Paris for Dreamers

by Katrina Lawrence

  Take a table on the rooftop terrace at the restaurant Le Georges, and toast the intoxicating view that sweeps from Notre-Dame around and up to Sacré-Coeur (which also offers up a superb Parisian vista). If the sun is setting, the Eiffel Tower will soon light up, fizzing like a flute of effervescent champagne. Let your own bubbles float to your head. After all, Paris is the ultimate city for enjoying the high life.

  PART THREE: FOOD & FUN

  Itinerary

  • Square Louvois 75002

  • Bibliothèque Nationale de France: 58 Rue de Richelieu 75002; 10.00-18.00; closed Sunday

  • Le Grand Véfour: 17 Rue de Beaujolais 75001; 12.30-14.00, 16.00-22.00; closed Saturday and Sunday

  • Le Grand Colbert: 2 Rue Vivienne 75002; 12.00-02.00 (Thursday-Saturday), 12.00-24.00 (Sunday), open 24 hours (Monday-Wednesday)

  • Bistrot Vivienne: 4 Rue des Petits Champs 75002; 08.00-01.00

  • Stohrer: 51 Rue Montorgueil 75002; 07.30-20.30

  • Au Pied de Cochon: 6 Rue Coquillière 75001; open 24 hours

  • E. Dehillerin: 18-20 Rue Coquillière 75001; 09.00-12.30, 14.00-18.00 (Monday), 09.00-19.00 (Tuesday-Friday), 09.00-18.00 (Saturday); closed Sunday

  • Bourse du Commerce: 2 Rue de Viarmes 75001

  • Gosselin: 123-125 Rue Saint-Honoré 75001; 07.00-20.00; closed Saturday

  • Hôtel Ritz: 15 Place Vendôme 75001

  • La Pâtisserie du Meurice par Cédric Grolet: 6 Rue de Castiglione 75001; 12.00-16.00; closed Monday

  Buy yourself a box of breakfast pastries to set the tone for today’s gastronomically minded tour and take a seat in the Square Louvois, by the fountain. And let’s rewind to the late 1790s, during the final Directory years of the French Revolution. Earlier in the decade, a neo-Classical theatre had been unveiled on this very site, to house the Paris Opera. You might think that opera, one of the favourite pastimes of the ancien régime, would have gone the way of aristocratic heads. But the Revolution wasn’t about destroying that privileged way of life so much as redistributing the riches. And in this district in particular, the financial hub of Paris then as now, a new generation of Parisian movers and shakers wanted to treat themselves to the very best things in life.

  Watching all the action – the finance types making deals, the women in their opera gowns — was a teenage boy called Antonin Carême. Born into a Left Bank slum, he was abandoned by his parents during the Terror period of the Revolution. At a time when it was safe for nobody to be on the streets, Carême was fortunate to be rescued by a restaurateur who offered board in return for work in his galley. After five years as a kitchen-boy, Carême moved onto an apprenticeship at a pâtisserie on Rue Vivienne, just a block east from here. Business was thriving, with the new Parisian elite ordering all sorts of sugary concoctions to serve at their dinner parties. Like opera, good food was not something the French were prepared to give up. It was one’s newly minted democratic right to dine well.

  Just across the Rue de Richelieu, you can see the door to the Bibliothèque Nationale — it was through here that Carême often ventured in his spare time, heading to the library’s print room, to find creative inspiration. A frustrated architect, he would pore over paintings of classical monuments and buildings, which he began to reconstruct with the only materials he had at hand: chou pastry, meringue, marzipan and spun sugar. Carême’s confectionery creations — tiered centrepiece cakes, known as pièces montées, in the forms of temples, castles and pyramids — took dessert to a whole new level, quite literally, and he was soon the talk of Paris, the name on every gourmand’s sugar-dusted lips.

  Venture into the main courtyard of the library, and turn to your right, towards the reading room, which was added in 1867. You won’t be able to walk around, but the guards will let you stand at the entrance, in stunned admiration of the space before you: a series of soaring, slender columns supporting arches of lacy lattice and glazed domes. You could almost be standing in a Carême confection. Architect Henri Loubrouste, even when working with cold hard cast-iron, brought a lyrical lightness to his work, in the same way that Carême was the master of ethereal dishes, such as piped meringues, soufflés and vol-au-vents, all his own creations.

  Retrace your steps to the main entrance, and head south down Rue de Richelieu, to Passage Beaujolais on your left, which will take you down to the Palais-Royal. At the base of the flight of stairs, you’ll see the Bar de l’Entracte — a water hole that has been here since well before the Revolution, when it served the carriage drivers who had dropped off their various playboy and party-girl passengers to the then royal palace. It was, by and large, the typical type of Old Paris eatery, an ale-drenched tavern where food was a fairly basic afterthought.

  Towards the end of the eighteenth century, dining — and drinking — habits were changing. Enter via the first entrance to the Palais-Royal, and you can’t miss one of Paris’s most celebrated restaurants, Le Grand Véfour. It opened as the Café de Chartres in 1784, a time when cafés were a glam affair. Mirror-lined and chandelier-lit, they were the perfect product of the Enlightenment era, and a stage on which politicians and philosophers could shine. Coffee fuelled the conversation, and newspapers offered up food for thought. It was no wonder that cafés, for all their pretty décor, became revolutionary hotbeds. Those at the Palais-Royal — by this time no longer the actual royal palace, which was then out at Versailles, and out of tune with an increasingly disgruntled Parisian public — attracted particularly passionate minds, eager to air their grievances with all the walks of Parisian life in these gardens, many hungry for bread while King Louis XVI and co dined like royalty. By the time Café de Chartres was rechristened as Le Grand Véfour in 1820, everyone could eat like a king or queen, for a price. Restaurants, often run by former palace chefs who had needed a career rethink, served up an extra dollop of luxury after the Revolution, to Parisians hungry for the good life of which they’d been deprived. Le Grand Véfour is as sumptuous now as back then, and the closest you’ll come to dining in a jewellery box. The literati and glitterati of Paris of the past couple of centuries have all sat on its red velvet banquettes, admiring the floral frescoes and golden trimmings. The prices are as you’d imagine, although the set-price lunch menu is a worthy splurge if you want to one day indulge in the epitome of haute cuisine.

  Revolutionary restaurants were a key ingredient in the formation of French fine dining as we know it, but Carême played a major role, too. He knew the restaurant business well — having delivered to them many cakes — but he bucked the chef-restaurateur trend in order to cook in-house for a series of international royals and high-profile Parisians. Still, his influential cookbooks codified haute cuisine the country over, and he is credited with bringing service à la russe to France from Russia, where food is served in courses, rather than as an all-you-can-eat free-for-all feast. And that white toque hat so symbolic of great French chefs? Carême’s doing, too.

  French cuisine has diversified over time, from high to low, and everything in between. Head back north, up Rue Vivienne; soon you’ll see, on your right, Le Grand Colbert (oui, it’s the Something’s Gotta Give restaurant). A brasserie style of eatery, it’s all about non-stop service from midday to midnight, and a set menu of traditional Gallic fare, in a splendid setting: think mosaic flooring and globe lamps that infuse the high-ceilinged space with a champagne glow. Go back down to Rue des Petits Champs, and up to the left, at the entrance to Galerie Vivienne you’ll see the inviting Bistrot Vivienne, with its warm, wood-lined interior, and quintessentially French food experience. Le bistrot tends to offer more varied menus, along with specials. It’s more leisurely than a brasserie but quicker than a more formal restaurant; legend has it that the bistrot — both in concept and name — was inspired by the Russian troops who descended on Montmartre after Napoléon’s failed Waterloo campaign, and yelled ‘býstro!’ (quickly) when they wanted faster food service. Now you know.

  Continue east along Rue des Petits Champs, through to the grand Pl
ace des Victoires, and straight over to Rue Étienne Marcel. In about ten minutes (give or take a little window-shopping), you’ll reach Rue Montorgueil. Take a left and stop when you see a royal-blue awning over the marble-cobbled footpath. You’re at Stohrer, Paris’s oldest patisserie. In 1725, Polish pastry maker Nicolas Stohrer accompanied his king’s daughter to France, for her marriage to Louis XV. After five years of palace work he decided to strike out on his own, setting up shop on this market street. It was a time when France was developing a sweet tooth, sugar becoming more plentiful thanks to the cane plantations in the recently colonised French Caribbean. After so many years in the cake business, Stohrer has worked up an impressive repertoire; if you have difficulty deciding on what to taste-test, go for the baba au rhum, said to have been invented by Monsieur Stohrer himself. Stohrer’s traiteur selection is equally mouth-watering: smoked-salmon tartlets, thick wedges of vegetable-laden quiche, and vol-au-vents filled with creamy mixtures that would have had Carême in a swoon. Traiteurs — or caterers — have been working the Parisian food trade for centuries. Long before restaurants came along, most apartments lacked kitchens, so families relied on take-away. It’s enough to make you envy those Parisians who lived around here (until you remember their homes were also bathroom-challenged).

  Walk back down Rue Montorgueil, towards Les Halles, the site of the city’s old markets. Sadly for lovers of history (probably not for lovers of green space and fresh air, however), the old market sheds are long gone. The chefs now go out to Rungis, in the south, but one address still brings them back here: E. Dehillerin, the legendary purveyors of cooking gear since 1820. To get there, walk along the southern side of Saint-Eustache (which is deserving of a visit, for it’s the highest Parisian church next to Notre-Dame), then continue past the row of restaurants that includes Au Pied de Cochon, the famous 24-hour brasserie that first opened to serve market workers. Stop here if you’re ready for lunch, and tick one of Paris’s classic dishes off your to-eat list: French onion soup, still made the way Julia Child loved. Child used to trek to Les Halles for her groceries, but also to shop at E. Dehillerin. Venture past its bottle-green façade, and coo over the copper pots and moulds hanging from hooks up high, and the decades-old shelves heaving with every utensil imaginable, and then some (fleur-de-lys-topped skewers, anyone?). You could well find yourself standing next to a three-hatted chef, but even if you’re not a culinary pro, you’ll find your perfect souvenir, such as a madeleine tray or crêpe pan.

  Pop over the road, towards the gardens of Les Halles, and you’ll soon see a circular building, the former Bourse de Commerce, topped with a part-glazed cupola. The city’s first iron dome, it at first protected the then halle au blé, or wheat hall, of the city’s markets. The building is currently being transformed into a contemporary art space, which seems quite fitting, as even though fine food in France is an art form, at heart nothing is more important than bread. This food staple has, of course, caused a revolution in this country.

  At that fraught time in France, bread — processed by the city’s many windmills — came in the form of large, coarse brown loaves, not the crunchy-yet-soft creation we now know as la baguette. This bread, now so symbolic of the good life à la française, only found its way onto Parisian plates in the mid-nineteenth century, after August Zang, from Austria, opened his Boulangerie Viennoise on Rue de Richelieu, just near where we started today’s tour. His various creations led not only to the baguette, but also the croissant, and the viennoiserie category of baked goods in general. Pastry wasn’t new to Paris, of course. Carême had worked gravity-defying wonders with chou, which was originally introduced to Paris by the chef Catherine de Medici brought along with her from Florence, on her marriage to the future King Henri II (she also, by the way, brought her astrologer, and he was responsible for the curious column you might have noticed tacked onto the side of the old wheat hall; once their observatory tower, it’s the sole remnant of her old residence, the Hôtel de Soissons). Chou is the pastry that gives us such delicacies as éclairs, gougères, profiteroles and the glazed mélange of cream puffs and cream that is the St Honoré. Few cakes capture Paris’s lyrical whimsy and satisfying lightness as this one, which can be found everywhere around town, but also at Gosselin, which you’ll find if you head down Rue du Louvre, and pivot just to the left at Rue Saint-Honoré — the street and gâteau are suitably named after the patron saint of pastry makers and bakers.

  Speaking of boulangers … the world’s first restaurant was said to have opened, circa 1765, just a block south from here, approximately on the corner of Rue du Louvre and Rue Bailleul, the brainchild of a Monsieur Boulanger. Instead of serving up the day’s one dish, usually some kind of stew, on a communal bench, as taverns did, Boulanger sat his clients down at their own marble-topped tables, and offered a menu of choices. He was particularly big on broths, extolling their health-enhancing benefits. Soon dozens of copycat establishments popped up around town, similarly selling a choice of restorative soups, or restaurants. And voilà: that’s why a restaurant is named as it is.

  Walk westwards along Rue Saint-Honoré. This section of the famous street is somewhat non-descript these days, but restaurants around here must have done a raging trade back in Boulanger’s time, when the entire strip was the centre of town, a buzzing merchant hub before the invention of the department store. Shop assistants would have flocked to restaurants after work, joined by the kitchen-deprived Parisians who lived on the floors above the boutiques, starting a time-honoured tradition of dining out. So integral to this country’s culture is the French meal, in all its multi-course richness, that it is now on the official UNESCO heritage list.

  ‘The destiny of nations depends on the manner in which they are fed,’ opined early nineteenth-century food writer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. As restaurants became ever more refined, chefs experimented with a nouvelle cuisine, dishes to satisfy a patriotic post-Revolution France. Fresh regional produce flavoured with rich stocks, butter-heavy sauces and local herbs came to define Gallic gastronomy, and set the kitchen-benchmark for fine dining the world over. Brillat-Savarin also famously proclaimed, ‘Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.’ For the French, to have good taste, literally, is to have le bon goût. Eating well is living well — and eating is not just a feast for the tastebuds, but for the eyes, with meals arranged as art on a porcelain plate.

  Continue walking westwards until you reach Place Vendôme. Just up to the right is the Hôtel Ritz, where another great French chef added his own flavour to haute cuisine. Auguste Escoffier, the business partner of César Ritz, was a man of his Belle Époque times, whipping up the gastronomic equivalent of the day’s fashions, all froth and bustle in pastel hues. So headily glamorous were the worlds this pair created in their five-star hotels, that they inspired a new phrase for living the extravagant life. ‘Putting on the ritz,’ says the Oxford Dictionary, is to make a show of luxury, say, to ‘garnish your soup with an asparagus tip nestled in a small spoonful of lightly whipped cream.’ Escoffier was indeed a lover of garnish and cream, and continued Carême’s tradition of ornamental food; like his predecessor, he was a frustrated artist, a sculptor manqué. His food was dramatically presented and poetically inspired. Some of his most celebrated signature dishes included Cuisses de Nymphes a l’Aurore (translation: Thighs of Nymphs at Dawn — or poached frogs’ legs set in jelly) and the Peach Melba, his vocal-chord-soothing ode to opera star Nelly Melba, with its poached fruit in a syrupy, creamy whirl, often served on an ice sculpture of a swan.

  Anyone can dine at the Ritz (or even take a course at the Escoffier school) but just as the Ritz has reinvented itself, so too has French food. There’s an even newer nouvelle cuisine these days, the flavour fussiness and peachy chintz stripped back even more, in line with internationalised tastes. Still, French dessert remains a flight of fancy. Treat yourself to one of the darling gâteaux by the Ritz’s current pastry artist, François Perret. Or exit south of Place Vendôme, down
Rue de Castiglione, to find the mouth-watering work of Paris’s other cake wunderkind, Cédric Grolet. He excels in concocting delights that mimic fresh fruits — right down to their rippled orange rinds or glossy cherry skin — and burst in the mouth with a molten-like explosion of vivid flavours. Buy a box and take yourself into the Tuileries, to find the perfect shaded chair on which to savour your fruity delights.

  Like a Paris-Brest — that classic ring of chou filled with swirls of praline cream — you’ve come full circle today, back to savouring a delicious moment in a Parisian park. But really, how can you ever have too much of such a thing? Paris doesn’t save its best food for special occasions. It’s a delight for the everyday, as much as for everyone. Monsieur Carême would certainly approve.

  Itinerary

  • Jardin des Tuileries: 113 Rue de Rivoli 75001; 07.30-19.30 (October-March), 07.00-21.00 (April-September)

  • Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel: Place du Carrousel 75001

  • Musée de l’Armée: 129 Rue de Grenelle 75007; 10.00-17.00; closed 1 January, 1 May & 25 December

  • Manège 1913: Avenue Charles Risler, Champ de Mars 75007

  Paris is a funfair — a playground of outdoor delights, of thrilling monuments to climb. But it’s also a city that loves its amusement-park attractions, oversized tinselly toys that enchant Parisian kids, and inner enfants, too. Rides that take nostalgia-loving locals back into the Belle Époque, and beyond.

  The longstanding Grande Roue, whose giant wheel spun around by the Place de la Concorde, might have come down (for now), but on another edge of the Jardin des Tuileries a fairground unfurls itself in the summer months, with its gaudy flashing lights and candy-coloured barbe à papa and Ferris wheel that proffers heart-stopping views over the rooftops of the Right Bank.