Arnaud Nicolas, and Electric Scooters

I was in Paris last August, but somehow between then and now the city has been completely taken over by electric scooters. I guess maybe I wasn't noticing the onset in the early days, but now that I am here with all the young people it turns out that electric scooters-- Lime and Bird-- are a huge thing.  For those of you who are out of it like me, it's an app-based activity. The scooters are just left wherever someone has finished with them, you use the app to track one down, log in from the app, and off you go.  It was cute-- we've been here a few days by now, all museums and food and wine, and everyone was just beginning to feel a little cooped up.  It was like the old days with the kids in the city, we needed an activity, and there it was-- scooter ride! All seven of us zooming down the quai on the left bank, and then taking our lives in our hands on the streets heading home. Kind of ridiculous and god knows dangerous in the long run (I actually can't believe cities haven't banned them yet) but they have that cool tech-driven feel about them. Who can believe that there are (not quite) free scooters lying around every corner of the city? It seems too good to be true.

[I remember the first time I heard about email, maybe 1983.  A guy was sitting next to me in the computer lab and I asked him what he was doing.  Sending a message to a friend in Chicago, he said. I said wow, how much does that cost?  No, it's free! It didn't seem possible. Long distance phone calls were still expensive back then.]

Michael Jackson show at the Grand Palais this afternoon was sort of interesting, not great to tell you the truth. I would have liked more old video footage, more Michael Jackson, more music. Instead there was a lot of contemporary painting and videos of dancers using MJ as a theme. They all felt like assignments in an art school class. And, it was mobbed. What the hell.

Anyway, on to dinner at Arnaud Nicolas.  This is a relatively new place, nearby on avenue de la Bourdonnais.  Nicolas is a MOF, a meilleur ouvrier de France, which is this very French award system in which a few people can qualify for special status in some specialty, mostly but not exclusively culinary.  Nicolas is a MOF in charcuterie: cured meats, patés and that sort of thing, and has set himself the task of recovering the lost art. There is not nearly as much charcuterie in France as there used to be, even in my memory.  In the seventies and eighties a lot of the old traiteurs went out of business, or were taken over by Chinese takeout places.

Most of the first courses on the Arnaud Nicolas menu are charcuterie platters.  The waiter (who Carol and I knew from a couple of lunches, and who in good French waiter fashion recognized us and welcomed us back) suggested that we order some to share. Here are the choices, we got a selection of four, including the lobster one... hardly matters because they are all wonderful.  The kitchen divvied them up into three or four mixed plates to spread around the table.

The main courses here are straight ahead, almost very carefully prepared but simple and casual. Manning and I shared the tourte de cochon, a pie of pork (lots of pork liver) and duck foie gras wrapped and baked in a puff pastry shell, with a little dark reduction poured around it.  Amazing. I don't take pictures of food but here is one from the internet.

Several people had the magret de canard, a couple had the quenelles, which is minced fish whipped up until it is super-light, then steamed and served with a shellfish-based sauce.  Harry had the marinated salmon,m a big plate of house-made gravlax.

Baba au rhum is an old fashioned French dessert that has come back into fashion lately, I get it all the time. Warm sponge cake with a pitcher of warm rum on the side to pour over, and vanilla whipped cream to put on top.  Others had Le Mont Blanc, another old-fashioned dessert based on layers of crispy meringue with whipped cream, fruit or chocolate. This one had chestnut cream, a Carol-favorite.

The service was as-ever fun and gracious. I already mentioned the head guy, who was backed up by a young waiter who actually handled most of the business at the table. He switched back and forth between French and English for us, picked out two bottles of great and (more or less) reasonable wine.  When he was opening the first bottle he noticed Manning watching him and smiled. Manning said he had worked as a waiter back home and was always nervous opening wine. So it turned into a lesson, with yet a third waiter (this is a fairly big place) coming over to supervise the particulars.  They brought him an opener and had him open the second bottle.

Great night.