WTF Lundi

Noisy Butter?

Cake Break

Rue Montorgueil in Paris is a wonderful place; a market street awash with cafés, artisan patisseries, fruit shops, veggie shops, fishmongers, butchers, poulterers and awesome cheese emporia.

But the jewel in the crown is Stohrer.

Established in 1730 by the former pastry chef at Versailles, it has survived the Revolution, the Republic, Napoleon (twice), yet more revolution and two World Wars and is still going strong as the most venerable and revered bakery in France.

It was there when Valjean and Cossette wandered the streets of Paris; there when Sidney Carton went to the guillotine for love; there when the Russians entered the city, and when the Nazis came and went a century and a half later; and it was there a couple of weeks ago when Katie introduced me to its wonders.
It's there still.
Go visit.

In the window sits the Eiffel Tower accurately recreated with macarons.
What's not to love?

Let's go inside, shall we?
Beautiful mosaic floor, glorious painted ceiling and flamboyant chandelier.
Not your usual local bakery then.

As you enter, the left hand side is sweet stuff and the right is savoury.
Indeed spicy, if you count the pretty, semi-naked girl armed with an olive branch and ready to spank you if you don't spend all your money in there.

The things in the foreground were labelled as "prawns in negligées".
I want them!
Now.

Ah, the infamous "Hazelnut Thingie", aka Feuillete Noisettes.
Boy howdy, those are good!

That prune tart looked tempting, but then so did everything else.

Porn.
No other word for it.
Let your greedy eyes linger, people.

Yes, we ate these.

And this lovely little snackette of wild mushroom tart, quiche, bread and a terrine that was almost as good as the terrine of pig's trotter with pickled wild mushrooms and mustard jus that I had for a starter at l'Epigramme (awesome) on Friday evening with Katie and Eric.

You have my permission to squeal.

That cherry had so much kirsch in it Katie almost fell off her chair.

The English simply cannot make proper chocolate éclairs.

After all that lot I need a coffee to wash it down.
Yum.

Now I just need to get back to Paris …

On The Wall

I do like the variety of things people in Paris tend to put on their walls.

Here are a few:

Lots of lovely signage and lamps.

Napoleon (inevitably).

Light.

Exhibition posters.
The Tiffany exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg was totally awesome.

Er … a giant seahorse with a swim bladder problem.

Sensible advice on what to do with capitalist vermin.

Colonial racism.

A weirdo religious woman unfeasibly happy about her Catholic guilt.
And a nice old iron grille.

Lifesized photos of people (in the basement of the Louvre).
When Katie posted this one we were somewhat bemused by the amount of people who thought the girl in the poster was Katie herself. Hee hee.

Parisien People

WTF Lundi

We spotted this charming fellow in a shop selling … er … cake decorations just off Quai de Valmy. Little wonder Minne Mouse looks so happy.

Click on him to make him bigger. Go on … you know you want to.

Relaxing In The Tuileries

Relaxing In The Tuileries can be tricky if you just can't get comfortable.

Though this guy seems nicely relaxed.

And Katie of course is quite at home here.


Apologies for not visiting anyone's blogs for a while but given the choice of Katie's company and that of the computer, Blogville's going to lose out until she's safely back in Berkeley next week.

Home Again (Doh)!

Well, we're back in rainy England and about to head off into Norwich to try to find sone decent baguettes (not much chance there) …

… and a decent breakfast (ditto).
More later.

Yay Paris!

Enjoying myself way too much to blog. Yadda yadda …