Sole with soul

Fish, that's my dish.  That's how we felt yesterday evening when the dinner hour rolled around.

I selected Le Bistrot d'Eleonore et Maxence, also known as Le BEM.  The menu items listed in Lafourchette indicated an emphasis on seafood, and the place's rating is above 9, with more than 800 reviews submitted.  The bistrot's distance from our apartment made for a nice evening's walk, and the location is in the chic and safe 7th arrondissement not far from the Place Georges Mulot neighborhood (in the 15th), one of our favorite quarters in Paris.  

Using Lafourchette.com, I reserved a table at 7:30PM and elected to use 2000 of my YUM points for a 25 euro discount.  Only people who use Lafourchette frequently can accumulate enough points to do this.  A restaurant manager is smart to accept YUM points because people who have them are people who dine out often.  That's a potential valued customer.

The bar area at the Bistrot d'Eleonore et Maxence

Rather than walk directly, we started early and took twice as long as necessary, wandering so that we could enjoy some of our favorite avenues:  Suffren, Breteuil, and at last Duquesne, where the bistrot is situated at number 39.  Why not take our time?  The weather was perfect.

At last we arrived at Le BEM, a place that is new to us.  What a discovery!  One of the specials of the day was sole meuniere, with steamed potatoes -- a favorite Cooley dish.

The sole arrived at the table partly deboned -- only the larger bones and spine remained.  It was perfectly cooked, with just the right amount of salty melted butter on the plate.  The steamed potatoes had just a touch of butter and were also perfectly done.

La sole meuniere chez Eleonore et Maxence

Dessert was pineapple with heavy, sweetened cream for Tom, and a chocolate ganache for me.  Delicious!

Pineapple with heavy cream, above, and chocolate ganache, below.

Bravo, Chef Omar Ouffroukh!

It turns out that Chef Ouffroukh used to work for Chef Pierre Sahut, at La Gauloise -- one of our longtime favorite restaurants.  He also worked for Frédéric Vardon at 39 V and Hans Zahner at the Royal Monceau.

Our server was good, but he seemed fairly distant until the end of the meal.  After we complimented the food, I told him that we loved the music that had been playing (soulful blues, hits from the 60s, etc. -- all American music).  The server lit up, enthusiastically saying that he, too, loved this music.  Then I told him Tom is a drummer.  The server asked for the name of his band, and we told him Island Jazz.  The server seemed to be thrilled.

We had decided to dine inside rather than at one of the many tables out on the wide sidewalk, even though the weather was so lovely.  The whole front of the bistrot was wide open anyway, and we were seated near the edge, almost outside.  The outdoor area is, unfortunately, where the smokers sit.  We prefer to avoid the smoke, so we usually dine inside.

After dinner, we walked all the way up the Avenue de la Tour Maubourg, from the beginning to the end at the Seine.  The sun had just set as we walked past the Ecole Militaire and gazed over at the Eiffel Tower.  The sky was smeared with pink just above the horizon.  Simply beautiful.

Here are some scenes from yesterday evening's walk:

St. François Xavier church on the Boulevard des Invalides.  The back of this church is near the
Bistrot d'Eleonore et Maxence on the Avenue Dusquesne.

The Place de President Mithouard, next to the church.

Place de Breteuil on the Avenue de Breteuil is graced by a lovely monument to Pasteur.

This space on the Avenue de Saxe is home to an outdoor market on Thursday and Saturday mornings.

Me walking, birds singing

Early this morning, I walked to the food market on the Avenue de Saxe (Thursdays and Saturdays).  Once again, it was so early that most of the vendors were still unloading and arranging their produce and other food in their booths.  Only a few were mostly set up, even though it was 7:30AM and the published opening time for these markets is 7AM.

Walking there then is fun, because there is activity to see, yet the market is not yet crowded.  By 8AM I am certain that all the vendors will be ready to sell, but by that time, the city will be hot.  Very hot.  We have three more days of this heat wave!

Some people think that the Avenue de Saxe market is especially prestigious, compared to all the many other neighborhood food markets in the city.  I don't think it is all that different from the others; however, the shoppers in the 7th arrondissement are probably more affluent than the average Parisian.

What I like about the Avenue de Saxe market is the nearby neighborhood anchored by the Place Georges Mulot.  It sure looks like the 7th arrondissement, but it is actually a part of the 15th.  If we were ever to buy an apartment in Paris, it would ideally be within a stone's throw of the Place Georges Mulot.

Place Georges Mulot, in the 15th arrondissement.

All the Haussmannian apartment buildings in this quarter were built around the same time, in the years after a slaughterhouse was demolished on that site.  The buildings are handsome, and so are the boulevards nearby -- the Avenue de Breteuil being the grandest of them all, with its fountain and the gleaming dome of the St. Louis Church at Les Invalides at either end.

The neighborhoods in between this one with Place Georges Mulot and the one where we stay are modest.  They include what I call "old village-y buildings" that date back to a time when this area was outside of Paris, and included the villages of Vaugirard and Grenelle.  These are much older than the late 19th century Haussmannian buildings.

Mixed in with the charming old village-y buildings are newer buildings, some of which are not so beautiful.  But there is one huge, curving apartment building built in the 1970s or so, which has green area around it.  While this structure is a monstrosity, it clearly is loved by its residents, who all seem to treasure the balconies that grace each apartment.  Because of the trees and greenery around this building, birds live there in abundance.  It is delightful to walk by there in the early morning to hear them singing.

I was surprised to see a new flower garden planted in a space next to the Bricolage hardware store nearby.  It must be a neighborhood project.  These kinds of gardens are springing up all over Paris; the City is encouraging residents to create them in whatever space they can find.

Neighborhood garden near Bricolage hardware store.

In one area that had no greenspace in the 7th, I noticed that the neighbors had terracotta-like tall pots made to go over and around several of the metal bollards on their sidewalks.  Then they filled the pots with dirt and planted flowers.  Cool.

A museum to see

August 16, 2018 -- While staring at the map of the area around the Place Georges Mulot neighborhood, I saw a museum that I didn't know existed:  the Musée Valentin Haüy (pronounced like "Ah, oui!").  Not surprisingly, it is a museum about the blind.

I knew that a very old school for the blind is in this area, and that Louis Braille had been a student there.  Valentin Haüy founded that school, and the museum's web site claims that it was the first school for blind children.  That makes sense, because Paris had been the site of the enormous hospital for the blind, Quinze Vingts, since 1260.  That hospital still exists, in a more modern form, next to the Bastille Opera.

La Place de Breteuil.

The middle street crossing through the Place Georges Mulot is named for Valentin Haüy, who established that school for blind kids in 1785.  Louis Braille invented his "tactile code for writing" when he was a student there, at age 16, in 1825.

The museum was established in 1886 by Edgard Guilbeau, a blind man.  His purpose was to highlight the importance of the invention of Braille, and to "situate it in its historical context."  The museum chronicles the history of access to education for the blind.

The Rue Valentin Haüy, looking from the Place de Breteuil toward the Place Georges Mulot.

Maurice de la Sizeranne, a teacher at the school, established the library that is associated with the museum in 1886.  Its collections include documents about blindness and visual impairment, as well as the writings of blind or visually impaired people. 

Twenty-seven languages are represented in the library's collections -- first and foremost, English.

Nicolas wine shop on the Place de Breteuil,
at the corner of the rue Valentin Haüy.

A few years after he established the library, M. de la Sizeranne founded an association for the well-being of the blind, and named it also for Valentin Haüy.  The museum and library are now a part of that association, headquartered at 5 rue Duroc.

Without my glasses, I am legally blind.  I also live with early adult-onset macular degeneration, the threat of a detached retina,  low pressure glaucoma, and the beginnings of cataracts.  Hence my interest in this institution for the blind and visually impaired.  I'm not walking with a white cane yet, but I am empathetic.

To reach the museum for the blind from the Place Georges Mulot, we would cross over the Avenue de Breteuil at the Place de Breteuil, where the magnificent Pasteur statue is situated.  If, instead, we turned right at the statue, we'd be in the lower end of the Avenue de Breteuil, where the broad green space in the middle has been turned into a neighborhood park.

The neighborhood around the Place Georges Mulot is outlined in red;
this is the former site of the Grenelle slaughterhouse.

The most charming aspect of this park are the small rectangular gardens that the neighbors have recently planted.  Each garden has a theme or a lesson associated with it.  The neighbors have a Facebook page about their little gardens:  Jardins de Breteuil.  Check it out.  Photos below.

Red fruit garden.

Flowing water and hard rain

August 15, 2018 -- Surprise!  Paris has artesian wells.  In the 19th century, as the city was expanding, engineer Georges Mulot was hired to find these springs with water under pressure, and to dig wells so that the water could serve the needs of residents and businesses of the left bank.  He started work in the 1830s and, after 7 years and 10 months of efforts, finally dug a successful well in 1841.  The location was not the most savory:  the courtyard of the Grenelle slaughterhouse.

Georges Mulot dug an artesian well here, so the place is now named for him.

A tall font in the form of a column with three tiers was then constructed in the middle of the Place Breteuil, where the statue of Pasteur now stands.  The artesian well's font fed a nearby water tower (chateau d'eau) that was part of the city's water system.

Georges Mulot went on to dig several more artesian wells in the Paris region and in Algeria.  Later, when the Grenelle slaughterhouse was gone and the font had been replaced by the Pasteur statue -- about 1905 -- the new residential neighborhood that was built on the site included a fountain in the middle, on a square named in honor of Georges Mulot.  The neighborhood around the square is a quiet network of streets consisting entirely of attractive Haussmannian apartment buildings like the one below.

For a long time now, I've known that this neighborhood around and including the Place Georges Mulot is where I would choose to live if I lived in Paris.   The neighborhood has everything: beauty, peace, quiet, a couple small groceries, bigger groceries not far away, the Avenue de Saxe outdoor market not far away, a lovely neighborhood park at the southern end of the Avenue Breteuil, a few good, small restaurants, a butcher shop, a wine store, a bakery nearby, a private library, an extensive taxi stand on the Place Breteuil, the Segur and Sevres-Lecourbe metro stations (lines 10 and 6) adjacent, a reasonable air-conditioned hotel (Bailli de Suffren -- for guests) on Avenue Suffren, and more.

Many people think this neighborhood is in the ritzy 7th arrondissement.  It is not; it is in the populous and large15th.  This part of the 15th sticks like a thumb out of the arrondissement's eastern side, surrounded by the 7th, 6th, and 14th arrondissements.  It also includes the Montparnasse Tower and the sprawling and ancient Necker children's hospital complex.

Being in the 15th is important to property owners because taxes are lower than they are in the 6th or 7th.  I'm not sure about the 14th.

Pasteur statue in the Place de Breteuil.

The beginning of Rue Lecourbe is just across the Boulevard Garibaldi from the Georges Mulot neighborhood.  Tom and I both have come to appreciate and be charmed by the mix of shops and restaurants on the long stretch of the wide, busy Rue Lecourbe from this beginning to the town hall of the 15th arrondissement.

Adorable private library on the Place de Breteuil.

Off the northwest side of the neighborhood, off of the Avenue de Suffren, are globally important institutions:  UNESCO and the European Space Agency.  This morning I examined the photographic exhibition on the fence along the  Suffen side of UNESCO.  It is part of the Hard Rain Project, about efforts to achieve a sustainable Earth (named for the Bob Dylan song, It's a Hard Rain Gonna Fall).  See a film about the ambitious project here.

When you're in the Georges Mulot neighborhood, you don't have a clue that the enormous Necker children's hospital is not far away.  The same is true of the Pasteur Institute.  You also don't see any sign to indicate that this was formerly the Grenelle slaughterhouse site.

Whole Earth photographic exhibit is part of UNESCO's Hard Rain Project.

In 1810, Napoleon called for the creation of five slaughterhouses just outside the Paris boundaries because. At that time he banished the numerous "tueries" (open areas where animals were killed) and  forbade the driving of live animals through the city streets.  He did this not just for public health reasons. The butchers' association at one time was a powerful, profitable, and somewhat violent group. Napoleon had to divide and conquer.

His 1810 decree effectively albeit indirectly put the butchers who killed the animals and the butchers who cut up and processed the meat into separate groups.  The latter group became more divided when some specialized in sausages and charcuterie, others in poultry, still others in horsemeat, beef, or pork.

European Space Agency, off the Avenue de Suffren

Personal descriptions of the early tueries are a nauseating read.  A long time ago, the tueries could be almost anywhere -- at the butcher's convenience.  Animals could be killed in the streets,or on the sidewalks; blood flowed in the gutters.  People complained about blood sticking all over their shoes.  The butchers then tried to organize specific areas for tueries.  But the real solution was to construct engineered slaughterhouses like those at Grenelle (now the Place Georges Mulot neighborhood), Ivry (later called Villejuif (near the Boulevard de l'Hopital), Montmartre (now the Jacques Decour high school on Avenue Trudaine), Popincourt - later called Menilmontant (at the rues Parmentier and Saint-Maur -- the only Kosher abattoir), and Du Roule (on the Avenue Miromesnil).  As the city grew to absorb these locations, new abattoirs were constructed at Vaugirard (now Parc Georges Brassens) and La Villette (now Parc de la Villette).

After reading a number of items on this subject, I opted to return to my normal fish-and-veggies default dinner last night.  We dined at Axuria on the Avenue Félix Faure, where I had sole meuniere with mixed vegetables and puréed potatoes, which I shared with Tom.  We had started with sharing an order of 9 escargots.  Tom's main course was a nice piece of pork, with veggies and Grenaille potatoes.  All of the food would have been good if it had been hot enough, which it was not.  Oh well.  We will try Axuria again next year, hoping that the problem(s) will be corrected.

One thing was heavenly perfection at Axuria:  the soufflé Grand Marnier.  Aaaahhh.

A doorway on the Avenue de Suffren.