Tuesday, our 3rd day in Paris, Part 3

I’m almost tearfully grateful when Mike tells me, as we leave Place Saint-Michel, that we don’t have to walk to La Rotonde on Boulevard du Montparnasse for lunch, but can hop the Metro.  Euphoria!  We have walked miles today and I am more than ready to sit down. My legs and feet are wailing uncontrollably, “what are you DOING to me?? Stop it this instant!”  With his handy app, Mike knows right where the Metro is and which line we need to take to glide over a couple of arrondissements.  I feel so safe with him!  We walk down, down, and down the Metro steps and then up, up, and up again when we arrive at our stop.  Paris is one giant staircase, I swear!

Mike has built this lunch up to me, has saved especially for it, and I am keenly excited about this culinary adventure.  A stone’s throw from theaters of the Rue de la Gaîté, La Rotonde has been the incarnation of the very essence of the Parisian brasserie for over a century.

In Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the character Jake Barnes states, “No matter what café in Montparnasse you ask a taxi driver to bring you to from the right bank of the river, they always take you to the Rotonde.”

Here’s Mike seated at our table with a tablecloth for lunch, while other customers enjoy a mid-day stop at bare tables for a café, bière, Cognac, or une verre de vin.  

Opened in 1911 by Victor Libion, it is renowned as having been a meeting spot for artists and writers from all over the world between the two World Wars.  An impoverished time, many of these creative men and women were literally starving artists.  They were allowed to sit in Libion’s café for hours with a ten-centime cup of coffee. Many times they were fed while he graciously held their art, returning it when they could pay their bill.

Among the famous individuals who congregated are Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Henri Rousseau, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, Samuel Beckett, Henri Matisse, Diego Rivera and Marcel Duchamp.

A great shot I found on the internet.  I didn’t think to get any pictures inside.

It is a gorgeous September afternoon and we opt to dine outside. Our waiter, in his black trousers, white shirt, black vest, classy bow tie and long white apron, snaps a white linen cloth over our table with panache, lays out linen napkins and hands us our menus with a pleasant voilà.  Towel over his arm, he delivers from his tray a clear glass carafe of chilled water and two sparkling wine glasses. Marvelously, the menu is in both French and English. I love comparing the two as I translate how the ordinary, everyday, real life English looks in the absolutely intoxicating, magical, dream life French.

Plenty of culinary firsts for me here in Paris, another bucket list food is escargot.  I was adventurous and tried them once years and years ago at a run-of-the-mill regional restaurant in Arlington, TX while Mike and my teenage niece looked on in caution and fascination.  The critters had actual ashes they were so burnt.  Just awful!  Not knowing what snails were supposed to taste like, I wondered how they could be considered fine dining?  Chewy and tasting of creosote, they were inedible.  As I’ve matured and done research, I have realized that they were not well prepared, to say the least, and I’ve been dying to have them at an upscale restaurant ever since. I came to France to have decent escargot, y’all!

I delightedly choose Escargots de Bourgogne au beurre d’ail for my entrée (appetizer) while Mike chooses Les huîtres de Quibéron.  That would be Burgundy snails with garlic butter and Quibéron oysters.  (Quibéron is a seaside resort in Brittany, France).  Both appetizers are a fantastic hit with both of us!  The escargots’ tender texture and clean, woodsy flavor is a revelation and I sop up every bit of the parsley butter with bits of delicious French bread.  Oh how I’m going to miss their exquisite bread!  We share bites and Mike agrees that the escargots are beyond tasty.  Very, very good.  Vindication!  The oysters taste of the lovely, briney sea, quite a bit more than we are used to with our mild Texas Gulf oysters, and Mike says they are the cleanest oysters he’s ever eaten.  Not one iota of grit.  He comments on it several times.

For our Plats (main course), I choose Filet de bar poêlé au citron confit et riz sauvage, Pan-seared sea bass fillet with lemon confit and wild rice,

I adore what the French do with both wine and butter! Fish is usually pretty boring to me, but this, this creation, is delectable! I even eat the skin with little bites of buttery lemon zest.  We share bites and Mike’s beef is superbly rare and tender with the perfect amount of rich wine sauce we agree.

Almost stupefied with gastronomical delight, we are presented with, voilà, dessert!

I have Parfait au caramel salé avec grains de café au chocolat et sucre brûléa, Salted Caramel Parfait that is dressed with chocolate coffee beans and lacy, burnt sugar.  I share a bite with Mike and he agrees that the super rich vanilla ice cream is the best we have tasted anywhere, ever.  So very good.  Apparently, the French know something special about cream as well.

Mike chooses the classic Crème brûlée.  The brown sugar crust is perfection and man, oh man, the custard is heavenly!  Good sized, it is almost too rich to finish.  Am I silly for saying that breaking the sugar crust is just satisfying?  Superb dessert.

Our waiter, who speaks engaging English, is very charming and humorous.  Not at all the snooty French waiter you are sometimes cautioned about on travel blogs.  He adds to the nuance of our fabulous meal and Hemingway and all. I tell him this meal is one of the highlights of our trip and that I am going to tell everyone back in Texas all about it, especially my sons.  He seems entertained by this.  Everybody in the world loves Texas and I love to share that we are from our renowned Lone Star State.

So what’s next after you’ve eaten yourself into a food coma?  A café of course! Loving the little sugar cube packet.  Have I mentioned that the French know what they’re doing with coffee?  Absolute perfection, these little demi cups of rich life.

A perfect, ambrosial Parisian lunch at a world famous restaurant with a renowned chef.  We saved for a year to afford such elegant treats as this.  Our meal cost €115, about $150.  The location, the language, the iconic ambiance, the superb food, the excellent service – it is so very worth it without even thinking about it.  I am beaming at my love who brought me here. Strains of Si tu vois ma mère (If You See My Mother) tinkle softly in my mind. (You have to give this link a few seconds to gear up with the sound.  Do watch the stills.  It’s lovely.)

Ah, Paree.  How lucky am I?

And in this graceful setting, I have another potty story, if you can stand it.

So after we finish our café, I make my way inside and genteelly ask the hostess, “Où sont les toilettes?” I practiced this for the umpteenth time on the way to the airport when we left Dallas and am now tickled to put it right out there.  So fluent in French, she is!  I am directed upstairs and I am gawking at the interior of the restaurant as I make my way.  The decor is very 1930’s, all brass fittings and red banquettes and rich golden light.

Another anonymous internet shot.

I find the toilet door and scoot inside.  Yes, there are urinals, plus a water closet with the one toilet.  I close the door and go.  You see, the day before, we made a dash for a museum in a dire moment of need, and I didn’t even blink when the men’s and women’s restrooms were located in the same general space, though separated by a wall.

Unisex even more so at the restaurant we frequented the day before across from The Louvre.  At that restaurant, at the top of the tiny stairs, across from some tiny tables where customers were seated, there was a lavatory and mirror and roller towel for washing hands.  Right in front of everyone dining.  A urinal was behind saloon doors and a water closet right next to it held the lone toilet.  (The water closet was so small I had to scrunch in between the toilet and the wall to get the door closed, and then my knees touched the door while sitting.  I believe I’ve mentioned that things are tiny in Paris.)

So here I am at the fabulously ornate and historic La Rotonde, spending the big bucks like we don’t work for a living, and I exit obliviously out of the restroom when a lovely waitress looks at me sharply and says, “Madame!  Les toilettes des dames sont ici!”  I look where she is bemusedly pointing and it says clearly on the door, “Femmes.”  I look at the one I just came sailing out of and it says, “Hommes.”  

Can I plead that I wanted very much to go where Hemingway went??  Non.

Although I also practiced saying, “I’m sorry” in French, (je suis désolé) as in “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French,” my too proud French flees the scene and “Sorry, I’m sorry!” is all I squeak before dashing downstairs, face aflame.  It could have been a ruder awakening as I burst out of the water closet into the area with two urinals.  Lordy.  Language barriers.  Let us draw a curtain of kindness over my second potty story from Paris.

Next blog – Nightime river cruise on the Seine