The third day began with a food tour. We're not really foodies, but we do like food. We made sure to eat a small breakfast. Our guide was a Canadian woman who recent wrote a cookbook in French, partially sponsored by Maille mustards (she confided that the pistachio-infused olive oil that they sold was not good). She was pleasant and knowledgeable. We went to two places to taste macarons, to compare the styles. They were very tasty, even if they do look like strangely colored hamburgers. There's apparently a great competition among bakers in Paris for who makes the best macaron. We also went to a mustard shop, a truffle shop and a super fancy food shop, where the gift wrap staff will need a bit of additional practice before the holidays. Then we got on the Metro and went to the Bastille area and walked through an indoor and outdoor food market. During this we learned that "rabbit is the new chicken." Not sure why we needed a new chicken, but okay. We tasted oysters from a fishmonger she knew.
We then went to this little wine shop, owned by a 30-ish Dutch woman who'd lived in the US and a bunch of other places and had a wine and cheese tasting. The wine was very pleasant and the woman was excellent company. She was one of those people who you really wished you could be as cool as. She had a great little french bulldog who was perhaps the most responsive dog I've ever seen. Her wines were carefully selected from smaller vineyards and I was pleased to see something I had in my collection on her shelves. The woman was realistic about the prospects for another wine shop in Paris, but she seemed fearless and energetically upbeat.
We left the shop and walked back to the Marais, where we met up with a friend of Ronnie's from high school- one of the people we'd seen in Boston with a couple of weeks ago. We had coffee and ice cream (Berthillion, best ice cream in Paris or maybe anywhere and priced to match- $10 for 2 little scoops). Then spent a couple of hours walking around and window shopping together. It was a very nice time, helped by some of the finest weather one could hope to experience- mid 70's and sunny with a light breeze and no humidity. My birthday plans could not have been treated better by the weather gremlins.
Back to the hotel, where I first went to get cash, only to find some small kind of entourage outside, with someone I didn't recognize signing autographs. Then back to nap and then for our final dinner at le Jules Verne, the Alain Ducasse restaurant at the mid-level of the Eiffel Tower. On the way out I asked the concierge, who can only be described as having a twinkle in his eye, who the entourage was for. I'm not sure, he said, it could be for Woody Allen or for Prince, both of whom were current guests. Or, he said, it could be for you. For the rest of the evening we joked occasionally about what we thought Prince and Woody were doing for the evening or if they were out together.
This is a much more pleasant mid-level than we'd experienced at Newark airport. Ducasse apparently has the most Michelin stars total among all his restaurants of anyone in the world, and I was sort of amused to hear that he was planning to make Jules Verne a 2 star restaurant (3 is the max and I think there's only a hundred and something of those in the world). Most chefs would kill to get 2 stars, and he's holding back. Before we ate we bumped up against the whole aperitif thing again. This time we had champagne, which is actually listed in the aperitif section of the menu.
First we had an amuse bouche, which looked and felt in your mouth like a little parfait covered with nuts but it had a mild savory taste, maybe a slight hint of liver. It was hard to tell, but it was delicious. Ronnie's appetizer had egg and sea urchin and I can't remember what else- maybe chanterelle mushrooms. Mine was a a bisque (though they didn't call it that) with shellfish and mushrooms. Certainly the best bisque I've ever had and Ronnie's food was good too, whatever it was. For an entree I had langoustines with summer vegetables and Ronnie had a saddle of lamb with potatoes and vegetables. The bread, by the way, featured a kind of cross between a croissant and a brioche and was terrific. One of the reasons that I ordered what I did was because I'd never had either shrimp or lobster (and a langoustine is kind of halfway in between) that I'd felt was perfectly cooked and I wanted to taste what it was like. It was actually quite special- tender and moist but firm enough that it felt cooked. Ronnie's lamb was fine. Nothing special.
By this time, all of these huge, wonderful meals were beginning to fuse into one. We still has a chocolate dome that the hotel had sent on Ronnie's birthday sitting in the room untouched because we were always too full to eat it. My dessert was a raspberry tart with chocolate/vanilla sorbet, which managed to taste like both at the same time. I can't remember what Ronnie had. As at our other meals, dessert is followed by a selection of little post-dessert desserts. I'd call them petits fours, but there were way more than four of them. One was a little parfait that looked remarkably like the one we'd had as an amuse bouche, but this one was sweet and fruity. We also had chocolate truffles, more macarons, and passion fruit marshmallows. Marshmallows are also a trendy-competitive food in Paris these days. I have to say that the passion fruit ones were delicious.
Afterwards, we went out on the platform and took a look at Paris at night. A boat had sunk in the Seine and there were emergency crews there. The city is, of course, beautiful at night. Then we descended to the mob scene that is the base of the Tower in the summer. Tons of people waiting on line, hanging out, picnicking. We got a cab back to the hotel and packed. I am never eating again.
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