P I C N I C

Me and Elena had lunch on the right bank, on the Rue de Rivoli. I love how simple a sandwich can be. In France sandwiches are mostly bread. It makes me think that Americans are in fact frightened of bread, we think that even when it’s great it’s still just ‘for filling up.’

In the subway fruit is for sale.

For dinner we went to Le Cul de Poule, (The Hen’s Ass), which was in the sex district. They actually had a taxidermied posterior of a hen on the wall. Elena ate a pea custard with pork lard foam for an appetizer.

They had a very nifty, fully automatic meat slicer with which they prepared the charcuterie plate. The flywheel is brought up to speed on the left by hand. The mechanism in the middle, which secures the meat, is engaged. This shuttles back and forth automatically, feeding the meat into the spinning blade. Once the meat is secured in position all that is required is to spin the wheel.

Salmon tartare with creme freche on the left. Fried rice ball with carmelized onion and salmon on the right.

Crispy smoked chicken leg ‘mojo’. As tender as duck confit. Meat is either rare or cooked for hours. There is no in between.

‘Pure brebis, Pure pleasure!’

I’ve been seeing adds for Brebis on the subway. Somehow the fact that the wheel of cheese and the loaf of bread are the same size blows my mind.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Paris. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.