The French Brasserie - A Love Affair

                   
Gallopin - founded in 1876 - located just behind the Paris Stock Exchange
Just one of my favorties - sit either in the main room or the brokers Lounge.

The French Brasserie:Where the pleasure of the eye is reunited with the pleasures of the table

.A gigantic platter of fruits de mer just outside the entrance door, Art Nouveau décor everywhere, the grand entrance of a diva and as Lyricist Ira Gershwin once wrote “Who Could Ask For Anything More”

Eating out in Paris can be the experience of a lifetime or the ultimate let down. Without an insider's tip for the best bistro or the latest hot restaurant, you could end up leaving the City of Light with a bad taste in your mouth. Fortunately there is the brasserie - one of the great culinary and social institutions of the French capital that has remained unchanged for well over 100 years. A meal in one of these cultural monuments - for they are more than mere restaurants - is always a memorable experience, because not only do you eat well at a reasonable price, but you'll experience at first hand an authentic slice of Parisian life.

These sumptuous dining rooms began life as simple beer taverns - 'brasserie' actually means 'brewery' in French - at the end of the nineteenth century when residents of Alsace fled to Paris as refugees after their region had been annexed by Germany. The good news is that the brasseries are here to stay as most have been classified monuments historiques by the French Government.
The great brasseries boast beautifully preserved Art Nouveau decor. Each one with its own personality and specialities. The dishes on the menu haven't changed much in the past 100 years either: a mountain of crushed ice covered with freshly shucked oysters and shellfish, a steaming tureen of choucroute , sauerkraut garnished with a dozen different sausages, an irresistible tarte tatin , and a chunk of the wonderfully pungent cheese from the village of Munster served with a hot potato and cumin seeds.
I spent the last couple of weeks eating (NO… over eating to be truthful) in the most famous and historic Brasseries of Paris. There are 49 of them in all. I only got to about 15. As one like myself, who feels at times I was born too late and would have preferred to be in Paris during the `1920’ and 30;’s, I can say, that entering one of these historic and 'drop dead' gorgeous Brasseries is returning to that era.
The brasseries of Paris are one of the few places you can still feel, see and smell the real Paris.