This is not an easy task, and have written briefly on my favorite restaurants of Paris in my blog. However, felled needed to be back to tell you more about the my memorable restaurants of my eternal Paris !!! These were all with nice anecdotes. Therefore, here is my take on my restaurants in Paris, part III !!! Hope you enjoy it as I.
The Pâtisserie Stohrer, the oldest pastry shop in Paris, was founded in 1730 by Nicolas Stohrer, pastry chef to King Louis XV. This institution on 51 Rue Montorgueil has all the makings of a legend… A sumptuous decor designed by a student of Paul Baudry (who worked on the decor of the Opéra Garnier). A temple of sweet and savory delicacies, where everything is made on-site to offer, century after century, the best of classic French pastries. Rum babas (invented by Nicolas Stohrer), puits d’amour (wells of love), old-fashioned religieuses, exceptional bouchees à la reine… Faithful to tradition, the Dolfi family, who hold the reins of the Maison, strives to perpetuate the spirit of Stohrer by drawing on an exceptional heritage and the expertise of its team of pastry chefs. Nicolas Stohrer Pastry Chef to Stanislas Leszczynski, former King of Poland, Duke of Lorraine, and father of Marie Leszczynska, future wife of Louis XV. He is the creator of the rum baba, a legendary recipe born from a kouglof deemed too dry by Stanislas, which the pastry chef washed down with Tokay wine (rum was added later) or Malaga wine, according to differing versions. He is also responsible for a number of other great classics of French pastry, from the chiboust tart to the puits d’amour and the religieuse à l’ancienne. pastry chef, of course, but also confectioner, oubloyer, gastelier, pain d’épice, waffle maker… With Nicolas Stohrer, the pastry chef has ceased to be simply the one who makes various savory “pâtés” to embrace all the facets of sweet, without departing, obviously, from his famous bouchees à la reine, of which he was the inventor, and which still have all of Paris running to this institution on Rue Montorgueil has all the makings of a legend…
The Rue Montorgueil (see post) is in the current 1er and 2éme arrondissements ,and in the Montorgueil quartier or neighborhood of Paris, its southern section in the 1er arrondissement, its northern section in the 2éme. It begins in the south, behind the Saint-Eustache Church, at 2 rue Montmartre and 124 rue Rambuteau, and ends 360 meters to the north at the intersection of 1 rue Léopold-Bellan and 59 rue Saint-Sauveur. To the north, Rue Montorgueil is extended by Rue des Petits-Carreaux (see post), The Rue Montorgueil is served by metro line 3 at Sentier station and line 4 at Les Halles and Étienne Marcel stations.
The official Pâtisserie Stohrer of Paris : https://stohrer.fr/
The Paris tourist office on the Pâtisserie Stohrer : https://parisjetaime.com/eng/shopping/patisserie-stohrer-p2596
The Restaurant Polidor located at 41 rue Monsieur Le Prince is a dairy-restaurant founded in the early 19C. Primarily a dairy from 1845, it became a full-fledged restaurant from 1890. Why not better take a condense history from their official webpage, As such, it is one of the oldest bistros. Already frequented in the 19C by poor artists such as the poet Germain Nouveau, who praised the establishment’s cuisine, the Polidor quickly became a must-see for working-class society. It offers simple, Parisian, homemade cuisine at competitive prices. Its tables d’hôtes have seen Sorbonne students, residents and employees of the neighborhood for over 150 years. This restaurant is also famous for having served as a landmark for the neighborhood’s artists, notably the assemblies of the Collège de pataphysique from 1948 to 1975. The restaurant has thus welcomed Ionesco, René Clair, Paul Valéry, Boris Vian, Paul Émile Victor. Not to mention further back in time Verlaine, Rimbaud, Jean Jaurès, James Joyce, André Gide or Ernest Hemingway, whose meeting at the Polidor with the hero of his film “Midnight in Paris” was filmed by Woody Allen. In the cellar of No 41, that of the Polidor, a vestige of this historic rampart extends to rue Racine. The “Crapouillot” of April 1960 recalls in this regard the “reunited cooks” of rue Racine in 1948, whom Daumier nicknamed the “saucialistes”. The same “Crapouillot” evokes the Polidor, “a 22-cent restaurant in the Belle Epoque where starving philosophers and less fortunate poets met”. To explain the name “Crèmerie-Restaurant” still used today by the Polidor. This name appeared in the second half of the 19C. Originally, catering was only occasional. Milk, eggs, and cheese were sold there, and soon they were “served” to a morning clientele, mainly female. At the end of the century, some “crèmeries” became real small restaurants. Like Verlaine, who had lunch there in 1893 in the company of Enrique Gomez Carillo, a renowned Spanish journalist, and often returned there with Rimbaud, who was staying at the time on rue Monsieur le Prince. Verlaine continued to be present at the Polidor: the “Friends of Verlaine” Association still meets there regularly. Pierre Benoît mentioned the Polidor in his reception speech at the Académie Française. Pierre Béarn, Ange Bastiani, Ernest Hemingway, André Gide, Paul Léautaud, Paul Valéry, to name but a small number, become familiar, often everyday figures. And James Joyce, the author of the famous “Ulysses,” whose wanderings in the Latin Quarter “in search of a broth on rue St-André-des-Arts or an omelet at Polidor” are recounted by Jean Paris in his “James Joyce by Himself.” book,
The rue Monsieur-le-Prince is located in the quartier or neighborhood of Odéon in the 6éme district or arrondissement of Paris. The street meets the following streets : Start: Carrefour de l’Odéon, Rue Dupuytren, Rue Antoine-Dubois, Rue Casimir-Delavigne, Rue Racine, Rue de Vaugirard, End: Boulevard Saint-Michel, This site is served by metro lines 4 and 10 at the Odéon station. Also ; by the RER A Luxembourg station. It is so named because of the proximity of the Hôtel du Prince de Condé, the first prince of the blood of France. The rue Monsieur-le-Prince was first a path that ran along the walls of Paris. In its section between Boulevard Saint-Michel and Rue de Vaugirard, in 1770, the King acquired from the Condé family the land on the site occupied by the hotel. This complex, between Rue de Vaugirard, Rue Monsieur-le-Prince and Rue de Condé, would allow the city to build the Comédie-Française theater, which later became the Odéon theater. (see post), In 1804, Generals Charles Pichegru and Georges Cadoudal, an emblematic figure of the Chouannerie (a civil war that pitted Republicans against Royalists in the west of France, in Brittany, Maine, Anjou and Normandy, during the French revolution) organized a plot against the First Consul, with the aim of kidnapping him. After Pichegru’s arrest, Cadoudal was arrested on March 9, 1804, on Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, after a chase and after killing two officers. He was guillotined on June 25, 1804. Notable buildings here are at No. 2: a building of three facades, overlooking the Rue de l’Odéon, the Carrefour de l’Odéon and the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. It is part of the housing estate built at the end of the 17C on the land freed up after the destruction of the Hôtel du Prince de Condé. It was at this address that the painter Théophile Vauchelet died on April 22, 1873, where he had his studio and home. The sociologist Albert Bayet lived there from 1910 to 1961. No. 4: Named Hôtel de Bacq or Hôtel de Darlons, the original building, of which only the gate and the window remain, was built in 1750 on the site of the stables of the Prince of Condé for Pierre Darlons, secretary to the Prince of Condé. No. 10: Auguste Comte lived on the second floor of this late 18C building from 1841 to 1857. He received members of the Positivist Society in his apartment, and wrote his last volume of the Cours de philosophie there, devoted essentially to sociology. The apartment has been restored and transformed into a museum. No. 14: This four-story, attic-style building, made of brick and stone, in the neo-Louis XIII style, has a carved wooden door with a pointed lancet arch, on which lean two female sculptures, one representing a libertine and the other a studious woman. A mascaron adorns the tip of the lancet. The wooden tympanum is pierced by a window with a wrought iron sill. The composer Camille Saint-Saëns lived in this building from 1877 to 1889, as did the doctor and man of letters Adolphe Piéchaud and the black American writer Richard Wright from 1948 to 1959. No. 15: L’Escale, the oldest Latin bar in Paris. A meeting place where during the 1950s and 1960s, legends of Latin (Hispanic and South American) music performed in its cellar, from Paco Ibanez to Violeta Parra (who lived on this street for a few years in the early 1960s). It was in the Latin American excitement surrounding this cabaret (sometimes renamed “peña” for the occasion, like the Latin Quarter renamed “Barrio Latino”) that groups like Los Incas, Los Calchakis, Los Machucambos were born, which, along with a few others, were at the origin of the extraordinary revival that Latin and Andean music experienced in France and Europe in the second half of the 20C. Other great Latin names would follow in their footsteps, such as Tito Puente (king of salsa), and Yuri Buenaventura. No. 16: Society of French Poets. association founded in 1902, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Victor Hugo, by José-Maria de Heredia (born Cuba), Sully Prudhomme, Léon Dierx and Alcanter de Brahm. No. 36: first Parisian home of the singer Charles Aznavour, where he lived until adulthood. He mentions the street in his song Autobiographie (1980) , No. 41: the restaurant Polidor (see above and pic) is one of the oldest Parisian bistros It was at the Hôtel d’Orient, located above the restaurant, that Arthur Rimbaud, French poet, settled in 1872, on his return from Charleville. He will not stay there for very long, because in November, he moves into the Hôtel des Étrangers, located at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Michel and Rue Racine. No. 54: On October 1, 1654, Blaise Pascal ,French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, moralist and theologian. He settles at this address, then Rue des Francs-Bourgeois-Saint-Michel. He will stay there until June 29, 1662, when, ill, he is taken to his sister’s house at 67, Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine. On November 23, 1654, Pascal experiences “the night of fire” which he recounts in the Memorial,
The official Restaurant Polidor of Paris : https://www.polidor.com/
The Paris tourist office on the 6éme arrondissement de Paris : https://parisjetaime.com/eng/article/explore-paris-s-6th-arrondissement-a823
The restaurant Le Procope,located at 13 rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, and founded in 1686, remains Paris’s most iconic café, steeped in history and literature. Hidden in the heart of the bustling quartier or neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and in the 6éme district or arrondissement of Paris, one of the city’s oldest treasures. What better way to describe its history than from its official webpage, Le Procope has now become the oldest café in the world. An elegant literary café, popular with artists, thinkers, and intellectuals of the time.. You may not know this, but it was one of the first cafés in the world to serve coffee, at a time when the drink was still considered absurd. This elegant venue, which rivals the finest literary salons, quickly became a veritable haunt of the philosophers of the Enlightenment. Diderot, Voltaire, and even Rousseau are said to have remade the world here by candlelight. Legend also says that it was in the heart of the Procope that the idea for the Encyclopedia was born… Another historical anecdote: Benjamin Franklin is also said to have frequented the premises. It was in the oldest café in the world that the inventor is said to have laid the foundations for the American Constitution. On the eve of the French revolution, the café changed its appearance. It then became a refuge for political clubs, such as the Cordeliers and the Jacobins. Danton, Marat, Robespierre… all entered the doors of the Procope. And it was within these walls that the Phrygian cap, the future symbol of the Republic, was also said to have been worn for the very first time. In the 19C, the place rediscovered its literary essence. The writer George Sand, as well as the novelist Théophile Gautier, and the poets Paul Verlaine and Anatole France, sat there and seemed to find inspiration. In 1883, the Stade Français, one of France’s oldest multi-sport clubs, was founded in Paris, in the salons of the oldest café in the world. Despite its reputation, the Procope ran into difficulties in 1890, the year the café closed its doors for good. It wasn’t until 1957 that a new restaurant of the same name opened within the café’s historic walls. The atmosphere pays homage to the Age of Enlightenment. Woodwork, chandeliers, busts of Voltaire, and ancient manuscripts honor the period decor. Today, the address is much more than a café-restaurant: it is a living part of the history of our beautiful France. Today, it hosts literary awards ceremonies. Among them, the Prix Procope des Lumières, awarded each year to an essay that deals with social issues or discusses philosophy.
The rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie is located in the quartier or neighborhood of La Monnaie of the 6éme district or arrondissement of Paris. It is only 116 meters long, it begins at 67 Rue Saint-André-des-Arts and 1 Rue de Buci and ends at 132 Boulevard Saint-Germain.
The street is served by metro lines 4 and 10 at the Odéon station. The name of this street comes from the theater that housed the Comédie Française from 1689 to 1770. Present since the 15C in the form of an old path running along the Philippe Auguste enclosure which became a street in 1560, it took the name of “rue des Fossés”, then “rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain-des-Prés”, and finally “rue de la Comédie” following the construction of the first Théâtre-Français in 1688. The street took its current name by decree on May 21, 1834 after the relocation of the Théâtre Français to the Palais-Royal in 1799, Notable buildings here are at No. 3: the inventor Roland Moreno a French inventor, famous in particular for having invented the smart card in 1974. He lived there from 1996 to 2006; No. 4: house from 1585, remodeled in the 18C. Wrought iron window sills. No. 5: house from the first half of the 18C. Wrought iron window sills and female mascarons on the first floor. No. 8: plaque recalling that the Dagneau restaurant was located here and that several personalities like Victor Hugo, George Sand, Henry Murger, Frédéric Chopin and Théophile Gautier frequented it. The writer Pierre Bourgeade lived in this building. No. 13: the oldest café in Paris, Le Procope, (see above) founded in 1684 , No. 14: site of the former Jeu de Paume of the Étoile, converted into the Théâtre-Français, known as the “Hôtel des Comédiens ordinaire du roi” On the facade, high relief representing Minerva tracing with one hand what she sees in the mirror of Truth, work of the sculptor Étienne Le Hongre , No. 16: Hôtel de Cahors, where the revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat, a French doctor, physicist, journalist and politician of Prussian origin, lived from 1790 to July 3, 1793. No. 21: here lived the infamous Doctor Guillotin, a French doctor and politician. He is known for having adopted, during the French revolution, the guillotine as the sole method of capital execution. No. 39: here was the printing house where Jean-Paul Marat published L’Ami du Peuple or Friend of the People with a permanent exhibition at the current Le Procope.
The official Restaurant Le Procope of Paris : https://www.procope.com/
The Paris tourist office on the Restaurant Le Procope : https://parisjetaime.com/eng/restaurant/le-procope-p3345
There you go folks, eternal Paris has an ever lasting good repertoire of restaurants and for all tastes! I just like to have again, not just my favorites, but those that gave me a nice anecdote of good memories. Again, hope you enjoy this post on my restaurants in Paris, part III !!! as I
And remember, happy travels, good health, and many cheers to all !!!
Paris1972-Versailles2003 