SpiceLines

Paris in early October.

It was Indian summer so I threw the balcony doors wide open for a morning kiss from the city I love. By the Sevres-Babylone metro stop, the trees were dropping their yellow leaves just in time to reveal the tip of the Eiffel Tower.

What an amazing goodbye—or au revoir—present.

On the breakfast tray:

A pot of fragrant Mariage Freres the verveine (lemon verbena tea)

A buttery croissant from Poilane (right around the corner!)

The last slices of aged Burgundy tome au lait entiere de chevre

and two apples (Piroutte and Reinette Grise), all from the Marche Bio. (One source calls the long-lost Reinette Grise “a bite from Louis XIV’s table… “)

A gaggle of motor scooters blasted down the boulevard Raspail, a shaggy dog (sans leash) trotted obediently alongside his long-legged mistress, a light breeze ruffled the pages of the Herald-Tribune.

Memories are made of this. (Oh, the fall hydrangeas? From Rosa Luna, the most adorable flower shop just down the street...)

Late September: Paris is full of surprises…

I forgot my black raincoat but not a drop has fallen. We were expecting autumn. Occasionally a few yellow leaves skitter down the sidewalk.

But mostly the city is in bloom. Unexpectedly riotous fall bloom.

That’s the thing about Paris. One minute you’re walking down the rue de Buci, and the next a man is taking his big grey parrot out to lunch. Or you look up to find a flock of red devils cavorting overhead...

Sundays at the Marche Biologique: This beatific couple sells all the fixings for a heavenly Italian feast--just one of the surprises at this organic but not exactly local market.

9: 02 AM: The tantalizing aroma of Les Gustalins’ galette de pommes de terre is pulling me like a magnet into the Marche Biologique. Overnight the bare frames running down the center of boulevard Raspail have turned into a river of striped tents shading organic, sometimes biodynamic, vegetables and fruit and much more...

It’s early, but already a lean young man is intently flipping free-form potato and onion “pancakes” on a sizzling hot griddle. My eyes are barely open but my taste buds are wide awake.

If you’re like me, the dreaded To Do List just keeps multiplying. Every time I cross one item off, two or three more take its place.

It’s clear that I’ll never ever reach the end. Once the very thought could make me frantic.

But a luscious stay in Paris has changed all that. Sometimes you just have to put that oh-so-American list—the sign of a busy, busy person, but maybe not such a contented one—on the back burner and engage in a little non-productive, time-wasting whimsy.

Yesterday I broke into a smile when I saw this mossy bag sprouting baby succulents. It might be the next “it” bag—and compared with Proenza Shouler’s $2,290 PS1 Navajo-style satchel, lust-provoking as it is, I must say this $20 find looks pretty good.

No, it’s not from Paris, though I could easily imagine a dozen of them suspended in a chic shop window, each brimming with berries or tiny flowers or lacy panties—whatever temptation was being dangled before our eyes. (You do know that in France, window-shopping is lecher la vitrine, or licking the window, n'est-ce pas?)

A collection of menus, business cards, notebooks and other ephemera recalls the restaurants and bistros of Paris--and the unforgettable meals we ate there.

Do you collect menus?

I do, especially when I travel. There’s no better souvenir of an extraordinary meal than a menu that recalls in detail the flavors of each morsel that we devoured. How better, par example, to remember Taillevent’s peerless canard de Challans roti aux figues de Sollies et a la cannelle?

Of course an itemized bill can accomplish the same trick (and remind you of the bottom line for your pleasure). As can a Moleskine exploding with every detail of that 3-hour lunch at Pierre Gagnaire. (The plates were small, bien sur, but there were 29 of them nonetheless….)

So here’s the collection from the Paris trip. Not all of it—I’ve left the patisseries, a chocolatier and a bakery for another day—but you’ll find tips on most of the places we enjoyed. (And two that we did not.)

Taillevent, 15 rue Lamennais, 75008 Paris. Phone: +33 (0)1 44 95 15 01.

We almost cancelled but an acquaintance admonished us: “You’re in Paris. You should go to Taillevent. Besides they lost a star so they’ll be trying extra hard.” So glad we did.

French comfort food: Roast chicken perfumed with the scents of garlic and thyme, served atop a billowing cloud of buttery mashed potatoes in an individual cast iron cocotte.

Of all the delicious food we ate in Paris, I was probably most bowled over by the simplest: Brasserie Lutetia’s succulent poulet fermier de Challans roti a l’ail rose et au thym and its silky pommes purees. This was comfort food raised to the level of art.

Ever since we’ve been home, I’ve been trying to recreate this elegant dish, an exercise in humility if ever there was one. Those silky mashed potatoes remain elusive. I’m getting closer, but in the meantime B is happy to devour the ones I've been serving—all that forbidden butter! They’re not perfect, but we’re learning to live with a few lumps.

Do you want to try the recipe? Here’s the shopping list: Chicken, canola oil, fresh thyme, garlic, potatoes, butter, milk, salt. Basic, you're thinking. You probably have everything on hand, except maybe the fresh thyme.

But wait: The dish might seem simple, but it takes stellar ingredients, a few kitchen trucs (tricks), and of course, inviting presentation to lift chicken and potatoes to the level of the Brasserie's luxe preparation.

Is this the moment to confess that no sooner had we stepped off the plane from Paris, than I ordered the darling little cocottes that were too heavy to carry home? Maybe later…

The centerpiece of Olivier Roellinger's Paris shop: A ship constructed of dried cloves. Similiar models are made in the Moluccas, where clove trees were once so abundant that sailors could smell their fragrance many miles out to sea.

Stepping through the doorway onto the bare planks, I felt, for a split second, that I had time-traveled to an old seafarer’s provisioning shop.

Then a wondrous conceit caught my eye: A sailing ship constructed entirely of clous de girofle—that is to say, cloves—from tip-tilted stem to stern. Thousands of dried buds had been used to create the masts and rigging, the wheelhouse and the bridge, even sailors leaning over the side, and had the ship not been displayed in a glass museum case, its aroma would have been intoxicating.

Tuesday morning, 10:26 AM: I had just walked into Epices Roellinger on rue St. Anne not far from the Opera. But I felt as if I had passed through a portal into another world—the world of Olivier Roellinger, a three-star Michelin chef whose passion for spices and the seafaring life is everywhere to be seen in this stunning new boutique. Juxtaposed with ephemera from the days when France was a colonial power are the real stars of the show: rare spices hand selected by the chef from India, Madagascar and other locales, and the exotic blends he conjures up in his atelier.

In the spirit of whimsy...

Have a very Happy (not too scary) Halloween!

(posted on YouTube by 2havago, sent to us by Global Province)