Paris Journal 2011 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Sometimes, my research consumes me. Yesterday was one of those days. The statement on a couple of web sites that Eddy Bénézet’s family raises Aubrac beef cattle got me going. This topic of different cattle breeds and how they’re raised in France is fascinating for me. Could it be because my great-great-grandfather William McAdams was a cattle breeder of some renown in the plains of Illinois in the mid-1800s? Maybe. I don’t know much about cattle, but it seems that I’m interested in learning. I’ve written about Charolais cattle in the past, and how they were brought into the U.S. especially after WWII, an how they were subsequently raised, fed, and bred differently, to the extent that Charolais cattle in the U.S. do not look like Charolais cattle from France anymore. One of my favorite newspaper columnists, Roger Williams, wrote an excellent piece about the ridiculous, environmentally insensitive way cattle are raised, fed and brought to market in the U.S. Here it is. I wrote to Roger after he published this, and told him about this Charolais difference. He was interested – his family raised cattle where he grew up in Texas. Here in France, lots of people care about the origin of the meat they eat, and it is possible to get a real answer when you ask where the beef on your plate comes from when you’re dining at a good restaurant. And so it is also possible to learn about Aubrac cattle on the web. The breed is an old one, and it was developed on the Aubrac plateau – a volcanic plateau in the Aveyron region of the south of France. That area has a harsh terrain, and the Aubrac cattle were bred to withstand that harsh terrain. They are grass-fed. They are brown, with lighter colored feet, big adorable dark eyes, and they have longhorns. Sometimes they are interbred with the Charolais, which is a bigger, meatier cow. The beef from Aubrac cattle has a lot of flavor, reputedly. Back to the Bénézet family. The internet makes it clear that people with the name Bénézet are still, indeed, raising and marketing Aubrac cattle. The internet also holds web sites that promote the products of various regions of France. There is such a site for the Aveyron region. On it, there is a list of Paris restaurants that feature the cuisine of the Aveyron. In that list is a page about Bernadette Bénézet, Eddy Bénézet’s mother. Her story fascinates me. She is a native of Entraygues, in the Aveyron. For ten years, she was a teacher. Then she gave that up to join her husband in running a café in La Defense, next to Paris. That touches on another French agri-marketing phenomenon I’ve noticed: Sometimes these families that have big operations in the provinces, producing some product of that territory (such as beef or cheese or foie gras), will buy restaurants or shops in Paris that will sell their products to the big city people. That could explain why a Bénézet of the Aubrac-raising family would have a café in Paris. At age 33, Bernadette was divorced from the Bénézet she’d married, and by herself, ran a café near the Place d’Iena. She has, according to the aveyron.com web site, “like her cousins, the Costes brothers, the gift of sensing the air that will float in the streets tomorrow.” In other words, she knows what the next cool thing will be. She made a couple of good buys and acquired a restaurant in the 16th, La Rotonde de la Muette, in 1988, and then La Gauloise eight years later. With La Rotonde, she re-made the restaurant into a chushy place, with soft, warm lighting and warm colors, like one sees in the chic neighborhoods in the establishments run by the Costes brothers. “I wanted a place that resembles an annex of a great hotel,” she said. The menu is “global,” not provincial, and trendy, according to Bernadette. “Our chef is very inventive,” she states. One day a week, she serves as a judge on the Paris Tribunal of Commerce, where she serves with businessmen who come from the upper crust of French industry, who were educated in the “great schools” like ENA, the École Nationale d’Administration. “It is not so bad for them to have to share the point of view of someone who has worked in the bistrots,” she says. To relax, she goes back to the family farm as often as possible. That is at Anglarès-Cassuéjouls, which is next to Laguiole, a place where Laguiole cheese is made from the milk from Aubrac cows. Other web sites now indicate that Eddy Bénézet is the general manager of these restaurants, along with several others. La Rotonde is near the entrance to the Jardins du Ranelagh, a park that sits in front of the Marmottan museum. Next to La Rotonde de la Muette is Bistrot de la Muette, Andremille, and Ristorante Dino. Eddy is also the general manager of Le Coq, a fine restaurant near the Trocadéro in the 16th. Near Le Coq, Eddy has another resto called Cobe. And he has La Gauloise, as well. I think perhaps his mom has turned it all over to him. By French standards, she would now be at retirement age. It is a good thing that Eddy is only in his thirties. This is a lot of responsibility, and must require bushels of energy. We decided to walk up to the neighborhood of the Jardins du Ranelagh and the Bénézet restaurants La Rotonde de la Muette, Bistrot de la Muette, Andremille, and Ristorante Dino. It took us just under an hour to walk there, and it was all uphill. I’ve been wanting to go to a really good Italian restaurant, and Dino seemed to be promising. The menu at the Bistrot de la Muette was fancy and appealing, but we just weren’t sure we were up for an elaborate French dinner. The Bistrot is not a casual bistrot. It has a 42-euro fixed-price dinner, and valet parking. I’m not opposed to that kind of elaborate dinner, I just have to be in the right mood for it. Dino was what we were in the mood for. I’ve been yearning for a very fine tomato sauce, like that made by chef Paul Grimaldi, the new young star at George & Wendy’s Corner Grill on Sanibel. Recently, I was appalled to see the 5-gallon can of tomato sauce used by the pizza man at Café le Commerce. While I do like that café very much, I don’t have much to say about its tomato sauce. Dino’s, however, is wonderful. Almost as good as Paul Grimaldi’s. I ordered the special of the day, cannelloni Napoletana, and Tom had the veal scaloppini al limoni, which came with neatly stacked, delicious macaroni and cheese. Tom finished with a homemade tiramisu. It was all excellent – well worth the long uphill walk to get there. Fortunately, the walk home was all downhill. Sign
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Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Statue
depicting La Fontaine’s fable about the crow and the fox, in the Jardins Ranelagh.
Cannelloni Napoletana at Ristorante Dino
on the Chaussee de la Muette
in the 16th arrondissement.
Below is the veal scaloppini al limoni, with its delightful candied strips of lemon
zest.
As we walk
through Paris, we often spot a house that seems to date back to a time when
it was in a village, outside of Paris, before the city grew to gobble up the
village. This one is on the rue Boulainvilliers, on the hill in the 16th
arrondissement that the taxi driver used to take us to our apartment on our
first day here this summer, July 4.
The Schmid family tomb in the cemetery for the former village
of Grenelle, now part of the 15th
arrondissement.
Along the
Seine near the Eiffel Tower is this mark that shows how high the floodwaters
were in 1910. |
