Cerveseria Catalana, Barcelona

Events of August 30th, 2009. 3 PM.

Barcelona has lots of attractions for between-times when you're not eating (as I get older I like more and more to use those times for sleeping, but your mileage may vary). This post's gratuitous shot is of the roof decorations at Le Perdrera, one of the two Gaudi apartment buildings that make up what I came to think of as the Holy Quaternary (including Sagrada Familia and Park Guell). We did the full tour here, which includes an apartment, the attic gallery (formerly used for cooling and for servants to hang out laundry) and the roof, which is notable for the up-and-down stairs, these monuments, and the views both to other buildings and down the interior light well. I'd like to think that this building is more interesting since it was designed from scratch and thus the interior is also more organic and flowing, as opposed to Casa Batllo where Gaudi tacked the famous melty facade onto an existing building. But that facade is certainly more impressive, and I don't know a thing really.

Afterward we did some aimless walking around the neighborhood, hoping to see other architectural marvels. While we didn't see much, strolling around a clean, spacious, unfamiliar city on a Sunday afternoon in late summer is rarely a bad thing. We walked down a lot of blocks, through the clever angled plazas that are designed into all the intersections, and then it happened.

It was already 2:30 or so, and we were actively wondering what to do about lunch but had no specific plans. As we crossed one intersection, there was a sudden voice calmly saying "We should go to that place." It was like the Voice of God! Perhaps I exaggerate, because it was my voice, but someone did make the VoG comment. I had seen Cerveseria Catalana mentioned on various lists, some of which called it 'the best tapas in Barcelona'. While I'm not given to grandiosities like that, I didn't have a better tapas elsewhere (and yes, I definitely missed your favorite spot. I missed a lot of places I would have gone to given the time and enthusiasm).

Another thing mentioned frequently in reviews of this place - it's crowded. I think we were secretly relieved after walking past a dozen lightly-trafficed establishments to find that this place didn't have a table for us, nor a space at the bar. A bonus of the casual Spanish attitude is that it's OK to wait casually. As I said, there wasn't even space at the bar since the bar is such a normal place to stand and eat. In this picture, which I swear is not the approach shot for an upskirt on my Dining Companion, you can just see the rest of my party outside on the pavement crowding a small, frightened, soon-to-be-empty jug of sangria. Personally I would have preferred cava sangria, or just cava, but everyone has their own tastes. At some equally popular bars later in the week, cirlces of people were sitting outside on the sidewalk with a bottle of cava in the middle of the group and bowl glasses all around. A sort of Spanish spin-the-bottle, but the bottle's full. And you don't spin it.

It's good to push the horizons a bit, especially when travelling. In Spain, I've read that the focus on seafood leads to extraordinarily good results, especially in the canned arena. There are evidently bars that focus on drinks and canned seafood, and not at all in a cheap way like those street bars in Japan that have canned corned beef and 1-cup sake. One preserved/canned item that's a bit of a stretch for most Americans is anchovies - famous in Spain, somewhat reviled in America. I think this is because the best Spanish anchovies have yet to make their way through the 'foodie' crowd initiation and into the popular consciousness. Suffice to say that if all anchovies were as good as these, there would be no lack of people eating them. And they were resoundingly not the best anchovies we had all week.

These, however, may have been the best cuttlefish we had all week. Quite sizable, these buggers. When you say "cuttlefish," I first think "Nonsequitur?" and then realize what you're on about and think of something on a 2-inch scale. The bodies alone on these guys were 3 inches, which was somewhat frightening at first. You want your cuttles to be, well, cuttley, and at this size they're starting to present an octopus aspect. But with this beautiful grilling, firm but soft meat, and a schvitz of lemon...

And then to the main event - montaditos. This being Barcelona, and Cerveseria Catalana, you should expect your items to come on toast. Toast that's been rubbed with tomato to soften up the staleness. Depending on your personality, these may or may not be easy to order. I found it challenging to get the attention of someone behind the counter (in my case it turned out to be one of the Filipino houseboys wearing the white coats with gold epaulets. Seriously, they're dressed that way.) because so many people are crowded in ordering and eating. But we had already been graced with a small table at this point, so all I had to do was specify our number, then start pointing. 4 of each please!

Nothing fancy here, just good ham on toast. Yes Dad, the white part at the bottom of the picture is pure fat. You'd still like it.

I'm mildly unsure what this is. Just from looking, I think it might be lomo, which is of course a dry-cured pork tenderloin (although I didn't know this until later in the week when we visited the World's Best Ham Shop). On top is certainly a little pepper, of the shape that in Japan is spicy only once in a surprising and painful while. These, I think, were spicy all the time.  

Never feed autumn eggplants to your daughter-in-law, that's what I always say. Fortunately this particular montadito didn't feature autumn eggplant, because it was August and 90 degrees, and I also wasn't with my daughter-in-law (for obvious reasons to numerous to number). This was toast with roasted pepper, eggplant and anchovy, and a weirder or tastier combination we didn't try. This should give you some ideas for home.

To really bulk things up, mini veal steak montaditos. Oh my. Soft, beefy, beautifully grilled, just big enough to make you feel you've eaten steak, and with those darling little peppers again...a challenge to eat standing up, as they were so juicy that you'd be spattered in no time.

When I went to the bathroom I was quite surprised by the inside of the restaurant. There were only seats for 20 or so outside, and the bar was dark enough that you couldn't see too far in. But once you were, there were 3 big rooms there, all packed with tables packed with people packing away the food. And more of those Filipinos with the faux Admiralty jackets. It put me very much in mind of Joe's Stone Crab, where they also serve very normal food, in very high quality, for serious prices, in a casual but classic environment populated by Latin waiters in eveningwear. And you have to love it.

I have some regrets about this lunch. I mildly regret that we didn't ask to transfer to one of the cooler tables during the period when it got hot on just our table due to the sun approaching its peak (at 4 PM!). I regret that we drank sangria instead of cava. But mostly I regret that we lost stamina and couldn't stay longer in order to try the seafood side of the bar beyond the cuttlefish above. I would have loved to get through some fancy Spanish shrimp and razor clams. Fortunately there was dinner to come that night...

Hmm, I don't think they have a web site. But it's kind of on the opposite side of the block from Casa Mila, the southwest corner. Ish. Look for tables and people waiting.

Milk Bar, Barcelona

After Saturday I had the feeling that I might never eat again...but Sunday came up clear and humid, and after a good 10 hours in bed hunger set in. Jet lag and a windowless apartment made it hard to venture out, so Dre had already scoped the neighborhood and found this place by the time we dared exit our cave. Good job spotting it too, as the Barri Gotic isn't great on breakfast options - it's more notable for alleys like this one and odd bits of nightlife. Then again, it's not really breakfast when this place opens 11-4 for their weekends-only 'Recovery Brunch' and we show up at 12.

'Milk Bar' should be a good tip that it's foreign, and in fact the owners are Irish. Can I digress and say that I've grown to hate Irish bars? They're the McDonald's of international drinking. Certain sections of both Tokyo and Barcelona are full (relatively) of Irish bars and, like McDonald's, they replicate a specific experience. [I must pause to say I actually quite like McDonald's's products, but one has to approach with a frame of reference that treats them as separate and novel foodstuffs, not substitutes for the traditional 'ham-burger' or 'chicken-nugget'.] Usually named something approriately authentic and louche like McCarthy's or Dirty Nelly's or Rumple McForeskin's or Pogue Mahone, the International Irish Bar, instead of small, oddly shaped-and-colored simulacra of traditional food products, replicates pints of Guiness, smoke, stained carpet and bad smells (and presumably rollicking, drunken good times. Slainte!). Never having been to Ireland I don't know how authentic this ambience is, but it's certainly close to the classic hotels I remember from Sydney, which are at least cousins.

Fortunately these good and upstanding Irish Spaniards have gone creative and avoided any cliches that would reference the dread IIB. Sofas, groovy wall hangings, small flowers, big breakfasts, coffee. The ambience is the thing since it's primarily a night spot (beers, cocktails, food), not actually a brunch venue. It's very soothing even though it's a bit calculated and international-boho-chic.

Beer taps for evening. The staff seemed to think I was odd for taking a picture of this. At the time, I thought it was perhaps a normal tap and it was one of those situations where the locals were surprised by tourists taking pictures and tittering over the most mundane details ("Look dear, plastic sushi!"), but now I just don't get it. This tap is awesome any way you look at it. Unfortunately it doesn't feature the name of major brewer Estrella's main product, which is called Damm, but I'm sure we'll get a picture of that in later. The cocktail lounge ambience at night must be quite good if the taps are this cool and the wallpaper is that vintage.

Yes, I took pictures in the bathroom. I took a lot of pictures on this trip - I got Europe approximately never, and things like El Bulli are likely to be once-in-a-lifetime.

This wall-of-comics was too funny to miss. Perhaps it's a Spanish tradition to laquer the walls of toilets with comics.

But perhaps not. In any case, Yay! Spider-Man! YAAY!!








Should you be wondering, they did indeed serve breakfasts bigger than your head (picture not actual size; the quantity of potatoes was somewhat daunting in real life). I managed to snap off a quick shot of one (mine). This was fresh, tasty, eggy, potato-ey, contained mass quantities of genuinely spicy chorizo nuggets, and was more than sufficient to warrant a recommendation to visit should you be in need of weekend Gotic brunch in Barcelona. Strangely, I was hungry two hours later...

Ah, there you are then. The owners designed the place to look like a "millionaire's drawing room". That explains it then.
+34 93 268 09 22

At left, a gratuitous placement shot from the Barri Gotic. There's a lot of graffiti on the doors.

Txikiteo, Barcelona

Events of August 29, 2009. 11 PM
After the all-too-brief stop in Paris, we were off to Barcelona. At the airport we met up with Dre, the lucky holder of the actual El Bulli reservation that spawned this whole trip, and Bee, and our foursome was set for the week. We arrived in Barcelona around 7:30, made it in one piece to our apartment in the historic Barri Gothic, passed out until 10, and wandered out into the street, Spanish-style, for some dinner. The streets around our apartment looked like this - dark, a bit gothic, a bit dirty (and a bit crooked, in photographic retrospect). As mentioned, I'll continue including gratuitous establishment shots in these reviews for touristic color. The green folded-paper bugs coming up in a second are another one...

Now, Barcelona is the nominal capital of the Catalan region. It's important to think of it as a separate region; the people certainly seem to. I saw a sign (in Girona, an hour north of Barcelona) that said "Welcome to Catalunya, a nation of Europe!" It didn't also say "Brought to you by separatist bombers ETA," but I couldn't help think of them. Similarly, every road sign and plenty of tourist attraction signs are written in both Castellano, the Spanish you know, and Catalan, the Spanish that looks like a cross between Castellano and French. (Using only two languages is actually very restrained in contrast to the menus at tourist restaurants, which are replicated in Castellano, Catalan, French, Italian, English and German. They're thick. Or wide.). It's clearly a big point of pride, because the languages are very similar-looking to the untrained eye, which feels like one would be enough.

The food may be a bit different from everywhere else though (future trips to Spain or more informed readers will be needed to verify this). There are a lot of places around the Barri Gothic that advertise themselves as Basque-style restaurants, often 'tabernas'. Those are either tapas places, which offer montaditos (stuff piled on toast), or Basque-style kitchens like Txikiteo, which we ended up in after a good 'ol walk around the southern extent of the Barri Gothic. At 10 PM the streets were fairly crowded with revelers presenting in distinctly scruffy t-shirt - board shorts - sandals ensembles, like they were working their way to or back from summer in Ibiza. But the restaurants were far from crowded; they filled up more as it got even later. Txikiteo looked promising, despite the name reminding me of Abba.

 

The waiter cleverly noticed that we were not locals (two or three Asians in the party depending on how you count) and explained things to us in detail. He strongly recommended that we have some Bravas first. I don't know how these show up in other parts of Spain, but I've developed a little line on how they're representative of the Basque region: obviously the waiter thought everyone should eat these daily, so they're some kind of national dish (I know this is a stretch, yes). But what are they? Fries with mayo. However, "We're Basque! That means we don't eat your stupid French frites, nor your Spanish potatoes! We cut the potatoes CUBIC before we fry them! And the mayonnaise is SPICY! So there!" It's the little differences that matter so much.

Roasted peppers are popular everywhere in Spain, I think. These were stuffed with canned tuna and smothered in sauce. Not bad.

Gulas, baby eels, were another special recommendation of the waiter, and he seemed pleased when we stepped up and ordered them. They look the business, don't they? After a quick look on The Googlez, I'm disappointed - I called these angulas, and the waiter responded by calling them gulas, as does Txikiteo's online menu. Things like the above article suggest that gulas are in fact Japanese pressed fish pepared to look a bit like baby eels, and the linked article on the shortage of real elvers was 15 years ago.  A nice dish, possibly preferrable to the translucent raw baby eels I ate in Japan several times earlier this year (but only because of the lower gross-out factor). If you want the real thing, you may have to hunt a bit. Make sure the menu says angulas, and look for the little eyes and mouths.

Baby squids. Cooked in ink. I can't get enough of this on a conceptual level. Every time I see 'squid cooked in ink' on a menu, I have to get it (outside Spain. Inside Spain, I rapidly got over this.). It's likely similar to my 'blue food' fascination - natural food is never blue, so when I see artificial blue food (blue raspberry water ice, blue margaritas...a sadly limited set) I usually order it. There are also few black foods, so I extend my contrary ordering to them. And I like squid.  These baby cuttlefish met but did not exceed expectations, with an additional objection being that, as befits whole animals, they still had their crunchy backbones inside. Like the other dishes at this restaurant though, they were a bit oily and heavy.

Bacalao is of course another famous Spanish item. In this case the dried, salted, smelly cod was rehydrated and cooked in tomato sauce. A strong taste, not in a bad way, but in a way that suggested there must be better versions of it in the world. Supply of potatoes and rice marked this as a main; I'm not sure if this type of stodge is really Spanish or if it's there in part to make this look more substantial to British tourists.

That was one day of vacation dining done - fantastic chocolates, a lovely palace lunch, and a typical if touristy Basque dinner. We passed out again and slept soundly for ages in our windowless apartment, not dreaming of baby eels even once.

Txikiteo
+34 93 412 41 57

Le Cinq, Paris

Events of Saturday, August 29, 2009. 12:30 PM. Roughly.

This plan to squeeze in a lunch in Paris on the way to a week in Barcelona was a pretty silly plan. Leave Tokyo at night, arrive in Paris under cover of dark (4 AM!), sleep for a few hours, stroll, chocolate...extravagant lunch. And all under the pretext that we had to fly to Barcelona through Paris anyway, so why not make the most of it?

The truth is, I had been reading luxury-dining blogs all year and wanted to make my own tiny dent in the list of wonderful-looking places I had read about (which the subsequent Spain reservations would help with). My goal was to have an excellent lunch in a very grand room, not necessarily to have the best food ever, since there was time for that later in the week, later in the year, and beyond. There are a few sites that I like the best because they seem to have an authentic love of food and less focus on star-collecting. One of these is Ze Julot, and one of his favorite chefs is Eric Briffard, who now leads the operation at the Four Seasons George Cinq's flagship restaurant, Le Cinq.

It's convenient that this is one of Julot's favorite places, because it's also one of the few at this level that was open for a Saturday lunch in late August. Ledoyen - closed. Lasserre - closed. That was the two top choices done. Arpege - closed. Savoy - closed. l'Ambroisie - closed (a relief, given the prices). Les Ambassadeurs was open and I booked it (despite them not having a lunch menu, meaning full dinner prices), but then Piege quit and suddenly they wrote to say they were closed. Senderens was open but somehow uninspiring. That left Le Cinq, which I was actually very excited by.

These pictures are all by way of introduction since they're what you'd see on the way to the restaurant after driving down the Champs Elysee and turning on Avenue George Cinq just before the Arc de Triomphe (packing in lots of Paris icons in one short ride!).  Above, we had the back hall and the lobby restaurant, and here's an example of the extravagant flower arrangements that the hotel is known for - extravagant not in a single bunch like this, but when strategically placed in clusters of 50...much more so. Unfortunately this week's choice was these green gladiolas; not the most eye-catching, but certain bold in their own way.

Here we are then, 'at table' and prepared for luncheon. The champagne trolley duly wheeled by and we duly submitted to a glass (note that this spoils the value equation immediately) while considering the room and the menu. Both are quite good. The room owes its grandeur to the huge ceilings, full-length mirrors and portraits, massive flower arrangements and suited staff, while the menu posses considerable power by offering a choice of 4-5 items for each of the 3 courses, all for E75 (this is good, honest; the prior booking at Les Ambassadeurs was EUR 230, hence my relief that they cancelled it.). The staff here were perfection - exactly my definition of service. The maitre d' looked like an important corporate CEO from a movie. My camera, on the floor in an attempt to look less stupid between courses, was immediately cushioned with a footstool. The team took all of 5 minutes to understand that we wanted friendly and fun service rather than reserved and formal, and we were off.

Of course, we were off with a slow start. Not that there was anything wrong with this basket of fried shrimp, but good lord what a heavy way to start lunch. On a light day in a beach town, you could eat one of these by yourself with a beer and call it a meal. They were good. We forged ahead...

Into the Land of Butter. This Tower of Dairy was every bit as huge as it looks, which is why my camera was knocked sideways. No fancy logos, no branded butters, just quantity. The table flower was this green orchid under glass, echoing the main arrangements.

The only thing that could have been more frightening than the Mayan pyramid of bovine secretion would of course be...

A second one, thoroughly mixed with chopped seaweed. In truth, the salty, oceanic flavor of these was one of the best things about lunch. Did I say 'these'? That's because after we ate about 1/4 of it, they took it away and gave us a new one. It was like eating seawater-buttered popcorn - you couldn't stop. I think there were 5 or 6 varieties of bread, but I purposely kept my ears closed and my mouth pure in a bid not to overeat.

Because the food had started coming. Tip: the 3 courses you order from the menu has little relevance to the progression of food you receive. I expected this, but my 'dining companion' (as Dominic always says) perhaps did not, which led to some BCPs. IT people among us may think of these as Business Continuity Procedures, but you and I of the dining world know them as Bread Consumption Problems. At left some sort of spherical raviolo topped with duck ham (ham, good; other thing, not so much; maybe it was even a potato and I just don't remember) and a cute piece of salmon wrapped with shiso and ginger and lightly grilled to cook the fish and crisp the wrapper. That was very good.

I think this was mango mousse topped with pepper mousse, but it was forgettable. Throughout these meals, I took pictures of everything and told myself that if I couldn't remember what it was when I got to the writeup, it wasn't really worth writing up. Still, a nice picture. If a bit artfully crooked.

I think this was a big tranche of foie gras grilled to perfection and sided by cunning towers of roasted melon topped with fresh almonds, but I can't quite remember.

I kid, I kid. I had a sinking feeling that this was not the best foie I was going to eat on this trip; it wasn't overly flavorful as livers go, and it was honestly a bit thick so that the perfectly-sauteed exterior was somewhat overwhelmed by the soft interior. But there were crunchy bits sprinkled on top that genuinely provided contrast, and this saved it for me. It turned out to be the best foie of the trip because it was the only foie of the trip, quel horreur. You can just see the slices of melon underneath.  I really can't remember what the green stuff was; looked spinachy.

These are most certainly cylinders of roasted melon topped with fresh almonds and foam. Lemongrass foam, I think. I'm given to believe that this sort of light, fresh presentation is very Briffard. Given statements like that, you should expect to see flowers soon...

Ah, there they are! Razor clams with chopped garlic and vegetables, fresh almonds (thankfully they petered out after this dish, as opposed to El Bulli where the whole dinner was nut-dependent. Actually you could argue that it's a nice touch to include nuts in both dishes like this, the same way the flowers will show up later.). I'm forced to admit that this was the first time I had seen a razor clam in the flesh (though not the last time for the week, no sir) and I had the feeling that it was good, not perfect. Good clam, reasonably-cooked, strong toppings slightly overwhelming despite being nice and fresh.

Nice and fresh went out the window with this pleasant guinea hen dish - bird three ways or something to that effect. These big breast pieces were quite big, soft and flavorful, and the skin was perfect. The accompanying macaroni, while not the truffled specialty that I hoped to eat at Lasserre, was lovely. A good example of laborious 'palace' cooking, each tube was filled with pureed herb sauce before they were stacked, smothered and covered.

And here was the other side of the presentation - leg meat stuffed with mince, surrounded with fresh mushrooms. These multiple-presentation concepts seem to be the thing this year, so it was pleasant to see them in person. This dish marked a recurring theme though - warm and salty. As opposed to hot and salty, or hot and balanced. I think of myself as a person who likes too much salt, so I was surprised to find both mains overdone on that front to my tastes. And the warmth...shocking. The maitre d' and head waiter did an excellent job of looking genuinely horrified when we mentioned this to them later, promising to tell the chef and promptly pouring us two glasses of Jurancon. They were nice, but I would have preferred hot dishes!

There's a riot going on here. Despite ordering the foie as a first course, I couldn't go past the sweetbreads as a main. Strange, that...All this year I've been trying to recapture the joy I used to feel in eating sweetbreads - hot, crisp, creamy, like the world's best fried chicken but better...and I've been failing. But I keep trying. This dish, strangely, lined up with a much more recent obsession - I had been wanting to eat saffron for several days, and the base here is saffron risotto.

Yes, a regular riot. Add in the deep-fried shrimp (because grilled shrimp wouldn't be enough cholesterol) and you've got a party. But I do enjoy the style, where everything is composed on the plate and mixed with lighter elements like the salad leaves and peas. This was a good dish (salt and heat notwithstanding), but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was reliving Julot's earlier experience where he thought the food was a clumsy imitation of Briffard's light yet intense cooking (c.f. foie with melon, fried sweetbreads with salad, yes?).

Mercy! The pictures don't do justice to the quantities, which may not have been American but were certainly far from Japanese. Before getting to the desserts we had ordered, there was a very good coin of frozen cheesecake topped with berry puree and sided with excellent fresh berries.

Julot advises that the desserts are quite inspid. This is too bad, as I'm an unfortunate dessert addict. It's also too bad because he's right - this tarte fine with rhubarb and strawberries was mediocre.

Fortunately this chocolate cake with mango mousse was a bit better despite the uninspired concept. Phew!

And since this is fine dining in France, the mignardise trolley rumbled over. If you're wondering, I had saved space, but didn't want to go too nuts given the quality of the desserts. Still, it warms the heart to see this, doesn't it? It warmed my heart even more to see the fresh caramels in a big pile, including lovely green pistachio ones...so I almost sizzled when they gave us takeaway boxes of the same.

Just a casual sweet snack to finish the lunch. From left to right, roughly, the truffle was decent, the macaron pale in comparison to the Pierre Hermes that I had picked up in Tokyo as a pre-flight snack (must start holiday on the right foot, mustn't we?), the pistachio eclair was small, well-executed and delicious, and the nut-filled chocolate and torrone were about as expected (which is to say good). I sound uninspired, but I think back to the last time I had a dessert trolley, at Rabelais in Daikanyama, and I think "What the hell was that?!" This was the real thing.

Mmmmmm, mission accomplished. I think the flaws in this lunch were evident - in retrospect I felt a lot like the master chef had been absent for a month on his August vacation, so the staff were still making his dishes, but not quite right. However the lingering feeling afterward was of happiness, contentment, and suffusion with inner light - partly because we were newly on vacation and determined to enjoy.

The Swiss gentleman next to us had been very chatty throughout lunch (after we exchanged a knowing wink regarding the order of water - he followed my lead with a carafe of Paris' finest) and suggested that we join forces for a kitchen tour. Very pleasant! The waiters were amused. The kitchen tour was a bit unfortunate - it's very much a working hotel kitchen, so you'll have to see the room service and lobby restaurant food being made as well as yours. I was glad that we hadn't ordered any a la carte items, each one of which was more expensive than the lunch course, as I would have felt the value diminish. I was not glad to see two large tubs filled with...partially eaten butter towers. The easy explanation would be that they were to be softened and re-used for dinner. Could that be? One hopes not. However one was still left with a pleasantly relaxed glow by the whole experience, which had nothing to do with wine, and which propelled us neatly out the door for a quick stroll to the Eiffel Tower and then on to the airport taxi.

l'Etoile d'Or, Paris

Events of Saturday, August 29, 2009. 12:00 PM.

I came to Denise Acabo's famous chocolate shop through a circuitous path. It started a few weeks ago when I was looking for something to do on a quiet Tokyo weekend. In past months, I've been enjoying the pleasant habit of visiting a new neighborhood for a day and exploring it as a means of recreation (and I'd like to say 'and exercise', but such visits typically involve lunch, coffee and cake, and dinner). One neighborhood I always meant to visit is northern-Tokyo's well-preserved Yanesen area, the rough triangle formed by the neighborhoods of Yanaka, Nezu and Sendagi. For some reason my search on the googlez led to the blog of a Singapore chocolatier who visited the area a few months ago, and subsequently to the post where he visited Paris and this shop. I started thinking it would be the culmination of the fine-chocolate exploration I've done this year as a way to stave off after-lunch blues. And then I realized it wouldn't be that hard to spend half a day in Paris on the way to Spain, nor would it be such an imposition to book a hotel in Montmartre that would be within an easy walk of the shop. And that was it, really.

After a lovely walk around Montmartre (skies: clear and blue. temperature: 20. tourists: French and in force. Couer: Sacred.), I wandered down to the shop on the way to catch a taxi to lunch. It's within rolling distance of the Moulin Rouge, by which I mean that if you stumbled out of the cabaret and fell down, you could be in front of l'Etoile d'Or by the time you stopped rolling down the hill. I should also point out that any reports about the seediness of the area are significantly overblown - while Pigalle itself is the next street over, on a Saturday afternoon one could easily have missed that this is meant to be the red-light district of Paris.You won't miss l'Etoile - a big red awning and lots of chocolate-related paraphenalia that fairly spills out onto the street. The outside speaks to you the same way that the inside does - it's a place by and for people who really love chocolate.

Inside is fantastic, especially for people like me who hardly never visit Europe. In the same way that you may have an imaginary, perfect Parisian bistro in your mind, replete with aproned waiters, brass fixtures, red woodwork and well-worn floors, you probably have a perfect Parisian chocolate shop. And this is probably pretty close. It's a world away from the modern, minimal, jeweler-cum-art salon candy (which also appeal to me strongly).


The ceiling is high and the walls are filled with shelves and mirrors, and those shelves are packed with a happy confusion of elaborately-decorated tins, molded glass candy dishes and fancifully colored boxes, all of which are dedicated to cocoa and sugar. A medium-sized refrigerated case holds pride of place in the middle of the floor while the register is on a small table at the back. This means the experience is more interactive - there's no long display case separating you from the staff.


Nick had mentioned that there was a Japanese assistant, which is a funny touch but welcome. As a culturally-insecure American, I have a mild fear of European language snobbery. Somehow the 6 years of French 'study' never sank in much, and my Japanese is now much better than my French ever was. Thus it was one of the true pleasures of my foreign-language life, after the assistant bid me good morning in French, to say "Pardon, je ne parle pas la Francais, 実は日本語の方がいい."  She's been in Paris for 3 years, and was very knowledgable about all the merchandise - if, in fact, I understood everything she told me! It's a minor disappointment that Mme. Acabo herself wasn't in the shop that day (since everyone else who has visited here makes a big production of the excitement of meeting her), but hopefully that's a situation to be rectified on a future visit.

One of the great attractions of l'Etoile d'Or is the exclusivity. Not that it's hard to get in, but that they have products you can't get anywhere else. This includes Bernachon from Lyon (who roast and grind their own beans daily) and also Le Roux caramels (the inventor of salted caramels, in 1977. I've previously made a big deal about how these are available at Shinjuku Isetan, but I recently learned that Yoku Moku bought the brand from Le Roux for Japan. Ah well. The flavor was not significantly different.). And the selection includes many other things whose names I've forgotten. Learning those names would be an early project if I ever moved to Paris.

In the end it was a bit overwhelming. I knew I had to try les Bernachons and get some fresh caramels in flavors not available in Japan (tarte tatin), and then ask the assistant for a few recommendations. OK, and a large Bernachon tablet to bring home. But very restrained, on the whole. Thinking back, I've decided that it's cultural. In Japan, all of these chocolates would be presented as close to god, elaborately built up, wrapped, cossetted and individually polished before boxing with ice for you to take home. Here, they were not perfectly formed, still in boxes in the cases with a minimum of fanfare, picked up carefully but still dropped into a plastic bag and tied with a ribbon. It's for people who eat chocolate, where I may have been expecting more elaboration given the length of my trip!

Trying to maintain some self-respect, I didn't take notes on the individual chocolates and thus can only mention what was good enough to be in my mind over a week later. As one would hope, Bernachon's Palette d'Or was excellent; it was indeed creamy, rich and red-fruity. But the true star was the assistant's recommendation, Bernard Dufoux's Menthe Fraiche. This felt like the perfection of the after-dinner mint, and also sparked the instant thought that I had never eaten a mint chocolate before this one. I would venture to say that you, too, have never had a chocolate with fresh mint, though I hope you have, because the taste is extraordinary. As would be any visit to l'Etoile d'Or.

l'Etoile d'Or
30 rue Fontaine
01 48 74 59 55