Le Volant Basque

 Hi, this is my old Paris blog, that I have had since 2008, when we were first shopping for an apartment here. I haven't written anything here for years, but I have always wanted to get back to it. We plan to be spending more time in Paris in the upcoming years, so maybe I will have time to actually do it. (If you go back to the earliest posts, the stories about searching for and eventually buying the apartment might be entertaining.)

My model for French food blogging is the late great John Talbott, who for many years was the best English-language food blogger in Paris. John's writing was thorough, candid, friendly, and unpretentious. We had the pleasure of having lunch with him back in the day.  I didn't know until reading his obituary that he was an ex-president of the American Psychiatric Association. In typical expat fashion, when we ate together the topic of what we did for a living didn't even come up. Sadly, his blog was on Typepad, which has since gone belly up.  You can still find his blog on the Wayback Machine. Somebody should archive it properly while it's still possible.

Anyway we are here for a short week, although both of us are working.  I will teach class remotely Wednesday night, and I'm giving a talk in Franck Ramus' lab. In the meantime, of course, we are eating.

A nice thing about our neighborhood in the 15th is that there are a lot of Basque restaurants. A long time ago when the 15th was still on the outskirts of the city there was a lot of industry-- car plants and abbattoirs-- out here, and the Basque people worked in them. Mostly gone now, but a few of the restaurants and bars are still here.

Le Volant Basque has been here, completely unchanged, at least since we bought our apartment in 2008. Last night it was quite crowded, maybe 3/4 French people and a few tables of tourists.  It has a very local feel-- we have occasionally walked in without a reservation and gotten away with it, which is unusual for dinner here.

So, the food:.This is a place where I get the same thing every time: the veal chop.  My Dad always used to order veal chops in the steak restaurants he went to in New York, but you hardly ever see them in the US anyymore, probably because it is too expensive.  This one is 3/4 of an inch thick, cooked medium rare, a lot of soft delicious fat around the bone, a delicious mushroom sauce.  I'm not usually big on taking pictures of my food, but on the other hand I have a tendency to forget what I had, so here goes--

Working backwards, I started with a "cassolette" of escargots and mushrooms, which was amazing, in delicious sop-it-up-with-bread garlic and butter.

Carol (no more photos, I draw the line at taking pictures of other people's food) had crème de potiron (cream of pumpkin soup) and her every-single-time dish, grilled veal liver. A thick slab of liver (I hate the paper thin slices in American supermarkets) again cooked medium rare.  

Dinner there always comes with a trio of sides for the table: white polenta, whipped potatoes, and rice. the rice has a few cut up carrots and peas in it, which is the closest to an actual vegetable one gets there. Old fashioned French restaurants, as much as I love them, just don't get it about vegetables.  It's funny, because at a cafe for lunch there are plenty of salads, but the idea of a side of steamed broccoli or something just doesn't exist here, at least not in the old places.

We had a pitcher of the house red Basque wine. John Talbott was also great at writing about wine. I love food and love wine, but I have a terrible time writing about it, stuck with saying it was "very good" or whatever. The other thing is, these days the two of us have a hard time making it through a bottle of wine, so it is often easier just to order a pitcher. I notice that almost all French restaurants have them, but French people never order them. The difference in sophistication about wine between the French and Americans (ie, me) is just astounding, and I have never been able to overcome it.  

For dessert, I had an indulgent favorite (hey, it's my first night here): vanilla ice cream with a shot of cold Izarra (a Basque digestif) poured over it.  Carol had the dessert "tapas"- rice pudding, chocolate mousse, and... oh well the Izarra erased the last one.