THE PARIS LETTER: Maison des Petits, CentQuatre

Way better than hanging out in our tiny pad

It rains a lot here. In fact, Paris's dirty little secret is that it's weather is exactly like London's. Or Seattle's. It never gets too cold or too hot, but it is gray. Graaaaay. And rainy. We've already had two months, June and October, where it rained for at least half the time. And while I'm very happy to have skipped out of New York before Hurricane Sandy, or any number of severe blizzards and blistering heatwaves, I can tell you that rain rain rain day after day is no fun either.

Especially when you've got a child. And a 450 square foot apartment.

So that is why this week's endorsement goes to Paris's many free indoor playspaces, which I've been exploring this fall. Today's playspace: Maison des Petits at CentQuatre.

CentQuatre, or 104, is a huge public arts space in what used to be Paris's premiere crematorium and coffin factory. Yes, that's right. Just like Parc de la Villette repurposed Paris's slaughterhouses, CentQuatre has turned this factory for death into art. So French, right?

Anyway, it is GREAT -  a huge space where you can go hear a concert, see an art installation, have lunch at Les Grands Tables de CentQuatre (or at the fun Camion a Pizza, a pizza truck with a woodburning oven).

And, if you have children between the ages of 0 and 5, you can take them to the Maison des Petits:

This is basically a giant playspace, with areas for toys, fingerpainting, books and music, plus a little space for babies who aren't walking yet, coffee and tea for parents, and an all important changing room. Though at least one parent is expected to stay with their children at all times, there is a staff on duty that runs things, helps kids get toys, and breaks up any conflicts, so you can sit in the corner and read a book if you want, or chat with other parents.

For me, its both a great way to get Sophia out of the house on a rainy day, and for her its really stimulating to be around the other kids , and - of course - all the new toys -

On the weekends and on Wednesdays (when maternelle, the French preschool, is not in session) there can be a bit of a wait, but CentQuatre is so lively that the wait is never boring - one afternoon we got to play with huge boxes of Legos provided by a charitable organization while we listened to a rock band tune up for a concert that night (Sophia found the thumping bass particularly exciting), and another day we found ourselves in the middle of a breakdancing festival, so we got to watch various dancers do amazing tricks.

Each time, the wait was not much more than 20 minutes, and if you come right when they open there's usually no wait at all. And, did I mention it's free? Paris tourists with little ones, this is also an option for you, though be prepared to speak some French and blend in, as this is more designed for Parisian families -

Here's some details for all you cooped up parents out there:

LE CENTQUATRE

LA MAISON DES PETITS
LE 104
104 Rue d'Aubervilliers, 75019 Paris
01 53 35 51 21
Metro: Stalingrad or Riquet
Tuesday-Friday  3-6PM
Saturday/Sunday 2-7PM 
Closed Monday
 

Our Best Paris Dinner Spot: Le Verre Vole

Wow, I almost don't want to post this because its really our favorite spot. This is very Parisian of me, actually - its hard to pry "les bonnes adresses" out of the folks in this town, they're always so worried that the place will be discovered and then they'll never get in again. Which I guess is a legitimate concern, we've all had places that we loved that became so popular we could no longer love them (Momofuku Ssam Bar comes to mind here...)

Matt loves Le Verre Vole!

BUT here's what a French person will do that an American probably wouldn't do - when asked point blank "Where did you get your hair cut?" or "Where did you find that amazing scarf?", or even - and of course - "Where did you buy this amazing baguette?", Parisians will have no qualms totally evading a straight answer if they don't want to tell you "Oh, around. Just some place in my neighborhood. Over that way (waving vaguely in a direction) - But you WILL NOT pry an actual address out of them if its a favorite they want to keep as their secret.

Whereas, an American would proudly tell you just where they got their haircut, and how much it cost, sometimes even before you ask.

So I'm torn about telling you about this place, because it is really something special and its CHEAP. But will I still be able to get a reservation once I've posted this? We shall see.

Delicious Orsin, or French sea urchin

LE VERRE VOLE
62 Rue de Lancry
75010 Paris
Open for lunch and dinner every day
+33 (0)1 48 03 17 34

Le Verre Vole is a wine bar specializing in natural wines, which they serve with a variety of seasonal small plates and a couple of nightly main dishes. Its small, sometimes cramped, and still very groovy, just on the edge of the Canal Saint Martin. And, all importantly, its open on Sunday nights, one of the hardest nights to find a decent place to eat in Paris. When it opened a few years back, it was THE place to be, though now trendier bistros have eclipsed it and its easier to book a table - it still does good business, but its not the center of attention it once was, which I personally am happy about.

Beet & Goat Cheese salad and Ceviche Salad

We usually load up on the appetizers (confusingly called entrées in French), which often include much seafood and organ meats in interesting combinations. Oh, yes - this isn't a good restaurant for you if you're a vegetarian or have other dietary restrictions. One of the best things on the menu by far is the boudin noir, or blood sausage, served with mashed potatoes and salad, and somewhere between a meatloaf and a paté. We get it just about every time we go, a French heart attack on a plate. If this doesn't sound good to you, maybe this isn't the restaurant for you (see, there's a chance it won't get super crowded after all!)

But, if you're an adventurous eater and enjoy trying wines from small, interesting French vineyards, this is a great place. The staff will recommend the wines based on your preferences, and its good if you speak a little French - though the staff can get by in English, you'll get more out of it if you've got a French speaker with you. The nice part about it is that you'll usually get out for around 50 Euros a person, including wine, and feel very well cared for and well fed.

So far, we've been able to book a few days in advance and been just fine...

I believe this was homemade headcheese....delicious...

The Best Cheap Lunch in Paris

Yep that's me on the left there.

Paris aficionados will already know that the best way to eat for cheap in this city is to do it at lunch - lunch is still the main meal of the day for many French people, and cafes in this city specialize in lunch formules, or set menus, usually for under 15 euros. For this you'll usually get several courses - an appetizer, main dish, and often a choice of dessert or a glass of wine. I've actually been taking myself out to lunch lately on Wednesdays, when Sophia has a babysitter, and plan  to do some good lunchtime food reporting in future posts.

But, when I first came to Paris in college, I was stunned by how expensive the food was here, and just had no idea how I would make it on a student budget. Then I discovered L'As du Fallafel on Rue des Rosiers in the Marais, and my life was forever changed. It still wins my best cheap lunch in Paris award, and its one of my favorite things to recommend to visitors.

L'As du Fallafel means "The Ace of Falafel", and its on a street where its got a lot of competition - in fact, its sort of the street of falafel stands - but I've never gone anywhere else. Rue des Rosiers is also the food center of the Marais's Jewish roots - just down the road is Sacha Finkelstejn, an honest to god Jewish deli where you can get a pastrami sandwich, as well as several Kosher butchers. You won't be able to miss the place because of the long ling outside, which usually moves fast. Ask the order guy for a fallafel with everything, including sauce piquante, and you'll get a pita stuffed with falafel, tahini, about five kinds of vegetables, including roasted eggplant and lightly pickled cabbage and celery root, and topped off with harissa, all for 5 euros. It'll come at you like this:

Though it looks like this guy skipped the harissa -mistake!

Don't worry, they give you a fork and napkins. BUT this is a mobile eating experience - you can sit down indoors at L'As du Fallafel, but its much better - and cheaper - as a takeaway. The only trick is to find a place to sit and eat it.

It requires a little patience, but there are two pretty little parks about a five minute walk away. Continue down Rue des Rosiers away from the Centre Pompidou until you get to Rue Pavee, your next possible left. Take Rue Pavee to the Rue des Francs Bourgeois; here, you can either make a right and there will be a little garden on your right about halfway down the block, or you can contine on Rue Pavee another block, as it become Rue Payenne, and eat in the Square Cain behind the Musee de Carnavalet.

Happy eating - one fallafel should set you up for a good day of sightseeing. Don't forget  to buy yourself something to drink, that sauce is piquante!

And, if you want to see what better food writers than I have to say about the place, check out Mark Bittman's review in the New York Times.

L'As du Fallafel
32, rue des Rosiers
75004 Paris
Metro: Saint-Paul
Closed Saturdays (its the Sabbath, yo!)

Steamin' it up: The Hammam at the Mosque de Paris

I want to warn you all: full nudity is no longer allowed at the hammam at the Mosque of Paris. And my friend Maya and I learned this the hard way.

I don't know why we thought full nudity would be allowed. I mean, its in a mosque. But we had both gone there when we visited Paris in college and I think we remembered that you could do the full naked thing then. Or maybe we just thought that because we remembered it feeling awkward, and so we were probably naked?

I'm not sure.

But in any case, the Hammam at the Mosque de Paris is really an experience not to be missed when you come to Paris, if you like new experiences and inexpensive, relaxing spa treatments. Both of which I do.

A Hammam, for my American readers, is the Turkish version of a steam bath, which means its kind of a like a communal sauna except a wet, but not dry heat (I'm not sure why I think you'll be more familiar with a communal sauna here. Maybe its because I'm Scandinavian...) Anyway, its basically a series of rooms that are heated with steam to varying degrees of hot, super hot, and hard-to-breath hot, with pools of cool water you can splash on yourself when you get overheated, and cold cold showers you can dunk yourself in afterwards.Because this Hammam is in a mosque, it is super gorgeous:

The Hammam is segregated by day, four days a week for women and two for men, and one that's "family day". You can just get a straight admission  to the steam, where you can hang out for as long as you like (or dare) gradually getting more and more relaxed and noodle-like. But  you can also get, as a package with your admission, a gommage, which is a kind of industrial strength exfoliating treatment, and a rubdown from some grandmotherly turkish ladies in crisp white uniforms. The whole thing is about 50 Euros, which while not the cheapest of the cheap, is pretty good for a unique Paris spa experience.

But here's the thing. Like with a lot of things in Paris, no one is going to tell you how this works beforehand. Unlike in US spas - at least the ones I've been to - where they take a little time to orient you and sometimes even give you a little tour of the place, the Hammam must be such a regular thing for some people that they just assume you know what you're doing. Either that, or it's their entertainment to watch the newbies stumble about. So I will impart some tips on the experience, after the jump:

Jour du Macaron

Readers, I'm going to shock you. Until just weeks ago, I had NEVER had a Parisian macaron.

Well, okay, I guess that's not strictly true since I had some frozen ones from Picard once at someone's house, but I'm not going to count that. I had never hit the big spots for this most famous of French cookies - Laduree and Pierre Herme. So when the Jour du Macaron rolled around this year, I knew it was time.

Actually, this Jour du Macaron thing was all new to me. Organized by Pierre Herme, the "bad boy of French pastry" (what does that mean? I'll get to it), this is a relatively new charity event that each year donates to a different cause by giving away macarons for a voluntary donation. Yes, give a penny, get a macaron. Stores all over town do it, and of course it works out great for them as well, since once you have one macaron you are basically hooked.

Yes, these are the crack cocaine of cookies, as may have been reported to you already. I kind of couldn't believe how good they were. I had spent a lot of time dismissing them in my mind as a kind of dainty, girly because of the way they look - but they are freaking delicious and don't need to be girly at all.

The king of making the macaron a thing of robust, masculine deliciousness is Pierre Herme, who on occasion puts foie gras in his macarons - which is actually AMAZING.The chocolate foie gras macaron was so good I got an extra six of them, then went back the next week for MORE, only to find it was a special flavor he did only for Jour du Macaron. Rats.

But as Pierre Herme is the pioneer of the "creative" macaron, there are lots of other interesting flavors, including Jasmine, Mandarin Orange/Olive Oil, Earl Grey Tea, Rosewater, and Lychee. And they are all AMAZING. I am jumping on the Pierre Herme bandwagon. Thank god he's got several Paris locations.

THE PARIS LETTER: Hurricanes, Mall Pools, and Cloth Diapers

Hello there from non-hurricane-threatened Paris -

Sheesh! What a weekend for my friends in New York and on the East Coast! Matt was supposed to fly to New York for a week yesterday, and just had to change his flight - clearly - in a way, it's nice to see New York taking all these precautions for once. And in another way, why does there always have to be a hurricane/blizzard/heat wave in New York that makes travel and life difficult? Its enough to make you wonder why 10 million people were foolish enough to call this place home. This year has really been a bad weather year for that city.

Sunset from our Paris apartment

But not for Paris! Matt and I were just talking at dinner about Europe's weather in general - it seems mysteriously free of the kinds of yearly insanity that strikes the US ; Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Floods, Tornadoes - Other than an occasional Italian earthquake, does Europe really have these kinds of natural disasters regularly? Given that last winter two inches of snow was cause for alarm here, I feel like maybe not. Someone, please tell me if I'm wrong - it seems somewhat unfair that all of Europe should be spared the kind of craziness all of the US seems to go through each year.

THE PARIS LETTER: The First One

Hi guys -

I'm up early-ish on a rainy Sunday here in Paris, and I was thinking about all of you and though I would write a letter to give you a little update on my life here over the last 6 weeks. I've had these ambitions of starting a blog to keep in touch with people, and I sort of got one up and running - but I realized it takes actual skill to do things like embed pictures and format shit, and I haven't figured all that out yet, so in the interim I must rely on the medium I know and understand - email ;) Please don't be disappointed -

So here we are in Paris. It is surprisingly just like living in New York AND totally different at same time. We live in thethe Northwest part of the city, on the border of the 17th & 18th arrondissements. This doesn't really have an equivalent in New York, though I've been trying hard to come up with one...In a lot of ways, I guess, it's like where we lived before, Upper-upper west side, between 100th and 125th street. Because theParis is arranged in a circle, and is just generally smaller in area than New York, EVERYTHING is much closer together, so neighborhood distinctions are both sort of more precise and more meaningless than in New York -

We are sort of right where the 8th, 9th, 17th, and 18th all converge. the 8th and 9th are more part of downtown Paris, and the 17th and 18th are more residential. The 18th is Montmartre, where Sacre Coeur is (and also Le Moulin Rouge), a hilly, very beautiful but also traditional cheap/artsy/seedy area, and the 16th, on the other side of us, is the Parisian Upper East Side, so we're sort of in the middle - half yuppie, half boho, with a fair amount of Maghrebine/working class folks as well. Maghrebine is this French term which means "Arabs from French Colonies", so from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, and there are LOTS of them in Paris. There;s a much stronger Arab/Muslim presence in Paris than you do in New York - they're definitely dominant ethnic group, and in a way it gave me a little perspective on why thethe French government was freaking out about the head scarf issue, because you really see head scarves everywhere- not that I think they should have freaked out, but it's just a different vibe.

So we live on a little Cour, which is like an alley or a dead end street, right off a busy street, Avenue de Clichy. It's kind of great because we have a lot of services very close to us, but our little street is pretty secluded and quiet. We are also half a block from the Metro, which we were at first very excited about, until we discovered that our line, the 13, is the MOST CROWDED SUBWAY LINE in Paris. Several French people, upon hearing what line we were on, exclaimed "Mais le treize, c'est le pire!" (but the 13th, it's the worst!) - terrific. It's like the 6 train kind of - they built it and the area it served expanded, and now they need another line in addition but haven't built one.

Sooo - what we have been doing instead, while the weather is still decent enough, is riding our bikes everywhere - or rather, Matt has been riding his bike and I've been using the Velibs, which is the Parisian public bike system, and to me is the best expression of how socialism can work. Velib is short for "Velo Libre", or "Free Bike". Each metro station has at least one rack of bikes within 100 meters, and you can rent them for 1 Euro a day - you unlock them, ride them to another part of the city, and then relock them at another Velib station. And, there's even a Velib van that goes around the city making sure the bikes are evenly distributed in neighborhoods - since we live on a hill, I am especially appreciative of this. Some mornings its like the Velib elves came in the night and restocked the nearby rack...

Anyway, this is especially fun for me as a New Yorker because 1) you can ride almost anywhere in Paris in under an hour and 2) You do not have to carry a gigantic chain lock or worry about your bike being stolen. The main issue is that a lot of the bikes are beat to shit - they're designed to be heavy duty and unbreakable, but you've still got to be pretty on top of it when you're checking out a bike, to make sure it doesn't have a flat/broken seat/misaligned wheel, etc. But usually it all works and it's AWESOME.

Matt is loving his job at the Pasteur Institute - he started about a month ago, and his lab is very high-powered, which is ironic since he moved from New York (traditionally workaholic) to (traditionally laid back) and is now working longer hours than ever. He is learning to slice live mouse brains and also inject them with a protein that can be controlled by light. I could go into more detail, but that would be a whole nother email. He's getting along really well with Paristhe other folks in the lab, and is able to speak English with most of them. What I am enjoying about Pasteur Institute is its cafeteria, which is also just like an American cafeteria and also very French at thethe same time - Trays and steam tables and all that, but also French food - Matt can often choose between braised rabbit and sole in butter sauce for lunch, and they have a cheese plate and bowls of chopped fresh herbs at the salad bar. Sometimes I'll go and meet him for lunch just for the food...

I'm working on some projects in the US as well as taking French and starting to look for a job. Its slow going, but I'm trying to be patient with myself and with the whole experience. Our furniture just came this week, FINALLY (after 2 months!) and that is making us feel MUCH more at home, though our apartment here is smaller than in the US and so we're trying to figure out where to put all the clothes, books, and papers.

Some other things that I'm enjoying: Going to movies at 10AM - and the general wealth of movie theaters here; not being able to do any errand running on Sundays - at first I thought this would be annoying, but it's actually great because it FORCES you to take time off; super cheap fast internet; kick-ass Moroccan food; chocolate/almond croissants; the boulangerie that does a second bake in the afternoon so you can get warm bread at 5PM; being able to travel anywhere in Europe in under 2 hours; butchers who ask you how you plan to cook the meat you're buying, and give tips; crazy workers strikes (I'm actually enjoying the social activism of it, believe it or not); little kids speaking French (adorable)

Things that they don't have here: chicken broth in a can or box (only bouillon cubes, no idea why), melatonin, chipotles, cheddar cheese, incandescent bulbs over 40 watts, dinner before 8PM, ice cubes/ice cube trays, magnetic stripe credit cards, good IPAs or hoppy beer of ANY kind, shoes in my size (11 womens)- I'm making an ongoing list of things that I may have to stuff in my suitcase and bring back when we're in the US over Xmas.

I'm going to sign off here for now so this doesn't get too long, but I"d love to hear from people just to catch up, so if you've got the time, drop me an email back!

xo CTL