Beth Arnold

Letter From Paris: The Luxurious Walk of Shame

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I love the Ritz and the Place Vendôme where it sits so majestically.  It would be heaven to stay in the suite where Coco Chanel lived and changed the habits and ideas about the dress of modern women (even if she consorted with Nazis).

The Hemingway Bar is my kind of place with its icy martinis, even if they're a little silly with flowers in them.  What would Papa say about that?  Fish them out.  (Here is the previous blog I wrote about my favorite Paris watering hole.)

The salty cocktail mix and olives are the perfect accompaniments along with the other little hors d'oeuvres that one can order or that sometimes magically come your way, as if the Cocktail God has bestowed a great gift on us for being in such a hallowed hall.  And Colin, the bartender, is a Hemingway Bar icon as well as a poobah in the world of cocktail mixing.  In my opinion, it's only proper to give him a respectful nod if one is ingesting his artful libations. 

Let Them Eat Cake

By guest columnist Mark Ginsburg

 

One of the striking things about Parisian pastry shops is the absolute consistency of the offerings. There’s a repertoire of 30-odd confections upon which the establishment is judged, which constitute an unyielding part of the French patrimoine. Surprises are quite rare in the French food world.

 

Despite, or because of, the presence of some 50,000 Americans living here, one would never, ever find American-style cake, with its vulgar and unwieldy wedge-like slices, or a slice of pie, with its disorganized fruit, and imperfect strips of crust, in a French pastry shop. The Parisians are warming up to le muffin, and the odd brownie, and cupcakes are sprouting up in some of the ice-cream stores in the 6e arrondissement (think Upper East Side), and le Marais (think Chelsea). Parisians like single-serve items. 

Sugarplum Cake Shop

The new Sugarplum Cake Shop is a total and extremely welcome aberration for Paris. Its unabashedly American-style offerings, and extremely high quality put most Manhattan bakeries

Letter From Paris: On Location--Liwan

Separated from me at birth--in spirit if not by looks--my friend Katherine Mosby was in town to meet with her French publisher, La Table Ronde Editions.  With the publishing success in France of her novel The Season of Lillian Dawes, they were bringing out her first novel, Private Altars (which will be called Sanctuaires Ardents here), this fall.  Hurrah!

I have known Katherine for many years, and I hadn't seen her since last June when we had taken ourselves on a much-too-short road trip to Burgundy.  Oh, yes, we had a grand girlfriend time.  Old friends, good food and wine, and road trips go together like fried okra and fresh tomato slices in the South.  Now, if we'd only had spa treatments to pamper us, the trip would've been absolutely divine.

Sadly, Katherine's mother had died since our Burgundy trip, and we had much news to recount, gab or rant, and console each other over.  When we see each other we tend to talk non-stop, hopping from one subject to the next and back again, covering a lot of territory as good girlfriends do.  We had the afternoon to fill ourselves up with our new stories,  and then we would return to my new pad in the 20th for dinner with the Lone Wolf, after a drink at the Hemingway Bar, of course.

As luck would have it, Katherine's swish hotel was not far from a shoe store where I had to go buy a pair of mile-high platforms that I'd seen in the window a few weeks before.  (Ladies, for those of you who tweet with me, here they are!)

Letter From Paris: A Different Elegance and Grace

Drum Roll...announcement.  The Lone Wolf and I are beginning to really like living in the 20th Arrondissement. 

Yes, I know I've whined about being out here.  The 20th is not the center of the city--the picture postcard Paris, where I lived for five years, and which I adore even if some people call it "bourgeois."  It is that heart of Paris that is so stunningly beautiful that I can never get over it.  On the hush-hush, I must confess I relish the feeling of being wrapped in Parisian history that was played out in its monuments and streets. 

It is this beauty and elegance of the material foundation of Paris--its streets and architecture, the rolling Seine, the handsome bridges that connect Left Bank to Right, the treasure of art and monuments--along with the spirit and specter of personages that lived or spent time here to elevate their knowledge and consciousness that give Paris its grace.   

But that was then.  Today, I live in the Paris that is made up of hamlets and villages--Ménilmontant and Belleville--that were once on the outskirts of the great capital, and were absorbed into the city's voluptuous skirts in 1860.  It actually feels like a village out here on top of our hill.  From the rise of Ménilmontant, we can stand and see the smog that hovers over the Paris where we used to live, a cloud over the Centre Pompidou.  I never knew it was there until I moved.

In Belleville (Photo by Beth Arnold)

Letter From Paris: Things We Didn't Wear But Could've Worn Us

Marché aux Puces de la Porte de Vanves

The Marché aux Puces de la Porte de Vanves (Vanves flea market) is stuffed full of things one may greedily lust for or happily leave in its pile of junk.  Among the treasures I've bought myself recently, are the blue and green café chairs that finish the seating on my terrace with its cozy banquette.

I love flea market jewelry, of course.  But a few things I haven't purchased are the Bakelite bracelets and necklaces for which I've licked my lips in years past.  They still attract my eye although I no longer have a secret desire to wrap myself up in a silken cocoon and come out as Carmen Miranda (pictured above), covered in the jewelry you see below.

Big Bakelite pieces that I didn't wear though they could have worn me--or you. 

They could have worn all of us.

There are obsessions we've all had.  Desires that insistently called us--but have somehow silenced themselves.

Letter From Paris: Where The Wild Things Are

Last Saturday morning, I'd gotten up early to go to my favorite house of natural beauty, Anne Semonin where the facials are fab and the jet lag treatments are luxurious on one's arrival in Paris.  First on my list, getting eyebrows done.  Checked it off. 

I wandered over to Les Halles to see what I could see at some of my favorite stores--Habitat, H & M, and Maison du Monde--not to mention I wanted to peruse the concert schedule at FNAC.  FNAC used to be THE place to discover the music line-up coming to town.  Then they took the old non-tech board down and changed it to digital, which isn't set up as well.  Boo hoo.  But it's still worth a stop.

Now I was headed to the best "gettin' place" in Paris, BHV.  (Shameless plug here.  I just did an interview with new-ish website GirlsGuidetoParis.com that is dedicated to girls who are planning dreamy trips to Paris--or dreaming about Paris.  One of my questions was what store could I not live without.  Yes, it was the old BHV...to see why, you'll have to click here.)

I came up from the depths of Les Halles to a sunlit Saturday and decided to take the short stroll over to BHV.  I have just finished Emile Zola's pleasure-to-read novel, The Belly of Paris, which is all about Les Halles, and I loved it.  His descriptions of the flamboyant fish and feathers of poultry and the charcuterie, where Florent, Quenu, Beautiful Lisa, and plump little Paulette lived, the battles between the fats and the thins, made me see it and smell it and wish I'd touched Les Halles in its glory days.  Wild things lived in Les Halles, and Zola recorded them.  Some were the people who populated the streets, and, frankly, some were rats.

Les Halles

Letter From Paris: The Hottest Little Restaurant in Town

Crossposted at HuffPost.com.  Comments not included here.

It is no surprise that there's a whole lot of eating going on in Paris--crispy baguettes, pains du chocolate, and pastries not to mention garlicky escargots, cassoulets, and foie gras and toasts, which is not even getting into the hundreds of buttery cheeses and mounds of rich chocolates that melt so lusciously in our mouths. And there is a culture of people here whose "way of the samurai" is a map to the newest good restaurant in town. Food and wine are their raisons d'être, and they talk about it, live it and breathe it, and some make a living at it.

So when these food people (sorry, but I dislike the term "foodies") find the next hot place, there is a furious flurry of talk and blogs on the new resto in town, which has opened on either side of the Seine. And the weird thing is that it's like the hundredth-monkey effect, when one knows about it, they all do. And the word is mumbled in French and English before being blasted into the mainstream consciousness. They're a team of gastronomic cheerleaders with a bull-horn.

So about a year ago in April, the food people started rumbling about a new place called Frenchie, which happened to be in my neighborhood. (Here, I must admit that the rumble has to turn into a roar before I pay attention to the restaurant openings and closings or will go to the trouble to nab a reservation for a "must eat.") So it took me from last April until January to call Frenchie up. The chef was going to be kind enough to squeeze us in for a late dinner within about a week, but we opted for the routine 8:30 slot, which was available a few weeks later. We met friends Ann and Don there.

Letter From Paris: Loving the Luxe Astier de Vilatte

Synchronicity has recently been drawing me to the rue Saint-Honoré.  Isn't it fantastic when life works that way?  When we let ourselves be open enough to follow the leads that come from natural serendipity or a twist of spontaneous fate--when somehow our interests and desires summon the people, places, and experiences that we actually want and even need.

Okay, I didn't really need to find a new favorite shop, but that's the beauty of it.  After a recent delicious lunch at the L'Ardoise Restaurant on rue Mont Thabor, the Lone Wolf, our friend Mario, and I were strolling along famous fashionista rue Saint-Honoré--which has luxe window-shopping--salivating over this and that as our lustful eyes led us along.  (Though let me just state here that I don't care who applauds it, I don't much like boutique Colette.  It's a trendy so-what in my book.)

When we arrived at the door of Astier de Vilatte, Mario said that we had to go in there. It was a French company, an emporium of hand-crafted delight, and we would want to empty the stores shelves into our pockets or load up the nearest truck (something like that).

Letter From Paris: Cafe Verlet and The Exquisite Fortune Teller

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It started when I got the email from My Little Paris:

Fortune telling. I guess we would all try it if it weren't for the fear of entering a shabby shack in the middle of nowhere and the prospect of facing a turban-hatted gourou with clinky rings. What if you could have your future (and fortune) told in a chic and respectful venue in the heart of Paris ? It's happening right now at Café Verlet, rue Saint-Honoré, a few blocks from Hermès. 

Well, My Little Paris doesn't know me.  I have happily been to plenty of psychics, healers, and other sensory advanced and aware individuals, in the city and in the country, which some would call the middle of nowhere--though none of them wore turbans or clinky rings.  (But wouldn't it be sort of divine if they did?)

Pooh-pooh me if you like, but I look at it like these gifted individuals just have a skill set I don't have.  They left channels open that I closed, or they received expanded perception through some energy blast that cracked through panes of space and time. 

So I called up my home boys, stylist James Leland Day (more about him in a future blog) and artist Theo Edmonds (whom you've read about here), and we met up at the good Café Verlet.

It was in my old neighborhood.  I'd walked by it a million times.  How had I missed it?

Letter From Paris: On Location--Galerie Vero-Dodat 2

Yes, I had to return to the scene of the aesthetic at the Galerie Vero-Dodat (pictured on right) in Paris's 1st Arrondissement.  The images were too good--too luscious in art and style to keep from you.  (If you happened to miss the previous Vero-Dodat blog, click here.)

These are the windows of an art gallery on the left side of the passage, if one has entered from the rue Croix des Petits Champs.  It was showing decorative arts--as in these chairs--and sexy sophisticated images, one of which you'll find below.

Art & Chairs (with reflection of floor) in the Galerie Vero-Dodat  (Above)