To: All Spanish Employees
Several visitors have brought to our attention that our Spanish speaking employees commonly use offensive language. Such behavior, in addition to violating the firm policies, is higly unprofessional, offensive both to visitors and employees, and will not be tolerated.
Therefore we have dicided to implement a series of rules in our ofice and expect them to be applied. It is expected that ALL employees immediately adhere to these rules:
1- Words like "coño, carajo" and other such espressions will not be used for emphasis, no matter how heated the discussion may get.
2- Non importants matters should not be addressed to as "pendejadas".
3- You will not say "la cagó" when someone makes a mistake, or "se cagó en su madre" if you see someone being reprimanded. All forms and derivatives of the word "cagar" are inappropriate in our environment .
4- Lack of determination will not be referred to as falta de cojones or mariconerías, nor will a person with lack of initiative be referred to as pendejo, mamao or comemierda.
5- No Manager or Supervisor, under any circumstance, will be referred to as "hijo de puta, ese cabrón", or "maricón".
6- When a good proposal is presented, the term "está de pinga" must not be used.
7- Unusual or creative brainstorming meetings should not be referred to as "pajas mentales".
8- Do not say “como jode” if a person is persistent, or "se jodió" if somebody is going through a difficult situation. Furthermore, you must not say "que jodienda", or "esto está del "when matters become complicated in your line of work.
9- When asking someone to leave you alone, you should not say "vete pa'l carajo", nor will you substitute "¿Qué carajo quieres"? for ¿May I help you?
10- When leaving the office using the term "me voy pa'l carajo" is not proper.
11- When any office equipment fails, it must be reported as " it broke down". not "se descojonó" or "se jodió la mierda ésta".
Last but not least, after reading this memorandum, please do not say "me voy a limpiar el culo con esto". Just keep it clean and file it properly.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Four Paris Restaurants Worth a Metro Ride
Four Paris Restaurants Worth a Metro Ride
By MARK BITTMAN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 1, 2011
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/travel/03Choice.html?hpw
FOUR years ago, writing in these pages about Paris restaurants, I mentioned one called Au Boeuf Couronné, called it “terrific” and added that traveling to its location in the 19th Arrondissement was “the rough equivalent of going deep into Brooklyn.”
This was true, psychologically (for me at least), but no longer. Paris is smaller than New York: it’s just over three miles from Île de la Cité to Au Boeuf Couronné, and about six from Midtown Manhattan to the restaurants I like in Brooklyn. And — as has happened in New York — as restaurants in the wealthy and most tourist-laden neighborhoods of Paris have become more crowded and expensive, the areas where one can find a great meal have expanded.
With this in mind, I set out to explore some of the farther-flung alternatives. I concentrated on the increasingly energetic northeast quadrant of the city, namely the 10th, 18th (generally speaking, Montmartre), 19th (around the park of Buttes Chaumont) and 20th (which contains the Belleville neighborhood) Arrondissements. And it wasn’t at all like “going deep into Brooklyn.” In six nights of eating I took exactly one taxi “home,” and even that was because the people I was eating with offered to drop me.
Two additional restaurants worth knowing about: Restaurant Astier at 44, rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud (in the 11th, it’s theoretically out of my range and is owned by a friend), not only does it have one of the best cheese trays in the city, it’s open seven nights, which is unusual and valuable. Quedubon, in the 19th at 22, rue Plateau, is better established than anything I’ve written about in more detail here, but I found it relatively disappointing; still, if you get through this list and want to take a shot, it’s beloved by many of my sources.
The four to follow have this in common: They’re in neighborhoods you might not get to otherwise, the food is good and in some instances fantastic, and the prices are way below average.
Baratin
Just off Rue de Belleville, this two-room place looks as if it put itself together with a design fee of zero. Yet it’s attractive and hip, at least in the style of an older generation. Beige walls sport oil paintings and black-and-white photos; the bar, tables and chairs — maybe there are 30 altogether? — are all of slightly beaten wood; the floor is old tile; the napkins are paper.
There are elegant touches, however, like the lovely water carafes sitting on the bar, and the easy, affordable and instantly likable wine list. Then there is the chef and owner, a hard-working gracious woman toiling in a kitchen that’s not open for style but because the door is ajar, presumably for ventilation and easy access.
After a bit of a hiccup — rather than being greeted we were sneered at by the black-dressed bartender — things settled down nicely. (Eventually, we charmed the owner with ignorance and bad French.) It’s not easy to order here: the appetizers are all about 10 euros (about $13.50) and big enough for a main course; you could easily split one, a main course and a dessert, and others were doing just that.
But duty called, so two of us ordered enough for four, starting with monkfish with red beans and sun-dried tomatoes, an unusual mix but a good one, and then a combo of octopus and potatoes, with pimentón (smoked paprika). Stewed lamb looked fantastic, as did roast pork, but we opted for barbue — a turbot-like fish — the skin crisp, the meat subcutaneously fatty and moist, the plate strewn with buttery root vegetables. (This was a theme of every restaurant we visited, it being late winter and these restaurants were hewing close to tradition, or trying to.) Pintade — guinea hen — was cooked perfectly, the dark meat braised and the white roasted, along with mushrooms and cabbage cooked in butter.
The baguette served with all of this, without fuss or comment, was incredible — crackly crisp and chewy. The pineapple confit with lime was an intense and welcome dessert.
Meanwhile, a guy walked in with a cat and let it loose to roam, which seemed to bother no one. Many people knew one another and stood around chatting. Even the surly bartender warmed up. It became a nearly perfect meal.
Baratin, 3, rue Jouye-Rouve (20th); (33-1) 43-49-39-70. An average meal for two (or, that is to say, a big one) is 70 euros, $97 at $1.39 to the euro, though you could eat much more cheaply. (None of the prices include drinks or tip, the latter insignificant as service is included.)
Philou
While I was in Paris, I told a native I was off to Philou, in the 10th. “Who goes to the 10th?” she demanded, with a bit more vulgarity than that.
At least enough people to fill Philou every night. (Some folks might even live around there; it seemed fine.) About a 20-minute walk from Bastille, Philou is too bright in both lighting and color, and that’s my only complaint. (I’ve read that it’s noisy, but that wasn’t my experience.) It’s unpretentious, with a compelling poster from “Les Enfants du Paradis” featuring the nearby Canal St.-Martin dominating one wall.
The owner, Philippe Damas, owned and sold the wildly successful Le Square Trousseau, reportedly because it was too successful for him to enjoy. This place is tiny — another one with about 30 seats — and he seems to be having a blast.
It’s also pretty inexpensive: 25 euros for two plates, 30 for three. There are several menu items that carry supplements, but at these prices you can’t complain, and you can, of course, avoid them.
The food: wonderful, sometimes perfect. Like the marinated sardines with parsley gelée, apples and horseradish. Also wonderful were a dead-on pâté with a jug of cornichons, pork cheeks in a gorgeous dark sauce with celery root cooked in stock (my mouth is watering at the thought of that); a few chunks of insanely good calf’s liver and poularde de Bresse, with meat that was almost as good as the skin, served with Chinese cabbage.
Imperfect but very good were real frogs’ legs, lots of them with pleurotes (the mushrooms were better than the meat); and scallops in their shells, with butter and puréed celeriac, which was “fine” in the sense that it was acceptable, but unexciting.
I will go back here. So would you.
Philou, 12, avenue Richerand (10th), (33-1) 42-38-00-13. An average meal for two can run as little as 48 euros, or as much as 68 euros.
Table d’Eugène
Found (perhaps with a little difficulty) in a part of Montmartre you may not have previously visited (I hadn’t), Table d’Eugène is the “fanciest” and most attractive of these places, in an old-fashioned way.
I confess that I visited here as an afterthought, for a last-minute lunch with my friend the cookbook author Patricia Wells, with whom I spent the morning visiting bakeries and cheese shops. It was late, I was tired and restauranted-out, and we tweaked our reservation to the displeasure of the proprietors. In other words, it was a setup for failure. Yet the food was so carefully presented and gorgeous — delicious, too — that the restaurant easily made the cut here. Like the others, it’s tiny; we wound up sharing our hastily arranged table with a couple of regulars who made us feel at home.
We started with a Parmesan sable, a delicate pastry that’s essentially a savory shortbread, with artichoke and pata negra, the fine Spanish ham. Rich piled upon rich, but that didn’t make it less enjoyable. No lighter but perhaps more elegant were chicken ravioli, with perfectly thin skins in an old-fashioned cream sauce and a garnish of fried parsnip. Just super.
Main courses were, if anything, better. Pork belly, with a rich, well-reduced meat sauce, was crisp and sublimely tender, cooked slowly and then browned. It was impossible not to polish off the entire plate, an act I didn’t regret for a moment. Our other course was a bar de ligne (sea bass), nicely browned and braised, with similarly treated fennel: simple, but spectacular.
I can’t drink or eat dessert at lunch so no report there. Next time I’ll go for dinner, and soon after I arrive.
Table d’Eugène, 18, rue Eugène Sue (18th); (33-1) 42-55-61-64. Lunch can be as little as 34 euros for two, dinner can run to 68 euros, but you could spend less.
Le Verre Volé
This 10th Arrondissement “eating cellar” is fun and frustrating. As much like someplace on the Lower East Side as you’ll find in Paris, it has mismatched and painted tables and chairs, a painted floor and a teeny tiny open kitchen. It’s funky, immediately likable, loud, brash and inconsistent. I wouldn’t make it your first stop, but its charms are undeniable, though it is crowded and noisy, with erratic service.
There is wine on many of the walls, sold at retail (people wander in, buy a bottle, wander out) and opened for you for 7 euros above that price, which is fine, since much of it is inexpensive. There are also good wines by the glass, like an organic Chablis at 5.5 euros a glass. Given, then, that you can drink cheaply, that a starter and a main course together will set you back just 25 to 30 euros, and that the food is quite good ... well, you can understand the popularity.
We ordered a lot, and enjoyed most of it: shrimp in intense shrimp sauce; steamed razor clams; more shrimp, big and little, steamed, from Brittany; the best scallops of the week; beef cheeks with aromatic vegetables, and an outstanding blood sausage. Some dishes — fish with vegetables, for example — were less exciting. Cheeses, from Jean-Yves Bordier, were fantastic, as was his insanely good butter. (That, on good bread, with a bit of blue ... there’s nothing better.) Crème brûlée was made with tonka beans, which are illegal in the United States (they contain coumarin, which has been found to cause liver damage in rats), and are gorgeously fragrant; that was a treat.
Le Verre Volé, 67, rue de Lancry (10th), (33-1) 48-03-17-34. An average meal for two could be had for 52 euros, but many people will spend more.
By MARK BITTMAN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 1, 2011
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/travel/03Choice.html?hpw
FOUR years ago, writing in these pages about Paris restaurants, I mentioned one called Au Boeuf Couronné, called it “terrific” and added that traveling to its location in the 19th Arrondissement was “the rough equivalent of going deep into Brooklyn.”
This was true, psychologically (for me at least), but no longer. Paris is smaller than New York: it’s just over three miles from Île de la Cité to Au Boeuf Couronné, and about six from Midtown Manhattan to the restaurants I like in Brooklyn. And — as has happened in New York — as restaurants in the wealthy and most tourist-laden neighborhoods of Paris have become more crowded and expensive, the areas where one can find a great meal have expanded.
With this in mind, I set out to explore some of the farther-flung alternatives. I concentrated on the increasingly energetic northeast quadrant of the city, namely the 10th, 18th (generally speaking, Montmartre), 19th (around the park of Buttes Chaumont) and 20th (which contains the Belleville neighborhood) Arrondissements. And it wasn’t at all like “going deep into Brooklyn.” In six nights of eating I took exactly one taxi “home,” and even that was because the people I was eating with offered to drop me.
Two additional restaurants worth knowing about: Restaurant Astier at 44, rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud (in the 11th, it’s theoretically out of my range and is owned by a friend), not only does it have one of the best cheese trays in the city, it’s open seven nights, which is unusual and valuable. Quedubon, in the 19th at 22, rue Plateau, is better established than anything I’ve written about in more detail here, but I found it relatively disappointing; still, if you get through this list and want to take a shot, it’s beloved by many of my sources.
The four to follow have this in common: They’re in neighborhoods you might not get to otherwise, the food is good and in some instances fantastic, and the prices are way below average.
Baratin
Just off Rue de Belleville, this two-room place looks as if it put itself together with a design fee of zero. Yet it’s attractive and hip, at least in the style of an older generation. Beige walls sport oil paintings and black-and-white photos; the bar, tables and chairs — maybe there are 30 altogether? — are all of slightly beaten wood; the floor is old tile; the napkins are paper.
There are elegant touches, however, like the lovely water carafes sitting on the bar, and the easy, affordable and instantly likable wine list. Then there is the chef and owner, a hard-working gracious woman toiling in a kitchen that’s not open for style but because the door is ajar, presumably for ventilation and easy access.
After a bit of a hiccup — rather than being greeted we were sneered at by the black-dressed bartender — things settled down nicely. (Eventually, we charmed the owner with ignorance and bad French.) It’s not easy to order here: the appetizers are all about 10 euros (about $13.50) and big enough for a main course; you could easily split one, a main course and a dessert, and others were doing just that.
But duty called, so two of us ordered enough for four, starting with monkfish with red beans and sun-dried tomatoes, an unusual mix but a good one, and then a combo of octopus and potatoes, with pimentón (smoked paprika). Stewed lamb looked fantastic, as did roast pork, but we opted for barbue — a turbot-like fish — the skin crisp, the meat subcutaneously fatty and moist, the plate strewn with buttery root vegetables. (This was a theme of every restaurant we visited, it being late winter and these restaurants were hewing close to tradition, or trying to.) Pintade — guinea hen — was cooked perfectly, the dark meat braised and the white roasted, along with mushrooms and cabbage cooked in butter.
The baguette served with all of this, without fuss or comment, was incredible — crackly crisp and chewy. The pineapple confit with lime was an intense and welcome dessert.
Meanwhile, a guy walked in with a cat and let it loose to roam, which seemed to bother no one. Many people knew one another and stood around chatting. Even the surly bartender warmed up. It became a nearly perfect meal.
Baratin, 3, rue Jouye-Rouve (20th); (33-1) 43-49-39-70. An average meal for two (or, that is to say, a big one) is 70 euros, $97 at $1.39 to the euro, though you could eat much more cheaply. (None of the prices include drinks or tip, the latter insignificant as service is included.)
Philou
While I was in Paris, I told a native I was off to Philou, in the 10th. “Who goes to the 10th?” she demanded, with a bit more vulgarity than that.
At least enough people to fill Philou every night. (Some folks might even live around there; it seemed fine.) About a 20-minute walk from Bastille, Philou is too bright in both lighting and color, and that’s my only complaint. (I’ve read that it’s noisy, but that wasn’t my experience.) It’s unpretentious, with a compelling poster from “Les Enfants du Paradis” featuring the nearby Canal St.-Martin dominating one wall.
The owner, Philippe Damas, owned and sold the wildly successful Le Square Trousseau, reportedly because it was too successful for him to enjoy. This place is tiny — another one with about 30 seats — and he seems to be having a blast.
It’s also pretty inexpensive: 25 euros for two plates, 30 for three. There are several menu items that carry supplements, but at these prices you can’t complain, and you can, of course, avoid them.
The food: wonderful, sometimes perfect. Like the marinated sardines with parsley gelée, apples and horseradish. Also wonderful were a dead-on pâté with a jug of cornichons, pork cheeks in a gorgeous dark sauce with celery root cooked in stock (my mouth is watering at the thought of that); a few chunks of insanely good calf’s liver and poularde de Bresse, with meat that was almost as good as the skin, served with Chinese cabbage.
Imperfect but very good were real frogs’ legs, lots of them with pleurotes (the mushrooms were better than the meat); and scallops in their shells, with butter and puréed celeriac, which was “fine” in the sense that it was acceptable, but unexciting.
I will go back here. So would you.
Philou, 12, avenue Richerand (10th), (33-1) 42-38-00-13. An average meal for two can run as little as 48 euros, or as much as 68 euros.
Table d’Eugène
Found (perhaps with a little difficulty) in a part of Montmartre you may not have previously visited (I hadn’t), Table d’Eugène is the “fanciest” and most attractive of these places, in an old-fashioned way.
I confess that I visited here as an afterthought, for a last-minute lunch with my friend the cookbook author Patricia Wells, with whom I spent the morning visiting bakeries and cheese shops. It was late, I was tired and restauranted-out, and we tweaked our reservation to the displeasure of the proprietors. In other words, it was a setup for failure. Yet the food was so carefully presented and gorgeous — delicious, too — that the restaurant easily made the cut here. Like the others, it’s tiny; we wound up sharing our hastily arranged table with a couple of regulars who made us feel at home.
We started with a Parmesan sable, a delicate pastry that’s essentially a savory shortbread, with artichoke and pata negra, the fine Spanish ham. Rich piled upon rich, but that didn’t make it less enjoyable. No lighter but perhaps more elegant were chicken ravioli, with perfectly thin skins in an old-fashioned cream sauce and a garnish of fried parsnip. Just super.
Main courses were, if anything, better. Pork belly, with a rich, well-reduced meat sauce, was crisp and sublimely tender, cooked slowly and then browned. It was impossible not to polish off the entire plate, an act I didn’t regret for a moment. Our other course was a bar de ligne (sea bass), nicely browned and braised, with similarly treated fennel: simple, but spectacular.
I can’t drink or eat dessert at lunch so no report there. Next time I’ll go for dinner, and soon after I arrive.
Table d’Eugène, 18, rue Eugène Sue (18th); (33-1) 42-55-61-64. Lunch can be as little as 34 euros for two, dinner can run to 68 euros, but you could spend less.
Le Verre Volé
This 10th Arrondissement “eating cellar” is fun and frustrating. As much like someplace on the Lower East Side as you’ll find in Paris, it has mismatched and painted tables and chairs, a painted floor and a teeny tiny open kitchen. It’s funky, immediately likable, loud, brash and inconsistent. I wouldn’t make it your first stop, but its charms are undeniable, though it is crowded and noisy, with erratic service.
There is wine on many of the walls, sold at retail (people wander in, buy a bottle, wander out) and opened for you for 7 euros above that price, which is fine, since much of it is inexpensive. There are also good wines by the glass, like an organic Chablis at 5.5 euros a glass. Given, then, that you can drink cheaply, that a starter and a main course together will set you back just 25 to 30 euros, and that the food is quite good ... well, you can understand the popularity.
We ordered a lot, and enjoyed most of it: shrimp in intense shrimp sauce; steamed razor clams; more shrimp, big and little, steamed, from Brittany; the best scallops of the week; beef cheeks with aromatic vegetables, and an outstanding blood sausage. Some dishes — fish with vegetables, for example — were less exciting. Cheeses, from Jean-Yves Bordier, were fantastic, as was his insanely good butter. (That, on good bread, with a bit of blue ... there’s nothing better.) Crème brûlée was made with tonka beans, which are illegal in the United States (they contain coumarin, which has been found to cause liver damage in rats), and are gorgeously fragrant; that was a treat.
Le Verre Volé, 67, rue de Lancry (10th), (33-1) 48-03-17-34. An average meal for two could be had for 52 euros, but many people will spend more.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
The Hunger Games Trilogy: Book 1
The Hunger Games Trilogy: Book 1
The Hunger Games (2008) (edit title/settings)
by Suzanne Collins (Author) (edit contributors)
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* Readers (48,718) & Reviews (11,070)
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Readers & Reviews › Reviews › Review
qwerty zx
2 of 3 members found this review helpful.
* Rated 1 stars
“I don't really understand all the fuss about this book, it is awfully written. Everything is in first person narrative, it is like something a fifth grader wrote for homework. The world depicted is extremely unrealistic, why are the "hunger games" continuing ? The people at the Capitol are too advanced compared to the other districts, and it is not believable that they're dependent on them for their economic fortune, so why are they keeping them so poor and oppressed, out of spite? The only character I liked in this novel was Rue and she was killed...”
qwerty zx wrote this review 6 hours ago. ( reply | permalink )
The Hunger Games (2008) (edit title/settings)
by Suzanne Collins (Author) (edit contributors)
Share this book on:
* Book Extras
* Readers (48,718) & Reviews (11,070)
* Discussions (374)
* Editions (76)
Readers & Reviews › Reviews › Review
qwerty zx
2 of 3 members found this review helpful.
* Rated 1 stars
“I don't really understand all the fuss about this book, it is awfully written. Everything is in first person narrative, it is like something a fifth grader wrote for homework. The world depicted is extremely unrealistic, why are the "hunger games" continuing ? The people at the Capitol are too advanced compared to the other districts, and it is not believable that they're dependent on them for their economic fortune, so why are they keeping them so poor and oppressed, out of spite? The only character I liked in this novel was Rue and she was killed...”
qwerty zx wrote this review 6 hours ago. ( reply | permalink )
Saturday, March 26, 2011
A Paris Farewell
A Paris Farewell
By AMY M. THOMAS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: March 25, 2011
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/travel/27paris-cover.html?hpw
I’VE always been one of those girls. A die-hard Francophile. An American helpless in the face of Parisian charms and pleasures. A New Yorker who could never seem to shake the City of Light. I went for a college semester, I went with boyfriends, I went to eat chocolate. And finally, for a two-year period beginning in 2009, I went to live my dream.
Now that I’m back home in New York, my vision of Paris has been altered. What was once mysterious is now intimately understood. What was once mythical is now more real (though, admittedly, still magical). To some extent, Paris will always belong to the Truffauts, Fitzgeralds and Bernhardts of the world. But now some of my own history runs through its streets too.
Weaned as I was on “A Moveable Feast” and “Memoirs of Montparnasse,” when I moved to Paris, I saw it clearly divided between the artsy Left Bank and the buttoned-up Right Bank. The Left Bank was for thinkers and dreamers; artists and musicians; students and stargazers who famously sought inspiration — and, peut-être, absinthe. It’s where Josephine Baker shimmied, where Hemingway feasted and where Sartre and de Beauvoir had endless philosophical debates.
The Right Bank was for bankers at the Bourse and flâneurs on the grand boulevards. It was where manicured gardens, symmetrical squares and majestic monuments reigned supreme; a mélange of foreign embassies, tony boutiques and chichi cafes, all steps from where King Louis XVI and thousands of others were guillotined at the Place de la Concorde during the French Revolution.
I made my home in the center of the Right Bank, off the Rue Montorgueil. On an amazing market street filled with patisseries, fromageries and boucheries, nothing made me happier, or feel more Parisienne, than meandering up and down the pedestrian blocks, inhaling the irresistible smells of roasting chickens, stinky cheeses and warm, yeasty baguettes. On more occasions than warranted, I’d treat myself to a crème-filled pain aux raisins from Stohrer, one of the oldest bakeries in Paris. Not too far away in the Marais, at a bread stand inside the Marché des Enfants Rouges, the Cornet Vegetarien — a sandwich of fresh greens, grated carrots and fennel, marinated onions and thinly sliced avocado, dressed with olive oil and honey and dusted with chives and lime zest — was like nothing I’d ever eaten. And the man who prepared it, Alain, a barrel-chested maestro who was given to bursts of song and dance, always made my day.
For macarons, I learned there was only one place to go: Pierre Hermé on the Left Bank. If I was alone, I took the delicate ganache-filled meringue cookies to the Square des Missions Étrangères, a small spot of green in the center of the well-to-do Rue du Bac neighborhood, and ate them in gleeful silence. But if I were bringing friends from out of town for the petites douceurs, we’d savor them together near the central basin in the Jardin du Luxembourg, where tourists and Parisians alike crowded around to watch the motorized sailboats skate across the water.
Back over on the Right Bank, inside the Palais Royal, I found a welcome solitude among the rows of trees pruned into perfect squares. I loved the Technicolor flowerbeds during late summer and how the rosebushes miraculously bloomed in winter, the buds like drops of blood against the white snow. And in the spring, the green fields and gold dome of Les Invalides opening before me when I zipped across the Pont Alexandre III to the Left Bank never failed to make me sigh.
As my circle of exploration expanded from the city center, I started seeing Paris itself growing in new ways. Cashmere emporiums and Costes brothers cafes were infiltrating the Left Bank, nudging it away from “bohemian” into the realm of “haute bourgeois,” while neighborhoods like Belleville and the Haut Marais, with their emerging artists and galleries, infused the Right Bank with creative juice. Apparently, my staunch division of Paris based on riverbanks wasn’t so black and white. And by the time my two-year stint was up, two other sides to Paris were luring me: the east and the west.
The Edgy East
I was first introduced to Canal St.-Martin on Paris’s east side by a friend who lived there and took me on my maiden Vélib’ bike ride, guiding me past the waterway’s peaked iron bridges and enchanting locks — where Amélie had skipped stones — to the flat and sprawling Parc de la Villette just north of the neighborhood. The boomerang-shaped canal was once Napoleon’s conduit for supplying fresh water to Paris. Later, the surrounding area became home to the working classes. But since the millennium, as my friend pointed out — and I couldn’t help but notice as we wended our way through picnicking Parisians flaunting Ray-Bans, iPhones and flashy baskets (sneakers) — the quartier has attracted more and more artists and writers, young couples and hipsters (or bobos — “bourgeois bohemians” — in Parisian parlance).
“When I moved to the neighborhood in 2002,” Elizabeth Bard, author of “Lunch in Paris: A Love Story With Recipes,” wrote in an e-mail, “they called our street the ‘rue des squatters’ because of all the illegal squats and an infamous ‘tent city’ that had been set up by tenants of a crumbling building down the street.” Today, as Ms. Bard points out, you’re just as likely to see potted geraniums and bamboo gardens as you are pilfered shopping carts and homeless camps.
The more time I spent in this gentrified quartier, the more I realized how fitting it was that a fashionable New York writer had made her home there with her Parisian boyfriend (now husband). Like the Mission in San Francisco or the Lower East Side in Manhattan, Canal St.-Martin is gritty with dirt and makeshift tarp shelters. But it’s also alive with creative energy. At Chez Prune, perhaps the neighborhood’s most popular cafe, with a lively terrace, I started making a game of counting the scruffy bearded men with fabulously disheveled coifs — the way only French men can wear their hair. They always seemed to be engaged in nicotine- and wine-fueled debates over their latest film or art projects before they hopped onto their Vespas, mobile phones cleverly tucked inside their helmets. It seemed like the epicenter of artsy intellectualism — the way I imagined Café Select on the Left Bank might have been in the ’60s.
This buoyant energy was everywhere I went in the east. Following a hairpin turn behind the stellar wine bar Le Verre Volé — where I’d devoured sautéed squid with oranges and green olives and a delicious bottle of Côtes du Rhône, with help from a friend — I discovered La Galerie Végétale, an airy, industrial space selling black-and-white photography and an impressive variety of potted succulents. Peering into the steamed-up windows of Voy Alimento, a beatnik-y cafe next door, I made a mental note to go there if I needed exotic herbs and organic teas by the gram.
Around the corner on the Rue Lucien-Sampaix, I watched a steady stream of waifish girls shuffle by in their distressed booties and hand-knit caps at Bob’s Juice Bar, which was opened by Marc Grossman, a New Yorker, in 2006. As I sat at the communal table, sipping carrot and apple juice with a fresh ginger kick, I realized that eating in the east was an international adventure. You could swing a baguette and find pizza topped with baba ganouj at Pink Flamingo Pizza, Cambodian noodles at Le Cambodge or humble bio (organic) carrot soup at Zuzu’s Petals.
As I became familiar with these neighborhood anchors, there was one address I knew I needed to conquer: Le Chateaubriand. Since Fred Peneau opened the bistro with the chef Inaki Aizpitarte in 2007, it’s earned a reputation as Paris’s pinnacle of “bistronomy.” As tough as reservations are to come by, it also accepts walk-ins. So by 9 every night, there’s a train of fashionable foodies pressed against the zinc bar, eyeing the diners already gorging on the five-course, 50-euro (about $68) menu.
Sure enough, the night of my reservation, the fashionable crowd gathering at the bar added to the evening’s excitement. As my dishes got more complex — moving from a dollop of mozzarella dusted with black pepper and vanilla to a deliciously juicy duck breast to pear crumble served with buckwheat ice cream and grapefruit compote — the din from the crowd flooding the entrance grew louder, until the whole interior seemed to vibrate. When I ventured a few weeks later to Le Dauphin, the modern all-marble wine bar opened by the Chateaubriand team, I saw the same cool kids snacking on tapas like oyster tapioca with blood sausage and dried duck meat.
As I was happily sinking my teeth into the quartier’s dining scene, other new ventures were infiltrating. Art was creeping up from the not-too-distant Haut Marais, including Galerie Chantal Crousel’s second Parisian exhibition space on the Rue Léon Jouhaux. And as a sign that the bobos might soon be ceding their territory to tourists — already appearing on boat tours of the canal — Le Citizen, the quartier’s first boutique hotel, made its debut.
“So many people are fed up with the conventional Sixth Arrondissement,” Sophie Berdah, a real estate developer who opened Le Citizen, explained as I sat with her in the hotel’s sun-flooded lobby, looking out at the prime stretch of Quai de Jemmapes. “This neighborhood is very off the track, so clients are people who know Paris a little.”
I appreciated how in tune Ms. Berdah was with the quartier’s spirit that is still more shabby than chic. I spent a night in one of the 12 rooms, enjoying personal touches like hand-delivered carafes of sparkling water; artwork from the California-based Creative Growth Art Center, which supports artists with mental and physical disabilities; and books from Ms. Berdah’s private collection as well as Artazart, the exhaustive design bookstore across the street. Mostly though, I contented myself bytaking in the views overlooking the canal — knobby chestnut trees, vagrant homeless camps and all.
The Refined West
It was a hotel opening on the other side of town that drew me deeper into Paris’s western elegance. Temporarily working in an office on Avenue Hoche, one of the grand arteries that shoots away from the towering Arc de Triomphe at the head of the Champs-Élysées, I would often stroll on my lunch breaks down to Parc Monceau, a relaxed expanse of green where schoolchildren and joggers run free. As I walked by the quartier’s harmonious rows of limestone town houses, past storefronts for Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne and Franck Sabet carpets, I noticed the scaffolding that would soon be dismantled to reveal the newly refurbished Royal Monceau.
Paris is a city filled with five-star hotels, each with its own history and style. The Royal Monceau is one of the artiest, having attracted guests from Maurice Chevalier to Ray Charles to Madonna since opening in 1928. In 2008, it was shuttered for a much-ballyhooed redesign by Philippe Starck. Then one autumn day in 2010, voilà, the scaffolding came down, and a coterie of suited doormen appeared, flanking a plush ruby carpet that extended from the hotel’s interior onto the sidewalk. Inside, the vast salon was filled with guests lounging in intimate groups of saddle-stitched leather chairs, nibbling club sandwiches and leafing through international newspapers. I spent 40 minutes browsing the bookstore’s hundreds of contemporary art, architecture and design titles and limited-edition accessories, like the signed and numbered .38 Special bullet ring by the French artist Jacques Monory. Then I found my way to the hotel’s gallery, and caught the debut exhibition of 50 original Jean-Michel Basquiat works.
Since I couldn’t afford one of the 139 rooms or suites that start at 730 euros a night, I figured I’d do the next best thing: splurge on lunch. I had two gorgeous options: Il Carpaccio, the upscale Italian restaurant tucked in the back corner under a vaulted ceiling, and La Cuisine, where Laurent André and Gabriel Grapin serve elevated classics according to the season. When in Rome, I told myself, and went directly to the French side.
My smoked herring starter, marinated in olive oil and served with pickled onions, was rich enough to call it quits. But I didn’t. From there, I moved on to the daily special of steamed cod and baby spinach and, being a sweet freak, couldn’t resist finishing the meal with a bespoke millefeuille (I chose pistachio cream and fresh raspberries), dreamed up for the hotel by the cult pâtissier Pierre Hermé.
Inspired by my Royal Monceau experience, I embraced this new code of western luxury. I knew my time in Paris would soon draw to a close and was all too happy to see the city in a different light. Just as the edgy east had drawn me in throughout my first year, as autumn turned to winter during my second year, I eagerly soaked up its more sophisticated side.
I went to see the giant green and orange neon Cy Twombly canvases that were fetching millions of dollars at Larry Gagosian’s new gallery, in a former hotel particulier. At the nearby contemporary auction house, Artcurial, I was entertained by the modelesque black-suited servers at the new Gilles & Boissier-designed cafe as they briskly trotted down the restaurant’s central artery to deliver burrata salads and salmon tartares to the well-coiffed, middle-aged patrons in their camel-colored cashmere. Since I was so close, I couldn’t resist the pull of the historic salon de thé Ladurée. I left with a rectangular pastel green box filled with rose and chocolate and pistachio macarons: a perfect Parisian memento.
My edible explorations in the west came to an exquisite finale at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. To the dismay of epicures worldwide, Mr. Robuchon had shuttered his gastronomic mecca, La Table, in November 2010 but then quietly popped up the next month in the brand-new shiny red and black basement of Publicis Drugstore at the head of the Champs-Élysées. With my Parisian tour drawing to a close — pourquoi pas? — I made a reservation.
As soon as I arrived, I spied Mr. Robuchon, who has more Michelin stars than any other chef in the world, supervising in the open kitchen. I knew it was going to be a special lunch. “Une coupe de Champagne?” I was asked as soon as I was situated at my corner perch at the bar, seated between two pairs of men. I accepted.
Having never been to any of Mr. Robuchon’s restaurants, I commanded a feast. I started with a basic salad, which was anything but: the endive, walnut, Stilton and apple combination was light and effervescent, beautifully refined. As were the procession of other small plates: John Dory with coriander, lime and a tomato compote; delicate black cod with daikon; and brochettes of creamy Parmesan-covered salsifis — a root vegetable (salsify to the Englsh-speaking) that I had never heard of but was given to me by Mr. Robuchon himself as un cadeau, and something I’ll now forever seek on menus.
As the lunch rolled on, I discovered the two pairs of men I was seated between included Michelin reviewers and members of the Club des Cent, a distinguished, if not clandestine, organization of 100 French gastronomes. The gentlemen pointed out many others in the restaurant I should have recognized but didn’t, including the actor Jean Reno and the singer Charles Aznavour and the former French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. The atmosphere was electrifying, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the food.
By the time I finished my golden caramel soufflé, most everyone in the restaurant was gone, and there I sat, “Mademoiselle Amy,” befriended by the staff, if only for the day. Antoine poured me a glass of Vouvray and Patrick insisted I have a second dessert that the pastry chef, François Benot, wanted to share: a mélange of banana, passion fruit, rum, granité and cream that he dreamed up in the Seychelles.
When I finally left the opulent den, parting with repeated handshakes, smiles and “enchantées,” I was beyond sated, beyond charmed. But I couldn’t help but also feel a tinge of melancholy: If only I could pack up this moment and a hundred others — biking across the Pont Alexandre III, admiring the rosebuds in the wintery Palais Royal gardens — and place them alongside the boxes of macarons and photos of Alain in the Marché des Enfants Rouges. Then I stepped out onto the Champs-Élysées, into the buoyant heart of Paris, and the wistfulness vanished, just like that.
BY THE COMPASS
RIGHT BANK
Stohrer, 51, rue Montorgueil, Second Arrondissement; (33-1) 42-33-38-20; stohrer.fr.
LEFT BANK
Pierre Hermé, 72 Rue Bonaparte, Sixth; (33-1) 43-54-47-77; pierreherme.com.
EAST
Chez Prune, 38, rue Beaurepaire, 10th; (33-1) 42-41-30-47.
Le Verre Volé, 67, rue de Lancry, 10th; (33-1) 48-03-17-34; leverrevole.fr. A two-course dinner for two is about 50 euros, or about $68 at $1.37 to the dollar.
La Galerie Végétale, 29, rue des Vinaigriers, 10th; (33-9) 54-32-19-68; lagalerievegetale.free.fr/BIO.html.
Voy Alimento, 23, rue des Vinaigriers, 10th; (33-1) 42-01-03-44; voyalimento.fr/.
Bob’s Juice Bar, 15, rue Lucien Sampaix, 10th; (33-9) 50-06-36-18; bobsjuicebar.com. Lunch for two, about 20 euros.
Pink Flamingo Pizza, 67, rue Bichat, 10th; (33-1) 42-02-31-70; pinkflamingopizza.com. Pizzas are 11 to 16 euros.
Le Cambodge, 10, avenue Richerand, 10th; (33-1) 44-84-37-70; lecambodge.fr. Entrées, 10 to 14 euros
Zuzu’s Petals, 8, rue Marie et Louise, 10th; (33-9) 51-79-00-31; zuzuspetals.fr. Lunch for two, 30 euros.
Le Chateaubriand, 129, avenue Parmentier, 11th; (33-1) 43-57-45-95; Five-course dinner for two, 100 euros.
Le Dauphin, 131, avenue Parmentier, 11th; (33-1) 55-28-78-88. Tapas are 5 to 14 euros.
Galerie Chantal Crousel, 11F, rue Léon Jouhaux, 10th; (33-1) 42-77-38-87; crousel.com.
Le Citizen, 96, quai de Jemmapes, 10th; (33-1) 83-62-55-50; lecitizenhotel.com. From 149 euros.
Artazart, 83, quai de Valmy; (33-1) 40-40-24-00.
WEST
Le Royal Monceau, 37, avenue Hoche, Eighth; (33-1) 42-99-88-00; leroyalmonceau.com. Rooms from 730 euros.
Gagosian Gallery, 4, rue de Ponthieu, Eighth; (33-1) 75-00-05-92; gagosian.com.
Artcurial, Hôtel Marcel Dassault, 7, rond-pont des Champs-Élysées, Eighth; 01 42 99 20 20; cafe-artcurial.abcsalles.com. Lunch for two, about 48 euros.
Ladurée, 75, avenue des Champs-Élysées, Eighth; (33-1) 40-75-08-75; laduree.fr.
Atelier Joel Robuchon Étoile, 133, avenue des Champs-Élysées, Eighth; (33-1) 47-23-75-75;joel-robuchon.net. Discovery menu for two: 300 euros.
AMY M. THOMAS, who writes about food, fashion and travel, lived in Paris for two years. She is writing a book about her Parisian experience.
By AMY M. THOMAS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: March 25, 2011
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/travel/27paris-cover.html?hpw
I’VE always been one of those girls. A die-hard Francophile. An American helpless in the face of Parisian charms and pleasures. A New Yorker who could never seem to shake the City of Light. I went for a college semester, I went with boyfriends, I went to eat chocolate. And finally, for a two-year period beginning in 2009, I went to live my dream.
Now that I’m back home in New York, my vision of Paris has been altered. What was once mysterious is now intimately understood. What was once mythical is now more real (though, admittedly, still magical). To some extent, Paris will always belong to the Truffauts, Fitzgeralds and Bernhardts of the world. But now some of my own history runs through its streets too.
Weaned as I was on “A Moveable Feast” and “Memoirs of Montparnasse,” when I moved to Paris, I saw it clearly divided between the artsy Left Bank and the buttoned-up Right Bank. The Left Bank was for thinkers and dreamers; artists and musicians; students and stargazers who famously sought inspiration — and, peut-être, absinthe. It’s where Josephine Baker shimmied, where Hemingway feasted and where Sartre and de Beauvoir had endless philosophical debates.
The Right Bank was for bankers at the Bourse and flâneurs on the grand boulevards. It was where manicured gardens, symmetrical squares and majestic monuments reigned supreme; a mélange of foreign embassies, tony boutiques and chichi cafes, all steps from where King Louis XVI and thousands of others were guillotined at the Place de la Concorde during the French Revolution.
I made my home in the center of the Right Bank, off the Rue Montorgueil. On an amazing market street filled with patisseries, fromageries and boucheries, nothing made me happier, or feel more Parisienne, than meandering up and down the pedestrian blocks, inhaling the irresistible smells of roasting chickens, stinky cheeses and warm, yeasty baguettes. On more occasions than warranted, I’d treat myself to a crème-filled pain aux raisins from Stohrer, one of the oldest bakeries in Paris. Not too far away in the Marais, at a bread stand inside the Marché des Enfants Rouges, the Cornet Vegetarien — a sandwich of fresh greens, grated carrots and fennel, marinated onions and thinly sliced avocado, dressed with olive oil and honey and dusted with chives and lime zest — was like nothing I’d ever eaten. And the man who prepared it, Alain, a barrel-chested maestro who was given to bursts of song and dance, always made my day.
For macarons, I learned there was only one place to go: Pierre Hermé on the Left Bank. If I was alone, I took the delicate ganache-filled meringue cookies to the Square des Missions Étrangères, a small spot of green in the center of the well-to-do Rue du Bac neighborhood, and ate them in gleeful silence. But if I were bringing friends from out of town for the petites douceurs, we’d savor them together near the central basin in the Jardin du Luxembourg, where tourists and Parisians alike crowded around to watch the motorized sailboats skate across the water.
Back over on the Right Bank, inside the Palais Royal, I found a welcome solitude among the rows of trees pruned into perfect squares. I loved the Technicolor flowerbeds during late summer and how the rosebushes miraculously bloomed in winter, the buds like drops of blood against the white snow. And in the spring, the green fields and gold dome of Les Invalides opening before me when I zipped across the Pont Alexandre III to the Left Bank never failed to make me sigh.
As my circle of exploration expanded from the city center, I started seeing Paris itself growing in new ways. Cashmere emporiums and Costes brothers cafes were infiltrating the Left Bank, nudging it away from “bohemian” into the realm of “haute bourgeois,” while neighborhoods like Belleville and the Haut Marais, with their emerging artists and galleries, infused the Right Bank with creative juice. Apparently, my staunch division of Paris based on riverbanks wasn’t so black and white. And by the time my two-year stint was up, two other sides to Paris were luring me: the east and the west.
The Edgy East
I was first introduced to Canal St.-Martin on Paris’s east side by a friend who lived there and took me on my maiden Vélib’ bike ride, guiding me past the waterway’s peaked iron bridges and enchanting locks — where Amélie had skipped stones — to the flat and sprawling Parc de la Villette just north of the neighborhood. The boomerang-shaped canal was once Napoleon’s conduit for supplying fresh water to Paris. Later, the surrounding area became home to the working classes. But since the millennium, as my friend pointed out — and I couldn’t help but notice as we wended our way through picnicking Parisians flaunting Ray-Bans, iPhones and flashy baskets (sneakers) — the quartier has attracted more and more artists and writers, young couples and hipsters (or bobos — “bourgeois bohemians” — in Parisian parlance).
“When I moved to the neighborhood in 2002,” Elizabeth Bard, author of “Lunch in Paris: A Love Story With Recipes,” wrote in an e-mail, “they called our street the ‘rue des squatters’ because of all the illegal squats and an infamous ‘tent city’ that had been set up by tenants of a crumbling building down the street.” Today, as Ms. Bard points out, you’re just as likely to see potted geraniums and bamboo gardens as you are pilfered shopping carts and homeless camps.
The more time I spent in this gentrified quartier, the more I realized how fitting it was that a fashionable New York writer had made her home there with her Parisian boyfriend (now husband). Like the Mission in San Francisco or the Lower East Side in Manhattan, Canal St.-Martin is gritty with dirt and makeshift tarp shelters. But it’s also alive with creative energy. At Chez Prune, perhaps the neighborhood’s most popular cafe, with a lively terrace, I started making a game of counting the scruffy bearded men with fabulously disheveled coifs — the way only French men can wear their hair. They always seemed to be engaged in nicotine- and wine-fueled debates over their latest film or art projects before they hopped onto their Vespas, mobile phones cleverly tucked inside their helmets. It seemed like the epicenter of artsy intellectualism — the way I imagined Café Select on the Left Bank might have been in the ’60s.
This buoyant energy was everywhere I went in the east. Following a hairpin turn behind the stellar wine bar Le Verre Volé — where I’d devoured sautéed squid with oranges and green olives and a delicious bottle of Côtes du Rhône, with help from a friend — I discovered La Galerie Végétale, an airy, industrial space selling black-and-white photography and an impressive variety of potted succulents. Peering into the steamed-up windows of Voy Alimento, a beatnik-y cafe next door, I made a mental note to go there if I needed exotic herbs and organic teas by the gram.
Around the corner on the Rue Lucien-Sampaix, I watched a steady stream of waifish girls shuffle by in their distressed booties and hand-knit caps at Bob’s Juice Bar, which was opened by Marc Grossman, a New Yorker, in 2006. As I sat at the communal table, sipping carrot and apple juice with a fresh ginger kick, I realized that eating in the east was an international adventure. You could swing a baguette and find pizza topped with baba ganouj at Pink Flamingo Pizza, Cambodian noodles at Le Cambodge or humble bio (organic) carrot soup at Zuzu’s Petals.
As I became familiar with these neighborhood anchors, there was one address I knew I needed to conquer: Le Chateaubriand. Since Fred Peneau opened the bistro with the chef Inaki Aizpitarte in 2007, it’s earned a reputation as Paris’s pinnacle of “bistronomy.” As tough as reservations are to come by, it also accepts walk-ins. So by 9 every night, there’s a train of fashionable foodies pressed against the zinc bar, eyeing the diners already gorging on the five-course, 50-euro (about $68) menu.
Sure enough, the night of my reservation, the fashionable crowd gathering at the bar added to the evening’s excitement. As my dishes got more complex — moving from a dollop of mozzarella dusted with black pepper and vanilla to a deliciously juicy duck breast to pear crumble served with buckwheat ice cream and grapefruit compote — the din from the crowd flooding the entrance grew louder, until the whole interior seemed to vibrate. When I ventured a few weeks later to Le Dauphin, the modern all-marble wine bar opened by the Chateaubriand team, I saw the same cool kids snacking on tapas like oyster tapioca with blood sausage and dried duck meat.
As I was happily sinking my teeth into the quartier’s dining scene, other new ventures were infiltrating. Art was creeping up from the not-too-distant Haut Marais, including Galerie Chantal Crousel’s second Parisian exhibition space on the Rue Léon Jouhaux. And as a sign that the bobos might soon be ceding their territory to tourists — already appearing on boat tours of the canal — Le Citizen, the quartier’s first boutique hotel, made its debut.
“So many people are fed up with the conventional Sixth Arrondissement,” Sophie Berdah, a real estate developer who opened Le Citizen, explained as I sat with her in the hotel’s sun-flooded lobby, looking out at the prime stretch of Quai de Jemmapes. “This neighborhood is very off the track, so clients are people who know Paris a little.”
I appreciated how in tune Ms. Berdah was with the quartier’s spirit that is still more shabby than chic. I spent a night in one of the 12 rooms, enjoying personal touches like hand-delivered carafes of sparkling water; artwork from the California-based Creative Growth Art Center, which supports artists with mental and physical disabilities; and books from Ms. Berdah’s private collection as well as Artazart, the exhaustive design bookstore across the street. Mostly though, I contented myself bytaking in the views overlooking the canal — knobby chestnut trees, vagrant homeless camps and all.
The Refined West
It was a hotel opening on the other side of town that drew me deeper into Paris’s western elegance. Temporarily working in an office on Avenue Hoche, one of the grand arteries that shoots away from the towering Arc de Triomphe at the head of the Champs-Élysées, I would often stroll on my lunch breaks down to Parc Monceau, a relaxed expanse of green where schoolchildren and joggers run free. As I walked by the quartier’s harmonious rows of limestone town houses, past storefronts for Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne and Franck Sabet carpets, I noticed the scaffolding that would soon be dismantled to reveal the newly refurbished Royal Monceau.
Paris is a city filled with five-star hotels, each with its own history and style. The Royal Monceau is one of the artiest, having attracted guests from Maurice Chevalier to Ray Charles to Madonna since opening in 1928. In 2008, it was shuttered for a much-ballyhooed redesign by Philippe Starck. Then one autumn day in 2010, voilà, the scaffolding came down, and a coterie of suited doormen appeared, flanking a plush ruby carpet that extended from the hotel’s interior onto the sidewalk. Inside, the vast salon was filled with guests lounging in intimate groups of saddle-stitched leather chairs, nibbling club sandwiches and leafing through international newspapers. I spent 40 minutes browsing the bookstore’s hundreds of contemporary art, architecture and design titles and limited-edition accessories, like the signed and numbered .38 Special bullet ring by the French artist Jacques Monory. Then I found my way to the hotel’s gallery, and caught the debut exhibition of 50 original Jean-Michel Basquiat works.
Since I couldn’t afford one of the 139 rooms or suites that start at 730 euros a night, I figured I’d do the next best thing: splurge on lunch. I had two gorgeous options: Il Carpaccio, the upscale Italian restaurant tucked in the back corner under a vaulted ceiling, and La Cuisine, where Laurent André and Gabriel Grapin serve elevated classics according to the season. When in Rome, I told myself, and went directly to the French side.
My smoked herring starter, marinated in olive oil and served with pickled onions, was rich enough to call it quits. But I didn’t. From there, I moved on to the daily special of steamed cod and baby spinach and, being a sweet freak, couldn’t resist finishing the meal with a bespoke millefeuille (I chose pistachio cream and fresh raspberries), dreamed up for the hotel by the cult pâtissier Pierre Hermé.
Inspired by my Royal Monceau experience, I embraced this new code of western luxury. I knew my time in Paris would soon draw to a close and was all too happy to see the city in a different light. Just as the edgy east had drawn me in throughout my first year, as autumn turned to winter during my second year, I eagerly soaked up its more sophisticated side.
I went to see the giant green and orange neon Cy Twombly canvases that were fetching millions of dollars at Larry Gagosian’s new gallery, in a former hotel particulier. At the nearby contemporary auction house, Artcurial, I was entertained by the modelesque black-suited servers at the new Gilles & Boissier-designed cafe as they briskly trotted down the restaurant’s central artery to deliver burrata salads and salmon tartares to the well-coiffed, middle-aged patrons in their camel-colored cashmere. Since I was so close, I couldn’t resist the pull of the historic salon de thé Ladurée. I left with a rectangular pastel green box filled with rose and chocolate and pistachio macarons: a perfect Parisian memento.
My edible explorations in the west came to an exquisite finale at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. To the dismay of epicures worldwide, Mr. Robuchon had shuttered his gastronomic mecca, La Table, in November 2010 but then quietly popped up the next month in the brand-new shiny red and black basement of Publicis Drugstore at the head of the Champs-Élysées. With my Parisian tour drawing to a close — pourquoi pas? — I made a reservation.
As soon as I arrived, I spied Mr. Robuchon, who has more Michelin stars than any other chef in the world, supervising in the open kitchen. I knew it was going to be a special lunch. “Une coupe de Champagne?” I was asked as soon as I was situated at my corner perch at the bar, seated between two pairs of men. I accepted.
Having never been to any of Mr. Robuchon’s restaurants, I commanded a feast. I started with a basic salad, which was anything but: the endive, walnut, Stilton and apple combination was light and effervescent, beautifully refined. As were the procession of other small plates: John Dory with coriander, lime and a tomato compote; delicate black cod with daikon; and brochettes of creamy Parmesan-covered salsifis — a root vegetable (salsify to the Englsh-speaking) that I had never heard of but was given to me by Mr. Robuchon himself as un cadeau, and something I’ll now forever seek on menus.
As the lunch rolled on, I discovered the two pairs of men I was seated between included Michelin reviewers and members of the Club des Cent, a distinguished, if not clandestine, organization of 100 French gastronomes. The gentlemen pointed out many others in the restaurant I should have recognized but didn’t, including the actor Jean Reno and the singer Charles Aznavour and the former French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. The atmosphere was electrifying, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the food.
By the time I finished my golden caramel soufflé, most everyone in the restaurant was gone, and there I sat, “Mademoiselle Amy,” befriended by the staff, if only for the day. Antoine poured me a glass of Vouvray and Patrick insisted I have a second dessert that the pastry chef, François Benot, wanted to share: a mélange of banana, passion fruit, rum, granité and cream that he dreamed up in the Seychelles.
When I finally left the opulent den, parting with repeated handshakes, smiles and “enchantées,” I was beyond sated, beyond charmed. But I couldn’t help but also feel a tinge of melancholy: If only I could pack up this moment and a hundred others — biking across the Pont Alexandre III, admiring the rosebuds in the wintery Palais Royal gardens — and place them alongside the boxes of macarons and photos of Alain in the Marché des Enfants Rouges. Then I stepped out onto the Champs-Élysées, into the buoyant heart of Paris, and the wistfulness vanished, just like that.
BY THE COMPASS
RIGHT BANK
Stohrer, 51, rue Montorgueil, Second Arrondissement; (33-1) 42-33-38-20; stohrer.fr.
LEFT BANK
Pierre Hermé, 72 Rue Bonaparte, Sixth; (33-1) 43-54-47-77; pierreherme.com.
EAST
Chez Prune, 38, rue Beaurepaire, 10th; (33-1) 42-41-30-47.
Le Verre Volé, 67, rue de Lancry, 10th; (33-1) 48-03-17-34; leverrevole.fr. A two-course dinner for two is about 50 euros, or about $68 at $1.37 to the dollar.
La Galerie Végétale, 29, rue des Vinaigriers, 10th; (33-9) 54-32-19-68; lagalerievegetale.free.fr/BIO.html.
Voy Alimento, 23, rue des Vinaigriers, 10th; (33-1) 42-01-03-44; voyalimento.fr/.
Bob’s Juice Bar, 15, rue Lucien Sampaix, 10th; (33-9) 50-06-36-18; bobsjuicebar.com. Lunch for two, about 20 euros.
Pink Flamingo Pizza, 67, rue Bichat, 10th; (33-1) 42-02-31-70; pinkflamingopizza.com. Pizzas are 11 to 16 euros.
Le Cambodge, 10, avenue Richerand, 10th; (33-1) 44-84-37-70; lecambodge.fr. Entrées, 10 to 14 euros
Zuzu’s Petals, 8, rue Marie et Louise, 10th; (33-9) 51-79-00-31; zuzuspetals.fr. Lunch for two, 30 euros.
Le Chateaubriand, 129, avenue Parmentier, 11th; (33-1) 43-57-45-95; Five-course dinner for two, 100 euros.
Le Dauphin, 131, avenue Parmentier, 11th; (33-1) 55-28-78-88. Tapas are 5 to 14 euros.
Galerie Chantal Crousel, 11F, rue Léon Jouhaux, 10th; (33-1) 42-77-38-87; crousel.com.
Le Citizen, 96, quai de Jemmapes, 10th; (33-1) 83-62-55-50; lecitizenhotel.com. From 149 euros.
Artazart, 83, quai de Valmy; (33-1) 40-40-24-00.
WEST
Le Royal Monceau, 37, avenue Hoche, Eighth; (33-1) 42-99-88-00; leroyalmonceau.com. Rooms from 730 euros.
Gagosian Gallery, 4, rue de Ponthieu, Eighth; (33-1) 75-00-05-92; gagosian.com.
Artcurial, Hôtel Marcel Dassault, 7, rond-pont des Champs-Élysées, Eighth; 01 42 99 20 20; cafe-artcurial.abcsalles.com. Lunch for two, about 48 euros.
Ladurée, 75, avenue des Champs-Élysées, Eighth; (33-1) 40-75-08-75; laduree.fr.
Atelier Joel Robuchon Étoile, 133, avenue des Champs-Élysées, Eighth; (33-1) 47-23-75-75;joel-robuchon.net. Discovery menu for two: 300 euros.
AMY M. THOMAS, who writes about food, fashion and travel, lived in Paris for two years. She is writing a book about her Parisian experience.
Friday, March 25, 2011
36 Hours in Seattle
36 Hours in Seattle
By DAVID LASKIN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: March 24, 2011
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/travel/27hours-seattle.html?adxnnl=1&hpw=&adxnnlx=1301068945-/xEj8xdptPK/vVYYXH/6Lg
SPRING comes early to Seattle and lasts long. By the end of February, the rains relent and pastel shades of plum and narcissus initiate a progression of color and scent that lasts months. But new flora is not the only thing popping out of the ground in Seattle these days. Seemingly overnight, whole swatches of downtown and close-in neighborhoods — notably South Lake Union and the Pike-Pine Corridor — have transformed themselves into vibrant enclaves of restaurants, bars and galleries. With so many converted and repurposed buildings, Seattle’s cityscape is starting to look as layered as the wardrobes of its inhabitants. The tarry pitch of the timber port never disappeared; it just got plastered over with grunge flannel, tech money, yuppie coffee, Pacific Rim flavors, and more recently the backyard chickens and chard of urban pioneers. Don’t let a passing shower keep you from entering the mix. This is one of the rare American cities where you can be outdoors year-round without either shivering or sweating.
Seattle
Friday
4 p.m.
1) PARK TOWER VIEW
Volunteer Park (1247 15th Avenue East; 206-684-4075; www.seattle.gov/parks), a 10-minute cab or bus ride from downtown at the north end of Capitol Hill, has gardens designed a century ago by the Olmsted Brothers, a conservatory bursting with plants from regions around the world, and a squat brick water tower that you can ascend for terrific views of the city below and the mountains and water beyond. Rain or shine, it’s the ideal place for spring orientation. If hunger strikes, stroll a couple of blocks east through one of Seattle’s oldest and prettiest neighborhoods for a slice of lemon Bundt cake ($3) and a Stumptown coffee at the cozy, humming Volunteer Park Cafe (1501 17th Avenue East; 206-328-3155; alwaysfreshgoodness.com).
6 p.m.
2) COOLEST CORRIDOR
The Pike-Pine Corridor is Seattle’s happiest urban makeover: from a warren of shabby flats and greasy spoons to an arty but not oppressively gentrified hamlet just across the freeway from downtown. When the locally revered Elliott Bay Book Company (1521 10th Avenue; 206-624-6600; elliottbaybook.com) abandoned Pioneer Square to relocate here last year, the literati gasped — but now it looks like a perfect neighborhood fit, what with the inviting communal tables at Oddfellows (1525 10th Avenue; 206-325-0807; oddfellowscafe.com) two doors down, and a full spectrum of restaurants, vintage clothing shops and home décor stores in the surrounding blocks. When it’s time for a predinner drink, amble over to Licorous (928 12th Avenue; 206-325-6947; licorous.com). Behind the shack-like facade is a soaring, spare, just dark and loud enough watering hole that serves creative cocktails (Bound for Glory, with Bacardi, allspice, lime juice and Jamaican bitters, $12) and bar snacks (salumi plate, $12).
7:30 p.m.
3) FRESH AND LOCAL
One of the most talked-about restaurants in town, Sitka & Spruce (1531 Melrose Avenue East; 206-324-0662; sitkaandspruce.com) looks like a classy college dining room with a long refectory table surrounded by a few smaller tables, concrete floors, exposed brick and duct work. But there’s nothing sophomoric about the food. The chef and owner, Matt Dillon, who moved the restaurant to the Pike-Pine Corridor last summer, follows his flawless intuition in transforming humble local ingredients (smelt, nettles, celery root, black trumpet mushrooms, turnips, pumpkin) into complexly layered, many-textured but never fussy creations like beer-fried smelt with aioli ($12), spiced pumpkin crepe with herbed labneh ($19) and salmon with stinging nettles ($23). Heed your server’s advice that entrees are meant to be shared — you will have just enough room for dessert (warm dates, pistachios and rose-water ice cream, $6.50), and you will be pleasantly surprised by the bill.
Saturday
9 a.m.
4) ART AND WATER
There used to be two complaints about downtown Seattle: it offered no inspiring parks and no waterfront access worthy of the scenery. The Olympic Sculpture Park (2901 Western Avenue; 206-654-3100; seattleartmuseum.org), opened four years ago by the Seattle Art Museum, took care of both problems in one stroke. Masterpieces in steel, granite, fiberglass and bronze by nationally renowned artists have wedded beautifully with maturing native trees, shrubs, ferns and wildflowers. Wander the zigzagging paths and ramps past the massive weathered steel hulls of Richard Serra’s “Wake” and Alexander Calder’s soaring painted steel “Eagle” until you reach the harborside promenade. From there continue north to a pocket beach and into the adjoining grassy fields of waterfront Myrtle Edwards Park. It’s all free.
10:30 a.m.
5) URBAN VILLAGE
The development of South Lake Union into a thriving urban village, brainchild of the Microsoft tycoon Paul Allen, is finally alive and kicking. This former industrial no man’s land now houses the city’s best galleries, an ever increasing collection of dining spots, some nifty shops and the spanking new Amazon campus. Use the South Lake Union Streetcar to hop from Gordon Woodside/John Braseth Gallery (2101 Ninth Avenue; 206-622-7243; woodsidebrasethgallery.com), which specializes in Northwest landscapes, to Honeychurch Antiques (411 Westlake Avenue North; 206-622-1225; honeychurch.com), with museum-quality Asian art and artifacts, and on to the Center for Wooden Boats (1010 Valley Street; 206-382-2628; cwb.org), where you can admire the old varnished beauties or rent a rowboat or sailboat for a spin around Seattle’s in-city lake. Need a (really rich) snack? The newly renamed Marie & Frères Chocolate (2122 Westlake Avenue; 206-859-3534; claudiocorallochocolate.com) has some of the most exquisite chocolate macaroons ever confected.
1 p.m.
6) LUNCH BESIDE THE CHIEF
Tilikum Place, with its imposing fountain statue of the city’s namesake, Chief Sealth, is Seattle’s closest thing to a piazza, and the Tilikum Place Café (407 Cedar Street; 206-282-4830) supplied the one missing element — a classy informal restaurant — when it opened two years ago. Understated elegance is the byword here, whether it’s the delicate purée of butternut squash soup with bits of tart apple ($4), the beet salad with arugula and blue cheese ($8) or the light and piquant mushroom and leek tart ($10).
4 p.m.
7) WALK ON WATER
You don’t have to leave the city limits to immerse yourself in the region’s stunning natural beauty. Drive or take a bus 15 minutes from downtown to the parking lot of the Museum of History and Industry (2700 24th Avenue East; 206-324-1126; seattlehistory.org) and pick up the milelong Arboretum Waterfront Trail. A network of well-maintained paths and boardwalks takes you through thickets of alder, willow and elderberry into marshy islands alive with the trills of red-winged blackbirds and marsh wrens, and over shallows where kayakers prowl amid the rushes and concrete pillars of the freeway overhead. If the sun is out, you’ll want to prolong the outing with a stroll through the flowering fruit trees in the adjoining arboretum.
8 p.m.
8) LA DOLCE VITA
Maybe it’s the stylish Italian vibe or the pretty people basking in the soft glow of dripping candles, or maybe it’s the sumptuous, creatively classic food — whatever the secret ingredient, Barolo Ristorante (1940 Westlake Avenue; 206-770-9000; baroloseattle.com) always feels like a party. The pastas would do a Roman mother proud — gnocchi sauced with braised pheasant ($19), leg of lamb ragù spooned over rigatoni ($18). The rack of lamb with Amarone-infused cherries ($36) is sinfully rich, and the seared branzino (sea bass) ($28) exhales the essence of the Mediterranean. Don’t leave without at least a nibble of cannoli or tiramisù ($7).
Midnight
9) THE BEAT GOES ON
At See Sound Lounge (115 Blanchard; 206-374-3733; seesoundlounge.com) young and not so young Seattle join forces to party to house music spun by a revolving cast of D.J.’s. There’s a small dance floor — but the compensation is lots of booths and sofas to crash on. The scene outside can get rowdy in the wee hours, but inside the beat and liquor flow smoothly.
Sunday
10:30 a.m.
10) BAYOU BRUNCH
Lake Pontchartrain meets Puget Sound at Toulouse Petit (601 Queen Anne Avenue North; 206-432-9069; toulousepetit.com), a funky bistro-style spot near the Seattle Center in Lower Queen Anne. Grab a booth and settle in with a basket of hot, crispy beignets ($7.50 for the large); then indulge in something truly decadent like pork cheeks confit hash topped with a couple of fried eggs ($12) or eggs Benedict with crab and fines herbes ($16). You can cleanse your system afterward with a brisk walk up
the hill to Kerry Park (211 West Highland Drive) for a magnificent farewell view.
IF YOU GO
The best, cheapest way to get from the airport to downtown is the new Link Light Rail; $2.50 one way (soundtransit.org).
The two-year-old 346-room Hyatt at Olive 8 (1635 Eighth Avenue; 206-695-1234; hyatt.com) has hands-down the best fitness center and pool of any downtown hotel; most of the sleekly appointed guest rooms have city views. Doubles from $179 to $279.
Pan Pacific Hotel Seattle (2125 Terry Avenue; 206-264-8111; panpacific.com), which opened in 2006, is a light and airy perch above the evolving scene in South Lake Union, a 15-minute walk to downtown. Doubles from $200.
By DAVID LASKIN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: March 24, 2011
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/travel/27hours-seattle.html?adxnnl=1&hpw=&adxnnlx=1301068945-/xEj8xdptPK/vVYYXH/6Lg
SPRING comes early to Seattle and lasts long. By the end of February, the rains relent and pastel shades of plum and narcissus initiate a progression of color and scent that lasts months. But new flora is not the only thing popping out of the ground in Seattle these days. Seemingly overnight, whole swatches of downtown and close-in neighborhoods — notably South Lake Union and the Pike-Pine Corridor — have transformed themselves into vibrant enclaves of restaurants, bars and galleries. With so many converted and repurposed buildings, Seattle’s cityscape is starting to look as layered as the wardrobes of its inhabitants. The tarry pitch of the timber port never disappeared; it just got plastered over with grunge flannel, tech money, yuppie coffee, Pacific Rim flavors, and more recently the backyard chickens and chard of urban pioneers. Don’t let a passing shower keep you from entering the mix. This is one of the rare American cities where you can be outdoors year-round without either shivering or sweating.
Seattle
Friday
4 p.m.
1) PARK TOWER VIEW
Volunteer Park (1247 15th Avenue East; 206-684-4075; www.seattle.gov/parks), a 10-minute cab or bus ride from downtown at the north end of Capitol Hill, has gardens designed a century ago by the Olmsted Brothers, a conservatory bursting with plants from regions around the world, and a squat brick water tower that you can ascend for terrific views of the city below and the mountains and water beyond. Rain or shine, it’s the ideal place for spring orientation. If hunger strikes, stroll a couple of blocks east through one of Seattle’s oldest and prettiest neighborhoods for a slice of lemon Bundt cake ($3) and a Stumptown coffee at the cozy, humming Volunteer Park Cafe (1501 17th Avenue East; 206-328-3155; alwaysfreshgoodness.com).
6 p.m.
2) COOLEST CORRIDOR
The Pike-Pine Corridor is Seattle’s happiest urban makeover: from a warren of shabby flats and greasy spoons to an arty but not oppressively gentrified hamlet just across the freeway from downtown. When the locally revered Elliott Bay Book Company (1521 10th Avenue; 206-624-6600; elliottbaybook.com) abandoned Pioneer Square to relocate here last year, the literati gasped — but now it looks like a perfect neighborhood fit, what with the inviting communal tables at Oddfellows (1525 10th Avenue; 206-325-0807; oddfellowscafe.com) two doors down, and a full spectrum of restaurants, vintage clothing shops and home décor stores in the surrounding blocks. When it’s time for a predinner drink, amble over to Licorous (928 12th Avenue; 206-325-6947; licorous.com). Behind the shack-like facade is a soaring, spare, just dark and loud enough watering hole that serves creative cocktails (Bound for Glory, with Bacardi, allspice, lime juice and Jamaican bitters, $12) and bar snacks (salumi plate, $12).
7:30 p.m.
3) FRESH AND LOCAL
One of the most talked-about restaurants in town, Sitka & Spruce (1531 Melrose Avenue East; 206-324-0662; sitkaandspruce.com) looks like a classy college dining room with a long refectory table surrounded by a few smaller tables, concrete floors, exposed brick and duct work. But there’s nothing sophomoric about the food. The chef and owner, Matt Dillon, who moved the restaurant to the Pike-Pine Corridor last summer, follows his flawless intuition in transforming humble local ingredients (smelt, nettles, celery root, black trumpet mushrooms, turnips, pumpkin) into complexly layered, many-textured but never fussy creations like beer-fried smelt with aioli ($12), spiced pumpkin crepe with herbed labneh ($19) and salmon with stinging nettles ($23). Heed your server’s advice that entrees are meant to be shared — you will have just enough room for dessert (warm dates, pistachios and rose-water ice cream, $6.50), and you will be pleasantly surprised by the bill.
Saturday
9 a.m.
4) ART AND WATER
There used to be two complaints about downtown Seattle: it offered no inspiring parks and no waterfront access worthy of the scenery. The Olympic Sculpture Park (2901 Western Avenue; 206-654-3100; seattleartmuseum.org), opened four years ago by the Seattle Art Museum, took care of both problems in one stroke. Masterpieces in steel, granite, fiberglass and bronze by nationally renowned artists have wedded beautifully with maturing native trees, shrubs, ferns and wildflowers. Wander the zigzagging paths and ramps past the massive weathered steel hulls of Richard Serra’s “Wake” and Alexander Calder’s soaring painted steel “Eagle” until you reach the harborside promenade. From there continue north to a pocket beach and into the adjoining grassy fields of waterfront Myrtle Edwards Park. It’s all free.
10:30 a.m.
5) URBAN VILLAGE
The development of South Lake Union into a thriving urban village, brainchild of the Microsoft tycoon Paul Allen, is finally alive and kicking. This former industrial no man’s land now houses the city’s best galleries, an ever increasing collection of dining spots, some nifty shops and the spanking new Amazon campus. Use the South Lake Union Streetcar to hop from Gordon Woodside/John Braseth Gallery (2101 Ninth Avenue; 206-622-7243; woodsidebrasethgallery.com), which specializes in Northwest landscapes, to Honeychurch Antiques (411 Westlake Avenue North; 206-622-1225; honeychurch.com), with museum-quality Asian art and artifacts, and on to the Center for Wooden Boats (1010 Valley Street; 206-382-2628; cwb.org), where you can admire the old varnished beauties or rent a rowboat or sailboat for a spin around Seattle’s in-city lake. Need a (really rich) snack? The newly renamed Marie & Frères Chocolate (2122 Westlake Avenue; 206-859-3534; claudiocorallochocolate.com) has some of the most exquisite chocolate macaroons ever confected.
1 p.m.
6) LUNCH BESIDE THE CHIEF
Tilikum Place, with its imposing fountain statue of the city’s namesake, Chief Sealth, is Seattle’s closest thing to a piazza, and the Tilikum Place Café (407 Cedar Street; 206-282-4830) supplied the one missing element — a classy informal restaurant — when it opened two years ago. Understated elegance is the byword here, whether it’s the delicate purée of butternut squash soup with bits of tart apple ($4), the beet salad with arugula and blue cheese ($8) or the light and piquant mushroom and leek tart ($10).
4 p.m.
7) WALK ON WATER
You don’t have to leave the city limits to immerse yourself in the region’s stunning natural beauty. Drive or take a bus 15 minutes from downtown to the parking lot of the Museum of History and Industry (2700 24th Avenue East; 206-324-1126; seattlehistory.org) and pick up the milelong Arboretum Waterfront Trail. A network of well-maintained paths and boardwalks takes you through thickets of alder, willow and elderberry into marshy islands alive with the trills of red-winged blackbirds and marsh wrens, and over shallows where kayakers prowl amid the rushes and concrete pillars of the freeway overhead. If the sun is out, you’ll want to prolong the outing with a stroll through the flowering fruit trees in the adjoining arboretum.
8 p.m.
8) LA DOLCE VITA
Maybe it’s the stylish Italian vibe or the pretty people basking in the soft glow of dripping candles, or maybe it’s the sumptuous, creatively classic food — whatever the secret ingredient, Barolo Ristorante (1940 Westlake Avenue; 206-770-9000; baroloseattle.com) always feels like a party. The pastas would do a Roman mother proud — gnocchi sauced with braised pheasant ($19), leg of lamb ragù spooned over rigatoni ($18). The rack of lamb with Amarone-infused cherries ($36) is sinfully rich, and the seared branzino (sea bass) ($28) exhales the essence of the Mediterranean. Don’t leave without at least a nibble of cannoli or tiramisù ($7).
Midnight
9) THE BEAT GOES ON
At See Sound Lounge (115 Blanchard; 206-374-3733; seesoundlounge.com) young and not so young Seattle join forces to party to house music spun by a revolving cast of D.J.’s. There’s a small dance floor — but the compensation is lots of booths and sofas to crash on. The scene outside can get rowdy in the wee hours, but inside the beat and liquor flow smoothly.
Sunday
10:30 a.m.
10) BAYOU BRUNCH
Lake Pontchartrain meets Puget Sound at Toulouse Petit (601 Queen Anne Avenue North; 206-432-9069; toulousepetit.com), a funky bistro-style spot near the Seattle Center in Lower Queen Anne. Grab a booth and settle in with a basket of hot, crispy beignets ($7.50 for the large); then indulge in something truly decadent like pork cheeks confit hash topped with a couple of fried eggs ($12) or eggs Benedict with crab and fines herbes ($16). You can cleanse your system afterward with a brisk walk up
the hill to Kerry Park (211 West Highland Drive) for a magnificent farewell view.
IF YOU GO
The best, cheapest way to get from the airport to downtown is the new Link Light Rail; $2.50 one way (soundtransit.org).
The two-year-old 346-room Hyatt at Olive 8 (1635 Eighth Avenue; 206-695-1234; hyatt.com) has hands-down the best fitness center and pool of any downtown hotel; most of the sleekly appointed guest rooms have city views. Doubles from $179 to $279.
Pan Pacific Hotel Seattle (2125 Terry Avenue; 206-264-8111; panpacific.com), which opened in 2006, is a light and airy perch above the evolving scene in South Lake Union, a 15-minute walk to downtown. Doubles from $200.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
36 Hours in Hong Kong
36 Hours in Hong Kong
By NAOMI LINDT
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: March 17, 2011
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/travel/20hours-hongkong.html?hpw
IN Hong Kong, that most cosmopolitan of cities, contrasts abound. Ladies toting Gucci handbags wait two hours in dingy alleys for a coveted bowl of noodles. Incense-filled Buddhist temples fight for space with gleaming new high-rises. Cutting-edge art galleries share a block with junk shops. Always reinventing itself — a recent example being the rebirth of the former marine police headquarters as the 1881 Heritage, housing a luxury mall and boutique hotel — Hong Kong is a city of constant change. Its coiffed, work-hard-play-harder professionals attract the world’s most inventive chefs to their city, while the nonstop shoppers — soldiering on, late into the night — get first shot at the latest in fashion and design. Somehow, over seven million residents have managed to carve out a niche in this buzzing, compact, vertical city.
36 Hours in Hong Kong
Friday
5 p.m.
1) START WITH ART
Hong Kong has lagged behind places like New York and London when it comes to the arts. But recent high-profile arrivals like Ben Brown Fine Arts and the Gagosian Gallery, coupled with the city’s plans to develop the West Kowloon Cultural District over the next decade, signal a creative awakening. Head to trendy Sheung Wan and its independent galleries to see the latest in contemporary international art. For photography, try the Upper Station (22 Upper Station Street; 852-3486-2474; theupperstation.com), known for work that examines Hong Kong’s changing identity. The nonprofit Para/Site Art Space (4 Po Yan Street; 852-2517-4620; para-site.org.hk) hosts exhibitions that often feature political or social commentary by emerging artists from places like Indonesia and Thailand.
8 p.m.
2) CULINARY RENAISSANCE
Following a $65 million renovation involving designers like Colin Cowie and Charles Allem, the 50-year-old Hotel Miramar in Tsim Tsa Shui was reborn as the Mira Hotel in late 2009. Not only are the rooms getting raves, but its Cantonese restaurant, Cuisine Cuisine (118 Nathan Road; 852-2315-5222; themirahotel.com), scored two Michelin stars this year under Ken Yu, known for his use of fresh ingredients and exquisite homemade sauces. Dishes like honey-glazed barbecued pork (130 Hong Kong dollars, or about $17 at 7.6 Hong Kong dollars to the U.S. dollar) and pan-fried cod with pomelo sauce (240 dollars) are served under a ceiling of suspended glass balls.
10:30 p.m.
3) SING IT OUT
Karaoke bars come in all shapes and sizes on Kowloon, but to see fashionable 20- and 30-somethings in full crooner mode, head to Cloudnine on Minden Avenue’s night-life strip (No. 8; 852-2723-6383). In the dimly lighted back room, the casual cool crowd — men in designer jeans and sneakers, women with blunt bangs and in miniskirts — share bottles of Johnnie Walker and tackle syrupy Cantopop ballads while lounging on velour couches. For a breath of fresh air, head across the street for a glass of wine (66 Hong Kong dollars) on the leafy terrace at Courtney’s (No. 7, the Minden Hotel; 852-2739-7777; theminden.com).
Saturday
9 a.m.
4) TRADITIONAL TRACK
For over 100 years, compact double-decker trams (hktramways.com) have been rumbling back and forth across Hong Kong Island. They still provide one of the cheapest and most scenic ways to experience the city’s daily life with a bird’s-eye view. Hop on anywhere along the line, grab a seat on the upper deck and watch the colorful panorama unfold — outdoor markets spilling over with choy sum and bok choy; storefronts strung with glistening Peking duck; old-school barber shops; and high-rises budding from the hills. A one-way ride is just 2 Hong Kong dollars.
11 a.m.
5) NOODLE MANIA
Disembark near the Central MTR station and walk toward D’Aguilar Street to partake of another Hong Kong obsession: Butao Ramen (11-12 Wo On Lane; bowl of soup from 75 Hong Kong dollars). Hong Konger Meter Chen sampled more than 800 bowls of ramen during his 15 years in Japan before convincing his favorite Tokyo chef to join him in opening this tiny 15-seat dining spot last October. Devotees wait in line for up to two hours to slurp one of the day’s 200 bowls, which are filled with a salty pork-rib-based broth, thin noodles and finely sliced barbecued pork, ear mushrooms and scallions.
12:30 p.m.
6) THE BRITISH ARE COMING
The British fashion designer Gareth Pugh opened his first store in the world last year on Ice House Street (No. 10; 852-2801-5332), sharing the block with Comme des Garçons and Ann Demeulemeester. His goth-rock designs — cropped tops made of safety pins; second-skin leather pants — are housed in a creepy, cavernous space. A short walk away is Rupert Sanderson’s first flagship outside of Britain (8 On Lan Street; 852-2530-3391; rupertsanderson.com), where you’ll find patent oxfords and sky-high python-skin platforms.
3 p.m.
7) TEA TIME
Wind your way through pond- and bird-filled Hong Kong Park to reach the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware (10 Cotton Tree Drive; 852-2869-0690; hk.art.museum; free), which chronicles over 3,000 years of Chinese tea drinking. Housed in a 167-year-old Greek Revival mansion that was once the residence of the commander of the British forces, the collection includes intricately designed tea services with flourishes like mother-of-pearl inlay and hand-painted fish and swallows. Afterward, sip a perfectly steeped cup (from 38 Hong Kong dollars) at the adjacent antiques-filled Lock Cha Tea House (852-2801-7177; lockcha.com).
7:30 p.m.
8) CHEF’S TABLE
In response to astronomical rents and ruthless landlords, chef-run private kitchens — speakeasy-like restaurants in residential buildings — have taken Hong Kong by storm. A noteworthy newcomer is TBLS (31 Hollywood Road, seventh floor; 852-2544-3433; tbls-kitchenstudio.com), where the young Vietnamese-American chef Que Vinh Dang prepares a six-course set menu (580 Hong Kong dollars) that changes monthly. The open kitchen takes center stage in the minimalist space, producing dishes like cassoulet pot pie with homemade sausage, tomato-basil alphabet soup with a wagyu beef sloppy Joe, and “instant sangría”: macerated fruit, homemade rainbow sorbet and red wine. To secure one of the 26 seats, book at least a month in advance.
10 p.m.
9) SHAKE IT UP
The cocktail revolution has hit Hong Kong’s shores, led by year-old Lily & Bloom (33 Wyndham Street; 852-2810-6166; lily-bloom.com). The New York firm AvroKO (the Stanton Social, Public) designed the brasserie-meets-supper club space — black banquettes, wrought-iron chandeliers, vintage glassware — and the Milk & Honey alum Christy Pope consulted on the menu, which includes the Old Cuban (120 Hong Kong dollars), made with 23-year-old rum, mint and lime; and a blackberry-pineapple sidecar (110 dollars). At boudoir-themed Varga Lounge (36 Staunton Street; 852-2104-9697; greenflashgroup.com.hk), sip signature tipples like the absinthe-and-pineapple Green Fairy (70 dollars) among images of ’50s pinup girls and retro furniture.
Sunday
10 a.m.
10) HOT BUNS
Scoring a seat at the dim sum house Tim Ho Wan (2-20 Kwong Wa Street; 852-2332-2896) should be your main mission of the day. The chef Mak Pui Gor left his post at the Four Seasons’ three-star Lung King Heen in 2009 to open this crammed, hole-in-the-wall, which received its own star soon after opening. Everything is amazing here, but the sugarcoated baked barbecued pork buns (14 Hong Kong dollars) are superb. Waits can be as long as four hours and you’ll need to be pushy — don’t hesitate to repeatedly show your number to the gruff lady who runs the show and demand an update (you can ask for a wait estimate and return later). It’s worth it.
1 p.m.
11) SPIRITED GARDENS
The tranquil, bonsai-filled grounds and lotus ponds at Chi Lin Nunnery (5 Chi Lin Drive; 852-2354-1888; chilin.org) are a welcome respite from the urban bustle. Founded in 1934 but rebuilt in the 1990s, the wide-eaved Tang Dynasty-style wooden pavilions that make up the elaborate temple complex were built without a single nail. If you’re lucky, you’ll catch a glimpse of the shorn, brown- and gray-robed nuns placing orchids and bowls of fruit at the feet of gold-cloaked deities, just as they’ve done for decades.
IF YOU GO
The sprawling minimalist rooms at the Upper House (88 Queensway; 852-3968-1111; upperhouse.com) in Pacific Place, by the Hong Kong interior designer Andre Fu, offer commanding harbor and mountain views coupled with king-size beds, light wood paneling and limestone-clad baths. Doubles from 3,300 Hong Kong dollars, about $432.
Cherry red and lime green Arne Jacobsen Egg chairs punctuate the muted, technologically thoughtful rooms (in-room PC, Blu-ray player, mobile phone for guests’ use) at the design-savvy Mira (118 Nathan Road; 852-2368-1111; themirahotel.com), located among Tsim Sha Tsui’s many shops and restaurants. Doubles start at 1,615 dollars.
Occupying the top 16 floors of a 118-story building, the city’s tallest, the Ritz-Carlton (1 Austin Road West; 852-2263-2263; ritzcarlton.com) is making a triumphant return to Hong Kong. Introductory rates from 4,088 dollars.
By NAOMI LINDT
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: March 17, 2011
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/travel/20hours-hongkong.html?hpw
IN Hong Kong, that most cosmopolitan of cities, contrasts abound. Ladies toting Gucci handbags wait two hours in dingy alleys for a coveted bowl of noodles. Incense-filled Buddhist temples fight for space with gleaming new high-rises. Cutting-edge art galleries share a block with junk shops. Always reinventing itself — a recent example being the rebirth of the former marine police headquarters as the 1881 Heritage, housing a luxury mall and boutique hotel — Hong Kong is a city of constant change. Its coiffed, work-hard-play-harder professionals attract the world’s most inventive chefs to their city, while the nonstop shoppers — soldiering on, late into the night — get first shot at the latest in fashion and design. Somehow, over seven million residents have managed to carve out a niche in this buzzing, compact, vertical city.
36 Hours in Hong Kong
Friday
5 p.m.
1) START WITH ART
Hong Kong has lagged behind places like New York and London when it comes to the arts. But recent high-profile arrivals like Ben Brown Fine Arts and the Gagosian Gallery, coupled with the city’s plans to develop the West Kowloon Cultural District over the next decade, signal a creative awakening. Head to trendy Sheung Wan and its independent galleries to see the latest in contemporary international art. For photography, try the Upper Station (22 Upper Station Street; 852-3486-2474; theupperstation.com), known for work that examines Hong Kong’s changing identity. The nonprofit Para/Site Art Space (4 Po Yan Street; 852-2517-4620; para-site.org.hk) hosts exhibitions that often feature political or social commentary by emerging artists from places like Indonesia and Thailand.
8 p.m.
2) CULINARY RENAISSANCE
Following a $65 million renovation involving designers like Colin Cowie and Charles Allem, the 50-year-old Hotel Miramar in Tsim Tsa Shui was reborn as the Mira Hotel in late 2009. Not only are the rooms getting raves, but its Cantonese restaurant, Cuisine Cuisine (118 Nathan Road; 852-2315-5222; themirahotel.com), scored two Michelin stars this year under Ken Yu, known for his use of fresh ingredients and exquisite homemade sauces. Dishes like honey-glazed barbecued pork (130 Hong Kong dollars, or about $17 at 7.6 Hong Kong dollars to the U.S. dollar) and pan-fried cod with pomelo sauce (240 dollars) are served under a ceiling of suspended glass balls.
10:30 p.m.
3) SING IT OUT
Karaoke bars come in all shapes and sizes on Kowloon, but to see fashionable 20- and 30-somethings in full crooner mode, head to Cloudnine on Minden Avenue’s night-life strip (No. 8; 852-2723-6383). In the dimly lighted back room, the casual cool crowd — men in designer jeans and sneakers, women with blunt bangs and in miniskirts — share bottles of Johnnie Walker and tackle syrupy Cantopop ballads while lounging on velour couches. For a breath of fresh air, head across the street for a glass of wine (66 Hong Kong dollars) on the leafy terrace at Courtney’s (No. 7, the Minden Hotel; 852-2739-7777; theminden.com).
Saturday
9 a.m.
4) TRADITIONAL TRACK
For over 100 years, compact double-decker trams (hktramways.com) have been rumbling back and forth across Hong Kong Island. They still provide one of the cheapest and most scenic ways to experience the city’s daily life with a bird’s-eye view. Hop on anywhere along the line, grab a seat on the upper deck and watch the colorful panorama unfold — outdoor markets spilling over with choy sum and bok choy; storefronts strung with glistening Peking duck; old-school barber shops; and high-rises budding from the hills. A one-way ride is just 2 Hong Kong dollars.
11 a.m.
5) NOODLE MANIA
Disembark near the Central MTR station and walk toward D’Aguilar Street to partake of another Hong Kong obsession: Butao Ramen (11-12 Wo On Lane; bowl of soup from 75 Hong Kong dollars). Hong Konger Meter Chen sampled more than 800 bowls of ramen during his 15 years in Japan before convincing his favorite Tokyo chef to join him in opening this tiny 15-seat dining spot last October. Devotees wait in line for up to two hours to slurp one of the day’s 200 bowls, which are filled with a salty pork-rib-based broth, thin noodles and finely sliced barbecued pork, ear mushrooms and scallions.
12:30 p.m.
6) THE BRITISH ARE COMING
The British fashion designer Gareth Pugh opened his first store in the world last year on Ice House Street (No. 10; 852-2801-5332), sharing the block with Comme des Garçons and Ann Demeulemeester. His goth-rock designs — cropped tops made of safety pins; second-skin leather pants — are housed in a creepy, cavernous space. A short walk away is Rupert Sanderson’s first flagship outside of Britain (8 On Lan Street; 852-2530-3391; rupertsanderson.com), where you’ll find patent oxfords and sky-high python-skin platforms.
3 p.m.
7) TEA TIME
Wind your way through pond- and bird-filled Hong Kong Park to reach the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware (10 Cotton Tree Drive; 852-2869-0690; hk.art.museum; free), which chronicles over 3,000 years of Chinese tea drinking. Housed in a 167-year-old Greek Revival mansion that was once the residence of the commander of the British forces, the collection includes intricately designed tea services with flourishes like mother-of-pearl inlay and hand-painted fish and swallows. Afterward, sip a perfectly steeped cup (from 38 Hong Kong dollars) at the adjacent antiques-filled Lock Cha Tea House (852-2801-7177; lockcha.com).
7:30 p.m.
8) CHEF’S TABLE
In response to astronomical rents and ruthless landlords, chef-run private kitchens — speakeasy-like restaurants in residential buildings — have taken Hong Kong by storm. A noteworthy newcomer is TBLS (31 Hollywood Road, seventh floor; 852-2544-3433; tbls-kitchenstudio.com), where the young Vietnamese-American chef Que Vinh Dang prepares a six-course set menu (580 Hong Kong dollars) that changes monthly. The open kitchen takes center stage in the minimalist space, producing dishes like cassoulet pot pie with homemade sausage, tomato-basil alphabet soup with a wagyu beef sloppy Joe, and “instant sangría”: macerated fruit, homemade rainbow sorbet and red wine. To secure one of the 26 seats, book at least a month in advance.
10 p.m.
9) SHAKE IT UP
The cocktail revolution has hit Hong Kong’s shores, led by year-old Lily & Bloom (33 Wyndham Street; 852-2810-6166; lily-bloom.com). The New York firm AvroKO (the Stanton Social, Public) designed the brasserie-meets-supper club space — black banquettes, wrought-iron chandeliers, vintage glassware — and the Milk & Honey alum Christy Pope consulted on the menu, which includes the Old Cuban (120 Hong Kong dollars), made with 23-year-old rum, mint and lime; and a blackberry-pineapple sidecar (110 dollars). At boudoir-themed Varga Lounge (36 Staunton Street; 852-2104-9697; greenflashgroup.com.hk), sip signature tipples like the absinthe-and-pineapple Green Fairy (70 dollars) among images of ’50s pinup girls and retro furniture.
Sunday
10 a.m.
10) HOT BUNS
Scoring a seat at the dim sum house Tim Ho Wan (2-20 Kwong Wa Street; 852-2332-2896) should be your main mission of the day. The chef Mak Pui Gor left his post at the Four Seasons’ three-star Lung King Heen in 2009 to open this crammed, hole-in-the-wall, which received its own star soon after opening. Everything is amazing here, but the sugarcoated baked barbecued pork buns (14 Hong Kong dollars) are superb. Waits can be as long as four hours and you’ll need to be pushy — don’t hesitate to repeatedly show your number to the gruff lady who runs the show and demand an update (you can ask for a wait estimate and return later). It’s worth it.
1 p.m.
11) SPIRITED GARDENS
The tranquil, bonsai-filled grounds and lotus ponds at Chi Lin Nunnery (5 Chi Lin Drive; 852-2354-1888; chilin.org) are a welcome respite from the urban bustle. Founded in 1934 but rebuilt in the 1990s, the wide-eaved Tang Dynasty-style wooden pavilions that make up the elaborate temple complex were built without a single nail. If you’re lucky, you’ll catch a glimpse of the shorn, brown- and gray-robed nuns placing orchids and bowls of fruit at the feet of gold-cloaked deities, just as they’ve done for decades.
IF YOU GO
The sprawling minimalist rooms at the Upper House (88 Queensway; 852-3968-1111; upperhouse.com) in Pacific Place, by the Hong Kong interior designer Andre Fu, offer commanding harbor and mountain views coupled with king-size beds, light wood paneling and limestone-clad baths. Doubles from 3,300 Hong Kong dollars, about $432.
Cherry red and lime green Arne Jacobsen Egg chairs punctuate the muted, technologically thoughtful rooms (in-room PC, Blu-ray player, mobile phone for guests’ use) at the design-savvy Mira (118 Nathan Road; 852-2368-1111; themirahotel.com), located among Tsim Sha Tsui’s many shops and restaurants. Doubles start at 1,615 dollars.
Occupying the top 16 floors of a 118-story building, the city’s tallest, the Ritz-Carlton (1 Austin Road West; 852-2263-2263; ritzcarlton.com) is making a triumphant return to Hong Kong. Introductory rates from 4,088 dollars.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Lewinski and Kaczynski limericks
Lewinski and Kaczynski limericks
The Washington Post runs a weekly contest in its Style section called the 'Style Invitational'.
The requirements this week were to use the two words 'Lewinsky' (the Intern) and 'Kaczynski' (the Unabomber) in the same limerick.
Now, remember, the following winning entries were actually printed verbatim in the newspaper, no bleeps or xxxs:
Third place:
There once was a girl named Lewinsky
Who played on a flute like Stravinsky
'Twas 'Hail to the Chief'
On this flute made of beef
That stole the front page from Kaczynski.
Second place:
Said Clinton to young Ms. Lewinsky,
We don't want to leave clues like Kaczynski,
Since you made such a mess,
Use the hem of your dress
And please wipe that stuff off your chinsky.
And the winning entry:
Lewinsky and Clinton have shown
What Kaczynski must surely have known,
That an intern is better
Than a bomb in a letter,
When deciding how best to be blown
The Washington Post runs a weekly contest in its Style section called the 'Style Invitational'.
The requirements this week were to use the two words 'Lewinsky' (the Intern) and 'Kaczynski' (the Unabomber) in the same limerick.
Now, remember, the following winning entries were actually printed verbatim in the newspaper, no bleeps or xxxs:
Third place:
There once was a girl named Lewinsky
Who played on a flute like Stravinsky
'Twas 'Hail to the Chief'
On this flute made of beef
That stole the front page from Kaczynski.
Second place:
Said Clinton to young Ms. Lewinsky,
We don't want to leave clues like Kaczynski,
Since you made such a mess,
Use the hem of your dress
And please wipe that stuff off your chinsky.
And the winning entry:
Lewinsky and Clinton have shown
What Kaczynski must surely have known,
That an intern is better
Than a bomb in a letter,
When deciding how best to be blown
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