Gray Mollusks and Black Pigs

Sunday, Dec 23rd started with wanna-be celebrities excited to eat a Hotel Vendôme continental breakfast near us. We shopped, Steph self-bought some leather accessory Christmas presents, we hit our favorite salon called Dallayou for tea, an almond croissant and an assortment of exquisite & expensive macaroons. Can I mention that while the Swiss undoubtedly achieve 9.5 on a 10 scale in the pastry and bread department, the French always manage a perfect 10; their skill and dedication to fine food is unparalleled. We ate a random cafe lunch, then hit a Scottish bar to down a few beers and to enjoy straining to understand the Scottish regulars' English for a while, instead of the French spoken everywhere else.

We dined later at a "renowned" neighborhood restaurant in the Marais district, packed late on a Sunday, a good sign. The wine was solid; the table baguette was world class; shared appetizers of Normandy oysters and country-style pork terrine were phenomenal and voila!, we were off and running! We learned the different French words for "rabbit" vs. "hare" (important subtleties when MOY is at stake). For the all-important main course, Steph ordered her best bet with the house specialty "black pork" chop (the meat isn't black, it comes from a special black-patterned pig raised specifically for this restaurant) and...disastrously, it was merely very good; likewise my entrecôte steak was good but not great. We threw out the lifeline and ordered the cheese plate dessert but it wasn't memorable. Lamentably, the most surefire formula for MOY implosion is "appetizer envy," and we were left wondering what might have been. After dinner, we enjoyed one of those spectacular unplanned Old World Europe moments, walking back to the hotel through the majestic Place Vendôme, a floodlit monument at midnight radiating history, toil and achievement.

We graced more pseudo-celebrities at breakfast on Christmas Eve, then checked out of the Vendôme and into the nearby Hyatt Regency Paris-Madeleine, a more classily understated yet equally wonderful boutique; we stayed there in 2003 and therefore know the area near the Madeleine church. We shopped at nearby favorite super-gourmet shops Hediard, Fouchon and Maille to stock up on fruit pavé confections, preserves and Dijon mustard, respectively. On a tip from Steph's work colleague, a former Paris denizen, we ate a congruently fancy lunch at a fancy wine shop with an unadvertised but large restaurant upstairs, full of real Parisians (and us). We then wandered through the enormous Tuileries gardens, stopped for espresso, and continued with an impromptu tour of the Invalides neighborhood, strolling on a local shopping street watching locals scurry for very-last-minute Christmas purchases under the sunset silhouette of a distant but imposing Eiffel Tower.

With no big dinner plans for a shut-down Paris Christmas Eve, all Steph's proverbial eggs for MOY rested with our Christmas Day lunch reservation at a more upscale and stuffy restaurant by world-renowned French chef Joel Robuchon, a risky proposition.

Some pictures from the trip here:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.6abi4vkn&x=0&y=-3t8kd7