One way to beat the brutal New York winter storms is to leave, to a warmer climate preferably. El Caribe would have been toasty, but I got a nice hook-up in Paris, what with a standby ticket and a friend’s flat in Asnieres sur Seine. I scheduled my time between bistros, hot chocolate, tea, and pastries, and filled in the blanks with lots of window shopping, being as how the SOLDES signs were everywhere (Mid Jan thru early Feb is a huge sales period in Paris). Luckily for me I didn’t fit into any of those designer mark downs, but I made up for it in eating and drinking. As it turned out the weather was a balmy 40 to 50 degrees with mixed clouds for the majority of the stay.
It is good advice to get recommendations wherever you travel, but especially so in Paris, with three brasseries on every street, the perils are many. I visited a couple of places Anthony Bourdain featured on his show No Reservations: Paris, got some solid advice from El Capitan, and filled in the rest from a very useful guide authored by my friend Michel Abood of Vinotas Selections.
Here is a list of the bistros which ranged from very good to outstanding:
Le Severo
Le Temps au Temps
Le Villaret
L’Ourcine
Frenchie
Le Comptoir
L’Ecallier du Bistrot
Bistrot Paul Bert
In addition there were the wine bars:
Baron Rouge
Juveniles
Willi’s Wine Bar
Avant Comptoir
It is hard adjusting to the NY state of mind, especially with all this ice, but I’m hoping the groundhog is right this time. Fuller reviews and my recs to follow soon.
