Paris Journal 2012 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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A company located in the 2nd arrondissement, La Fourchette, operates the web site www.lafourchette.com. Their web hosting company, Typhon, is not far away, in the 3rd arrondissement. The web site is available in English as www.thefork.com . It is also available in Spanish. But it is about finding and reserving a table at a restaurant in France, in real time, online. Many restaurants use La Fourchette simply for its reservation service. A good number of them use it to offer “deals,” or discounts, to attract new customers. We found that it also can lure disenchanted customers back, to show them that the resto has changed for the better. Lafourchette.com works well for all three purposes. The restaurants that use the services of lafourchette.com are not just the less expensive ones; some very pricey places use it, too. Because of lafourchette.com, we returned to La Bastide Odéon this summer, even though we had become somewhat disenchanted with it in the past. La Bastide Odéon is now under new management, and it has vastly improved. But the challenge is to get the word out, isn’t it? Once a reputation is damaged, it is difficult to change it. Lafourchette.com encourages diners to review the restaurant a day or so after dining there. At the very least, you can complete a short, multiple-choice survey that you receive in your email. If you want to do more, you can write and submit a brief, narrative review. Those reviews convinced me that we should give La Bastide Odéon another chance this year. The “deal” they offered (called a promotion) was a 20 percent reduction on the food portion of the tab. Some restos offer a 40 percent reduction on food. This is what persuaded us to try La Bastide d’Opio last night. Normally, we would not go to any restaurant in that area just to the north of the Place Saint Sulpice. We think it is full of tourist traps. But the Bastide d’Opio has a high rating, of 8 points on a 10-point scale, from customer reviews on the web site. These reviews are not from tourists, for the most part. It seems that the bulk of lafourchette.com users are French people. The high rating, and the deal, persuaded us to reserve a table at La Bastide d’Opio. This Bastide, by the way, I don’t think is related to La Bastide Odéon. A “bastide” is a cottage or a small walled village in the south of France. In a restaurant name, it suggests that the place features the cuisine of Provençe. Such is the case with La Bastide d’Opio. So it was no surprise to me that the “crumble” of fresh sardines with almonds and pistachios that I ordered as a starter arrived atop a serving of delicious ratatouille, a vegetable dish that is distinctly Provençale. I’m trying to focus on ordering things that I can’t find easily back home in Florida, since we’ll be there next week. Fresh sardines is something I don’t find there. Ratatouille, too, is not often served back home. For my main course, I ordered the duck breast, because duck, too, is not offered everywhere, as it is here, and when it is offered, it often is not as good as it is in France. Tom, however, ordered linguine with green beans and shrimp. Shrimp is generally better in Florida, but anyone is capable of ruining good shrimp. And it is possible to do shrimp very well, even in landlocked Paris. Tom’s main course was a great success, too, as was his dessert, a gratin d’abricots. Our server, I believe, was actually the manager of the place. He gave us a choice of tables, and I selected one tucked beneath the stairs that led to an upstairs dining room. Without that upstairs room, this resto would be tiny indeed, as it is squeezed into one of the many extremely old little buildings in that buzzing neighborhood. The neighborhood has been buzzing for centuries; it is the location of the old, medieval foire Saint Germain, a never-ending fair, a party that never stops. Now this foire is a scheduled festival, with events in June and July of each year, many of which take place in the Place Saint Sulpice or nearby. I enjoyed looking at the old beams overhead and in the wall next to us. The stairs beside us were a combination of very old, hand-hewn wood and modern boards, added over the years, to strengthen, repair, and rebuild – a never-ending task on a building that old. The “real time” aspect of reserving via lafourchette.com is for real, it seems. We have been able to reserve a table for a time that is merely an hour or two away. Usually we try to allow more time than that, however. For the first time, yesterday the reservation system didn’t work for us, but I think it was the restaurant’s fault. More than a day in advance, I’d reserved a table at La Cuisine de Philippe, just down the street from us, via lafourchette.com. The promotion that this resto offers is only good for Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. After initially confirming our Tuesday night reservation as I made it on Monday, the next day, on Tuesday morning, I received an apologetic email from lafourchette.com, conveying the message that La Cuisine de Philippe was unable to honor our reservation. The writer encouraged me to make a reservation for a different restaurant. And so that’s how we ended up at La Bastide d’Opio. The manager at the Bastide d’Opio was sweetly complimentary of my French pronunciation skills, saying that my pronunciation in French was far better than his in English. I said, “ah, non, mais merci, c’est gentille.” And he continued to be very nice all evening, even with a table of five difficult French women. He is a classy guy, a real professional. Shortly after we arrived and were seated, the place started filling up with French people. I didn’t hear any other English speakers, although it is possible some were upstairs, I don’t know. The manager had asked us, in French, if we wanted English or French menus. He didn’t presume that we wanted English ones, which we don’t, and I liked it that he did not presume. And so this was how we discovered another delightful little restaurant where the locals go to dine. We’d arrived just in time, as it was starting to rain. We’d been out walking through the Luxembourg Gardens, taking the full tour of that park and the ones just to the south, on the avenue de l’Observatoire. After that, we sat for a few minutes on a bench in the Place Saint Sulpice, witnessing a stunt in which a couple of young men donned scuba masks and snorkels, stripped to their skivvies, sat on the edge of the fountain, and fell backwards into the water as two of their friends videotaped them. They got out of that cold water as fast as they could, and put their clothes back on. They were only wearing shorts and shirts. They needed heavy, dark sweatpants and sweatshirts, however. The weather was chilly; at least, that’s what we Floridians thought. The evening air was probably 59 degrees F. Tom says it is good for us to experience some true Fall weather. He’s probably right, but this is about enough for me. I thought maybe we should come to France for the last week of June next year, and stay through only the third week of September. But we’ll probably just do the usual three months. I hate to leave you here, on this chilly note, but I must put the Zonta newsletter together today. Bye for now! |
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
This
chandelier in a shop window on the rue Jacob is like one that I owned many
years ago, only this one is smaller.
Tom said “shall we see how much it costs?” I said, “no, been there and done that; I
don’t need one of those again.” Such a
chandelier is beautiful, but you can imagine how much work cleaning it would
be.
A
porte cochere
door was open on the rue Jacob, so we popped in and photographed this
charming old staircase.
Cute
and quirky decoration near our table under the steps.
Looking
up past the old beams and a woodcarving to the upstairs of the Bastide d’Opio. Opio, by the way,
is a village in southeastern France.
Delicious
magret de canard (duck breast) in a honey
sauce with roasted potatoes. I could
only eat a few of the potatoes.
Portions at La Bastide d’Opio
are generous.
A
painting inside the Saint Thomas d’Aquin church.
My
Thomas, with bright bunnies in front of a gallery on the boulevard Saint Germain. |
