Paris Journal 2014 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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This morning, while thinking about our dining experience last night, I realized what was wrong with the restaurant: the staff seemed worried, and overly serious; there was no joy. Lack of joy was odd in a place that was all decked out for a glitzy party. Because it was the final day of the long holiday weekend, I’ve decided not to comment much on the merely “correct” food because it was probably merely “correct” due to the main chef(s) being gone on holiday. But take a look at this boudoir-décor! We were surrounded by plush, red-and-gold eye-candy. The red-velvet upholstered chairs we sat in were so heavy we could barely move them. Each one had a circular brass handle on the back to assist in moving them. The lighting was romantic. The “Salon Josephine” was separated from the rest of the dining room by a big square of glass with water sheeting over it. A gorgeous multi-vased arrangement of red roses adorned the entry.
There were at least two extended French families gathered there for a special weekend celebration – including a birthday for one of the family members. Clearly, this has been an important neighborhood restaurant in the swish 7th arrondissement for a long time. Le Grand Bistro, on the Place Breteuil, has been in the Dorr family since 1975, and the younger generation has recently taken control, I think. The family also owns three other restaurants in Paris. The elder Dorr worked for Chef Claude Deligne at Taillevant before taking over the family restaurant. The current Dorr worked for Alain Ducasse at the Plaza-Athénée, Christophe Cussac at the Joël Robuchon restaurant in the Hôtel Métropole Monte-Carlo, and Louis Grandart at the restaurant Drouant. So you see why I want to give the resto another chance sometime before I pass judgment. I just am not sure when that chance should be. Probably not until sometime in September. Every dish we had made me long for a similar, but much better, one that we’d had elsewhere. For example, the tarte fine aux pommes last night was attractive (see below) but it made me yearn for Joël Valero’s tarte fine aux pommes, with its freshness, flavor, and liveliness (the Valero’s, retired to Épernay, had Restaurant Oh! Duo for decades, on the avenue Émile Zola).
The dorade made me yearn for the dorade like what I had recently at A La Tour Eiffel. Again, it is the freshness, and the pairing of flavors with the exquisitely done vegetables that I missed – as well as the perfect cooking of the fish, leaving its moistness and flavor intact. Tom’s steak was good, but not anything like the steak (priced exactly the same) that he recently had at Le Granite. Not even close. Without the 50 percent discount (on food items, not beverages) from LaFourchette.com, we would have felt that we’d been seriously overcharged. But with the discount, it was okay. Most concerning of all is the fact that we didn’t see even one server crack one smile last night. They were all tense, and worried. I made sure to smile at them whenever I could. We were, after all, feeling somewhat celebratory again, because Tom had a really good day at work on his latest book. By the way, one of the reasons you don’t see much detail about the work is that we don’t want to communicate anything about the next editions to the competition. And besides, that’s not the subject of this journal. Our experiences out and about in Paris are the subject. So after dinner, we decided to walk home a slightly different way than the route we’d taken to the restaurant. It is about a 30-minute walk, if not rushing, each way. Going to the resto, we’d turned down the avenue de Suffren and walked through the Place Georges Mulot neighborhood, a deluxe eastern corner of the 15th arrondissement that would be a top choice for us if we were to buy an apartment here. That neighborhood sticks out into the 7th, so that as soon as we cross it, we are in the 7th, on the Place de Breteuil, where Le Grand Bistro is situated. It is a grand setting for a Grand Bistro, because the spacious avenue de Breteuil has a verdant park running through the middle of its expanse, leading up to the glistening golden dome of Les Invalides. When we left the resto, we pointed ourselves up the avenue de Saxe, a wide market street. The market booths and their frames were all gone, so we had a marvelous open space to walk through, as we headed toward the Eiffel Tower and the rear grounds of the École Militaire. Days are much shorter now, and the wait in the resto had been very long. So night was falling as we walked home. From this day on, you’ll be seeing more Paris-at-night photos from our after-dinner walks home.
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Tuesday, August 19, 2014
The avenue de Saxe, on our way home last night.
Le Grand Bistro Breteuil.
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