Joe Ray

Saturday, January 31, 2009

La Coupole

In nearly a decade living in Paris, I had never been to the Montparnasse brasserie La Coupole - it’s the Bostonian’s equivalent of never having been to Legal Sea Foods.

Part of the reason for not going was that I snobbishly avoid chains on principle and La Coupole is owned by the Flo group, which owns or bought up more a dozen brasseries in Paris and across Europe including Bofinger, Brasserie Flo and Julien.

I’d also be justified in staying away for nothing more than wanting to boycott those cheap-looking sandwich board that each Flo brasserie has out on the sidewalk advertising something like a 19-euro prix fixe menu. It looks like they pimped them from the semi-ubiquitous French steakhouse chain called Hippopotamus. I imagine the original owner of each brasserie groaning every time they walk past those things.

But the other afternoon, it was cold and we needed a coffee, went inside and I immediately wondered aloud why I had stayed away so long. Like brasserie Wepler, it’s got that great, big-town feeling that envelops you as soon as you walk through the door. Everything from the big, beautiful cupola that floats over the room to the waiters in their black and whites swooping around with big plates of shellfish to the sense of space the mammoth room affords – it all gives a sort of city comfort.

What I’d really like to applaud is the price of La Coupole’s coffee and hot chocolate. Though 4,10€ for cappuccino makes me groan, particularly considering the poor quality of most French coffee, I’d pay a similar price at my neighborhood café. La Coupole’s hot chocolate, made with high-end Valrhona chocolate, costs about the same and it beats the pants off the powdered junk with the pony on the label that most cafes use.

La Coupole MAP
102, bd du Montparnasse
75014 Paris
+33 1 43 20 14 20
http://www.flobrasseries.com/coupoleparis/

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Thursday, January 15, 2009

Knuckles, Onions and a Man Alone

Put to the test on where to go in the neighborhood to fulfill a French onion soup quest, the team at La Cave à Jojo floundered.

“That’s tricky around here,” said Jojo, batting ideas around with clients at the bar, before smiling. “I’ve got it.”

We walked back into the night, skirting the base of Montmartre and bringing our bodies down to the right temperature for soupe à l’oignon.

On the way to our table, a man alone ate oysters from a raised platter, following each with brown bread and sweet butter, then luxuriously washing it down with some white wine; we were in the right place.

I’ve known this – the one-man reward in a bistro - and seeing the man made me think of doing the same several years ago, filing a story at some ungodly hour and heading to Au Général Lafayette for pig knuckle, choucroute and beer. Similarly, every year when I get a new carte de séjour, I straight from the prefecture to the Petit Fer à Cheval where I order steak tartare, silently toast my grandma and thank God I don’t have to renew the damn thing for another year.

Back at Wepler, the breeze blowing through an open door shook me from my reverie – Paris city air sweetened with the sea salt it picked up blowing across the oysters kept outside.

Inside, three men who have ordered two coffees look up as the waiter arrives.

Garcon smiled, placing the coffee on the table and slipping a chocolate to the guy who didn’t need any more caffeine.

In this temple of consumption, the thought of it all made the conversation better, made me hungrier.

We ordered soup, my friends agreed to split a chèvre chaud, but they stared at me funny when I ordered a pig knuckle.

I raised a silent toast to grandma and dug in.

Brasserie Wepler MAP
14, Place de Clichy
75018 Paris
+33 1 42 93 70 84
www.wepler.com

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