Paris Festival Overload!

It was just way too much!   At least for me!  Fête du Gastronomie, Heures Heureuses des Tartines, Fête des Jardins, Gazons Paris and Paris Sans Voitures(without cars). Down right impossible to enjoy them to the fullest, and practically impossible to get but a few smidgens here and there!

Why did the mayor of Paris do this? She should have known that scheduling all these luscious and wonderful events on the same weekend, would be tortuous for us to get to them all!

September is always a month chock full of many events that you don’t want to miss,but this weekend it became an insurmountable  pyramid!  Saturday mornings are taken up buying my vegetables at  at Paris’s newest outdoor marché in my neighborhood.

I missed out completely on the tartines because of typical French disorganization. This year it took place in my own quartier, the 14th, with various restaurants selling wonderfully sounding concoctions on a crusty piece of baguette, called “tartines” for the mere price of two euros!

One restaurant proposing a fricassee of small calamari, with sherry vinegar and confit of artichokes,had me salivating enough to trek up a fair distance, only  to find the restaurant closed, even though it was clearly listed offering the bargain delicacies from noon till 6pm!

I ended up trying to console myself with some Chinese baozi, steamed little dumplings filled with vegetables or meats.  The chef supposedly came from being head honcho at the Chinese Embassy, but however plump and cute to look at, the fillings were rather bland on their own merits.

I wasn’t able to go tartine searching in the evening because I had theater tickets for the 5pm play, and besides any later, I am not game at all to allow sandwiches to suffice for  a dinner meal!

I could have kicked myself retrospectfully though, as I failed to note that for Féte du Gastronomie, they were having a free buffet in front of Hotel de Ville saturday noon with Ann Sophie Pic,  and conferences at École Ferrandi with other famous chefs such as Yannick Alleno, Phillipe Conticini, and Theiry Marx, though it would certainly been a push affair  to get in with all of the students!

I loved the movie, Irma La Douce, so I had been anxiously awaiting the play to open  mid September at the Théatre Porte Saint Martin,  another one of the many very pretty theaters here.

The musical renditions were great, but the actress playing Irma, just didn’t have the charisma of Shirley Maclean in the movie version. Nevertheless, live theater is always preferred over cinema for me, and affords a fun  and dazzling  way to spend a few hours.

The evening  had taken on a soft shadowy smokiness,  typical for early autumn, by the time we left,  but the sidewalks were bustling with folks either heading home or going out.  The huge stone arch  Porte Saint Martin, was once a ancient gateway into Paris, like the adjoining Porte Saint Denis.

The whole neighborhood is adorably old and still reeks of seediness that I hope never departs, especially along Rue Faubourg Saint Denis, where I was heading for dinner.  Old and very uneven dirty cobblestones seemed more littered than usual.

The prostitutes are always there in the area, with some looking well pass retirement age, and dressed in ridiculously vulgar attire.   Nothing as cleaned up and cute as Irma La Douce!

The restaurant, Le 52 is just past passage Brady, or little Pakistan/India.   Opened last year, it has become one of the most sought out bobo restaurants in the city. The menu looked promising as well as the fantastic wine list, offering even some foreign bottles at very decent prices, as far as restaurant wine prices go.

Our choices were hit and miss, with one entree and dessert over worked with enticing sounding flavours that added little to the overall dish.  The best was the smoked haddock topped with roasted beet and and a orgeat emulsion. The wonderful unilateral daurade or sea bream was crispy browned with eggplant puree and crunchy carrots shavings.  My first course of  stuffed small calamari with broccoli puree was bland and uninteresting except for the charcoal tuiles.  A shared dessert of caramelized brioche was dry  with drops of pureed nectarines and white chocolate too small to savour, but saved by an excellent almond milk ice cream.

The sommelier Clement was wonderful, letting me have a few sips before deciding which bottle to choose.  Ambiance was  young and energetic with music a little too loud for my ears.

By the time we left, there were still quite a few of the Kurdish stores open, so I popped in my favorite to pick up imported Greek yoghurt and filo dough before heading home.

Sunday morning, I took bus 68, and got off at Opera to experience Paris without cars, except for taxis and buses.  The over all quietness was at first almost shockingly strange, but oh so welcome.  Last summer I experienced the same on the Champs Élysée during a farmer’s market, but here in central Paris it was even quieter!

I saw mothers jogging  behind baby strollers on Avenue Quatre Septembre and it was nice crossing streets easily anywhere without lights.  Some side streets looked desolate in the warm morning sun.

I turned on Rue Montmartre heading south towards Rue Tiquetonne and again Rue Saint Denis just above Les Halles, to check out this les gazons, or “grass lawns” supposedly set out on the sidewalks.

Those patches of real grass were very spotty, but at least there was some effort to turn these ancient streets into miniature grassy lawns decked out with chaise lounges and plants.

I couldn’t leave the area without walking down Rue Montorgueil as the food merchants were trying to clear out their sunday vegetables with fabulous sales.   Every Parisian knows that the best bargains can often be founded at the end of the marches and today was no different.

Three  boxes of raspberries for 3 euros and an astonishing two bunches of the purplish tiny artichokes called “poivrades” here, had me already seeing them in a red wine ragout. Out of season asparagus, obviously imported from Peru, I snatched up 3 bunches for 5 euros; a real steal!

They were heavy on my lap riding bus 38 back, but since I missed meeting some chefs at a  marché for Fete du Gastronomie, at least I had some edible treasures to take home.  The rest of the afternoon would be devoted to Fête des Jardins.

You can see some fabulous hidden gardens during this event in Paris and all around France that generally are not open to the public.  The French president’s estate and the Prime Minister’s garden, I reported on in  previous blog posts.

This time I wanted to go to the Horticultural Center of Paris at Rungis.  This is where the city of Paris grows all sorts of seasonal flowers to decorate the various many parks, plazas, streets, and public places throughout the whole city of Paris! They also have their tree farm here too, to supply new and young specimens as replacements for the thousands of trees that line Parisian avenues and parks.

It is only open to the public once every two years, so I definitely wanted to take advantage of this opportunity now! Rungis is renowned for being where Les Halles food markets was transferred and it is about 15 miles south of Paris near Orly airport.

The greenhouses were growing thousands of winter flowers, such as pansies and primulas that will be planted in November, able to sustain their bright cheerful colors despite periods of freezing cold.  Hundreds of densely budded chrysanthemums were projected to be in full flower to decorate city cemeteries  on November 1, a national bank holiday here to honor the dead.

Likewise vast numbers of Poinsettia of all colours were undergoing their 14 hours of dark periods per day needed for the plant to produce its famous red, pink, and white flowering leaves in time for Christmas.

There were also greenhouses devoted to producing indoor plants that are used to decorated the cities 20 town houses and the central mayoral office of Hôtel de Ville such as cyclamens and spathiphyllums seen in the photos.

All green houses are fully automated by computers that insure proper lighting, temperatures, humidity and water distribution that would be made to any specific PH as needed. Only organic fertilizers are used and only predators insects and pheromones are used to keep garden pests away.

He went on to add that Paris did not use any chemical  fertilizers, nor chemical insecticides at all for the hundreds of gardens and parks thought out the city, making Paris indeed a very green environment, except for vehicle pollution.

They demonstrated a very ingenious seeding machine made in Italy, that used a vacuum to suck up only one seed at a time to deposit in the little cubicles of medium.  The gardener was quick to point out that pansies are very picky about soil types and would only prosper really well in a special mixture.

Adorable sheep are used to keep the grass and weeds trimmed and the one with horns was happily munching away on straggly tree branches.

In the tree farm, there were demonstrations of machines that scoop out tall trees ready for bagging and transport to be replanted in the parks and sidewalks.  They too have several greenhouses for growing baby trees.

After successfully answering all the questions on a quiz, given out at the beginning of the guided tours, we were all awarded a small plant of our choice.  Children were invited to choose and repot flowers of their choice too, so no one left without garden goodies.

We ended up getting red sage, a succulent, some orange dangling begonias and parsley plants before heading home.  Wow, what  treats just for the asking!

Just about every weekend in Paris, there is usually some féte celebrating something year round or  spectacular events for free.   Next weekend is Nuit Blanche and Féte de la Science, again one of my favorites!

Just one of the many reasons to love this incredible beautiful city where you can always find the most interesting things to learn , to see or  be dazzled by, all for free, or at the worse a few pennies!