July 31, 2017 --
Intuition Gourmande sits on the little rue Pétel, around the corner from the grand town hall of
the 15th arrondissement. It caught my eye several years ago because
its menu, posted on the front window, looked right, and it wasn’t translated
into English. The windows were
clean. The interior was warmly paneled
in wood and the banquettes were covered in red velveteen. I found a good review of the place, and we
would have dined there before this year except that we kept missing it due to
its closing in August for vacation. I
just never remembered it in July, and then August would come and it was too late.
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| The back of the dining room at Intuition Gourmande. |
But on Saturday evening, I booked a table there. I did it on time because on Thursday, I sat
down at the computer and methodically went through our favorite restaurants’
reservation calendars, one by one, on lafourchette.com. I made a list of who was closing when, and
when they’d be re-opening, if it was before the end of August.
Because of that tedious task, we made it to Intuition
Gourmande this year. We are so glad we
did! We shared a starter course of couteaux (razor clams) with peas and lardons (ham/bacon bits). The smokey flavor on the peas and lardons was a perfect complement for the
razor clams – something the chef knew by intuition, I imagine.
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| Razor clams with peas and lardons. |
We each had travers de
porc (pork ribs) with a dynamite homemade barbeque sauce. These ribs were so tender, moist and
flavorful that Tom’s face brightened and his dimples showed as he smiled. “I love this place!” he exclaimed.
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| Travers de porc with artichokes. |
And so we now have another favorite place in the Grenelle
neighborhood.
Yesterday we hopped on the number 6 metro again, this time
in the direction of Nation. I must pause
here and say something about this number 6 metro, particularly the La
Motte-Picquet station.
In 2000, Tom had his arm broken by a pickpocket in that
station. His wallet was gone, taken by
the pickpocket’s partner, who quickly disappeared. But Tom made the mistake of grabbing the
pickpocket’s arm and holding on.
Simultaneously, the pickpocket twisted his arm free (cracking Tom’s in
the motion) and head-butted Tom in the face.
Tom was down on the pavement, whoozy and bleeding from his
lip, as the pickpocket fled by running down the up escalator. We noticed that the security cameras in the
escalator areas had been knocked askew, and nothing had been done about
it. The staff in the station’s office
did nothing for us. So we think they
were complicit.
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| Wine cart now used as part of a flowerbed in the Parc Bercy. |
Later, after we’d talked to the police at the police station
and to the banks on the phone at the apartment, Tom sought medical care at the
ancient public hospital, Hotel Dieu, where the nice and scholarly Dr. Martin failed to diagnose the
break in his arm. That was done by our
regular doctor the next week, when we were home in Columbus.
Through all these years, because of that trauma, I have
subconsciously avoided the La Motte Picquet station, and in particular the line
6 elevated metro at that station. This
year, however, I broke through that wall and we have taken the line 6 from that
station several times.
The station, meanwhile, has been renovated. The old wooden escalators have been replaced
by newer, narrower escalators. The
security cameras are firmly in place. I’ve
even seen metro security police in that station, on the line 6 platform. I hope the two unhelpful men who used to
work in the station’s office have retired and left Paris, as retirees often do.
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| Old building in the Parc Bercy |
We thoroughly enjoyed yesterday’s ride on the elevated line
6, all the way to the Bercy station. We
had some good views of the 14th and 13th arrondissements.
Part of the way was underground, as we
passed through the Montparnasse hill.
But the rest of the way, we were charmed by the elevated station
platforms that looked as if they could be small town train stations.
When we finally passed over the Seine and disembarked at the
Bercy station, we walked around to the Place Leonard Bernstein and entered the
Parc Bercy. In the past, we’d just taken
our regular line 10 to Gare d’Austerlitz and walked for a while along the river
before crossing over to the park on the Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir. That’s an okay way to go, but taking the
metro to Bercy is a much more direct way to the park.
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| Tom, a Floridian feeling at home beneath a palm tree in Parc Bercy |
That park is not to be missed. Although it is not an old park (1997), it has
very old trees. That’s because it was
created in an area that was once home to narrow, cobbled streets with little
stone wine warehouses everywhere. Trees
were planted long ago along these narrow streets to keep the wine at more even
temperatures, I’m convinced.
The park designers (architects Bernard Huet, Madeleine
Ferrand, Jean-Pierre Feugas, Bernard Leroy, and landscapers Ian Le Caisne and
Philippe Raguin) left the cobbled streets intact, for the most part. The warehouses are gone, but evidence of
their past existence remains. Embedded
in most of the cobbled streets are tracks that were used to move heavy barrels
of wine by horse- or donkey-drawn carts.
One of the carts remains in the park, used now a part of a flowerbed.
The flowerbeds are amazing riots of color and ebullient
foliage at Parc Bercy. They make me
happy. Leaving the Parc Bercy at the
southeast end brought us right into the Court St. Emilion, a street where the
stone wine warehouse buildings remain on a cobbled pavement with embedded iron rails. The warehouses now house shops
and lots of restaurants.
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| A beechwold in the Parc Bercy. |
We missed Bercy and the Cour St. Emilion last year, so we
noticed plenty of change. The Nicolas
restaurant where we dined in the past is no longer as lonely. It has far more competition now. In fact, the competing places were just too
crowded for our mood yesterday. We
selected the Frog, a British restaurant, instead of the crowded French country
cuisine restos.
At the Frog we were served a delicious club sandwich and a
fine hamburger, along with perfect fries.
The Brits can cook.
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| Club sandwich, burger and fries at the Frog. |
Another stereotype-busting change that we’ve noticed is that
Parisians now dress down – a lot. I’m
talking blue jeans, sneakers, and t-shirts everywhere, every day of the week,
even in really nice restaurants. French
women often wear sneakers with dresses.
Two years ago, I bought some faded blue jeans here at
Monoprix, thinking I’d wear them on weekends.
Now I wear them regularly.
I wore them yesterday for our Sunday walk. After lunching we walked through a corner of
the park and exited on the street leading to the church of Notre Dame de la
Nativité
Bercy, a plain edifice that almost looks like a bank. After walking through a tunnel under the
train tracks, we took the rue Charenton to the Jardin de Reuilly. There was a lot of sunbathing going on in
that garden.
There we were able to pick up the Promenade Plantée,
a walk that we’ve been wanting to take.
We ambled along the Promenade, admiring all the flowers and wall murals,
until we reached the rue Ledru Rollin, in the Quinze Vingts neighborhood, which
is named for the opthalmology hospital between that street and the Opera
Bastille. That hospital was originally
established in 1260 by Louis IX.
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| Heron, duck, and turtles on a pond in the Parc Bercy |
Tom asked me what Quinze Vingts means. I could not remember, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, “The name
Quinze-Vingts, which means three hundred (15 × 20 = 300), comes from the
vigesimal (based on 20) numeral system used in the Middle Ages: it referred to
the number of beds in the hospital, and was intended to house 300 poor, blind
city-dwellers.”
We walked along the rue Ledru Rollin until we reached the
other end of it. I must say this is a
very pleasant commercial street in the 12th arrondissement – much nicer
than the rue Charenton.
We took the line 8 metro from Ledru Rollin to home because
it is far less crazy than the metro station at the Bastille. I noticed that we had made choices that
followed a pattern of preferring peace and calm over crazy crowds all day.
At home on the balcony, we had a peaceful summer dinner of
pear and blue cheese salad, on a bed of lamb’s lettuce with a honey
vinaigrette. And it was nice.
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