Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Thursday, Nov. 16, 2006 - 3:50 p.m.

Updated 11/17 to thank more of you

::sigh:: Almost time to go home. :(

I had an excellent dinner tonight with Marie-Pierre and Marion. They treated me to a goodbye dinner at Le Quinzi�me, a restaurant operated by new celebrity chef Cyril Lignac, who is a pretty big deal here. His restaurant is pretty new and very plush. The table chairs are these cushy, velvety, heavy chairs more like armchairs than dinner chairs, though they don't actually have arms. People swoop in on you as soon as you get near the door, opening it for you, taking your coats and scarves, ushering you to your table and seating you, bringing you things, taking things away...and not just one person, more like 3. The water is bottled Evian, not a carafe. There's a whole range of bread choices, offered to you from a cool wooden box tray with gleaming silver tongs. People cheerfully and professionally pour, serve, carry, clear, move...you hardly have to lift a finger. They darn near feed you. The table was very nicely set, too. :) The chairs are camel-colored and the table and platewear is all immaculate white, gleaming silver, and spotless glass.

So anyway, we got all settled in and ordered, and our yummy peach kirs and these cool olive and parmesan crudites appeared by magic before you could blink, and then a guy glided in with this rectangular black china server thing with a glass cylinder containing 3 little demitasse spoons and 3 little square glass containers that had a toothpick-speared fricaseed shrimp suspended across the top, over chestnut mousse layered over some other sort of creamy substance. The chestnut was a little sweet while the white was kind of truffle-y, and the shrimp was a little salty. It was really good. As soon as we finished, the guy who brought the shrimp swept the empties away and another came around with the pretty, pretty bread tray and our waiter brought a little rectangular black slate (yes, slate; as in, the stone) butter tray that had a little swirly cone of salted butter and a smooth bevelled cube of unsalted. When our dinners came, MP's and Marion's were on these gigantic white porcelain square plates, which was pretty hysterical, because their dinners were your typical gourmet, hyper-expensive movie dinners: tiny. They each had 3 tiny little slices of veal filet mignon, a tablespoon-sized dollop of sauteed mushrooms in some kind of sauce (and I forget the kind of mushrooms), and a serving spoon-sized teardrop-shaped dollop of pureed pumpkin. My dinner arrived on a black slate slab that was raised about half in inch off the table by little slate legs, and was 3 long, narrow "macaronis" (more like small mostaciolle tubes) stuffed with 'Morilles' mushrooms, topped with melted parmesan and drizzled with mushroom sauce, with arugula scattered around it. It was really good, but really rich, so I shared the last of it with MP and Marion. I had a nibble of everything they had too, and it was awesome. That pumpkin puree stuff was incredible. My bread was insane, too. It had some kind of nuts in it, and the outside edge was nice and crispy, while the inside was firm without being mealy. Really good stuff.

When we finished, an armada of guys swept in to take away the plates, scoop up the crumbs and pour more wine, then a girl brought us CARAMBAR MOUSSE!!! It was served in these little glass bowls shaped like the bowl of a martini glass and sitting on top of glass cylinders half-filled with blue water and a piece of dry ice, so they were all billowy and frothy as you ate your mousse with another little demitasse spoon. The mousse was the lightest, airiest mousse I've ever had in my life, and insanely good. Seriously, awesomely good. With little crunchy bits of Carambar sprinkled on top. I can't tell you how good it was, it was just so awesome. We all agreed Berthillon needs to come up with Carambar ice cream, it was so delicious. And the presentation rocked. :) (yes, i am just that much of a kid still, that i love dry ice. mix dry ice with a yummy treat, and you pretty much have a totally kickbutt crowd pleaser, in my opinion)

The girl came to take the remains of our dry ice away, and dessert arrived. I had what was basically moelleux au chocolat, with praline ice cream that was surprisingly not overly sweet or at all buttery, and had these really cool strawberry sprinkly things scattered across it and the moelleux. they were really tangy and heightened the whole taste experience. :) MP and Marion split the dessert sampler, and I'm tellin' you guys, I have never seen a bigger plate of dessert in my entire life. There was an entire moelleux and then 2 adorable samples of every thing on the dessert menu, and I would imagine they were presented exactly like the full sizes would have been, but in miniature. The whole thing was served on a platter about 10x20" big, with all the desserts artfully arranged and then different colored items sprinkled around the edges - little minced pieces of mint, those strawberry sprinkly minced pieces I had, nuts or toasted coconut (i don't know which), and cocoa. They had 5 or 6 samples plus the moelleux, and they let me try them too, and they were insanely delicious. And as if all that weren't enough, on the way out, the hostess handed us little bags with marble cake inside of them - "for breakfast." How cool is that?! That Cyril guy rocks. :) And so do MP and Marion, for treating me to such an awesome dinner and fabulous dining experience! :)

And for those keeping score, it lasted 3.5 hours. Can I just say how much I love the 3.5 hour dining experience? :)

After dinner, we all walked to the Metro together, then MP headed off one way on Line 10 while we went the other, and Marion and I parted ways at LaMotte Piquet. I needed some water, which necessitated swinging by my little late-night market, and the nouvelle beaujolais are coming out, which is cause for celebration here in the heart of wine production world, so L'Os a Moelle had a brass band to celebrate it, and the place was packed. I stood outside watching people swing dancing to "Tequila" and cracking up at the guys in the band, some of whom were wearing outlandish costumes or wigs. One guy was completely decked out as his version of Elvis, which necessitated the prerequisite gigantic black pompadour wig, but then he was wearing some kind of vest over a red vinyl shirt with long red sleeves that were slit all over the place, so they were more like strips of vinyl that were cuffed, a gigantic silver conch belt, and the tightest silver lame (lamee? lah-may) pants I have ever seen. Like, seriously, he must have been sewn into them, because I just don't know how he got them on, otherwise. I don't know how they were keepin' it together, either. I have never seen a pair of pants more tightly stretched across someone's ass in my entire life. The whole outfit was so outlandishly incredible, I laughed when I first saw him.

From there, I got my water and headed home, and I kinda wanted to cry realizing that tonight was the last time I will make the walk from my Metro home. Tomorrow I turn my key over and will spend the last 2 nights I'm here at MP's. So tonight is my last time here in my little house. I did cry a little when I got here. It's sad. I love my little house. I like my neighborhood. I love Paris and the Metro and the freedom I have here. I love that there are more museums here than you would ever think possible for one city to have, and the fact that nearly everywhere you look, there's something old, historical, and ornate. Paris totally has my heart, you guys. It's part of me. It's romantic and beautiful and cantankerous and stodgy and artistic and creative and traditional and full of life and sound and smell. Every day is a sonnet, even when it sucks. It kills me to leave it. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the opportunity and how grateful I am for the experience. TB rocks. This was all his idea, and if he hadn't been so supportive and made it possible, I couldn't have done it. I hope he understands how thankful I am for it and how excited and happy I am to be going home to him. I missed him a great deal. I also appreciate the help I got from people like That33Girlie, who sent me a care package at the time when I most needed one, and Em, who shelled out for a Flickr pro account so that I could continue posting photos. Also Jonny-C, who has been very helpful on the job front. And those of you who commented and emailed were lifesavers on lonely days, so I want to thank you guys, too, for making my time here less solitary.

So now I have to finish cleaning my apartment and doing a rudimentary job of packing so that I can carry everything to MP's, where I will repack it Saturday night, because that bag is the bag with the clothing I will be wearing Saturday and Sunday, as well as all my books and stuff. Most of my stuff will fit in the gigantic Samsonite from Elodie and Arnaud, but not all of it, so I'm in the weird position of figuring out how to portion things out so that TB's backpack isn't underfilled and the things in it get damaged. I think I'm actually taking one of my pillows back with me, if for no other reason I need it to take up space. As I actually like that pillow and plan to replace the one I had back home with it, it's not such a bad thing, but it's the first time I've ever had to actually pad a suitcase. If I didn't have the books I've got to get home, I think I could actually fit everything - including the backpack - in the gigantic Samsonite. Now all I need is a security strap for it and a container for Jonny-C's present so that it doesn't get damaged in transit.

So I'd better get to it; it's 2:30am. I'm trying to pull an all-nighter so that I can hit the Statue of Liberty with Pete tomorrow if it isn't raining, but I'm starting to fade pretty quickly, so I don't know that that's going to work. I guess we'll see. Either way, I'll be up until at least 5.

Peace out,
Katie

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