I Prefer Paris

Parisian of the Month: Charlotte Puckette

I recently met Charlotte Puckette through a mutual friend and we co-lead a food tour of the Place Aligre market. Charlotte is a chef and caterer and the author of The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. Since I was also a chef and caterer in New York before I moved here, I thought it would be interesting to hear her story, and curious to see if it was similar to mine. Charlotte still has her charming southern drawl when she speaks English and I liked her warm, easygoing personality right away.

Charlotte was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. Her first major adventure abroad was moving to Uganda in 1990 and setting up a computer system for the Ministry of Health. Uganda at the time was a very hard and dangerous place to live in and there wasn't much for Charlotte to do outside of her work. She couldn't find any suitable food to eat, so out of survival she started to buy raw ingredients and concoct different dishes. This sparked her interest in cooking and she moved to Paris in 1993 and enrolled in the Cordon Bleu cooking school where she learned classic French cooking. She started catering on her own in 1994 and prepared typical French dishes for her clients. Feeling a bit limited and curious at the same time lead her to start experimenting with different cuisines. It wasn't  hard to convince her clients to include ethnic food on the menu and she said they were relieved that finally somebody was offering something different and refreshing other than the same old traditional French cuisine. She believes the key to her success is the homemade feel to her cooking, emphasizing texture and flavor rather than perfect looking but boring tasting food.

Charlotte came up with the idea for an ethnic cookbook a few years ago with a food writer friend Olivia Kiang- Snaije, when she realized there were no cookbooks in English that had any information about the rich, unexplored ethnic cuisine of Paris. She wanted to expose people to a whole other side of French cooking other than the half dozen or so dishes that most typical restaurants served and felt people were really missing out on an essential part of the food map of the city. More than a cookbook, her goal was to provide a guide book of the best ethnic restaurants in the city along with the top recipes from each one, market stores and stands, and neighborhoods.

Her favorite places to shop are Chinatown in the 13th arr, Marche Aligre, the Belleville market,and the West African, Guadeloupe and Martinique markets near Chateau Rouge in the 10th arr. Favorite specific shops include a Lebanese grocery shop in the 15th arr. Le Delice d'Orient , 52 Ave. Emile Zola, and a Japanese market Kioko, 46 rue des Petites Champs, 2nd arr.

I love asking this question on my interviews and thought it was a most appropriate one for Charlotte:
What are your three must have foods if you were on a desert island? Charlotte laughed and said Manchego cheese, chewy bread, and white or red Burgundy wine.

Charlotte's biggest cooking influences come from traveling all over the world and discovering different cuisines rather than specific chefs or cooking styles.

When asked what was her biggest triumph and the biggest disaster of her career, she immediately said the cookbook for the first part of the question and for the second, told me an all too familiar story that brought back painful memories of my own catering business.At a Christmas eve dinner for 40 a few years back, she watched in horror as her client dropped a whole poached salmon on the floor while carrying it to the table. Charlotte told her to leave the room immediately and frantically called two waiters to help her put back the pieces of the salmon back together a-la-Humpty Dumpty before her 20 seconds were up (there's a code in catering industry called the 20 second rule, where if you drop something on the floor and you pick it up in twenty seconds, it's still acceptable to serve).

Charlotte and I did have a lot in common regarding our food careers but I never wrote a cookbook. In fact, she is working on another cookbook idea, so hopefully we won't have to wait long for another gem.

I got along so well with Charlotte that we decided we to collaborate on  food market tours followed by cooking lessons.The idea is that I will take people food shopping for ingredients in the morning at a local food market and afterwards Charlotte will assist clients in preparing a delicious lunch.

I will officially announce and offer the tours in early 2009.

To order The Ethnic Paris Cookbook in the U.S. click here
To order in France click here

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Happy Thanksgiving 2008

This is my fourth Thanksgiving living in Paris and the third time I am making traditional turkey dinner and all the trimmings. Actually its a bit of a pot luck  with some friends bringing dishes. As many of you know I was a chef and caterer in New York for over 20 years before I moved here and still use many of my tried and true recipes. I am having fourteen people over this year.

Here's the menu:
Farm raised turkey
Grand Marnier, dried apricot, sausage and slivered almond stuffing
Fresh cranberry sauce with pears poached in espresso
Sweet potato crunch
Mashed potatoes
Roasted broccoli in garlic oil
Pecan pie
Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting
Fruit crumble
Lots of red wine

I can wait to eat all this yummy food.

My former French teacher Luc Georges, who still gives lessons in New York, sent out this email last year with a French Thanksgivng vocabulary list. Here it is again.

Have a wonderful and joyous Thanksgiving and be thankful for what you have and for your family and friends.

 

French Thanksgiving Vocabulary

Thanksgiving    le jour de l'action de grâce
autumn, fall    l'automne
colony    une colonie
feast    un festin, un banquet
football    le football américain
grateful    (adj)    reconnaissant
harvest    la récolte
horn of plenty    la corne d'abondance
native    (adj)    natif
(Native American) Indians    les Indiens (d'Amérique)
November    novembre
parade    une parade
Pilgrims    les pèlerins
settler    un colonisateur
to share    partager
Thursday    jeudi
tradition    une tradition
traditional    (adj)    traditionnel
treaty    un pacte
tribe    une tribu
 
The food served for the Thanksgiving feast varies from home to home, but here are some traditional dishes.
food    la nourriture
corn    le maïs
cranberries    les canneberges
gravy    la sauce au jus de viande
mashed potatoes    la purée
pumpkin pie    la tarte à la citrouille
stuffing    la farce
sweet potatoes    les patates douces
turkey    la dinde
yam    un igname

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Les Canaux de la Mode

Les Canaux de La Mode is a bi-annual symposium and fashion event that bridges Dutch fashion designers with French couture craftsmen through creativity, design and crafts. I went to the vernissage(opening) for the exhibition at the Palais Royal Monday night and the clothes were quite fashion forward, more like works of art. I loved the black leather Batman-like dress called Dragon designed by Jeroen van Tuyl & Vanessa Ruiz, which i was told took over 300 hours to make. Another eye opener was the purple rayon dress with black patent leather woven straps by Oscar and Vanessa Ruiz(pictured above).  If you have moment, stop by and see this fun, innovative show.

Les Canaux de La Mode
Till November 30
Galerie Joyce
Palais Royal
168-173 Galerie de Valois
Metro: Palais Royal
http://www.lescanauxdelamode.com

Towel please!

To the Bat Cave

Jeweled Pig

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Meredith Mullins: The Chartres Laybrinth

The Chartres Labyrinth—ancient stones worn smooth by the feet of so many travelers—spirits stepping in and out of time. From a distance, the labyrinth presents a puzzle but, once you begin the journey, the path becomes clear. There are a few bends in the road, and sometimes you have to dance around (or with) your fellow travelers (especially on the last day of the Chartres labyrinth season). But, you take one steady step at a time and, before you know it, you reach the center.

Meredith Mullins is an internationally exhibited American photographer, currently living in Paris. Visit www.meredithmullins.artspan.com to see more of the Paris images. Her award-winning book, In A Paris Moment (click here to order), and her 2009 Paris Calendar can be ordered online or in bookstores throughout the U.S. Original photographs are available directly through the artist. Meredith will be teaching photography workshops in December 2008 and in 2009. Please contact her for information at [email protected].

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Restaurant Review: Les Diables au Thym

A large majority of restaurants in Paris play up the stereotype of the cozy, dim brasserie with worn, wooden tables and a wait staff that couldn’t care less. If you’re expecting this, then you may be shocked by the tiny Les Diables au Thym, where the well-lit dining room has a clear view of the kitchen and the staff is just as welcoming and helpful as any you would find in the States.

When I met Richard at Les Diables au Thym, a waitress immediately asked to take my coat and handed me a menu where I was confronted with a myriad of choices, each better than the next. I finally decided on a mushroom and chestnut soup to start and the foie gras appetizer as a main course, and we ordered a pitcher of the house red wine to share. The wine was the only disappointment of the entire meal: a bit too acidic, even when we left it to breathe.

The waitress informed us right away that the kitchen was behind and that our food would take some time to arrive, which was a welcome change from staff that often keep you guessing about what happened to your order. However, in the end, the first course came quite quickly, and we finished nearly as fast. The soup was hearty and flavorful: the distinct tastes and textures of the chestnuts and mushrooms shone through and played well off one another. The combination was one that I never would have considered, but I was pleasantly surprised. When the waitress cleared my empty bowl, I waited in anticipation for the next course.

Foie gras is always delicious, and the one at Les Diables au Thym was no exception. It was served with homemade bread filled with raisins, nuts and whole grains, but it was also quite yummy served on the crusty white baguette that was at the table.

Richard and I decided to share a dessert, and it being fall, we settled on the pumpkin cake. For lack of a better word, I have never tasted anything so pumpkiny in my whole life: it was like the concentrated essence of the quintessential fall gourd, infused with a sweet, caramel syrup that made the entire thing incredibly moist and tasty. We cleared our plate with no problem, even after the two courses we had already finished.

Les Diables au Thym may not have the typical Paris décor and atmosphere, but after a year and a half living here, I have to say that, for me, it was a welcome change and one that I look forward to experiencing again.

Les Diables au Thym
36 rue Bergere, 9th arr.
 Tel. 01 47 70 77 09
Open Monday to Friday Lunch & Dinner
Price range: 25 – 35 euros per person
www.lesdiablesauthym.com

Emily Monaco is an American student/expat from New York who has (hopefully permanently) moved to Paris. She spends her time in Paris seeking out artsy movie theaters, eating in amazing restaurants and trying to figure out how to use the Vélib.
http://travelday.today.com

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about including small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

 

Door of the Month: 6 rue Jean Goujon

I found this fabulous art deco door connected to this even more fabulous art deco building built in 1930 by architect and city planner Charles Lemaresquier. Lemaresquier (1870-1972) went to the Beaux Arts School and later went on to win the prestigious Rome Prize.

I was lucky enough to gain access to the lobby(meaning i snuck in when I saw somebody enter the lobby door without a code) and took photos of the still intact deco carpet and stained glass window illuminating the stairwell.

6 rue Rene Goujon, 8th arr.
Metro: Franklin Roosevelt
 

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about including small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

 

Armenian Church

I was walking down rue Jean -Goujon in the eight arr. and found this breathtaking, incredibly ornate church. It's the Cathédrale Arménienne Saint Jean-Baptiste (armenian church) and the only thing I learned in my research was it was built in 1903 by architect Albert-Désiré Guilbert. I love the amazing richly detailed stone carvings and the cartoon-like murals.

Cathédrale Arménienne Saint Jean-Baptiste
15 rue Jean-Goujon, 8th arr.
Metro: Franklin Roosevelt

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about including small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

 

Les Cocottes

I've made two attempts to have lunch at Les Cocottes in the last year and have not been very successful. The first time I arrived at 3PM, too late for lunch but they offered to make me a Croque Monsieur. It was one of the best I've ever had,  with thick, creamy, gooey melted cheese and and crunchy toast. I figured if a simple Croque Monsieur is this good then the cocottes must be sensational. The second time I arrived late again and was told they had stopped serving.

The third time worked like a charm and I arrived before 2PM. It was still packed with hungry diners and I squeezed myself into the last seat at the counter. The waiter efficiently rattled off the entree and plat of the day. Pork ribs sounded appetizing but I waited to look at the full menu. I was surprised it had only four cocottes, considering it was their specialty. Chicken with rice pilaf, potato confit with pigs feet, and seasonal vegetables all looked tasty but I chose the crusty codfish with carrots and potatoes. It was a damp, gray raw day and it was the perfect thing to order.

I munched on some crusty on the outside, doughy on the inside bread and I saw it as a sign the upcoming meal would be good. I studied the menu further while I waited and saw that they offered a true Caesar salad, which was important information since most Caesar salads in Paris are disappointing bastardizations with weird added ingredients like tomatoes and string beans. I also noticed a delightful imbalance: there are nine dessert choices compared to three or four in in all the other categories. I contemplated having either the Manchego cheese with black cherry confit or the "fabulous chocolate tart by Christian Constant". While I was making my monumental dessert decision, out came a black cast iron pot and the waiter warned that it was tres chaud. I lifted off the cover and a warm aromatic steam cloud rolled up my nose. I waited a few minutes for it to cool down and dug into crusty codfish. It was crunchy but lacking salt and the potatoes and vegetables were cooked just right, soft enough to melt in your mouth with just enough firmness not to make them mushy. The place setting included a spoon which was a smart idea so I would not miss a morsel of  codfish which was so flaky it fell apart into little bits or a drop of the savory juices from the stew. The best thing about the dish was that it was hearty but not heavy.

Feeling sufficiently full, I decided against dessert and only ordered coffee because I saw it came with a Poilane butter cookie in the shape of a teaspoon. The strong coffee and my buttery spoon were a superb complement to my satisfying meal.

A new trend in restaurant  dining decor started a few years ago which I am not a big fan of: all bar stool seating. Les Cocottes is one of them and although my seat of taupe and brown leather wasn't uncomfortable, I don't think I could have lasted more than 45 minutes on it. Maybe that's the reason they have them. The rest of the decor was pleasant and pleasing to the eye with soft neutral tones of gray and beige.

I asked for the check and the waiter brought it out in a cocotte pot cover which was an adorable finishing touch.

Les Cocottes
135 rue St. Dominique, 7th arr.
Metro: Ecole Militaire
Open seven days 8AM-11PM
Tel. 01 45 50 10 31
Price range:  15-25 euros per person

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about including small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

 

Paris Artseen- Seulgi Lee

The lines between visual and performance arts has been growing blurrier these past years, especially when one examines cutting edge explorations such as those by Seulgi Lee, a South Korean artist living in Paris for the past 17 years.  After completing her degree at an arts high school in Seoul, Lee came to France to study at the Beaux Arts in Paris. An admirer of Rodin and Claudel, as well as work by Renoir, Lee began her studies at the Beaux Arts in a mosaic studio.  For Lee, deciding to participate in this workshop was part of a realization that one could use decorative arts techniques in fine arts work.  Thus began a series of transformations towards her own interdisciplinary artistic practice.  In her third year at the Beaux Arts, Lee met Jean-Luc Vilmouth who'd just begun teaching in the sculpture studio.  "I showed him pictures of garbage cans and other things, things I wasn't willing to show anyone else, and he made me realize art could be made out of nothing or anything."  Most of the students in Vilmouth's group—which Lee became a part of—were doing installation and mixed performance pieces at the time, a direction Lee's work would take.

Given these foundations, one sees how the work Lee has been showing over the past decade here in Paris and in Seoul borrows from the decorative arts in its bright colourings and textures; it is playful, almost giddy at times. For example, a 2005 exhibition at Miss China Beauty Room in Paris showed a sock tree called "weeping willow" alongside a series of almost naïve drawings of single objects floating mid-page.  Her installation piece "c" from a show at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2001 recalls something from fairy tales or a children's stage set: out of the edge of a giant grey lump stick live people's legs (see image).  In fact, Lee believes that "children are the most serious of people," and therefore she tries to get at the elements of childhood which unite all of us. "Everyone was a child once, its something we all share," she explains, and I want to "create relationships with [and between] people"— as well as between objects.  This is why she works with what she calls "standard forms" such as blocks and circles, or everyday objects, such as green tea, doors, doorknobs or take out cups.

One should not be fooled, however, by the surface lightness of this work.  It exposes its own interrogations of serious issues within playful, unthreatening (or less threatening) space.  Take for example the take-out cup and straw in her 2008 solo show "Automatic; homage to the thief" at Colletpark galérie, Paris. This cup's an object, Lee explains, we just toss away.  Yet in her work she connects the cup and a plastic fast food tray via a straw within which water is then circulated "permanently".  This, Lee adds, is opposed to the disposable logic of the object, giving it elements of sustainability, making the material take on a constancy unlike our daily uses for it.  Similarly, for the show "B side" from the Do Art Gallery in Seoul, Lee's "Green Tea" piece linked two solid green cubes with a bar of running green tea.  Instead of constructing a real bar between the cubes, she used the flow of liquid.  The tea is at the same time more constant and yet also not fabricated like an object, nor solid in the same manner as a bar would have been.  As here, Lee is "interested in creating objects where the relationship between them is indirect".  The stream of tea also adds mobility to the work, like a life force connecting the cubes.


When asked whether she thinks about impermanence, or what is left behind (speaking both of people and objects), in relationship to her own migration to Paris, or how people confront others' leaving, deal with absence, distance or loss, Lee looks stumped and admits that she had not conceived of her work this way.  However, she admits, she has moved a lot in her life, even in Paris, and her work does deal with that search for the familiar, or a desire to see the world from another perspective. For example, she sought out difficult to locate round doorknobs for her piece "Porte américaine" (see image) —whereas in France, the doorknobs are typically horizontal levers, the round knob, prevalent in the USA, is also the kind she recalls from her childhood in Korea. This piece is a door with 7 doorknobs, but, as she said, "only one will actually open the door, though many are offered.  It's the idea that we're given a lot of options but only one works, like in life."

Lee's work is also quite political—despite its bright and cheerful camouflage. In fact, the political aspects of her artwork have lead Lee to put herself in positions of risk, such as for her documented performance piece "Une afghane en Corse".  This piece emerged after Lee saw images of women in Burkas in a metro ad at a time when she was noticing an increasing number of covered women around Paris, and was interested in black hooded protesters in Corsica.  In the interest of bringing these intersecting ideas of people covering themselves up or being covered, Lee dressed in bright floral patterns—a small flower motif she later learned is called "liberty"— and hooded herself in a similarly floral scarf in which only two eye holes were cut.  Lee then wandered around the island of Corsica, an island covered with tiny, richly perfumed Mediterranean wildflowers. No one would mistake this getup for traditional covering, yet it angered some of the people she came across and even frightened a few. "For me, taking risks in the real world is very important", Lee explained, which is why she sought out actual protesters to display another political work, the giant yellow banner on which Lee embroidered the word "STRIKE" in French: "GRÈVE" in pink thread.  The process of meticulous, time-consuming embroidery was, for Lee, also a response to the idea of striking.  For some strikers protest to avoid unemployment, which puts one into a position of having too much time on one's hands, and in striking one is also not at work. This piece also touched on an element of the feminist idea of women's work not having value yet being time consuming.  Though Lee never managed to get this French banner used in a real demonstration in France, she did manage to have a Korean version in held high at a May 1st parade in Seoul.

Whether you enjoy Lee's work because it helps you, as she hopes to, "see the world with the eyes of objects" or "see objects are inhabitants of the earth just as human beings are" or you simply laugh at the vibrancy of some childhood echo, this work certainly does reawaken the hidden corner of ourselves where the curious child still resides, strangely evoking the future adult with all of its complicated politics. 

Currently, Seulgi Lee's work is represented by La Galerie Colletpark in Paris and she will be showing alongside Caroline Molusson at la Ferme du Buisson Centre d'Art in Noisiel near Marne-la-Vallée (out on RER A from Paris) from January 24 thru March 29th, 2009. 
http://www.lafermedubuisson.com/caroline-molusson-seulgi-lee.html
 
Jennifer K Dick is an author (of Fluorescence, Retina, & Enclosures) and teacher (currently at EHESS and Ecole Polytechnique). She co-organizes the bilingual IVY reading series with Michelle Noteboom in Paris which began in a gallery thanks to curator Susie Hollands. Jennifer is now completing her PhD at Paris III on visual uses of the page in poetry: text and image in works by Anne marie Albiach, Myung Mi Kim and Susan Howe.
http://ivywritersparis.blogspot.com

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about including small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

 

Big Heads Up

I am amused by this large head bronze sculpture in the Jardin de Luxembourg.  Le Prophete by sculptor Louis Derbre, stands 6.50 meters (21 ft.) and weighs 12 tons. It's a stark contrast to the delicately detailed queens of France statues in white stone lining the park.

Louis Debre is a world renowned sculptor and his work has been shown all over the world including Brazil, the U.S.,Canada, Norway, Japan, Indonesia and the Ivory Coast. His crowning achievement came in 1997 with the six monumental sculptures he did for the Hiroshima peace memorial.

Click here to view the interesting photo montage showing how he created Le Prophete.

Le Prophete
Jardin de Luxembourg
Metro: Odeon

 

Great Profile

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about including small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com