Category: france

Booze or Lose: Le Baron Rouge

So school started for reals this week, or at least as “for reals” as it ever really is at the husk of a university where I teach. Part of the problem is this rather large strike that has been going on for the past five days with no signs of abating. This means that getting to work has been a veritable hell, with only one train in every three running on the major commuter transit lines. Upon arriving at campus, the buildings may or may not be barricaded by stern-looking policemen or angry students. If I am so lucky as to get in to one of the classrooms, I’m usually greeted by one or two confused students, whom I chat with for a while before letting them leave. On Thursday, the one day that I actually had dozens upon dozens of students show up for my classes, it became clear that a major registration faux-pas had taken place and that nobody (myself included) was in the right place. Unfortunately, all of the administrators and secretaries are also on strike, so I wasn’t able to do much besides take attendance, play half-hearted rounds of the cannibal game (my favorite ice-breaker in which students gradually cannibalize one another on a desert island), and send everyone on their way. Basically, I was a glorified attendance-taker this week. I’m so glad I’ve had 9 years of higher education. Livin’ the dream, baby.  I’m livin’ the dream.

Add to that some other minor irritations and this was the kind of week that warranted one serious after-work happy hour. B and I fantasized all summer about organizing a kind of weekly get-together at one of our favorite wine bars, Le Baron Rouge (1 rue Théophile Roussell, 75012 Paris, Métro Ledru-Rollin).  Think Thirsty Thursday all grown-up, complete with charcuterie plates and witty banter. We “discovered” this place (I’m like Christopher Columbus over here, discovering places that other bloggers have already written about ad nauseum) with BC and J last spring and quickly became devoted patrons.  Le Baron Rouge is seriously awesome. They have an amazing selection of wines available by the (cheap!) glass, listed on large chalkboards. You can give yourself a rather comprehensive lesson in French wines just by gradually working your way down the chalkboard, as B has been methodically doing. Or, you can be a crusty old creature of habit like yours truly and just order a glass of the Pic Saint-Loup over and over again, because you like it, and because the true madness of modernity might just be forgetting what you actually like because you want to try everything.  Or so us crusty old creatures of habit tell ourselves.  Either way, the wines are lovely and the bartenders are both knowledgeable and generous in their pours.  At between two and four euros a glass (and you are getting some pretty knockout wines at the top end of that spectrum), you can afford to have a few glasses to blow off some steam. And, if you really like something, you can take home a bottle for less than you’d spend at your local wine merchant.

Let’s say for a moment that you’re more serious drinker, or perhaps you like boozing at home, or feel a wide-eyed sense of wonder and value when you stroll the aisles of Costo.  You might want to purchase a few liters of wine from one of the big barrels that line the walls of Le Baron Rouge. You pay a one-time fee for the plastic jugs, and then return whenever you want to refill for bargain-basement prices. I like it when my bulk drinking is green. Take that, Leonardo di Caprio. Have fun cruising around in your Prius, you know, the feel-good hybrid with the hideous environmental footprint? I only take public transportation and drink my wine out of reusable plastic jugs. Now who is feeling smug?

More importantly, and lest you think I actually do anything beneficial for the environment besides begrudgingly sort my recyclables and ride Vélibs when drunk, let me tell you about the charcuterie plates. Oh man, Le Baron Rouge is like cured meat nirvana.  Their large charcuterie plate is one of the best parts of my week, with slices of spicy dry salami, tangy garlic sausage, and two of the biggest mounds of foie gras paté and creamy rabbit rillettes you could ever hope for in your life. Most charcuterie plates leave a group of four wild-eyed and lusting after those final cornichons. But the charcuterie plate at Le Baron Rouge is totally satisfying and perfect for a table of four. Party of six?  Add a mixte, which pairs an amazingly smoky Tomme de Corse with more of that great salami. You also then get the pleasure that comes from the opening of the cheese fridge at Le Baron Rouge, a most glorious stink that wafts through the entire joint and causes the Americans to glare suspiciously at their companions.  Don’t worry newbies! It’s just cheese stink, magnificent, tremendous, old cheese stink. If they bottled it in perfume form, I’d be the first girl in line at Sephora.

We gave our Thirsty Thursday plan a trial-spin a few weeks back with much success, with a half-dozen friends showing up to drink and chat around the enormous barrel in the center of the front room.  This past Thursday was less successful, with B and I drinking alone until our table was gradually hijacked by the hoards of French workers that show up after 7 p.m.  We left, disappointed that we weren’t living in our own version of Cheers and resolved to do better next week. So, Paris denizens, Le Baron Rouge next Thursday? I get done taking attendance at 4 p.m., so we’ll aim for a prompt 6 p.m. arrival time. How about it guys? The charcuterie plate is on me.

Clarence Will Go Your Way, Lenny: Al Taglio Pizza

First off, these kinds of things never fail to amuse the hell out of me:

Lordy, France.  Get it together already.  One minute you are deporting Gypsies, the next you are making racially-oriented gaffes that only a handful of people in the geriatric population in the United States make.

Luckily, for the win we have this:

Oh man, Pierre Hermé is my hot sometime-lover that my actual boyfriend doesn’t disapprove of me hooking up with.  Or something like that.  My fave new, alchemical, and hopefully not temporary flavor is the green tea with ginger and red bean. There’s an actual red bean buried the center of the macaroon. Holy smokes, Batman.  Now that is a P’tit Oriental this fat kid can get behind.

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In other news, I have a bit of a new crew on account of various American friends accruing to teach this academic year in Paris.  While they certainly can’t replace S, BC, and J, whom I miss terribly, this new batch of fresh, vaguely hipster blood from the States has been a lot of fun to hang out with lately.  Especially after the long summer I spent virtually alone with B, in which we developed a private language of grunts and whines that we now exclusively use for communication at home.

One recent arrival is a good friend of mine from California, who we’ll call the Prairie Wolf, departing from our usual pseudo-anonymous naming system here at Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background. Prairie Wolf was the name bestowed upon my friend by our graduate department’s intermural softball team, a group whose very name is so deeply fraught with dorkdom and benchwarming that I’m tempted to reveal it to the internets at large for a laugh at the expense of some dear friends. Don’t worry, friends, your secret is safe with me.  Anyway, of all the things that came out of my department’s brief foray into athleticism (including grown men going fisticuffs with various underage referees and long drunken nights listening to play by play recounts of the bloodbath), perhaps the best was the moniker of Prairie Wolf.  He’s wily, quick, and has the coloring of the high plains. I’m pleased he’s moved to France.

Another great development is the arrival of M’s friend ME (system fail) from Pittsburg, a really lovely guy who has brought along his teenage daughter E. Oh man, I know I hang out with teenagers all day and am totally enchanted by a lot of them, but this one is really special. You know those teenagers that you meet that are so cool and self-possessed and sharp and funny that they cause you to shudder to think how much easier your life would have been if you had had your shit together like that when you were 14? Yeah, she’s one of those. She’s a fencer, which immediately charmed B, and a serious pop-culture critic, which made me want to invite her over for a sleepover so she could tell me all the best reality shows to watch this fall. Anyway, if I ever have a kid, I hope she turns out like this. It seems like a lot of the conversation in the zeitgeist lately is about how American teenagerdom is horrible and leveling. It’s great to meet a young woman who I can’t wait to hang out with again.

So anyway, these new folk along with B, M, and I (ha! system double fail!) all converged on Sunday night at Al Taglio (2 bis rue Neuve Popincourt, 75011 Paris, Métro Oberkampf), a pizza place that I had been lustily reading about in Le Fooding for months.  By now you must realize, dear reader, that I am a pretty devoted pizza-eater, and my allegiances have been torn by the deep excellence of both La Briciola and Pink Flamingo Pizza, both of which are within walking distance of own apartment  and make me quiver with desire.  I hardly expected that Al Taglio (which means “by the slice”) could possibly compete with my already over-full dance card of Right Bank pizza joints.

Woah, ho ho, was I wrong. It’s fantastic. Instead of ordering of a menu, you go to the counter and pick from pizzas that are available, which are cut into squares and priced by weight.  I’ll admit that part of my admiration for this system is that the pizza (in look and texture alone) vaguely resembles the Little Caesar’s Sicilian-style pizza of my childhood. Oh, how far this little foodie has come! I say “in look and texture alone” because the toppings at Al Taglio are slightly more chic than those of my dearly departed rural Colorado Little Caesars (Pizza Pizza!).  Rather than make any decision, we simply ordered an assortment of different pizzas. And then we ordered some more. And some more after that. We, uh, somehow managed to eat 155 euros worth of pizza and red wine.  I guess there were six of us, but still, it’s kind of ridiculous how much of this pizza we managed to eat.

But the toppings! The toppings! How about roasted zucchini, sun-dried tomatoes, and kalamata olives? Or carbonara-style pizza with crispy pancetta, shaved parmesean, and creamy egg yolks?  Maybe you would rather have a slice with gorgonzola and pinenuts? Black trumpet mushrooms and fontina cheese? The table’s favorite was a pie with roasted asparagus and black truffle cream sauce.  Yup, I said black truffle cream sauce, dear reader. I wish you could have been there, too. Come over later and we’ll go for a slice, my treat.

After our second tableful of quickly-devoured slices, B went inside to order another round of pizza and a third (or fourth?) carafe of the house red. He came back, shaking his head in amusement at a conversation between an American couple that he had inadvertently been eavesdropping on while he waited to order.  The guy was apparently reassuring his beautiful lady-companion that he wasn’t actually cheating on her, but that having lots of other girls around was “part of the game.” As in, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” Yucko. Anyway, it would have been a nothing kind of observation except that when we all went inside to pay for our epic pizza feast, M noticed that the gentleman player in question was none other than LENNY KRAVITZ, who does indeed keep an apartment somewhere in the Marais and whose picture and endorsement graces all L’As du Fallafel paraphernalia. I got a bit twitterpated, obviously, because it’s LENNY KRAVITZ, and uh, he looks pretty great for 46! I’m going to assume that his secret is a steady diet of falafel and Al Taglio pizza and work hard to follow this regimen.

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Finally, I know I’ve been a total loser lately when it comes to posting on a regular basis.  I suck and totally don’t deserve you. I wish I could say it was because I’ve been hard at work writing my magnum academic opus, but it’s probably more likely because I’ve discovered the TLC shows Sister Wives and Hoarding: Buried Alive and spend most of my time watching slack-jawed and smug. I also admit that I got kind of discouraged about blogging (Where’s my travel-guide book deal already, Universe?), an endeavor that on my worst days seems to be just one more thing I’ve managed to contrive to avoid doing my “real” work, you know, that stuff that gathers dust on those days when I write thirty-thousand words about cheeses I want to put in my mouth. But I recently stumbled on a new blog by a friend of mine (who is apparently too cool to publicize these things), the charming Ducks and Turtles. It seems my dear friend AV has moved to Los Angeles and is spending some quality time photographing local ducks (awesome) and writing about things he eats (more awesome). You should definitely check his site out, especially if you are sick of old content here and want to read someone waaay smarter than I’ll ever write. He said something amazingly sweet about this here blog and it’s a compliment that I don’t deserve but I’ll take anyway, ’cause I’m not dumb. In response to that, I’ll note that my blog’s name is a rather obscure Wyndham Lewis reference that nobody would ever recognize in two million years, so don’t go underestimating your scope, dearest AV. I bet you don’t sit around all day fantasizing about punching some reality star polygamist repeatedly in the face. But thanks anyway for the compliment, you really made my day.

Redemption

On Monday B and I went to the Préfecture du Police in an attempt to renew our paperwork so that we can continue legally living and working in France.  Because, uh, it’s kind of unclear as to whether or not we are currently legal, a state of affairs that is strikingly reminiscent of the first three hazy months I spent in France.  It was a dark time.  I didn’t have hot water or internet or a bank account with money in it or real friends just yet, so I spent most of my time eating falafel and shivering next to my radiator.  I had been told that renewing my contract and my visa would be a snap compared to last year.  I should have seen this headache coming, but somehow in the halcyon days of summer it didn’t seem like anything could possibly go wrong.

Somehow, however, papers managed to not get filed by my employer to reauthorize me to work in France. I’m not blaming anyone, though I do suspect that the bug-eyed woman at my university who is supposed to be handling our affairs with the office of immigration might have slacked off a bit this summer.  This woman has made an art form out of plaintively blinking and stammering. She’s an expert in this peculiarly French office-drone trick of passing the buck, usually down the hall to her unsuspecting colleagues. I guess that person exists in every office, in every corner of the world, but somehow it never makes you feel any better to know that when someone drops the ball and suddenly phrases like “You’re not getting paid!” and “You might be deported!” start getting tossed about.  So I’m waiting, nervously, for a renewal of my “authorisation du travail” (work visa), so that my “carte de sejour” (life visa?) might also be renewed, so nobody can use my name and “deported” in the same sentence for a while.

“Visa” is a problematic term here, as is “carte de sejour,” “titre de sejour,” and “authorisation du travail.”  I apparently have anywhere between one and all four of those, though I don’t actually have in my possession anything that is actually titled as such.  So it’s difficult to say what paperwork needs to be filled out for renewal. I have no idea what that paperwork is actually called, and neither do the French people. There were some reforms made sometime recently, reforms that were supposed to make the process easier for people like us.  You know, people who are only here for a limited period of time and make the equivalent of six sesame seeds in wages ever month.  Apparently not everyone in the Kafkaesque bureaucracy that deals with foreigners has been alerted to these reforms, however, so the process that one goes through for renewal is decidedly unclear.

There are many of expat blogs devoted to bitching about French bureaucracy, which is admittedly Byzantine. If I could write a novel about it and make a million bucks I totally would, but I think that has already been done six hundred times or so.  It hasn’t been that bad, not by a long shot, and I feel guilty when I bitch about the number of hours I’ve logged at various offices around town and seemingly millions of copies I’ve made for various applications that seem to go nowhere.  Obviously, most foreigners that find themselves trying to work in countries like France and the United States have a much more difficult time than I do, which is why you shouldn’t be interested in my kvetching (and also why you should give Stephen Colbert a big giant round of applause for his recent testimony before Congress, the final moments of which we watch on a near-hourly basis).

So anyway, we went to the Préfecture on Monday with everything from our electric bill to x-rays of our lungs, all in triplicate, so that we might have the opportunity to continue teaching the youth of France outdated American idioms for another year.  Oh, yeah, and so that I can also continue going to restaurants and taking pictures of things I eat and sharing them with you here.  Let me tell you what, going to the Préfecture sucks.  It’s the place where Marie Antoinette crashed the night before she hit the guillotine, people.  To say that it has a lousy vibe would be the understatement of the year.  After being nearly strip-searched at the entrance, you go into the special area for renewals.  The smell of nervous foreigner body odor hits you like a wall when you walk in.  You take a number, hope for a chair, and then wait for what feels like sixteen years, only so you can be told that you don’t have all the paperwork you need (even though you’ve brought everything on all seven different lists from four different websites that you’ve managed to get your hands on).  They’ll give you what’s called a “recipisse,” which is basically a document with a stamp on it that certifies that you are indeed jumping through all the hoops that are being set in front of you, and this is apparently enough to keep working and living in France, that is, until you get your mother’s cousin’s birth certificate and your dead dog’s immunization records and return for another round in two months.  It’s awful.

Despite having strictly-worded appointment times, B and I had to wait three hours to speak with our immigration officer.  B, his usual cool-as-a-cucumber self, quietly read poetry and examined the maps on the walls.  I sweated through my shirt, agonized about how I had filled out my forms, tapped my foot, and picked the cuticles on my thumbs until they bled.  I had to pee about an hour in to the wait, but I was terrified that my number would be called if I went to the bathroom and they would deport me for my transgression.  After another hour of fantasizing that I would actually wet myself when I sat down with my application, I finally decided it was worth the risk and went to the ladies room.

The bathrooms were horribly bleak, with no toilet seats and crusty door locks.  The sink was a long, trough-like apparatus, with cold water and soap that smelled of ammonia.  As I was washing my hands, I glanced down at the drain and saw a trail of blood that led to a cream-colored object.  Horrified, I examined it more closely and discovered that someone had left a bloody tooth in the sink at the Préfecture.  And not just a baby tooth or a little chip of a filling either – a huge, ghastly-looking molar with long bloody roots still attached.  I gasped and redirected the steam of water so that I could turn it over and get a better look at it.  I was so aghast that I almost went to get B so that he could see it.

What the hell happened there?  I could just imagine some poor woman pulling out her own tooth, abandoning it, and then returning to the waiting room so she wouldn’t be deported, perhaps with a wad of toilet paper stuffed in the oozing socket. Can I admit something to you? I have to say that tooth kind of made me feel better about my day. I mean, no matter how bad things got for me from that moment forward, I wasn’t having the worst day possible. Not even close. Not by a long shot. I was practically relieved when I was told by the immigration official that my file was incomplete and that I would have to return again in two months. Paperwork! Paperwork is easy compared to extracting your own tooth in a dirty public restroom!

Anyway, I haven’t felt like I’ve had much to write about lately, but I knew I’d have to tell you about that tooth. Man, I wish I’d had my camera, though there were enough complaints about the cyst-popping video thing that I suppose that the really abject stuff isn’t what you really go for, dear reader.  On the off chance that you are the one person reading this blog that really does go for the gross stuff, I’d love to direct you to my newest obsession: ear-wax extraction videos.  There are lots of different kinds, but I like the medical ones where you actually go inside the person’s ear canal with some kind of amazing little camera and watch as whole giant slabs of crud are pulled out with tweezers, revealing the shiny clean eardrum beneath.  The best part is when the person with the earwax clod goes “OH WOW!” because they can suddenly hear for the first time in like six years.  They do it every time.  There’s something comforting about that.

Clarence Gets Down and Dirty with the Kimchi: Hang-A-Li

Let’s talk about Korean food in Paris, shall we?

Many moons ago I recommended one Han Lim as a possible venue for getting some “spare but functional” Korean food in Paris. It was kind of a throwaway entry – stock photo of some kimchi, a few offhand remarks about how sick of French food I was, and some rather lukewarm praise of the place. Would you believe that this is one of my highest ranked entries? I literally can’t tell you how many people arrive at this site from googling “Korean food in Paris” or “kimchi.” If Han Lim has seen any kind of spike in their Anglophone business in the past six months, it’s entirely my doing. I can be thanked in soju.

Worse yet, I believe the picture of kimchi that accompanies that totally lackluster few paragraphs is now one of the top Google images that comes back from searching “kimchi.” I stole it from some poor (now-anonymous) bloke’s Flickr or something and never even thought of giving credit where credit is due. I’m a jerk, you unnamed-yet-brilliant photographer of spicy fermented cabbage! Contact me and I’ll send you a special Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background thank you gift!

As an aside, I keep telling readers to contact me for their special Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background prizes and they never do. And it’s a shame, because all of these amazing champagne stoppers and lenticular postcards are just gathering dust, when they could be keeping your leftover Prosecco bubbly and your children amused.

All of this is to say that I’ve since found much better Korean food in Paris since I started frequenting the Asian district of the first arrondissement. I’m still nuts for Higuma, but have started branching out to other restaurants off of rue Sainte Anne since their kimchi ramen left me a little bit cold (I’m still a rabid loyalist to their yakatori, however). Anyway, a recent stroll led B and I to discover the nearby Hang-A-Li (7 rue Louvois, 75002 Paris, Métro Quatre-Septembre), a warm and friendly Korean restaurant that is doing some serious and scrumptious cooking.

First of all, their banchan is much closer to what I’m used to from eating Korean food in Southern California. While it’s varied from night to night, you can expect to see baechu kimchi, dongchimi (cabbage in a white brine), oijangajji muchim (pickled cucumbers), sigeumchi namul (blanched spinach dressed with soysauce, sesame oil, and garlic), kongnamul (bean sprouts with sesame oil), and musaengchae (julienned white radishes in a sweet vinegar sauce).  A rather thick, but lovely pajeon (savory pancakes with spring onions) can be ordered as an entrée.

Our first visit, we launched headfirst in the barbeque and weren’t disappointed.  We shared the bulgogi, which was everything that you want it to be and satisfyingly so, and a spicy, peanutty pork dish that uses samgyeopsal (unsalted strips of pork belly).  I’d never eaten anything like it in the States, and oh man, was it delicious.  It was all of my favorite things in one dish:  salty, spicy, nutty, and fatty. For about 14€ a dish, with soup, banchan, and a lovely little dish of lychee-heavy fruit salad included in this price, Hang-A-Li is a good bargain, especially compared to Han Lim (which is much more expensive and not nearly as tasty).

Last night we returned to Hang-A-Li with M.  It was a chilly night and we were all still dressed for late summer. By the time we were arrived, nothing sounded better than a cold Hite beer and a kimchi jjigae (kimchi-based hot pot with pork and tofu). This is one of my comfort foods par excellence, and Hang-A-Li’s version lived up to my high expectations. M, who also ordered one, kept quietly murmuring “I love this soup. I love this soup.” She has much less bombastic, and far better taste than I do, so I’ll leave you with that as the best review imaginable.  B ordered his spicy pork samgyeopsal and spent the rest of the evening with what I’ll call the “blissed-out pork belly face.”  We’ll definitely we spending a lot of time at Hang-A-Li as the weather gets colder, and so should you.

Details: Disregard everything I’ve said about Korean food in Paris until now and scoot over to Hang-A-Li for dinner.

Hungerdome: Will “la vraie gastronomie mexicaine à Paris” please stand up? (part one)

I bet you thought I forgot all about you.

I won’t bore you with a tedious account of what I’ve been up to, other than to say, man, writing a dissertation is really hard. Once I’ve stared at the blinking Word cursor for hours doing that, it’s really tough to get motivated to write a blog entry that isn’t just like “whine, whine, whine, woe is me, I’m the pitiful scholar.”And is there anything more grating than listening to a graduate student bitch about their “work”? It’s annoying whenever anyone complains about their deadlines and their stress level, but there is something uniquely agitating about it when that person is a graduate student. I slept until eleven today, people. I don’t get to complain about my life, like, ever. So I won’t, and anyway, I’m sorry to be such a deserter.

ON TO BRIGHTER THINGS:

We’ve been eagerly awaiting the French release of Carlos Cuarón’s Rudo y Cursi, starring the überdreamy Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna.  A quick gander at IMDb suggests that everyone in the entire world who has wanted to see this movie has probably already seen it, as the French release date was the very last one in the list of international premieres. That said, if you haven’t seen it, you really should. It’s fantastic. We’ve been giddily anticipating it, being big fans of everything Gael García Bernal does, from his acting right down to his face sweat. Seriously, I love that man like a sickness. Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control left me with months of sweaty Mexican cowboy dreams. Recently, I rather uneasily discovered that B’s enthusiasm for Gael rivals my own, and couldn’t help but wonder who both of us imagined we were making out with after the movie last night.

At any rate, we decided that Rudo y Cursi demanded a fully Mexican-themed evening, so we made reservations at Hacienda del Sol (157 bd du Monparnasse, 75006 Paris, Métro Vavin), one of two Mexican restaurants in Paris that receives a fair amount of gastronomical acclaim. I had first read about it on the New York Times’ In Transit blog, where it was lauded by someone who was supposedly originally from California (had it been a New Yorker, I would have ignored it entirely). It’s kind of a trek from our place in the Marais down to Montparnasse, but this is the way that Gael would want it, we reasoned.

I’ll cut immediately to the chase: the food is pretty good! If you are a European, you’ll probably totally dig it. If you are an American in Paris, or god forbid, a Mexican, I’d give yourself about a year in Paris until you start checking out restaurants that advertise themselves as “la vraie gastronomie mexicaine.” By then, you’ll be so psyched to see Bohemia and Negro Modelo on the menu that you won’t even blink at the fact that they cost as much as a few six packs in the States.

I guess that part of my problem stems from the fact that Mexican food seems like it shouldn’t ever be fussy, and Paris isn’t particularly good at doing anything that isn’t fussy. There are a few (wildly popular) exceptions to this rule, including the abysmal Ave Maria (1 rue Jacquard, 75011 Paris, Métro: who cares, the food is terrible), where huge sloppy platters of the equivalent epicurian value as “world music” are eagerly gobbled up by the “sophisticated” palates of the French hipster public. Hacienda del Sol is marketing itself as a refined take on Sonoran food, and I suppose that is how you’d have to market yourself if you wanted to make a living in this town. But for an American accustomed to big bottomless baskets of hot chips and sloppy bowls of spicy salsa, the tiny dish of cold chips and the miniature spoon that accompanied our little puddle of hot sauce felt, well, heartless. As did our kindly server’s warning that our salsa was “dangerously spicy,” which I suppose it is, if you’re French.

For our entrées, we shared a serving of (rather bland) guacamole and some beef chimichangas. The presentation cracked me up, because, really, chimichangas? This is a food item that I associate most clearly with the microwave at a gas station. They were pretty good, I guess.

I’m terribly homesick.

For our main course, I got the pollo en salsa de mole poblano and B got the tamale plate. My chicken in mole was quite good, even if the mole wasn’t quite as spicy as I’m used to it being. The flavor was nuanced with that medley of sweet and smoky that I love, and the corn tortillas were fresh and homemade. Yes, those are bananas, not plantains. Sigh.

Even better were B’s tamales, one filled with tomatoes, cheese, and roasted chiles in a banana leaf, and one filled with red chile cooked beef in a corn husk. I was immediately overcome with jealousy when they served our plates, and wished that we had both ordered tamales and been done with it. They were tender, flavorful, and moist, and I wished that the two bites B generously doled out could have been bigger. In an ideal world, I could have smothered them in Chimayo red chile sauce and made a glorious feast, but we’re in Paris, and they got the job done admirably.

For dessert, we shared a dish of ice cream, which our server proudly noted is made in-house.  We selected scoops of tamarind, hibiscus, and lime, and the combination was perfectly sour and refreshing.

The only thing that soured the meal a bit for me was the check. Look, I get it. Many of these ingredients have to be imported from across an ocean. The 29€ menu of entrée + plat + dessert is indeed the magic number in this town. But 76€ for a meal that involves chimichangas and Mexican beer? That’s $96.32 as of today’s conversion rate. When I pointed out to B that were spending about a hundred bucks on this dinner, he turned slightly pale. Sometimes it’s best if you can dwell in the stupidity of the unconverted tab.

Anyway, why am I calling this a Hungerdome? Well, because now we are on a quest, and date night next week will be at Anahuacalli, the other Mexican restaurant that everybody can’t say enough good things about. We even had a Real Live Californian say that their enchiladas verdes were the best he’d ever had, immediately rousing my suspicions about him as a human being. But at any rate, it’s on, and while two Parisian Mexican restaurants may enter this battle, only one leaves.

Finally, I’d like to give a Cinéclub shout-out to Le Nouveau Latina (20 Rue du Temple, 75004 Paris, Métro Hôtel de Ville) where we saw Rudo y Cursi last night. I’ve kind of abandoned the Cinéclub theatre review section of this blog, probably because there are only so many things you can really saw about a movie theatre (There are seats! And a screen! Sometimes they play movies you might want to see!). But in addition to the fact that it is literally next door to my apartment building, Le Nouveau Latina is really one of the more charming Cinéma d’Art et d’Essai in Paris. Specializing in Spanish, Portuguese, Latin American, and Italian films (though they also show a healthy dose of other classic and contemporary independent films from France and the US), Le Nouveau Latina reliably has a lot of great stuff showing on any day of the week on their two well-maintained screens. It’s also a darling place to hang out, with a large café and a well-edited selection of books and DVDs for sale. I’ve even heard that they sometimes give salsa lessons upstairs. I have a personal soft spot for this theatre, as it was the site of both my first date with M (we saw Antichrist together!), as well as a midnight screening of Alien that was one of my first “ah-ha” moments about B. He held my hand during the scary parts and seemed only mildly amused by my histrionics. As I’m widely acknowledged as the most annoying person in the world to see movies with, B’s seeming cool made me suspect that he might be a good person to keep going to movies with for a long time.

Dearest reader, I’ve missed you. I hope your autumn is shaping up splendidly.