This restaurant specialises in poultry and has a car valet to park your car for you. It has pink tablecloths, no space between the tables, a long wine list and at least one customer who is the spitting image of Juliette Binoche (it wasn't her, Mr L says the real one is far more beautiful - how would he know??).
The car valet didn't have much to do and spent most of the evening leaning on the counter gossiping with the staff.
I had coq au vin made with wine from the Jura region - it was very rich and velvety and the coq must have been a splendid specimen, nothing at all like bland supermarket chicken. The wine was divine, a Croz Hermitage. Our neighbours on one side ended up with the woman sat on the man's knee, singing some kind of song in Italian (I think..) and sharing their dessert. Our neighbours on the other side were a Jarvis Cocker lookalike and his 'fille à papa' girlfriend.
Afterwards we stopped under the Eiffel Tower and watched the twinkly lights. Wonderful.
This looks like a cheap and cheerful Lebanese take-away from the outside, but at the back there are a load of tables.
The food is absolutely excellent (both takeaway and sit down), freshly prepared and totally delicious, especially the garlic sauce which I tasted for the first time last night. I had mixed kebabs which came with generous helpings of hummous, garlic sauce, metabbal and tabbouleh. We tried a Lebanese red wine which was also delicious.
This place is dead handy for the cinemas around Montparnasse, so if you're starving hungry and need to eat before or after a film then it's perfect.
Thursday night's romantic 'diner à deux' with Mr L was just around the corner from my place. I was slightly worried when Mr L admired the lime green walls and wondered if the colour would be good in his living room, but once I had slurped a glass of the delicious Côtes de Roussillon he could have splashed lime green paint on the Eiffel Tower and I wouldn't have minded. Giufeli (recommended by ebtb, merci Nathan) has a set menu which changes daily and it is truly excellent. The wine was even decanted into the most elegant carafe, which magically seemed to be never ending.....
My 'duo meridionale' of salmon and another fish whose name I have forgotten with yummy cheesy risotto was perfect and the starter of aubergine caviar with a poached egg was fresh and light. I couldn't manage all of my dessert, but you can't not have dessert because it is part of the set menu and the whole thing is only 22€!! I think this easily has to be the best and best value meal I have had in Paris. I shall become a regular.
It's soooo good to be back in Paris. Dinner with my friend who checked all my post for me over the last three months was just round the corner from her place and it was FAB. After weeks of good solid plain English food, prepared in a galley kitchen, often at a very odd angle as we sailed along, last night was heaven. This place is a cosy neighbourhood restaurant with a chef who spent a year in England. How did I guess? Well, the cheese selection we had for dessert included a very good cheddar and a very good stilton. The dead giveaway though, was a beautifully presented dollop of Branston pickle on the plate. Yes, you heard me correctly - Branston pickle served up in a French restaurant in Paris. I just had to blog it. And for info, a really good wine to have with cheese and Branston pickle is a white wine from the Jura region, called Arbois. What a revelation.
A tea shop recommended by Mr L has to be tested. What do the French know about tea anyway? Quite a lot actually, although you do get the odd disastrous pot of luke warm water with a tea bag desperately trying to impart some flavour...
So while Mr L was off skiing (yes, skiing in May) I went to test the tea with a true English rose. Except that we didn't have tea, we had a glass of rosé. Maybe we were put off the tea by the name of the tea shop which translates as 'the dormouse in the teapot' - I like my tea without stewed rodent thank you. The glass of rosé was accompanied by the most enormous slab of meltingly scrumptious sticky chocolate cake, which was impossible to finish. Apart from the availability of wine in the tea shop, it could almost have been in Bristol - slightly shabby with lots of mismatched chairs, scuffed leather armchairs and the walls covered with film posters.
I think I should have gone for the lemon meringue pie. Next time.
Strictly speaking, this shouldn't be in my 'Places to go in Paris' section, because it's not in Paris - but as you can get there in under an hour by public transport from the centre of Paris and you can still see Paris when you get there, I reckon it still counts.
There's a castle, a park, a chapel and stuff like that - y'know, statues, fountains and stuff. So far you could be at any European royal residence getting merrily confused over exactly which King Henry, Charles, Louis lived there..... married which Elizabeth, Marie, Josephine or Catherine .....
And then there is this humungous, 2.4km long terrace with the most incredible views over the west of Paris. I was astounded. Why had no-one ever told me about this place? Do Parisians have a pact to keep this place secret from none French people? Is there some terrible secret they don't want us to know about, I dunno, like French people actually really like monarchies and are secretly plotting to reinstate a French King in the chateau at St Germain en Laye.....?
None of the tourist bumph explains why this 2.4km long terrace was built, it seems so impossibly extravagant. The view over Paris is stunning, but the nearest part you see is La Défense, which didn't exist when the terrace was built and you really need binoculars to see the older parts of Paris.
So all you do is walk along this terrace for 2.4km and walk back again, getting a crick in your neck from looking sideways at the view as you walk. Then you go for a refreshing beer in an outdoor café and wonder at the amazement of it all. Cool.
You don't often see people spilling out onto the pavement from cafés and bars in Paris. It's usually a sign that the place is on the tourist trail or that the local residents haven't succeeded in getting the owners to keep their customers indoors. Le Baron Rouge is certainly on the tourist trail - I've heard Italian, Spanish, American and English there and when it closes at 3.30 pm on a Sunday afternoon the barman announces closing time in French and English. It's seriously good value for money though. They have a good selection of wine and plates of rillettes, cheese, charcuterie or oysters to accompany it.
Once you've squished yourself into a spot it's difficult to want to leave.
Another dozen oysters and a bottle of Muscadet anyone?