Food Review: Paris, Toulouse & Normandy – JP

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Doral, Florida – Your correspondent and my wife visited France earlier this month to attend a wedding in Toulouse and tour the Normandy battlefields. Despite all the political turmoil in the French Republic, their restaurants can be hard to beat.

Paris

In Paris we enjoyed “Chez Andre” on Rue Marbeuf in the 8th Arrondisement. This bustling 1930’s-style bistro, lined with banquettes, is right off the Champs-Elysees. They serve sizzling bowls of onion soup with a hearty broth and plenty of melted cheese. They also feature excellent versions of classic dishes, and a fine wine selection, including Bourdeaux reds. You are never too old to start drinking better wine.

Of course, your correspondent almost always orders steak frites, bien cuit, or something close to it. Maybe Trump’s tariffs will prompt the European Union to let in beef from the Texas panhandle and the Argentine pampas. My wife enjoyed a veal chop, which can be hard to find in Miami. This restaurant has become so popular that it has expanded into the street with a Manhattan-style wooden structure.

Also “Brasserie Lipp” on Boulevard Saint Germain in the 6th Arrondisement is a favorite. It reminds us of the old German restaurants in Chicago, like Berghoff. Its founders came to Paris from Alsace in 1880, and it has become a Parisian institution. In 1871, the expanding German Reich had wrestled the region of Alsace from the French Republic, but some of their residents preferred Paris. My wife enjoyed a classic sole meuniere.

Other favorites in Paris include “Chez Georges” on Rue du Mail near the Bourse in the 2nd Arrondisement, just off Place de Victoires. The hustle-bustle of the long and narrow dining room, with its mirrored walls and Gothic columns, takes you back in time.

There is also “Chez Rene” on Boulevard Saint Germain in the 5th Arrondisement, located north of the new campus building for La Sorbonne, and south of Ile St. Louis. It is a classic bistro with traditional and authentic cooking. The walls are filled with art show posters dating from the 1940’s.

Finally, “Le Severo,” a classic bistro on Rue des Plantes in the 14th Arrondisement, south of Montparnasse train station. It is open only on weekdays, and hardly at all during August. Their specialty is steak frites, featuring fantastic Limosin beef. The wine blackboard fills an entire wall of the tiny room. The fine fare includes spring asparagus, green salads, thick veal chops and excellent cheese.
Paris is a city for walking and eating. When we needed a ride, we got an Uber driver of a London taxi cab, fitted with left-hand drive.

Toulouse

The site of the wedding was an event space, “Domaine de Preissac,” on Route du Clos du Loup, around 20 minutes north from the city center of Toulouse. It is a great place for weddings and dinner celebrations, located in a renovated castle standing in the middle of a former sheep pasture. A civil magistrate conducted the ceremony. The back setting for the ceremony was two long rows of tall trees meeting at the top, as if forming the walls and ceiling of a church.

In the year 722, the city of Toulouse was sacked by Muslim Jihadists, who had just finished conquering most of the Iberian peninsula. They were not stopped until ten years later, when in 732 they werre met by an army of Christian Franks in a field between the cities of Tours and Poitiers. This army was led by Charles Martel (“Charles the Hammer”), the Mayor of the Palace of the Frankish Kingdom (sort of like Chief of Staff to the President). His grandson Charlemagne (“Charles the Great”) was crowned king, and he led his knights to reconquer the rest of what became French territory to the Pyrenees mountains. You will not read about this in most contemporary tour books.

The French aviation industry developed in Toulouse in order to be located as far away as possible from the German border after the two World Wars. Today this is where Airbus aircraft are assembled.

A good restaurant there is “Brasserie Les Beaux Arts” on Quai de la Daurade in the city center, next to the Garonne River. They feature local bourgeois fare and a good selection of Bourdeaux red wines. French labor laws make it relatively expensive to hire employees. Accordingly, their restaurants are almost always understaffed.

On our train ride from Paris to Toulouse on a high-speed train (“TGV”), the luggage compartment of our coach had to be re-arranged to make room for a touring bycicle. The return from Toulouse to Paris was complicated by a threatened national strike of railroad labor unions. We avoided it by traveling back a day earlier than planned, so we had more time in Paris. After the Second World War, the French Republic awarded medals to all the employees of the French National Railroad Company (“SNCF”) for their contributions to the Resistance.

Normandy

Julia Child and her husband Paul met when both worked for the United States Office of Strategic Services, precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, during the Second World War. They married and in 1948 were posted to the United States embassy in Paris. They crossed the Atlantic in an ocean liner to the port city of Le Havre in the region of Normandy. There they picked up their car from the ship’s hold, a blue Buick nicknamed the “Blue Flash.” Then they set out to drive to Paris, but stopped for lunch in the city of Rouen, the capital of Normandy.

There they ate at “La Couronne,” a restaurant on Place du Vieux Marche that has been operating since 1345. This was her first French meal, and she fell in love with French cooking and made a career promoting it. Other distinguished guests have included Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve and John Wayne.

Today it bills itself as a chic and gastronomic restaurant. They feature various four-course meals: an appetizer, the main course, a cheese plate and dessert. Seafood dominates the menu, but there are plenty of delicious choices for landlubbers. Their wine list features Bourdeaux reds.

This restaurant was already operating in 1431 when Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in the square facing it. She was only 19 years old, and as the flames engulfed her, an English soldier cried out: “Oh my God, we have killed a saint!” No such excitement during our visit.

Across from this restaurant stands the new Church of Joan of Arc, completed in 1979. It features stained-glass windows salvaged from another church destroyed during the Second World War. The interior feels somewhat like a Viking ship, to reflect the city’s founding by Norsemen. The Allied landings in June 1940 were the first successful invasion of Normandy from the sea since the Vikings in the IXth century.

Rouen was the hometown of Robert LaSalle, the XVIIth century explorer of the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River and all the way down to Texas. Today the main business street in Chicago is named LaSalle Street.

The smaller cities and towns in Normandy also have excellent food, featuring local cheese, crepes, charcuteries and Calvados apple brandy. We had savory ham and cheese crepes for lunch in the village of St. Marie du Mont, near Utah Beach. The “Cheese Festival” (Fete de Fromage) in the town of Pont L’Eveque, between Caen and Rouen, displayed not only various cheeses, but also crepes, hams, sausages, nougat, wines and liqueurs.

Nevertheless, your correspondent was relieved to return stateside. France, like the rest of the European Union, has allowed mass immigration into its welfare state by unassimilable aliens, creating two irreconcilable nations inside their national territory.

During our stay in Paris, we were treated to dinner by old friends in their apartment, located in a fashionable neighborhood. They admitted that less than one kilometer away, in the outlying suburbs, there exist no-go zones of an unassimilated population, with no interest in assimilating. These immigrants, more than Russian tanks, are the biggest threat to Europe, and there is no NATO to defend against them.

In any event, your correspondent brought back a bottle of French whisky, purchased at the duty-free store in Paris Charles De Gaulle airport. This Becloux single malt whisky will be enjoyed with friends and cigars in Miami.