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Le Pain de la Bourse

A day away from the national strike, Dominique strikes a pose in front of the Bourse

Yes, it LOOKS like there’s “Pain in the Bourse” in Paris, and today’s national strike to draw attention to France’s part of worldwide international fiscal misery would support that, but in fact Le Pain de la Bourse is a darling little cafe just across the street, as you can see, from the Bourse–and its name means “The Bread of the Bourse” (and not the kind of “bread” that means money).

Do you love it? The heart of French financial markets is located in the Palais Brongniart, neoclassically built in the over-the-top 19th century by Emperor Napoleon’s architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart. Why did Napoleon commission Brongniart to build it? Because he loved how Brongniart had designed the layout for Père Lachaise Cemetery, now, of course, the revered home of (sigh) Jim Morrison of the Doors and zillions of other really more interesting people. Not that Jim isn’t interesting.

So Dominique (pictured) and I arranged to meet to discuss the state of things. Obama’s first days as President–she’d gone to the inauguration party at Hôtel de Ville, with lots of noise, interminable lines to get drinks, but high joy from beginning to end; I’d stayed home and watched first French TF1 then CNN with champagne and a friend. Then an embassy bookclub trip she is arranging to Orleans to follow in the footsteps of Joan of Arc, after reading Mark Twain’s fictionalized biography on same that he (wrongly) described as his “greatest work.” An Opera Comique performance that we couldn’t get tickets to. The upcoming national strike that would shut down metro, regional and neighborhood trains and flights across the country today. “Let’s try Le Pain de la Bourse,” she said. And so we did.

It was such a cute little place. Menu of the day on the chalkboard. 11,80 euros ($17) for soupe de potiron (pumpkin soup), open-face sandwiches of ham and gouda cheese on Poilâne-style bread, and salad.

We agreed the soup was terrific, but not for the reasons you’d suppose. It was so pure and simple…so French. Pumpkin cooked in seasoned water with a little mince of parsley, then pureed. That’s it. It’s not meant to bowl you over; not meant to challenge your palate with different flavors and textures and colors; not meant to fill you up. Soup in France, for the most part, is, in the words of Auguste Escoffier (that early 20th century “king of chefs and chef of kings”) designed to “put the heart at ease, calm down the violence of hunger, eliminate the tension of the day, and awaken and refine the appetite”

And it did. Markets are failing. Davos is dour. Strikes are pending. But Dominique and I sat in the shadow of the French Bourse (Per Bloomberg, “France’s CAC 40 retreated 2.2 percent” that day) and felt as if our hearts were at ease, the violence of hunger had been calmed, the tension of the day just evaporated, and our appetites were awakened and refined–which was too bad, when you look at the rest of the plate with its little cheese tartine, its little ham tartine, and a big mass of mesclun salad, not very well dressed. Oh well.

All things considered, it was a very enjoyable lunch indeed and we recommend the restaurant for its breakfast, brunch, and lunch:
Le Pain de la Bourse
33, rue Vivienne
75002 Paris
telephone: 01.42.36.76.02

And if you’re hankering after true French housewife pumpkin soup, please take a look at the original recipe of my marvelous Touraine professor of many years ago, Mme. Marie-Josie Diacre, at Soupsong’s Soupe au potiron. I cannot help be reminded, during this perilous fiscal time, that Jack Sprat also turned to pumpkins in times of trouble.

Le bar à soupes

What's on the menu today?

Friend Elizabeth found the reference on the first page of this week’s Figaro Scope, which tells you what’s hot hot hot in Paris for the coming week. And right on the first page, first item for restaurants, was Le Bar à soupes. Courez-y!, it said: “Run there!” So Christine and I did the very next day for lunch–jumping on metro line 1 and off at Bastille, closing our eyes to resist the temptations of the fabulous January sales on Faubourg St. Antoine, then hooking a left on Rue de Charonne in the 11th.

Whew, we were just about the first customers, and it was a good thing since the tiny place filled up to bursting in the next quarter hour. Who knew this was a Paris institution?

Anne-Catherine Bley (pictured) opened it 9 years ago with a single concept and hasn’t changed it one bit since then: Six freshly made, homemade soups every day but Sundays and holidays, 12 noon to 3, then 6:30 to 11pm. For 5 euros, you can sit down (or take out) a big bowl of soup, a fabulous seedy roll, and a sparkling carafe of water spiced with fresh lime. OR, for 9,90 euros you can settle down with the “formule.” This last means 1) a big bowl of soup with bread; 2) a choice of really delectable cheese, salad, or dessert; and 3) a glass of wine or coffee or tea. Carafe d’eau, of course, if you ask for it–it’s required by law for all French restaurants.

I got the pois chiche à l’orientale–a nice chunky little soup with chickpeas, tomatoes, a little pepper, and the surprise of plumped sultanas; Christine settled on the crème de carottes . We chose; we took a window seat; we were served; and we had the best time soaking it all in. Attractive and slim Anne-Catherine bustling over her soups like a mother hen (haven’t I always told you that the more soup you eat, the slenderer you’ll be?). Young, enthusiastic serveurs. Attractive setting with down lights; charcoal granite floor; blond, stainless, and glass counter crowned with dramatic flowers and revealing the soups of the day like an artist’s palette; and large oil portraits on white walls of a big fat turnip, a fennel, a tomato, and a beet. In the back room, racks of newspapers and magazines stood by to charm and stimulate the clientele. Because this wasn’t a snooty, stylish crowd at all. This was tweedy professors, and students in jeans and back packs, and young arty professionals with laptops. Possibly the 21st century de Beauvoir was in the back room arguing and slurping and writing.

The soups are very nice and very French and very much in season. This week, lots of creamy vegetable soups–carrot; red pepper; mushroom; broccoli; pumpkin; chestnuts; peas–sometimes spiced with a little mint or citrus, sometimes smooshed with the housewife’s favorite soup cheese, La vache qui rit. Lentil soups. Some surprises of borshch or celery with blue cheese.

Do I recommend this place? You know I do. Anne-Catherine delivers the goods: she says, Car une soupe c’est bon, c’est simple et c’est surtout pas triste ! , or “Because a soup is good, is simple, and above all never sad.”

Courez-y!
Le Bar à soupes
33 rue de Charonne
75011 Paris
01.43.57.53.79
www.lebarasoupes.com

The music is nice, but where's the soup?

Mmmm, fragrant with mint

My last day in Turkey, *sob*, and it’s off to the neighborhood resto for an Ottoman feast — the splendid Altinsis. We’re welcomed sequentially by some 8 smiling men into a large golden room, spangled with beams from the setting sun through its panoramic windows. The gal in charge of the children’s playroom is a little wide-eyed when she spots the Solley 4 trooping in her door, and we are immediately marched off to the table assigned to parents, where we can monitor kid shenanigans through the glass wall separating us. We kick back with a sigh and study the menu. It’s formidible and told in pictures–some 93 of them.

We can’t resist the stuffed grapeleaves, the pide, the kebaps, and a bunch of tasty meze–but take a look at the incredible pictured Eksili Ufak Köfte soup. It’s a fragrant and spicy broth thick with bits of tender lamb and tomatoes. But how about those exquisite and rich dumplings filling the bowl–and how about the fact that they’re punctuated by a large dark splash of heady mint oil? Quite spectacular in appearance and what an exciting combination of flavors. We’d love a recipe!

We felt as pampered as the women in Altinsis’ pictured artwork, and we highly recommend the soup and the restaurant:
ALTINSIS
Turan Günes Bulvari 19.Cadde 1/B MSB Lojmanlari karsisi
Oran Sehri – ANKARA
Tel: 0312 492 07 07

Yes, I'm a fan of urbanspoon.com

Plus I make great soup

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.