Why BONJOUR is the most sacred word to French people and your entree into France

 

While greetings may not be much of a part of  life here in the USA, in France, the word BONJOUR is sacred. "Honestly, it may be terrible to say (explains a person in Paris) but if a colleague does not greet me in the morning, I'll think he or she is mad at me or in a bad mood and  then, I will be the one in the bad mood, having been offended" 

So, as a visitor in France, to really get along and fit in, when you interact with another human being, say Bonjour before asking anything ( very, very important!!).

Bonjour is not just about saying hello, it is much more, a sign of respect. Knowing this will often give you better service when entering a shop or a bakery or otherwise you will just be perceived as a bad-mannered person. I cannot overstate this to tourists. 

As a shop owner told me 'If you come to me with just a request, I am clearly going to think you see me as a robot that is just here to satisfy your needs and not as a human being that deserves a little respect'

If you can just learn this, your time in France can be so much more lovely.

"We'll always have Paris'..an update on when we'll be able to visit

 

I can't believe its been since January that I have worked on my blog..Time is racing by, but now I'm back.

The pandemic has thrown a wrench into any kind of travel for us, Americans, it looks like until next year, unless we have an effective vaccine and that does not look like until the end of the year. 

I watch the daily French news, French TV travelogues and read the French newspapers to keep up with the goings on in France. I miss it something awful and am straining at the bit to get back. 

I know you are also excited to get back to any international travel, but as of yet, its a sit and wait approach we need to take.

I'l keep you updated to any news. 

I can't wait to arrive in Paris and get over to La Coupole and have a dozen or so oysters and a bottle of flinty Muscadet wine.

Why are French shops asking customers to round up the price of their purchases?

The next time you are shopping in France you might be asked 'l'arrondi solidare" and the question you are being asked is whether you want to round up the total of your purchases to the nearest Euro. 
The reason you are being asked is that the extra money goes to selected charities. Big name brands in France are taking part. 
Last year 259 charities benefited from the donations. 

Paris Place Vendome - a smart , elegant and expensive neighborhood meets a bargain

A place where Stomachs rumble to the the subtle scents of good regional food and the best sandwiches in town.

The bistro Le Petit Vendome ( located around the corner from the Ritz Hotel) you might expect a very smart address; so it's always a pleasant surprise to find a bistro with a  colorful frontage, neon signs, handwritten menu on chalk boards over the bar and hams strung from the ceiling. 

There is always a huge queue out the door ( so be prepared) , but the waiting faithful ( whose regulars include Mark Zukerberg , celebrity chef Alain Ducasse, and model Kate Moss to name a few) are waiting by the promise of rapide croute Auvergne  ( a speedy Auvergne snack), Auvergne Blu Cheese, Garlic sausage, country ham served on a true Baguettes from Boulangerie Julien.

For more than sandwiches, grab a table and treat yourself to the best Confit of duck in town ( so says Chef Ducasse) or veal escalope or farm chicken with hand-,made chips..oh..oh..oh!

A great chef has left us...

Andre Daguin was a man committed to the defense of French terroir, the use of good products and above all, put the French region of Gascony on the culinary map.

Chef Andre took at the time, the breast of duck, known then, little-regarded ingredient; used mainly in confits ( meats simmered and preserved in its own fat) into an international sensation, when he decided to grill the breast like a steak. Clients at first thought it was beef when tasted and the news of the new dish sweep not only France, but world wide, it was that revolutionary. Today, grilled duck breast appears in the top spot in surveys of France's favorite dishes and I  might be so bold as to say now worldwide favorite. 

His philosophy of cooking was always:
'Cooking is simple, it's to put the maximum of taste into the minimum of volume'

Are French waiters really rude?

OK, so French waiters can be a little cold-shouldered ( especially Cafe, ones) But what would you prefer? A serious professional who gets your order right at the first time of asking? Or the eternally cherry American version who asks you ' how your soup is tonight" every three minutes and asks "if there's anything else I can do for you' every six?

The misconception arises because French waiters are not, as in America, youths filling in time until their real lives begin. They are professionals pursuing a profession considered worthy of respect.That is why French service outstrips our own. These fellows (They are generally men) can take an order for 15 different drinks, deliver them on one tray, shouts at a passing taxi, give directions to the Center Pompidou and still get the change right. 
NUF SAID!!!

Cole Porter once penned "I love Paris, every moment ,every moment of the year' Oh! do I!

Once of the hundreds of pleasures I get from being in Paris , is to walk the numerous tree line streets.
Emperor Napoleon III is responsible for the tree-linted avenues that abound in Paris.
Unlike other great capitols of Europe, Paris is alive with green spaces and hundred of miles of lush tree lined streets, avenue and boulevards. 

Restaurants worldwide today are noisy, loud music, uncivilized dinners, silly cuisine.. so in the future...for me I wish...

Paris - French classic dishes are once again back on menus..Hurrah!

Enough of the fancy, pretentious, minimal , foreign inspired, fusion nonsense   on French menus.
A new crop ( actually old restaurants) are putting old French classics (( and cheap) back on the menus. Hurrah!! It's about time.
One of my favorite places in Paris, Chez Julian ( has been converted from an upper-class brasserie) to a modest eatery with only French classic dishes in a stunning settling. 

Until late is was impossible to find good French onion soup or sole meuniere on Paris menus. Oh, there was still a few like my go to bistro in the 7e, La Fontaine de Mars.  
But recently, there has been a score of restaurants highlighting French traditional classic dish and affordable prices. 
Now, restaurants such as Bouillon Julien are offering plates of Veal blanquette, roast chicken and fries, calf's sweetbread and pot-au-feu that are Delicious, simple, honest and stripped of all pretense. The dishes are not pretty: such as a plate of steak with peppercorn sauce ( maybe splodges of sauce all over the dishes rim, BUT BUT this is the kind of meal I have been looking for, a comfort food simple, good and price-wise a bargain. reminiscent of Parisian Sunday Dinners.

https://www.bouillon-julien.com/menu

The sardines, goddess of plates and tins in France

There is a harbor, ( in Brittany)  a bay where sardines meet every year from April to September, as if ending their lives there and their journey in a tin was a sweet dream.
As if in theses small cans, tightly packed with their buddies, the pleasure of being tasted, many months, years after even prolonged their existence a little. 
Ten years of maturing is meant to be the ideal for a vintage box to taste all the confit flavor...
All this a bit poetic , you ask? Why yes, if you never had a tin of these special vintage sardines then you don't know what a sardine is and these sardines, these little clupeidae's ( that's sardines to you) has nothing in common with its comrades!.

In praise of oysters..are the oldest foods of the human race

Although in France, you can get oysters it seems any time of the year, now being September, this time of year offers the best in oysters served.
I found this morning, an article in the London Times (yes, the Brits it seems gives a lot of their seafood treasures away to other countries, but they do like oysters in season)

 an editorial from September 4, 1919!
In part it reads ( and is still true today, I must add)
' Oysters are among the oldest foods of the human race. The presence of their shells in the ancient kitchens of the Baltic  shows that man was eating them in the remote ages when the brackish waters of that land-locked sea were still salt. 
Primitive man, ( American's take heed of this) used no condiments and the modern man ( foodie or epicure, my words) is advised to follow the old way. It seems nowadays,many people ( mainly Americans, my words now) replaces the natural juice, that should be redolent of the sea, with all kinds of things to cover up the taste of this most wondrous product from the sea. 
Stop it! If you must, do what we do in France, the oysters are served with a little bowl containing wine vinegar, onion and herbs into which each oyster is to be plunged for a number of seconds.'
But, but best of all is just the oyster and its juice itself.
As someone once remarked, its like kissing the sea on the lips.
PS: Don't even get me started on cooked oysters..to do so is to take a vintage Bordeaux wine and add a soft drink to it..

A hidden spot in Normandy - just a bit north of Honfleur - Etretat - the dramtic rocky coastline, BUT BUT

Yes, the cliffs of Etretat have attracted painters and tourists for over 100 years,. It's ( but only located in France) a mirror of the English White Cliff s of Dover.

But the real surprise here is something most painters and tourists never see but should. the 'WOW' of Les Jardins d'Etretat high above the cliffs. The blend of landscape art and art sculptures makes the gardens a delight for both garden lovers and art lovers and of course, the dramatic natural landscape only adds to the drama. 

The best time to visit? - early evening as the lights of the village below comes on whilst at the same time the sea and gardens are bathed in a soft evening light.

Ou sont les napps?

As nice and pleasant as it seems, my question, will always be..
          
WHERE ARE THE TABLE CLOTHS?
Not only today are people dressed slovenly and and manners have seem to go out the door with the garbage, restaurants ( nice restaurants) are have dispensed with table cloths.  WHY!!!

That Face - Audrey Hepburn, William Holden and Paris..

French country sounds are keeping visitors awake and they are complaining - what is wrong with people?

Many holiday makers ( both the French and other country visitors) are complaining about the sounds of the French countryside, what with over noisy cockerels,loud cows, deafening cicadas and ear-splitting church bells, they find its impossible to get a moments peace when surrounded by the sounds of rural France. 

Hello? what do people expect? Am I missing something here?

Hurrah for one major of a small village in the southwest of France, who has taken to putting up a sign before you enter the village that says ' Warning, enter at your own risk' followed by all the sounds they may hear. 

This is what food and cooking is all about in France and none of that silly stuff..

The chef to French Presidents, Guillaume GOMEZ  and his fantastic Pate's

Arcachon Bassin is located 30 miles from Bordeaux; but feels like another world

The Bassin of Arcachon has many things going for it, but to me, its their oysters and oyster farms.

Life's simple pleasures; French style that is, is snacking on 2 dozen ( or more) oysters. Here in this large basin is the home to some of the worlds best grown oysters and the shoreline is dotted with oyster farmer colorful huts and having the opportunity to visit, sit down and taste oysters along with some great flinty white wine. 
One of the great sensations of my life. 

The time has come - NO tourist buses to be allowed in central Paris - Hurrah!

Because of the influx of tourists; France is the worlds most visited country, the local government is soon to pass legislation to ban tourist buses central Paris.

The major says she no longer wants the total anarchy of tourist buses in the heart of the city.

Tourists can do like everyone else and take public transportation or walk.
Tourists buses will  have to park outside the city.

So stay tuned for future developments..

France's favorite village of the year - St Vaast La Hougue - Normandy

Every year viewers of the French TV show - Beautiful Villages vote for their favorite French Village. This year the tiny village on the stunning coastal area in Normandy known as the Cotentin Peninsula won the votes. This area is in fact one of my favorites in Normandy. 

Its described as a land  of sailors and at low tide, the oyster beds provide a link between the French mainland and another jewel: the island of Tatihou, a unique point of view for painters for more than 200 years. The harbor and the picturesque narrow street make this a wondrous place to visit. 
I love the many charming and 'knock-your-socks-off' villages on this peninsula. 
Here is a video ( sorry its in French) but you'l get the idea of the winner.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_tN6GIDe0
Above is a click-on to a youtube better view of the video without advertising.

Remembering Anthony Bourdain..

Its been a year since we lovers of real food lost Anthony Bourdain..I can't believe it..
He expressed for me and my chef brother, so many things we thought true, but could not articulate in so many words.

Here is something he wrote, that I totally believe in..

" I knew already that the best meal in the world, the perfect meal, is very rarely the most sophisticated or expensive one.
I knew how important factors other than technique or rare ingredients can be in the real business of making magic happen at the dinner table.
Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life' "

Paris and France heat wave...

Yesterday it was 104 degrees ( 40 Celsius) in Paris...wow!!!!
The hottest since 1947 ... WOW!
Most French do NOT have AC, and those that do and upmarket hotels, it is not the US type that you can turn up to STUN! Electricity is very very expensive in France, so most AC is cool, but not freezing cold as here in the good ole USA.
This is what it looked like this morning in Paris ( very unusual cloud formation) 

This is sunrise, NOT sunset...

Monaco - France's tiny neighbor and one of my favorite places to indulgent in one of life great pleasures

It's Friday morning in sunny Beverly Hills and yet, my thoughts go to the second smallest country in the world - Monaco. Within its mere 200 hectares is to be found extravagant sights that allure and inspires me. Yes, there is certainly enough glitz and glamour at every turn, a country filled to the brim with luxurious places to stay and fabulous restaurants abound. and YET!!!

And yet For me, one of life's great pleasures is to stay at the Hotel Hermitage ( home of the most opulence place to have breakfast in its Gustave Eiffel dome restaurant), but also to spend the entire day in the Thermes Spa ( located next door and a private tunnel from the hotel to the spa) and then to have lunch atop the spa in the L'Hirondelle Spa restaurant. Life can get no better than this. 
It's magic, I can tell you.

Lunch, dressed up in your fluffy white Spa robe and eating and drinking the best of wine and food in the world, NO SPA SALADS HERE ( hurrah) , but food and drink as it should be. Its a dream...

French rules of dining etiquette - what another one?

"Where do I out my cell phone, the left or right side?"

Yes, Being in France, there is a strict code of rules on how to behave; it makes life here so much more pleasant..

Please remember, When you are offered something ( like a fill up of your wine glass, more bread, a minor treat) simply saying 'Merci' indicated a refusal, as in "No, thank you". This is quiet different from the American practice, were saying a simple 'Thank you; implies acceptance, as in 'Yes, thank you.'
SO - in France, if you want your wine glass filled or more bread, don't say 'Merci' 
    SAY - 'oui, s'il vous plait"

Tired of the overtouristed, overdone French Riviera? then...

...head to the Ile de Re, on the Atlantic coast..( one of my all-time favorite places in France) , its a haven for foodies (I hate that term), cyclists and beach lovers. 

Here you will find over 100 KM of bike paths, 10 beautifully preserved villages with boutique hotels and glorious food markets. While you may think it's a cross between the Hampton's and Martha's Vineyard, it's nothing of the sort. Zoning laws here are very very strict and the people who count in France ( movie and TV stars, government big wigs etc,  and your truly) come here to get away from it all. Easy to reach by car or train, but hard to leave.

France cooking - Silly food vs real food - guess which is which? Nuf said!

It's Over - The days of Metro individual tickets is going away after 119 years...

For nearly 119 years from the first opening of the Paris metro in 1900, the little rectangles of thick white paper with a black line on the back have been with Parisians. 

550 million single-trip tickets are sold every year. BUT..times must change ( I'm not happy...) and by this coming September ( 2019) a new digital systems will be set up with a plastic top-up card called Navigo Easy. Just add money to  it and tap the card at the station entrance. The fares will remain the same Euro 1.90 for a single-trip and Euro 14.90 for ten trips.

Gratitude - It comes in Two Kinds

First, there is the gratitude which we should all feel for what France has given the world.

The language, the hardest by far of the Romance languages to learn ( at least for me) and yet!, and yet what a beautiful language.  The writers, then the painters; here again the debt is immense, especially the Impressionists. Going onto the world of music, my own personal list would include Ravel, Debussy. Ibert and Legrand, OH! the architecture; The Vaux-le-Vicomte and the chateaux of the Loire are my favorites. The vast formal gardens that dot the landscape, the cuisine ( don't get me started), the great fashion houses and don't forget the larger than life personalities like Jacques Tati, Maurice Chevalier and Stephen Grappelli and to the  host of hoteliers who have made all my stays so memorable, I have not the words to thank them for all their generosity and kindness..

I could go on and on...

The essence of France, however is a thousand times more than all of this, it seems sometimes to be the very air I breathe. And that brings me to the second kind of gratitude - MY OWN.

For the France that I have known for more than 70 years, looking back, the memories come crowding in. For all these memories, I am grateful and for many thousands more. And that sort of gratitude is more than gratitude:
                      IT IS...... LOVE.

The Megaliths of Carnac - The largest gathering of standing Stones in the world

In Brittany ( my favorite part of France) stands 7000 years old megalithic alignments and one of the most important European prehistory centers in existence. 
The two main sites, Menec and Kermario)  ( out of many more in the wide area) alone account for almost 3000 menhirs ( stones) and run well over 4 miles.

The stones are to this day surrounded by mystery, to what they were actually used for.  

St Tropez – nothing succeeds like excess

St Tropez is quiet simply, the most famous resort in Europe – and it has attracted the artistic and dissolute long before BB ( Brigitte Barbot).  

But it was BB who transformed this village into a worldwide reputation for illicit pleasures and the place has never looked back.

The great, the rich and the A-listers still come in by the Yachtful, as do any amount of flotsam and jetsam, whose obsession with air-headed extravagance can get on anyones nerves ( especial y mine, if you must know) 

Yes, the  wooded, rocky peninsula is spectacular, the views across the sea to the Maures mountain s are outstanding, but beyond that, unless you fancy paying ( in summer July and August) 15 euros for a  coke,  and being   with some other 30,000 people a day ( just getting in is like driving on the 405 freeway during rush hour) and pay constantly queuing and paying for over prices food and drink I say, forget it, unless you have a private yacht and can call Pop stars by their first name.

For those you don’t know, the famous beach is NOT in town, but 15 minutes away and then its basically private clubs that charge a fortune for you to sit in the sand.

It’s all about BLINGE on steroids.

I can’t tell you how many clients who begged to go and then once there called and said 'get me out'.

OK, should you still go, the months of May, June, September and October would be fine, but be aware many of the bling places are closed and once again, this charming village returns to a little Med port