soupsong.com

Back in September, when I was hyperventilating over the beauty of my just one-year-old granddaughter Rosalind in Seattle, I got taken out to lunch by the urbanspoon.com guys, where daughter Meg had been working part time. Don’t know about urbanspoon.com? You should. Among other amazing things that it does, it lets you use the GPS on your ipod to locate the closest, say, SOUP restaurant to your own two feet at that moment, then draws you a map to get there and lets you read reviews about it before you walk through the door. I tried it out on Patrick’s ipod–incredible and incredibly easy. Plus I got the t-shirt. “Take it to Paris,” Adam said, “we’d love to urbanspoon that city too.”

So when Ana suggested we Pudlo on Friday night, I finally remembered to pop the t-shirt in my bag for a trial spin.

Pudlo?

That’s the brilliant Gilles Pudlowski’s restaurant guide of Paris. Ana and I go Pudloing the way Oscar Wilde’s Algy Moncrieff goes Bunburying.

La Gorille Blanc is a Pudlo “Special Favorite.” It’s in the 7th Arrondissement on the Left Bank, within spitting distance of the great Bon Marche department store and food emporium. Bernard Arény has made a truly sweet spot of it, bringing in a great chef with a fabulous menu, and consecrating the place to Flocon de neige (Snowflake), the astonishing albino gorilla who was captured in equitorial Guinea by the Fang tribe in 1966 and thence transported to the Barcelona zoo. Snowflake lived to the great age of 40 and fathered some 21 babies, none of them albinos. When Arény visited him in Barcelona, it was love at first sight.

The restaurant is tiny, charged with a warm, rich, and silvergleaming atmosphere, and hung with portraits of Snowflake. Ana and I are the first people in the place (typical Americans–”only” 7:30 pm) and it’s a good thing, cause we cheerfully go about making asses out of ourselves. “Ha ha ha,” says Ana, “My friend is going to write up this evening’s meal on the Internet, is it okay to use the camera?” “Ha ha ha, oh yes, that’s fine,” says the darling waitress. M. Arény is in the background, very chic in his brick red shirt and black trousers. Ana takes a picture of me tucking the Urbanspoon t-shirt under my jacket and posing next to a picture of Snowflake climbing a ladder. Nope, can’t see the logo. How about putting the t-shirt logo on top of the photo? Non, non, non! M. Areny rushes up with a different and great photo of Snowflake’s head and takes over the stage managing of the whole shot, pictured. We love it and hope you do too. And we’re all relieved that we got THAT out of the way.

Now we’ve ordered. We’re embarked on a lovely pichet of St. Emilion Bordeaux. And oh la la, the soup arrives and it’s gorgeous! Un velouté de chataignes en cappuccino aux cèpes séchés, or creamy chestnut soup with a porcini mushroom emulsion, splashed with paprika and topped with chervil. Oh my. Ana and I both want to dive in head first, but the staff springs into photography support. I take a picture with the flash and it doesn’t do the dish justice. Candlesticks appear from all directions and we end up with the photo you see. It DOES do the look of the soup justice, but not the taste and feel. The soup is light, rich, and sweet but goes into palate overdrive when paired with the musky froth of deeply flavored mushrooms. Something to suck through your teeth and savor in small swallows, if only you had that kind of self control.

And the rest of the dinner follows suit, Ana so happy with la terrine de champignon à la crème d’ail (mushroom terrine) and both of us with le fricassé de lapin et oignons aux raisins secs (stewed rabbit), not to mention the superb desserts–price for each of us, including wine and tip, 45 euros. Not bad!

We highly recommend it: LA GORILLE BLANC
11 bis, rue Chomel
75007 Paris
01.45.49.04.54

I’ll work on developing a recipe for this marvelous chestnut soup, but in the meantime, if you simply must have chestnut soup today, try the much heartier Hungarian recipe for Creamy Chestnut and Smoked Ham Soup on my website.