Tales of Christmas

• There’s nothing prettier in winter in Paris than Champs Elysées all decked up in festive illuminations and the lights will be turned on coming Monday, 23 November at 6.30pm, with help from Charlotte Gainsbourg. And there’s something different this year too – fuschia (instead of white) lightings are awaiting instead!
• Christmas market at Champs Elysées opens its doors on Friday 20 November and there will be some 170 vendor huts in place. If you’re there on the 9 and 10 December, note a change in the hut designated for Ateliers de Paris. Until 28 December; open daily from 10am to 10pm, and to 11pm on Fridays and Saturdays.

In the News: Last Week

• I’m sure by now everyone have heard about the riots and disturbances after the cancellation of Mailorama money giveaway. Videos from news outlet and civilians (such as this) show the damages sustained. I can understand the disappointment, but to start attacking other individuals who were in the same position? That’s just so not cool.
• France is through to the World Cup in South Africa next summer. They won the first leg of the World Cup Qualifier against Ireland in Dublin, and they drew 1-1 with Ireland during the second leg match in Paris. Winning 2-1 by aggregate, it is not without controversy. Ah, the hand of Thierry (not Maradona, not God) struck this time. Is there a glory in such a win?
• An article was published last week on the Guardian, of this extraordinary tale of a former captain of French football team, who betrayed his country and his people, during the World War II.

Foodies’ Goodies

• We at Paris Metblogs love bagels but hunting for good bagels is really not easy. We’ve tried a few so-so ones so far. Ann Mah has recently found I <3 Coco Bagel Store and thinks it’s pas mal du tout.
• A croissant tasting session certainly sounds a lot of fun. And for the record, the Ispahan croissant from Pierre Hermé may be unconventional but it tastes soooooo good.
• Le Fooding Guide 2010 is now out! Get it from your nearest newsagent, for €9.50 each.

Coming Up: Next Week in Events

• Ok, technically, this is not upcoming. It is currently taking place. Salon Créations & Savoir-faire is just the place to go for anyone big into arts and crafts, get some tips and inspirations, and just in time for the home-made Christmas gifts idea to take off.
• Michael Schürmann of Paris Movie Walks will be leading an hour-long free tour of Paris film locations on 25 November at 4pm. The tour starts and ends at the bookshop Shakespeare & Co. (37 rue de la Bucherie, 5ème). A book signing follows the end of the tour. A quick book take if you’re interested in knowing further.

That’s it for today. I know it’s delivered a day earlier than usual, but I’m travelling tomorrow and wouldn’t want to miss writing this edition. Oh, don’t forget, it’s Beaujolais Nouveau day today – chin chin!

The launch of Michelin Tokyo Guide 2009 (Photo by Junko Kimura/Getty Images)

A new Michelin Tokyo Guide will be on sale this weekend and at the launch/photocall it is revealed that Tokyo is now the new world capital of gastronomy. Oh la la. C’est catastrophe pour Paris?

According to the new guide, Tokyo now has 11 3-stars restaurants compared with 10 for Paris. Not only that, Tokyo has also garnered a whooping total of 261 stars, shared by 197 restaurants. In comparison, Paris is looking at 70 restaurants which share 106 stars between them.

This is really quite a change of gastronomic fortune for the Japanese capital. The first Michelin guide to Tokyo was published a mere two years ago, in 2007. After some controversy over the use of non-Japanese inspectors (”how can they adequately judge Japanese cuisine when they’re not Japanese?”) Michelin said that for this latest edition, only Japanese inspectors were used.

Now, before detractors of French cuisine try to score some points based on this guide, remember that Tokyo is much bigger than Paris and it also has four times more restaurants (some 160,000 in Tokyo versus about 40,000 in Paris). Furthermore, France overall still have more 3-stars restaurants than any other country, with 25 compared with Japan’s 18.

Come on Paris – let’s up our game before the next French Michelin guide in March 2010! ;)

This week:

• I guess most people have heard about the wedding salon in Paris, but did you know there was one dedicated to divorce last week-end?
• Other than the concert mentioned last week, there were other ways to commemorate the fall of the Berlin wall on Monday, such as this mock wall destruction party in a parisian bar
• Also this week was the 11th festival of amateur theater, which was a good opportunity to enjoy live theater!
• Did you get any chocolates from the Galeries Lafayette on Thursday?
• Also, most of the week, traffic has been difficult first on both RER A and B and then mostly on RER B. Find out why the RER B was more affected

Coming up:

• This week-end, artists open their doors to you in Montmartre!
• Next week is the “festival de films gays, lesbiens, trans et +++” (do I need to translate?) at the Forum des Images in Les Halles
• Also next week is the science festival, mostly for schools during the week days and for everyone during the week-end

Various:

• A giant tunnel is being built along the Seine, in order to have a bigger storage capacity for rain water and avoid flooding in the city
• Now in Paris? Wish you could stroll around? Find out about virtual sightseeing of the city…

There are also a couple videos on youtube, which might give you a better idea (what with having sound and mouvement as well…).

• More fall foliage pictures in Paris
• An interesting way to walk around the city: Paris Movie Walks suggests 10 walks following different movies shot in the city of lights! (camera! action!). Sounds ideal for any movie buff looking for an excuse to walk around!
• Paris, the city that sleeps? A petition by artists seems to hint that Paris is indeed likely to become the European capital of sleep, after a number of laws make it harder to organise music events at night in the city. The petition (in French)
• Some three-star chefs have gone cooking in the metro, wish you were there no?
• So the French are slow to pick up on Twitter? But they get artsy about it: a graphic designer has made a poster of his 1000 first tweets and they are now visible on some street walls in Paris
• Apparently, ordering café is more complicated than I thought. Here are nine types of coffee you could order in Paris. I never drink coffee so I don’t know about this but I was definitely surprised to hear the basic coffee is made out of chicory…
• Up until the 10th of November, it’s National French week in the US and this led me to find this nice article explaining what is verlan
• An interesting view of what NOT to do when you come visiting Paris, which does make a number of good points
• An open air (free) concert on the place de la Concorde will take place next Monday in order to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall
• Also next week is the 11 novembre bank holiday commemorating the armistice of 1918. Check out all the events that have taken place on that day over the years on Wikipedia from a French point of view (differences with the English version are interesting as well)

Here are the photos that I’ve taken on the rather chilly morning of what I think are rather loveable monsters. And since I don’t know which of these totems are supposed to represent which month of the year, I’m labelling them as hours on the clock, as per their position in the garden, where sun rises on the east (the Louvre side) at 12 and sets on the west (the Place de la Concorde side) at 6. ;-)

Ugo Rondinone at Jardin des Tuileries on an autumnal morning

Tilting at 1 o'clock, with cheesy grin at 2

3 has a long face, and 4 gets slopey

Oooooo for 5 and 6 overshadows the Obelisk

Happy hour at 7 and grinning for 8

Half a wink at 9, and 10 swallowed another monster!

Toothy at 11 and serene at 12, against the sunrise east

You can still see these totems for yourself until 15th November at Jardin des Tuileries. If you figure out which month each represents, do let us know.

Ps: I’m taking a short break on the Metlinks OTW but fret not, Bij is keeping an eye on all things interesting and Paris-related, and will bring the weekly dose of Metlinks to you for the next few weeks. I look forward to reading them :D

• Eating out with foodies can be a trying experience (not always, it just can be). We’ll make you wait until photographic evidence is taken before you can eat, and we’re probably attracting plenty of weird looks from the other diners too. Still, culinary photography can be rewarding. Case in point – the very first International Festival of Culinary Photography! OK, these folks are professionals but the topic remains the same – beautiful food-related photographs. The festival runs from 6th to 15th November at Bercy Village.
• BBC correspondent, Vincent Dowd took the “Van Gogh Express” to Auvers-sur-Oise just outside of Paris, to follow the footsteps of the famous post-impressionist master.
• Boris Johnson (Mayor of London) wants to build something to rival the Eiffel Tower. Seen as an ambitious vanity project, we’ll see what the winning design will be in the next couple of weeks. And if it’ll be in place by the time Olympics 2012 starts.
• Marché d’Art de la Bastille is currently underway and will remain in place at Place de la Bastille, Place de l’Arsenal, Boulevard Bourdon and Boulevard de la Bastille until Sunday 1st Nov. Ticket costs €8 and hundreds of artists are displaying their works for your perusal, and hopefully, purchase.
• How well do you really know Paris? Get your hand on this book and take the 400-questions quiz. (I need to get me a copy.) In the mean time you can try this simple quiz from National Geographic.
• Paris by Appointment Only brings us back to Deyrolle, ahead of the launch of 1000° C: Deyrolle.
• Hmmmm, a Hamlet-inspired cabaret… Ham. & Ex by Matthias Langhoff will be performing from 5th November to 12th December at Odéon Theatre. To go or not to go, that is the question.
• I may have been watching Ratatouille once too often. After seeing this blogpost on Etablissements Julien Aurouze I pegged it right away as the pest shop featured in the animated movie. A quick google said I was right, yay!
• Interestingly-named exhibition at the Conciergerie, somewhat Halloween-related, is Le sort probable de l’homme qui avait avalé le fantôme, roughly translated as “the probable fate of the man who had swallowed the ghost”. Weird, right?
• Versailles was the centre of political power in France under the reign of King Louis XIV but it is only now that the very first exhibition of the Sun King is being held at the palace which he once held supreme. Some 300 artworks have been gathered to show the king as a leader in war, a patron of arts, a defender of the church and of course, a royal who lived lavishly and in style. “Louis XIV, l’homme et le roi” runs until 7th February 2010, and opens daily except Mondays (and although there’s no mention, I believe it’ll be closed at Christmas and New Year too).

Chocolate places that are normally easily found in Paris were a bit less on the priority as we paid more attention to exhibitors from outside of Paris and from abroad. Of course, it’s not all about chocolate. Other delights include macarons, praline, cupcakes, nougat, ice cream, fudge etc.

Mälarchocolaterie and macarons of Christophe Roussel

Eiffel Tower chocolates and fudge selections

Chocolate cupcakes and Mode du Chocolat

Crunchy chocolate bites and Giant Chocorat

One of our favourite stands in previous years was Madame Setsuko, and last year, we also learnt that on the last day of the chocolate festival (i.e. Sunday), there might not be any of the ganache left. Therefore, upon entry, we decided to seek Madame Setsuko before checking out everything else.

Weird, in place where the stand for Madame Setsuko had been previously, was Tokyo Chocolate instead. Recognising the logo on the packaging as that of the mother company that owns Madame Setsuko, it dawned on us there must had been a swap, or perhaps a corporate merger sometime between last year and this year. We probably should have asked… Nonetheless I was excited to get a few boxes of the last of green tea ganache, as I’ve planned to give them as gifts to a few friends.

Arriving home, I took a peek into one of the boxes and my reaction was “uh oh”. It seemed like not only Madame Setsuko had changed into something else, the packaging and attention to details had altered too. The ganache were no longer packed in vacuum sealed opaque bag, but looked like hastily assembled and filled plastic bag, selotaped over. I was dismayed to see that in the lack of proper seal and moist absorbing sachet, the ganache were looking “wet” with dark patches. There was no information label anywhere either that I wouldn’t even know when the ganache would expire.

How am I supposed to present any of these as gifts, looking relatively battered and without any expiry date, particularly when I had planned to post a couple of the boxes away? :(

Tokyo Chocolate green tea ganache

Ganache straight from the boxes and rescued pieces

I attempted a rescue mission, by tossing some of them in matcha green tea powder that I have at home. Alas, the variety/grade must have been different, as the taste became slightly altered and the colour somehat different.

Oh well, what a shame. I guess I’m going to send my friends some other chocolates that I’ve bought instead and eat the ganache myself. And while I eat, I am typing this. They still taste good despite appearances… ;-)

Ps: my favourite bounty from the salon was milk chocolate with sea salt from Mälarchocolaterie. I’ve been told they have an excellent tearoom in Stockholm too. Perhaps it’s time to look into accepting a visiting invitation from my ex-housemate!

It is well known that the Mesoamerican civilisations were the first to put xocolātl into conscious knowledge and subsequent reverence, and to this day, I can’t thank them enough for this wonderful discovery and cultivation of theirs. And in Teotihuacan, it was the Drink of Gods.

Chocolate sculpture by Pierre Hermé

This weekend, in conjunction with the exhibition and cultural trail, Pierre Hermé is going to put his brand of magic through chocolate drinks. Four chocolate drinks, created based on inspirations drew from Mexican chocolates, promise to “retrace the history of chocolate through the ages, from the ritual drink of Teotihuacan to the present day”. It sounds so delicious already, isn’t it?

Therefore, either today (24th Oct) or tomorrow (25th Oct), between 2.30pm and 6.30pm, make your way to the foyer of the Claude Lévi-Strauss theatre at the musuem, enjoy the occasion and be inspired by the wonder of trickling hot chocolate conjured by the master himself. The event is free and open to all.

Better still, why not be there earlier and take some time to see the exhibition and learn the story of the Teotihuacan? There are also tons of other special programmes for this week, in the lead up to the All Saints Day on 1st November.

Ps: morbid as it sounds, the rituals of the deads really have me quite fascinated and a “Ball of the Deads” will be taking place on 1st November (that’s next Sunday) from 4.30pm to 6.30pm, with performances by Isaura Corlay and the ballet dancers of la Maison du Mexique. They will be accompanied by El mariachi Mezcal!

• Recognise Mr Chat above? If you can’t have enough of him, Galeries Pierre Cardin is the place to be between now and 5th November. (Sorry about the slightly blurry image above, which was taken on Rue Bonaparte a few months ago.)
• Well the big news a few hours ago – Jean Sarkozy finally caved and abandoned the pursuit of the presidency of EPAD. Business folks at La Defense – a sigh of relief.
• Poor France had to go through a round of play-off in order to play in the World Cup next year in South Africa. They’ll be playing Ireland in a couple of weeks. Ensues torn loyalty for me, as someone who loves both countries. Anyway, in a bid not to have Irish fans overrun Stade de France on match day, only 8,500 tickets would be allocated to Football Association of Ireland.
• Do you find the tales of King Arthur fascinating? If so, here’s something for you. The exhibition La légende du Roi Arthur is currently running at Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF), until 24th January 2010.
• Two new exhibitions also started this week in Musée d’Orsay which I personally believe to be very interesting. The Art Nouveau Revival is quintessentially French in essence and spirit, and James Ensor’s works on Expressionism are simply haunting and dramatic. Both exhibitions will end on 4th February 2010.
• If sculpture is more of your thing, you should go to Musée Rodin. Pairing 2 masters – Matisse and Rodin – with about thirty years separating them, see how they drew inspirations from and for each other.
• Astérix is turning 50 next week (29th October) and to celebrate this special occasion, about 30 pieces of original works that chronicle Astérix’s adventure, along with some related objects, will be on exhibit at Musée Cluny (aka Musée National du Moyen Âge) from 28th October 2009 to 3rd January 2010.
• Oooo have you heard – La Tour d’Argent are auctioning off some of their finest from their wine cellar! Yes, some bottles would inevitably be overpriced… but if you’re still interested, the address is Salons Hoche (9 avenue Hoche, 75008) and the auction will take place on 7th-8th December.
• Were you at the fake snowball fight while cruising down the Seine?
• Leonora Epstein has just moved to Paris last month and is testing the water in the dating scene. How tricky will it be, with the cultural and language differences? Already, she has just broke up with the guy that she had been seeing in the last month or so. By choice, mind. I can see her logic, being non-French myself, but isn’t all relationship somewhat complicated at one point or another?