The (upset) Belly of Paris

Last night my stomach was attacked by some terrible demon that kept me up all night reintroducing some of my repast to the fresh air. Meaning, I spent 2.5 hours throwing up. Not fun. I finally fell asleep around 6 AM, and am laying low today.
 
But yesterday, before things got ugly, I had a great day! My wonderful sister-in-law (TA) has a friend who moved from Moss (Norway) to Paris a couple of years ago. LH was nice enough to have lunch with me and show me around a little bit.

McMacarons

We had lunch at a brasserie on Blvd Hausmann. I had a salade perigourdine - I had this at Au Timbre Poste in 2009, and was excited to try it again.

Lettuce and haricot vert in a yummy vinaigrette, with (starting at 9:00 and going clockwise), smoked duck breast, tomato, toast with bloc de foie gras, sauteed chicken gizzards, and hard cooked egg. Unfortunately, I think the foie gras was the culprit - and at this point, I can't imagine being interested in trying any more. My first and last foie?!?!?! Can it be?!?!?!

After lunch we walked down toward Les Halles, and we meandered through one of the historic covered passages.

Passage des Panoramas

I loved this - it is like an alley, covered with a glass ceiling, lined with tiny little business...everything from vintage postcards to Turkish restaurants to a very strange store that seemed to sell art projects made from naked dolls.

On we went to a street that I have been very excited to explore - the rue Montorgueil. This street is part of the Les Halles market area - a place where people have come to buy and sell food for around 1,000 years.

As far as I can tell from some quick google research - it has been a market street for over 200 years.

Here are some photos of the street - a fantastic mix of modern businesses in antidiluvian buildings, and old, established places. Prepared foods, fish markets and butchers, ice cream and pizza, flowers and hair salons....and the HQ of the partie socialiste!

One of the places on this street I had first read about in David Lebovitz's blog (this is the definitive foodie look at this street) and I was SO excited to see it in person. Au Rocher de Cancale is an oyster restaurant that has been around for 150 years....and has an oyster monument built into its facade. A monument to oysters. You can keep your statues of Napoleon or Georges Clemenceau...this is important history!

Apparently, there was a voracious appetite for oysters in Paris in the mid-19th century - from what I can translate from the restaurant website, there were quite a few oyster restaurants/stands on this street, each with a particular supplier from Normandy. Lebovitz says that they ran kind of a Pony Express for oysters - running a horse with a load as fast as possible, and changing for a fresh fast horse periodically. LOVE that!

Rue Montorgueil ends at Les Halles - the main food market in Paris since well before 1183 when it was formally sanctioned by King Philippe Augustus (he was the last King of the Franks, first King of France). In Zola's the Belly of Paris, the story takes place in the mid-19th century version of Les Halles, which was an enormous covered market, with different pavilions (designed by Victor Balthard) for vegetables, fruits, fish, meat, etc. See some great old images here. Today it is a park (under construction) with a subterranean shopping mall below. Somehow, jostling tourists to get to the H&M has much less romance than the idea of centuries of farmers bringing their wares to sell to hungry Parisians.

Still, Zola laments the Balthard-era Les Halles as being a kind of modern travesty - and end of an era of "true" Paris. I wonder if the farmers in 1183 lamented the buildings constructed by King Phillippe Augustus and mourned their "traditional" way of marketing?

LH told me that there is a street market, a farmer's market, at the foot of rue Montogueil twice a week. As far as I can tell, this would be the continuation of 1000 years of this kind of market activity in this place. I need to go.

Also figuring heavily in the Belly of Paris is the church of Saint Eustace - very weird to come up an elevator from an underground mall and see a majestic gothic/renaissance church...

Zola's imaginary Florent, starving, sought solace here after escaping political imprisonment from rising up against Napoleon III...but the real history is better. Louis XIV had his first communion here. Moliere was baptized here. Mozart held his mother's funeral here. The tourist flyer from inside the church says that it is the market cathedral, meant to appease spiritual hunger.

It is full of sculpture and paintings, including one by Rubens.

The massive stone pillars and heavy, enormous wooden doors were impressive...but the organ was amazing. As it turns out, it is the biggest church organ in France. I may need to come for a service just to hear this thing!

LH invited me up to her incredible apartment just off the rue Montorgueil where we chatted about good sites to see in Paris until it was time for her to pop over to the poissonniere and pick up some fresh fish for dinner. I grabbed some peonies and a baguette from Eric Kayser, and walked back up to the 10th. That baguette was fantastic (much more to my liking than the one from Le Grenier a Pain, which didn't have a crunchy enough crust or a flavorful enough interior) - I had it with some butter and radishes, along with leftover chicken and some cherry tomatoes and endive....of course, that was before all H-E-double broomsticks broke loose in my upset belly.


But now, I think I am ready to try a little food...another piece of that baguette should be fine...