City Secrets Paris: The Essential Insider's Guide

The French lay claim to a patrimoine gastronomique with perhaps more validity than any other nation, and Paris is bursting with restaurants and flavors of every sort. For Parisians, sampling the fare on offer is a serious national sport. Unfortunately, they tend to complement this with wine purchased at the corner supermarket. Although this is not universally the case, a dispiriting percentage of the wine consumed in France passes through either the "hypermarchés" or soulless chain stores, completely bereft of the romance of the vine. It can be a challenge to find a great bottle while visiting the city, so when I travel to Paris my ace in the hole is a wine shop called Lavinia. Lavinia is a wine lover’s dream, with six thousand selections, about a third of which are from nations around the world — unique in France. This is a veritable temple of Bacchus; they store their treasures under optimal conditions, and best of all, they deliver! If you’d like a cache of champagne to be waiting for you when you arrive on your next visit to Paris, make the call before you leave, and you’ll be sipping the best from their cellars as soon as you arrive. Whether you’re looking for romance or just an antidote to the rigors of museum going and shopping, there’s no better option than a bottle of crisp and refreshing fizz. Cheers!
Charles Curtis
Charles Curtis is Master of Wine (MW) and the head of North American Wine Sales at Christie’s.

RUE VIEILLE-DU-TEMPLE
75004

Chez Marianne
2, rue des Hospitalières Saint-Gervais
01 42 72 18 86
Metro: Saint-Paul or Hôtel de Ville

L’as du falafel
34, rue des Rosiers
01 48 87 63 60

Les mots à la bouche
6, rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie
01 42 78 88 30; www.motsbouche.com

Au Petit Fer à Cheval
30, rue Vieille du Temple
01 42 72 47 47

Cacao et Chocolat
36, rue Vieille du Temple
01 42 71 50 06; www.cacaoetchocolat.com

La belle Hortense
31, rue Vieille du Temple
01 48 04 71 60

The Marais is certainly not overlooked, but it remains my favorite neighborhood. Rue Vieille-du-Temple, which was in the thirteenth century a path that led to the House of the Temple, is the neighborhood’s heart. The poetic names of the intersecting streets — the veins of the Marais are full of medieval echoes: rue de la Perle, rue des Francs-Bourgeois, rue des Rosiers, rue des Blancs-Manteaux, rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie. Each leads to a museum: Musée Picasso, Musée de la chasse et la nature, Musée des Archives, Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, Musée Carnavalet, Musée Cognacq-Jay, Centre Pompidou. Nowhere else in Paris is there such a concentration of art, culture, and history. The blocks between rue du Roi-de-Sicile and rue des Francs-Bourgeois are quintessential Marais. This is where the three identities of the neighborhood meet and mix: Jewish, gay, and fashion. The rue des Francs-Bourgeois, from rue Vieille du Temple to Place des Vosges, is home to elegant, wood-paneled boutiques. On rue des Rosiers — which you should avoid on weekend afternoons when it is as crowded as the passage between the Rialto and San Marco in Venice you will find old Jewish pastry shops and delicatessens, the best falafel in Paris (at Chez Marianne or L’as du falafel), and a Jewish bookstore. On rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie, there is an excellent gay bookstore, Les mots à la bouche. When done with your shopping or museum visits, stop for lunch at Au Petit Fer à Cheval, then walk up the street and look for the fountain of chocolate in the window of Cacao et Chocolat. Their chocolate eclairs (they have four kinds — dark, milk, white, and cappuccino) are sublime. If you are in the neighborhood at night, stop for a glass of wine at La belle Hortense, near the corner of rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie. The place is easy to find because the patrons spill out onto the sidewalk, wine glasses in hand, chatting about the latest literary scandal. Here it’s as if Paris hasn’t changed since the time of Sartre and Beauvoir.
Catherine Cusset
Catherine Cusset is the author of The Story of Jane, as well as nine novels in French, published by Gallimard. Le problème avec Jane won the Grand Prix des lectrices d’Elle 2000 and Un brillant avenir was awarded the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens 2008.

RUNNING IN PARIS: PACK YOUR SNEAKERS!

Jardin des Tuileries, 75001
One lap of the Périphérique

Jardin du Luxembourg, 75006
One lap of the Périphérique

Jardin des Plantes, 75005
Four laps around the center specimen beds

Parc des Buttes Chaumont, 75019
Two laps with hills

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of running past the sardonic Parisian with a cigarette dangling from his lips as he pumps his fist and shouts to me, “Courage, cherie.”

To conquer jet lag and keep pace with all the decadent meals and mouth-watering croissants Paris has to offer, I like to lace up my shoes and head for a one-mile run in one of my favorite parks or jardins. These quiet, elegant spaces offer soft, sandy paths with a balance of shade beneath the chestnut trees.

Parc des Buttes Chaumont tops my list. A magical project of Baron Haussmann, it is one of the least formal but most attractive landscaped parks in the city, featuring rolling hills, a lake, myriad species of plants and trees, and to complete the scene, a flawless classical temple perched right in the center, from which one can see Montmartre and other spectacular sights.
Amelia Durand
Amelia Durand is a publicist who specializes in food and wine. She was previously the communications director for Estates & Wines at Moet Hennessy USA.

MAISON CARETTE
4, rue du Trocadero 75016
01 47 27 98 85; www.carette-paris.com
Metro: Trocadéro

Carette was the tearoom of my childhood.

It continues to thrive today as a “deluxe pastry shop,” just as Jean Carette intended it to be when he opened it in 1927. His wife Madeleine was the renowned Madame Carette. The tearoom on the place du Trocadéro enhances the square’s sweet atmosphere.

I remember it all: the hot chocolate served in its small, brown porcelain pot, the well-roasted pretzels, and the buns studded with raisins and covered with icing sugar, which were the sweet and guilty pleasure of my Uncle Gilles. We used to bring the buns back for his breakfast (for me it was teatime, but for him it was just time to wake up).

Nothing has changed; neither the atmosphere, nor the waitresses with their little aprons made of white lace. (“With women, it always works better,” emphasizes Marcial today, manager since 1998.) The Mont-blancs at Carette are memorable, and the macarons are still as creamy as they have always been; the small egg or tomato sandwiches are still wrapped in their little sheet of “maison Carette” paper.

I take my children here these days. One orders a pistachio ice cream, the other has a strawberry one. Sometimes I bump into my old schoolmates. This makes me think of my mother and me … thirty-five years ago…. Yes, this tearoom is my own private madeleine.
Mathilde Meyer
Mathilde Meyer is the communications director at Prada and Miu Miu.

BELLEVILLE
75020
Metro: Pyrénées, Belleville, Couronnes, Jourdain

The highest point in Paris is not Sacré-Cour but Télégraphe at the top of Belleville.

If, coming from République, you get there by way of rue de Belleville, the ascent is straight up without a single break. This itinerary gives no reason to suspect the existence, right there, so close, of a complex landscape, ravined by water, of a miniature Lisbon embedded into the heights of Paris. Take rue Piat to the esplanade that overlooks the garden, and from there, where everything descends, let yourself glide all the way down to Place Henri Krasucki, and then, you will understand.

Halfway down, the hill folds in on itself, hiding a small valley that pours out like a comma, hurtling to the south by way of rue des Couronnes. This little valley forms a quartier that all at once overhangs the big city below and lies buried, concealed by the hill that peaks beyond. There you feel both above the fray below and protected as if in a sunken path.

It’s a dream of a quartier, a dream of urbanity. You go for a walk through streets that follow the contour lines of the hill while others slope steeply downward, like streams rushing to get it over with.

Rue des Cascades, rue de la Mare, des Rigoles, de la Duée (which means spring) — the toponymy sings of runoff, erosion, and, consequently, the passage of time. You daydream of an ideal twentieth century that oozes argot (where have they gone, then, the Parisians?); the young Georges Perec, who grew up on Rue Vilin; the street urchin running after his red balloon, who crashes into the beautiful Simone Signoret of Casque d’Or. You imagine Serge Reggiani of the same film, the outsider transfixed by love, getting drunk in one of the cabarets that, much earlier, in the nineteenth century, abounded in the sludge, among the quarries, pastures, and sloping vineyards. Above the Rue des Savies time collapses and it is absolutely Merovingians, Henry IV, and Fernand Reynaud who watch each other from the corner of their eye. So many have passed through here. And what of all the people who live here now? Take a stroll around Belleville some sunny Sunday afternoon, and count the number of different nationalities you come across.
Dominique Marchais
Dominiqeue Marchais is a film director and screenwriter. His film credits include Les Temps des grâces.

MUSEE CARNAVALET
1548; 1660, François Mansart
23, rue de Sévigné 75003
01 44 59 58 58; www.carnavalet.paris.fr
Metro: Saint-Paul or Chemin Vert

It wasn’t until I visited the Musée Carnavalet that I realized, with utter mortification, that everything I knew--well, thought I knew--about French history was from the English point of view. The history of the city of Paris, from ancient glass and other archaeological discoveries to fine and decorative art (including a Charles Le Brun ceiling) is packed into two adjoining hôtels particuliers in the Marais. The Revolutionary collection alone fills twelve rooms, and a section devoted to French literature includes a marvelous reconstruction of Proust’s cork-lined bedroom and correspondence from the famed wit and woman of letters Madame de Sévigné, who, in February 1671, wrote to her daughter, Françoise-Marguerite, comtesse de Grignan: “If you are not feeling well, if you have not slept, chocolate will revive you. But you have no chocolate pot! I think of that again and again. How will you manage?” Also on exhibit is a wonderful portrait of an endearingly pink-cheeked gourmand at table believed to be Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent Grimod de la Reynière, an early eccentric hero in the culinary firmament. His eight-volume Almanach des gourmands, a best-selling series published from 1803 to 1812, was devoted to the gastronomic wonders of Paris, from the finest patisseries to brand-new establishments called les restaurants.
Jane Lear
Jane Lear is a freelance food writer, editor, and cookbook author. She is the co-author, with chef Floyd Cardoz, of One Spice, Two Spice, as well as a contributor to The Gourmet Cookbook, Gourmet Today, and the forthcoming Martha Stewart’s American Food. For many years she was senior articles editor at Gourmet magazine.

LE BIENVENU
56 bis, rue du Louvre 75002
01 42 33 31 08
Open 24 hours, closed Mondays
Metro: Sentier or Etienne Marcel

It’s not because Le Bienvenu is so conveniently located in the heart of the Right Bank (between La Bourse, the old stock market, and Le Sentier, Paris’s fashion district) that it’s worth noticing. It also can’t be that “The Welcome One,” as the restaurant’s name is translated, is near the city’s 24-hour main post office. However, this proximity is a bit ironic because Le Bienvenu serves wonderful food all night long — a rarity in a city where few restaurants stay open past midnight. However, it is not just the staples of North African cuisine (delicious, comforting spicy salads with cumin seeds and coriander, couscous, tagines, and mint tea) that keep pulling us back to this restaurant. What makes Le Bienvenu so appealing is its uniquely odd yet harmonious mix of people and its peculiar but warm and tolerant atmosphere.

Who patronizes Le Bienvenu? The hungry, after-hours types, who, for whatever reason, inhabit Paris’s nights, that’s who — those searching for food and/or cozy company at the time of day when tous les chats sont gris — all the cats seem gray — and when social barriers tend to vanish. The pack of taxis parked on the rue du Louvre indicates that you’ve arrived. When entering the dark Bienvenu, you receive a surprisingly gentle and affectionate greeting, “Bonsoir, messieurs Bonsoir, mesdames,” from the owners, who stand behind a long, warmly lit bar. This sweet charm, typical of the Moroccan French, makes you instantly feel like a member of this late-night family. In the dim and male-dominated barroom, the habitués sit — a mix of taxi drivers and people from the local neighborhood. Every night the drivers meet at the same exact late hour and sit as a group at the same red-clothed tables in the bar area. Engaged in friendly conversation, they share their couscous or bleu steak and drink coarse Moroccan red wine or Amstel beer. Le Bienvenu’s menu is as culturally tolerant as its patrons. Along with traditional Moroccan dishes, the entrecôte Bordelaise has been invited. Dijon mustard meets the pastilla vegetable stew, served in its typically low, earthenware dish topped by its high, conical lid. In this convivial atmosphere, the solitude of the few who sit alone at a single table seems less harsh. These people are the local, lonely insomniacs lost in their thoughts, their tired eyes wandering, unfocused, while they munch on stock-steamed Berber couscous. For the regulars, the Bienvenu has his own etiquette: fashion people, journalists on deadline, and partygoers will pass the bar and walk straight to the room in the rear. No chic back room here, but a flabbergasting riot of colors, the walls painted floor-to-ceiling with Moroccan-inspired panoramic frescoes. A student, obviously fond of super-bright rainbow colors, depicted a naive (although not clumsy) vision of Fez’s landmarks. The high walls, the medina, the gardens, and the musicians in white djellabas are all on display above a faux wrought-iron grille with an intricate design that generously includes the radiator.

Depending on one’s mood, curiosity, and the time of the day, you may find Le Bienvenu garish and spooky or fascinating and great fun. No arrogance is allowed at Le Bienvenu, which is a nice change in Paris. Plus, you will always find a taxi among the drivers dining to take you home!
Katell le Bourhis
Katell le Bourhis is the personal advisor for fashion and art to Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH. Previously, she was a curator at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum and the director of the Musée de la Mode et du Costume in Paris.