Read to the end

[Darcy]

WHAT'S DOING IN PARIS

After enduring a cooler than normal winter, when almost daily snow flurries replaced the endless February showers, Parisians are in the mood for spring. By mid-February, when temperatures still refused to rise above freezing, the city's cafe tables were already out on the sidewalks, and Parisians had begun the spring and summer ritual of cafe sitting.

In Paris, spring is the season for wandering and sun-worshipping: aimless strolls through flower-filled parks, afternoons spent sifting through the bins at open-air flea markets, endless mornings for people-watching and walks along the Seine.

Those in need of a more defined itinerary shouldn't miss the Sunday morning bird market at Place Louis Lepine on Ile de la Cite, where you'll find every color, shape and size of pet canary, parrot or finch, sold with an extraordinary array of cages. During the week, visit the flower market on the same spot.

Sundays are family days in France, and the parks are full of children, some tended by fathers looking ill-at-ease as they carry a fluffy pink ''barbe a papa'' (cotton candy) while their children try out a new pair of roller skates. On a sunny Sunday around noon, visit the Jardin du Luxembourg to watch French children float little rented sailboats on the pond, or wander over to the compact and inspiring Parc Monceau in the eighth arrondissement. The 18th century, sculpture-filled park is always neatly tended and filled with seasonal floral displays, and it is a popular site for weekend wedding portraits, jogging and roller skating. It's one of the city's better parks for young children, with a tiny merry-go-round and snack stand selling cotton candy and freshly grilled waffles.

From mid-March through April daffodils and tulips fill the Bois de Boulogne gardens at Bagatelle, while the iris display in May is not to be missed.

Flea markets are always ideal for people-watching and bargainhunting, and one semiannual fair worth noting is the Foire Nationale a la Ferraille a la Brocante et Aux Jambons, better known as the ''Ham and Iron Fair.'' Scheduled for March 11 through 20 (Porte de Pantin (211 Avenue Jean Jaures, Paris 19) the fair is an enormously popular event, with hundreds of indoor stands featuring not just antiques and secondhand goods, but also regional food and wine specialties to sample there or take away. Later in the season, the annual Brocante de Mai will be held at the Place de la Bastille May 26 to June 5.

Runners will want to visit Paris during the weekend of the eighth annual Paris marathon, which follows a spectacular course through the city, beginning and ending at Avenue Foch at the Arc de Triomphe. This year's run, scheduled for May 14, will be held for the first time in the evening, beginning at 6 P.M., with the entire city illuminated for the special event. For information, contact the American representative (Americascope Tour Services, 12 East 28th Street, New York, N.Y. 10016; 212-684-7610). Registration closes April 14.

Art on Display

This season's art exhibitions should offer something for just about everyone's taste. At the splendidly appointed Musee des Arts Decoratifs (107 Rue de Rivoli, open 1 to 6 P.M. daily and 11 to 8 P.M. Sunday, closed Tuesday) the Finnish designer Tapio Wirkkala is showing for the first time in France. The exhibition (through April 11) includes his tableware, china, glassware and wood sculpture, all clean, crisp designs we've come to identify with Finland. Several items, including vases and woodenware, are for sale in the museum craft shop.

Beginning March 16 and continuing through April 30, the museum will present ''Pioneers of Soviet Russian Photography, 1917 to 1942,'' and will include the works of some 19 avant-garde photographers offering glimpses of daily Soviet life, and portraits of intellectuals, celebrities and artists of the period.

Across the street at the gallery of Le Louvre des Antiquaires (2 Place du Palais Royal, open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 A.M. to 7 P.M.) there's an appealing exhibition of contemporary porcelain from the Sevres workshops. The display (through April 10) includes plates, sculptures, vases, even a table, dating from 1850 to the present. The show offers a fascinating look at changing styles and standards of beauty during that period.

A new, small museum worth noting is the Musee Zadkine (100 bis Rue D'Assas, Paris 6; open Wednesday through Saturday, 10 A.M. to 5:40 P.M.). It is housed in the old workshop and home of the Russian-born sculptor Ossip Zadkine, who lived and worked in Paris from 1909 until his death in 1981. The museum is devoted solely to his works in wood and stone, and includes a garden gallery perfect for those searching out a calm, relaxing spot for a spring afternoon.

Other shows worth noting include an exhibition of the works of Edouard Manet at the Grand Palais (Avenue Winston Churchill, Paris 8) from April 16 to Aug. 1; Monet during his years at Giverny at the Centre Culturel du Marais (28 Rue des Francs Bourgeois, Paris 3) from April 12 to July 17; and a major show devoted to Giorgio de Chirico at the Centre Georges Pompidou (Rue Saint Martin, Paris 4) now through April 15.

Culture

Tickets to the Paris Opera are never easy to acquire, but Parisians tend to flee the city on spring and summer weekends, so it's always worth trying for Saturday or Sunday tickets. The Opera de Paris will be performing Mozart's ''Le Nozze de Figaro'' through March 19, and Verdi's ''Luisa Miller'' May 30 through June 16.

At the ballet, the opera company will perform a series of works by the American choreographer Alvin Ailey from April 8 to 22, with ''Romeo and Juliet'' scheduled from April 30 to May 18. The Beijing Opera will be appear at the Palais des Congres from May 5 to June 12.

Food

Although the cafes on the Champs Elysees are quickly being overtaken by fast-food eateries, and a new Mr. Donut is about to open across the street from the Gare St. Lazare, Paris always manages to find room for another restaurant or wine bar. There are numerous good, new offerings.

The recently opened Blue Fox Bar (25 Rue Royale, Paris 8; telephone [phone]. Closed Saturday evening and Sunday) is already attracting a chic following, drawing a solid lunch crowd from the offices and shops around Place de la Madeleine. It's a pleasant wine bar, where the list of wines by the glass changes from day to day, with simple daily specials such as blanquette de veau.

Try a cold beef salad ($4.50) or the house sandwich, sliced beef, onions and tomatoes on whole wheat bread, served with a side order of potato salad ($3.50). If it's on the list that day, sample the hearty 1977 Gigondas from the highly respected negotiant, E. Guigal.

Francois Clerc, of the Michelin two-star La Vieille Fontaine in the suburb of Maisons-Laffitte, recently opened an elegant restaurant housed in a turn-of-the-century chalet at the edge of the Bois de Boulogne.

Le Pavillon des Prices (9 Avenue de la Porte d'Auteuil, Paris 16; 603-31-63. Open daily) is already full each evening, offering a standard $22 menu, with a moderately priced wine list that includes a house St. Emilion for $6 a bottle.

Sample the rougets de roche marines au vinaigre de framboise (small rouget fish in a raspberry vinegar sauce), the garlicky noisettes d'agneau a l'embeurree de choux et de tomates (nuggets of lamb with cabbage and tomatoes) and the excellent caramel ice cream. A full meal with more expensive wines will cost about $36 a person, with tax and tip.

Come spring, nearly every bistro and restaurant in town will be offering the fat white French asparagus, most often served warm in a parsley vinaigrette. Other spring menu offerings to look forward to include fresh fava beans, often combined with lamb or duck in salads and main dishes, plump red strawberries, new carrots and turnips that find their way into stews, and, of course, spring lamb.

Some of the best milk-fed lamb I've ever sampled should be on the menu through the month of April at Le Petit Bedon (38 Rue Pergolese, Paris 16; 500-23-66. Closed Saturday, Sunday and holidays). This little auberge-style restaurant not far from the Arc de Triomphe gets its agneau de lait from a small breeder in the Bordeaux region, and the lamb is generally delicate and rosy, served with creamed cabbage and a little potato galette served with pine nuts.

The Petit Bedon's ambitious, 34-year-old chef, Christian Ignace, also offers a fine first course of thinly sliced salmon that he cures and smokes himself, seasoning the fish with salt, sugar and an almost flowery, aromatic Brazilian black pepper. The chef spent five years working with the French pastry chef Gaston Lenotre, and so it's no surprise that desserts are exceptional: There's a caramelized pear served with expertly prepared puff pastry, good honey ice cream and a refreshing dessert of fresh mangoes and passion fruit served with coconut cookies.

Spring is prime season for brie de Meaux and brie de Melun, camembert, pont l'eveque and fresh goat cheese. Good places for sampling an assortment of seasonal cheese include La Ferme Saint Hubert (21 Rue Vignon, Paris 8; 073-31-31. Closed Saturday evening and Sunday) and Androuet (41 Rue d'Amsterdam, Paris 8; 874-26-90. Closed Sunday).

La Ferme Saint Hubert, near Place de la Madeleine and around the corner from Fauchon, is a good place to go from a quick, casual lunch, where the tasting room offers a degustation of six or seven different varieties of cheese (for $5 or $6 a platter) as well as sandwiches and grilled goat cheese specialties, and an assortment of breads and wines.

Androuet is a heartier affair, where a serious tasting of the 100 or more cheese varieties offered will take several, well-spent hours, and will cost about $15.

Pierre Cardin, who took over Maxim's a few years ago, is wasting no time exploiting the name of the restaurant on Rue Royale. His newest project is Minim's (76 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore; 266-10-09; open noon to 2 P.M only, closed Sunday), with a belle epoque decor and a fast-food formula. Meals can be taken at the bar or tiny bistro tables. Choices include sandwiches ($1) and daily specials such as sauteed beef ($3.50). Hotels

One of the newest in town is the clean and quiet, 20-room Hotel Les Trois Couronnes (30 Rue de l'Arc de Triomphe, Paris 17; 380-46-81.) just steps from the Arc. The small hotel, with a mixed Art Nouveau and Art Deco decor, offers rooms ranging from $39 to $43 a night, plus $2.50 for breakfast. There's a pleasant, quiet sitting room, with a beautiful Art Nouveau marble mantlepiece and rooms are fitted with televisions and minibars.

The Hotel de Crillon - where nearly half the clientele is American - has recently undergone a spectacular $10 million renovation, and the elegant bar has already become a popular after-dinner spot for Parisians. The bright, restored lobby shines with gold and white marble, arched mirrors, crystal chandeliers, and gilt-edged period furniture. The new hotel dining room in an 18th-century salon overlooking the Place de la Concorde has been given new life and now boasts a Michelin star.

Prices are not low: A meal in the Le Crillon dining room will easily cost $60 a person including wine, tax and tip. The rooms, which include marble bathrooms and tasteful decor, range in price from $127 for a single room with bath to $560 for a two-bedroom suite with living room. Breakfast is an additional $9. (10 Place de la Concorde, Paris 8; 296-10-81). Stylish Shopping

Skirts are shorter this year - just to the knee - with the popular winter theme of red, black and white continuing into spring. Black and white polka dot dresses, worn with black and white spectator shoes appear to be part of the spring uniform, with a bold aqua showing up in trim menswear-style suits, designed for wearing with high-heeled, white dotted stockings and aqua and white spectators.

The best fashion buys in town are still to be found at Mendes (65 Rue Montmarte, Paris 3; 236-83-32. Open 9:30 A.M. to 6:30 P.M. weekdays, 9:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. Saturdays), where Yves Saint Laurent silk blouses sell for about $75, his wool suits for $265, with Saint Laurent silk dresses ranging from $175 to $250.

Costume jewelry is making a comeback, again most frequently seen in chunky necklaces, big bold earrings and bulky bracelets in red, white or black. A good place to find these at about $12 each is Victoire, a boutique that features the works of many young French designers, with shops at 10 Place des Victoires (508-53-29) and 38 Rue Francois (723-89-81).

One of Paris's most popular little boutiques devoted to antique kitchen ware, cookbooks, bed and table linens has recently relocated in stunning new quarters off Place des Victores. The new Au Bain Marie (20 Rue Herold, Paris 1; 260-94-55) carries such items as silverplate asparagus holders for $20, glass knife rests for $1.25, metal advertising signs and a great assortment of porcelain, with a good choice of asparagus and oyster plates.



By PATRICIA WELLS

March 6, 1983!!!!

Ah, the good old days!

[geordy]

Darcy,
You should have posted this yesterday! I knew something was up when I got to the Marathon as I know it is this weekend!

I tried to go to The Blue Fox Wine Bar in 1993! It was closed or the entrance area was under construction!! I was hoping it had made a re-appearance ....then I saw the prices being quoted!!

[Jody]

GGGGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR


I was actually adding some of those to "The List"!

[framboiseetrose]

Darcy,

Thought that was a typo on room rates at the Crillon! I almost wanted to reserve one of their single rooms - Mr. framboise can stay home, LOL! Guess the joke's on me!

In fact, the only time we stayed at The Crillon was to celebrate my 40th birthday (many, many moons ago). Air France was having a sale for a 10-day stay, it came up to about $135/a day - that includes air fare from San Francisco and limo service to and from CDG. We had a room overlooking the US Embassy (on rue Boissy d'Anglas) during the renovation. Fortunately, most of the construction was on the other side. They had the biggest bathrooms - breakfast with Baccarat and Limoges - and great service!

Now, those were days worth remembering! Thanks for bringing it back.

[cigalechanta]

I was at Bain Marie back then and the Ham brocante is no longer held there but in Chatou where the famous Renoir painted the Luncheon at the Guiggenette(sp?) La Fournaise.
We had lunch there a few years ago and enjoyed it.

[Darcy]

de Marais, I was right there with you adding things to my list before I finished reading the article!

Mimi, have you been to the big antiques fair at Chatou? I really, really want to go there sometime.

[cigalechanta]

this is for Darcy et al...

Hog Heaven
A pair of greedy Americans pig out during a day at the French National Ham and Antiques Fair.
By Peggy Knickerbocker
The day I took David Sedaris to La Foire Nationale à la Brocante et aux Jambons, I thought he might hyperventilate from exhilaration. "An oxygen tank!" he begged, theatrically gasping for air, as we toured the 400-odd booths at one of the oldest and most important fairs in France, which celebrates antiques, secondhand ware and ham.
I knew he'd love it. After all, David--a fellow American and the author of the best-selling Me Talk Pretty One Day--had dragged me to flea markets all over Paris when I needed to furnish my new apartment there. David took almost as much pleasure in my finds as he did in his, patiently setting me up with all the implements of a French household, from Le Creuset pots to gilded mirrors. Bringing him to the fair, which runs for 10 days every March and September, was my way of returning the favor.

As the train pulled into Chatou, 10 miles from Paris, we saw what appeared to be a refugee encampment with smoke billowing out of the center. Handsomely dressed dealers, many with dogs in tow, carried out huge candelabra, piles of linen and baskets of china. Anything but a refugee encampment, it was a small village filled with green wooden stalls surrounding a food area where something (ham, we assumed) smoked away.

Both David and I had been wondering what ham had to do with antiques. We learned that during the Middle Ages, pork butchers from every region in France came to Paris during Holy Week, leading up to Easter, to sell meat. As the years passed, vendors at the Foire aux Lards (or Fair of Fat, as it was then known) began selling not only pork but the equipment to cook it. Now you can buy everything imaginable there, we observed, from oyster dishes and butcher blocks to four-poster beds. While I have never been one for flea markets at home in San Francisco, this was something else entirely. It was as if we'd stumbled upon the detritus of a musty old French attic or a recently sold château.

In my flea-market forays with David in Paris, I'd come across several vendors with exceptional taste. One of my favorites, Madame Claudine Peltot, was in Chatou that sunny fall day. Madame Peltot began collecting linen as an antidote to the stress of her job, as mayor of a small town. Finally, she amassed such an enormous supply that she needed to sell some so she could buy more. At the Bastille Brocante in Paris, she'd given me a crash course on French linens; along the way we learned that we shared a passion for cooking.

Madame Peltot has always inspired me with her creativity--pairing a chartreuse linen tablecloth with purple napkins, for instance. I bought that tablecloth (I couldn't wait to top it with a centerpiece of tangerines and persimmons) and a lovely side table that Monsieur Peltot agreed to deliver to my apartment. Their dog, Nini, oversaw all from an antique daybed, her head resting on a pile of pillowcases.

At half past noon, the antiques dealers paused almost in unison for lunch. David and I continued to shop, waiting for hunger to scratch our stomachs, and interrupted a proprietor to ask about an item that caught our eye. The man carefully wiped his mouth with a white linen napkin and politely replied, "Excuse me, Madame and Monsieur, but as you can see, we are lunching. May I ask you to return when we are finished?" Well, we thought, chastened, this was a normal response from the French, who take their meals seriously. Then we scrutinized his table for hints about what we should sample for our lunch.

Despite those clues, we had a hard time deciding between roasted pork with grilled endive, at one booth; tartiflette (warm potatoes with bacon), at another; and sausages and sauerkraut, at a third. Finally we found ourselves at Monsieur Sepre's booth, admiring huge rotisseries of pork that had been brined for weeks, and bought baguettes filled with thin slices. On our way to sit, we were sidetracked by Soler Fils, a lively stand with a canopy of pork legs, where we bought lard for preparing lardons--just the thing for topping a salad made with frisée and warm poached egg.

As we ate, David became increasingly agitated about the vastness of the shopping opportunities ahead of us. Distracted, he accused one of the vendors of stealing his jacket from the back of his chair. Later, after he'd made a few more purchases and calmed down a little, he remembered that he hadn't worn a jacket that day.

As we were leaving the fair, Monsieur James Jaulin's objets culinaires stopped us in our tracks. Monsieur Jaulin showed us an old lamp that came with a little strainer for turning used cooking oil into fuel. Then he gestured at a display of polished copper molds, pointing a flashlight at them so they glowed. "But do you notice," he asked, "how the shine is not reflective?" He explained that the molds were created with imperfect facets, to prevent glare.

Waiting for the train, David and I took stock. In addition to my purchases from Madame Peltot, I'd been unable to resist a huge mortar and pestle and a candleholder from Monsieur Jaulin. David had amassed three paintings, a wooden pharmacy box, two dish towels, some old photographic developing paper, a yogurt jar and a crocheted angora kitten as a gift for his partner, Hugh. ("He clutches it in his arms as he falls asleep every night," David told me later.)

It was a glorious way to spend the day and to learn more about the French. Aesthetics are so important to them, for instance, that dealers thought nothing of moving their lunch tables right into the middle of an aisle to catch the long, low fall light.

Indeed, when Monsieur Peltot delivered my side table, he didn't hesitate to give me his opinion about where it should be placed. "Near the window, as the table has a lustrous top and will catch the light there," he insisted. And we took great pleasure as we caught a bit of light in the city that is all about light.

Peggy Knickerbocker is a longtime resident of San Francisco, where she writes about food and tends to the business of renting her Paris apartment by the week.

This article originally appeared in March, 2002.

Copyright © 2008, American Express Publishing. All rights reserved.

[Happygoin]

Mimi, thanks for posting this. It was great fun to read! What I wouldn't give to visit the Fair of Fat sometime...

[framboiseetrose]

Mimi, a big thank you from me also. It makes one want to go and browse and eat some delicious pork dishes....................