I went on line and bought tickets on our usual schedule, 2 pm entry for use after a noon lunch nearby. I couldn't find a likely eatery any closer than our old friend the Brasserie du Grand Palais, so at the appropriate hour, we set off there by taxi.

As we bowled along, paralleling the Seine, I got this reasonable shot of Notre Dame in profile, with (closed and locked) bouquiniste stalls in the forground and marred only by raindrops on the window and the ever-present cranes.

Then, as we got closer and crossed the river on the Alexandre III bridge, I caught this nicely framed shot of one of its four corner pylons, topped by gilded Victory and his winged horse.

We got to the brasserie just at noon, when it was relatively empty, but by 12:45 pm, it was spinning-off-the-map busy, with more French speakers than tourists. We've always sat outside before, but it rained today, so we sat inside and for the first time my photos of the food aren't all red from the sun shining through their bright-red awning.

This was the chalkboard menu advertizing the specials of the day. Appetizers: house-made foie gras with pear chutney, salad of poultry livers, and plate of Serrano ham. Mains: steak-frites with blue cheese sauce and salad, sliced sausage with its juice and crushed potatoes, hake with beure-blanc sauce and harlequin rice, and linguine à l'arrabbiata. Also 2.5-lb rib-steak for two with fries and three sauces. Desserts: coffee tiramisu, tea or coffee with an assortment of small sweets, molten chocolate cake with caramel ice cream, vanilla crème brulée, tarte Tatin with crème fraiche, house-made crêpes, and something obscured by the salt and pepper grinders that came with custard sauce.

Paper napkins, but thick, absorbant, custom-printed ones.

As usual, though, we were trying not to overeat at every meal, so David ordered another salad with hot grilled goat cheese, this time made not with some generic chevre but with those great little pucks from Rocamadour drizzled with honey! Too bad about the triangles of sliced bread.

I, on the other was sold as soon as I saw poultry-liver salad on the chalkboard! Both dishes were excellent!

For dessert, we shared a humongous, thick slice of tarte Tatin (upside-down caramelized apple tart) with crème fraîche (half-soured cream).

On the {nominally) 8-minute walk around the gigantic Grand Palais to reach the Petit Palais, I captured this view back across the Alexandre III bridge to the gilded dome of the Invalides (Napoleon's tomb and the army museum). We had to step carefully, as it was horsechestnut season, and the streets and sidewalks were littered with large, hard, spiky balls, both whole (which roll underfoot) and crushed (which are slippery).

Here's the Petit Palais, together with a banner advertising the Greuze exhibition. The entrance, alas, is under the central arch and dome, at the top of a very long grand staircase. But I looked around a little and spotted the street-level handicapped entrance (the French don't say handicapped, they say "persons of reduced mobility"), hidden behind a bush, just below the banner hanging on the building. That was the exit for most visitors, so for once we entered the exhibition through the gift-shop rather than the other way around.

In the cloakroom, I took a photo of our locker, so as to remember its number. It took me a while to figure out that the little black icon (one of the items they recommend you put in a locker) is a motorcycle helmet.

The exhibition started with a time line of the artist's life and career and these two portraits. The first is a 1760 self portrait of the Greuze (1725–1805). The second is his absolutely charming portrait of his wife, the former Anne Gabrielle Babuty.

These two are childhood portraits of his two surviving daughters. At the left is Anne Geneviève (called Caroline) and at the right Louise Gabrielle.

You can immediately see why he was renowned for his portrayal of children, and particuarly of their emotions. This exhibition was centered on that aspect of his work and was entitled "L'Enfance en Lumière" (Childhood Illuminated).

Many of the works on display were done in "sanguine," a kind of chalk or graphite pencil that gets its color from iron oxides. The little boy at the left looks as though he expects to be smacked for doing something wrong. It's just entitled "Study of a child's head."

At the right, "Head of a Young Woman Wearing a Cap.

The pair at the left here are both studies for a larger, multifigure painting called "The Ungrateful Son."

At the right is the painting featured on the posters for the exhibitions, "Young Shepherd Holding a Dandelion."

Noel Coward made fun of Greuze in his song "Green Carnation" from the operatta Bitter Sweet: "We believe in Art,/Though we're poles apart/From the fools who are thrilled by Greuze . . . ." But sorry, Noel, much as I like your work, I like his too.

Passing through part of the museum's permanent collection on our way out, I paused to snap this elaborate 8-foot "vitrine" that holds pride of place under the dome. It's a display case made for the 1867 Universal Exposition in Paris. I think they rotate particularly interesting objects through it.

And in the taxi back to the hotel, we happened to pass the imposing Cheval Blanc ("White Horse"), an extremely upscale new hotel housed within the historic Samaritaine department store. Its restaurant, Plénitude, has been booked solid since it opened; we've never been able to get in.

I think the flowers and leaves above the door light up at night.

Dinner was chez Paul Imbert in the famous Plaza Athenée hotel. The surroundings were incredibly elegant. Down the center of the dining room ran the long, marble "royal table," and they seated us across from each other three seats down from the top. As it happened, we had that table to almost to ourselves all evening—just one other couple were seated there, several places down from us. I joked with one of the waiters about the amount of walking it caused him—after laying out my silverware for each course, he had to walk all the way around the head of the tabl and back to lay out David's. But, he said, look how elegantly slender it keeps me.

We ordered the surprise tasting menu, and that may have been the reason we were at only ones to do so. That may be why we were at the royal table. All the other diners were seated at individual tables around the sides of the room.

The photo at the right is of the view down the long table, past the bowl of decorative artichokes and the large vases of hydrangeas. You can make out our tablemates—her hair as she sips wine just above the artichokes and his hand reaching onto the table opposite her.

And here's the shorter view, toward the head of the table. Places are set but no one ever sat there. My purse rested on a small table the waiter brought me for the purpose, and when I sneezed once during dinner, he scurried over to put a little leather-bound box of Kleenexnext to it.

The menu needed no changes to accommodate my avocado allergy but several for David's buckwheat intolerance. For example, my first amuse-bouche was small, slightly sweet, gougères crusted all over the top with buckwheat. They came with a creamy cheese sauce for dipping.

David got two little bites of a (I think) a carrot preparation.

I was served a chubby little round loaf of buckwheat bread, together with a generous portion of butter that had been rolled in buckwheat groats.

Meanwhile, David got slices of ordinary whole-grain bread and an equally generous portion of pristine, buckwheat-free butter.

The second amuse-bouche. served in a wine glass, was ricotta with watercress juice, topped by a lacy cookie in the shape of a flower.

The first "real" course was the chef's signature dish, brioche Marie Antoinette. It was a warm brioche filled and surrounded by a "coulante" (runny sauce) made from sea urchin, the whole thing topped with lots of delicious mild caviar. Yummy.

In fact, all the food was outstanding! This lobster in beet civet was probably the most photogenic dish (note the three little lettuce cups holding horseradish-spiked yogurt and the two little orange cylinders that look like roasted baby carrots but are actually lobster sausages). The lettuce cups were topped with little shreds of cabbage and assorted flower petals. The pink-and-white "rose" just to the left of center was made of slices of a striped beet and a yellow flower petal. And perhaps you can make out that they served our dishes on monogrammed linen placemats rather than hide the marble surface under table cloths.

The next dish was chicken, the famous Bresse chicken. I'm not generally a fan of Bresse chicken, but this one was excellent. The speckled edge facing the camera is the skin, which had had herbs and spices pressed into it. The top surface is a cross section of the breast, over which the kitchen had sprinkled pine nuts, chanterelle mushrooms, and one pink onion flower. It was surrounde by a rich poultry sauce, and across the back of the plate someone had built a little rippled sculpture out of thin poached and grilled slices and chunks of green and yellow zucchini.

With the chicken came this side dish in which crisp, pressed zucchini blossoms are standing up in a pile of additional sautéed chanterelles. Beside them was a pool of a foamy sauce I didn't catch the name of but that concealed a serving of rice pilaf.

Then the cheese course arrived. At the right is my plate with two little wedges, one of a dry ashed chevre, and the other of something with a washed orange rind. Pont l'Éveque maybe?

But that was just the beginning. At the left here is the board they brought us, from which I had already chosen the two little wedges. The other three varieties were also excellent. They even brought us each a slice of fruit bread to go with the cheese.

After the cheese, the waiter came out with a little brush and dustpan and sweept the marble all around our placemats.

Then came the "grand dessert." First was the little round dish with chickweed on top. It turned out to be marmalade of "reine-claudes" (small green plums) with a reine-claude purée on top. Then the peach melba in the tall glass, with caramelized almonds on top

After that came the "aumonière," a sort of pouch of crisp pastry filled, in this case, with roasted fresh figs and accompanied by fig-leaf ice cream.

I don't seem to have gotten a photo, but my notes say they brought us a pair of little vanilla "religieuses" (cream-puff-based pastries shaped like nuns) with lacy crepe ruffles around their necks!

We were just congratulating ourselves on having eaten at least part of every dessert when our waiter reappeared with a sort of humidor, from which he persuaded each of us to select (and eat!) a couple of exquisite house-made chocolates.

A spendid dinner altogether, and as our taxi pulled away, we could sight down the Avenue Montaigne and see that the Eiffel tower was back to normal, again lit and sparkling on the hour.