Mhaolain's Child, a Renaissance Thinker in a Post-Modern Culture

Chef Daniel Rose and Spring Restaurant: a Perfect 10

 --the 16th-century cellars

Instead of waiting for me to reach a conclusion paragraph at the end of this review, I’ll save you the time by saying up front Chef Daniel Rose’s Spring Restaurant in Paris definitely lives up to its hype. Was it worth the extreme effort to gain a table? Absolutely. Would I go again? In a heartbeat. In fact, I’d put Paris in the Top 5 Bucket List Vacations again just to return to Chef Daniel’s kitchen.

As I began to make my list of possibilities for dinners in Paris, Spring Restaurant very quickly emerged from the reviews as the top candidate for one of our evening meals. It also quickly became the most difficult table to secure as it is one of the few restaurants with almost no access via the internet. One either calls the restaurant directly during the tiny window during which they answer the telephone or one makes a booking in person. Both options proved extremely difficult. I was fortunate to enlist the help of the concierge team at American Express who made a series of telephone calls and reserved 2 spots out of a mere 26 to be seated in the dining room at Spring on our designated evening. (Just days after our dinner Chef Daniel introduced a new schedule offering 2 seatings for dinner and opened up his cellar wine bar to include its tables in Spring Restaurant’s inventory.)

Spring Restaurant offers only a chef’s tasting menu, but who could argue with the offerings from Rose’s kitchen. The 12 tables cluster around the kitchen for a true dinner theater experience. Starting with two amuse bouche, we progressed through six courses of the freshest, most creative culinary combinations I’ve ever tasted. Green peas, lima beans, fish, duck, raspberries, grapefruit all sacheted across my tastebuds, leaving a trail of fairytale magic in their wake. Combinations of fresh herbs, fresh vegetables, and perfect sauces kept each course new and satisfying to the palate. Pleasant banter among the tightly-seated patrons intermingled with comments from the servers as well as from the kitchen staff increased the enjoyment of the meal.

After most of the diners in the main room had reached their final course, Chef Daniel pulled up a chair to chat with me. Among the many conversation threads we pulled was a comment about how a Chicago boy reigned among the great chefs in 21st-century Paris. When I asked Chef if he ever considered opening a restaurant in the USA, he quickly instructed me as to why that was an impossibility. The contents of that conversation will come in a forthcoming post, so stick around.

Though we were unable to garner a table in the main dining room for a return to Spring Restaurant on one of our remaining evenings in Paris, Chef encouraged us to arrive in the hope of getting a bar stool around 7:30pm at the door of the wine bar he had created in the 16th-century cellar of his building. From the bar stools, one could order the main course from the tasting menu served upstairs in addition to ordering cheese and charcuterie plates. Following his instructions to the letter, we had the extraordinary pleasure of eating from his kitchen two evenings in a row.

As I mentioned earlier, two days after we left Paris, Chef Daniel changed the use and schedule of his dining room and wine bar. While lucky patrons who arrive early may gain one of the 6 bar stools in the cellar, the tables down there are now by reservation only. The good news is that Spring Restaurant now offers two seatings, introducing one that begins at 6pm, and has doubled its seating capacity. Furthermore, they are experimenting with an internet-friendly system for booking at least some of their available reservations.

In addition to the building in which Spring Restaurant and the wine cellar are housed, Rose has a wine store across the street. He and his partner host wine tastings there. Additionally, they are building a wine club program to feature their favorite wines from France.

In conclusion, I repeat my introduction. Perfect service, perfect food, perfect wine pairings, perfect setting (the cellars were supposedly built and used by the court at nearby Louvre Palace). The perfect meal may be capped by a moonlit stroll through the courtyards of the Louvre, which sits just a couple of blocks away. Did I mention perfect?

The Jules Verne Restaurant: Scaling the Heights of the Eiffel Tower

One of the privileges of working with A-list clients is that they, like my husband and myself, enjoy intriguing food and wine experiences. Not every dish has to be complicated, nor does every bottle of wine require a pedigreed label. But the flavors and fragrances need to create a memory. As such, it was a thrill to be invited to dinner at The Jules Verne Restaurant, one of the restaurants in famed chef Alain Ducasse's coterie of restaurants. After all, our own president and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Obama, declined dinner at the presidential home of his French counterpart in order to share an intimate dining experience atop this quintessential Parisian monument.

Gaining access to the Eiffel Tower is in itself a difficult task. Long lines exist even for those planners who long ago bought tickets for entry at a specific time and day. Not so for the lucky reservation-holders to the JV, for they have their own private entrance in the South pier of the Tower. At the door, one presents proof of a reservation and is "marked off" the list on the IPad of the greeter. Next, one submits one's purse and jackets for security clearance while the person him/herself walks through the metal detector, much like clearing security at the airport. The Tower is often a target of bombing attempts, so I didn't mind the security efforts at all. After security clearance, six lucky people board the glass-sided elevator that whisks its riders more than 400 feet (actually, 125 meters) up the side of the mighty Tower. The ride is slow enough to get up-close and personal with the rivets and beams that make up the structure.

Stepping out of the elevator, we found a restaurant that is gleaming with granite, marble, polished wood, and floor-to-ceiling windows. The tables are arranged to afford every diner, even those not immediately adjacent to the window, a glimpse of the view. Our table was perpendicular to the windows, and, though I was not seated window-side, I had a breath-taking view of the sunset over the suburb of Paris they call "Little Manhattan."

While each diner has the option to choose individual dishes to compose his/her meal, our group opted for our table to enjoy the Menu Degustation, including a wine sampling paired with each course. Lest anyone worry about the tolerance of this tiny Southern woman, let me say that the pours were indeed mere sips designed to accompany the small servings of each course.

Our meal began with beautiful cold soup amuse bouche and champagne. (Real Champagne, I discovered, doesn't taste much like the "champagne" we get in the South. Turns out the French keep the good stuff to themselves.) The courses progressed through lobster starters, entrees of fish and then pigeon, followed by a dessert with raspberries, and, finally, chocolates. By the time the chocolate grand finale came, I was very happy I'm not a dessert fan. The food was delicious, a wonderful sidebar to the gorgeous view. The service was genial, just the right amount of personal banter between servers and patrons. Its tempo was appropriately measured, never too fast nor too slow. Very professional.

One interesting facet of the restaurant itself is the ingenious design of the restrooms. I felt like I was in one of Jules Verne's novels or a Star Trek set when I waved my hand over the beam to open the door. The room was almost entirely encased in black marble that sparkled. It gave me the feeling of being in a pod hurtling through the depths of darkest space amid twinkling stars and planets.

Now, for the big question -- would I return to the Jules Verne on a future trip? Absolutely, IF I was an invited guest. If I was on my own nickel (or Euro), probably not. The meal was very good, but nothing was so good it made my eyes roll back in my head. As my week in Paris progressed, I would have dishes that indeed made my tastebuds dance a tango and at a significantly lower cost. However, nowhere else in Paris could you have the combination of such good food and luxurious service with such a breath-taking view. I'm privileged to have enjoyed the experience once in my life. But, it was an expensive experience, and I'm very grateful to my gracious hosts.

If I'm ever back in the City of Light, I think I'll take a picnic up to Montmartre and watch the sunset over Paris from up there. Less cost, less pampering, but the same gorgeous view, only that one includes the Eiffel Tower.

So Many Restaurants, So Few Days: Dining in Paris

One of my favorite facets of planning any business or pleasure trip is the process of choosing the restaurants at which we will eat. Whether it’s choosing to buy groceries at the local farmers’ market for a picnic or to dine at a storybook restaurant, I love to make my way through other diners’ experiences and reviews to gain my own perspective and fix our itinerary. In addition simply to creating a Google search, I also search websites like Frommer’s and Fodors’ travel forums, Chowhound, Yelp, and TripAdvisor. It’s amazing what a search engine will turn up these days, both positive and negative. Most restaurants have their own websites, Facebook pages, and Google map pages that have pertinent information as well as reviews. I read most of these reviews word for word in order to see how similar the reviewers' situations and expectations are to my own. Often, I disregard a negative review merely because my parameters are dissimilar to those of the reviewer.

As I began the process of choosing restaurants for our Paris trip, I had very few prerequisites. First, since I was gathering information for my restaurateur client, the restaurants had to receive favorable reviews consistently from the Paris food bloggers, like the team at ParisByMouth. It’s one thing to wow the tastebuds of your diners on a single evening and another thing altogether to do so on a regular basis (which is why I love Nashville’s Virago). Secondly, the restaurant needed to offer me the opportunity to book my table in advance so my itinerary was in place for both my clients’ sake as well as for my own interest. Thirdly, I wanted restaurants we could walk to from our apartment, or at least walk easily from the Metro to the restaurant, which is the case for almost any restaurant in Paris. Fourthly, I wanted restaurants that offered creative contemporary food like that of my client, restaurants that did not rest on the recipes from 50 years ago. Finally, I wanted restaurants that didn’t cost an arm and a leg for a meal.

Even though we had 7 nights in Paris, it was a monumental task to select only 7 restaurants for dinner. That final parameter, the cost, helped eliminate many of the Michelin-starred restaurants of Paris. Ultimately, however, we were privileged to be included in a dinner party at one 5-star restaurant, The Jules Verne Restaurant atop the Eiffel Tower. With Sunday night set aside for our business dinner party, I had six slots to fill and thousands of likely candidates.

As such, I narrowed my parameters further to include only those nearest the apartment where we stayed. Directly across the street from Notre Dame Cathedral, this apartment served as a perfect location for both my business interests as well as our vacation ideas, being in the center of the heart of Paris. Therefore, I decided to limit our choices to restaurants located in the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 6th arrondisements of Paris. This limitation helped narrow the field tremendously.

In addition to reading the online reviews of my dining possibilities, I discovered the French version of Open Table, an online booking/review site. La Fourchette offered an incredibly easy solution to very long distant booking. Later, after I had completed my reservation process, I discovered another online booking resource, Book A Table. This site offers additional restaurants to those at La Fourchette. Yum.

Finally, my list narrowed to eight restaurants: Spring Restaurant, Ze Kitchen Galerie, Les Bouquinistes, Mini Palais, Sola, Flottes O.trement, Bar a Manger, and Christophe. Reservations at five of the eight were attainable either via La Fouchette or by directly emailing the restaurant. Unfortunately, because he required telephone booking, I removed Christophe from my list, thinking I might drop in for lunch. Albeit Spring also required telephone booking, I determined we were going to eat there, so I enlisted help to get that reservation. Ultimately, we arranged to have dinner, in chronological order, at Jules Verne, Ze Kitchen Galerie, Les Bouquinistes, Spring Restaurant, and Sola. We booked lunch at Flottes O.trement, Bar a Manger, and Mini Palais, again based on the neighborhoods we were visiting on a particular. As the day unfolded, we were unable to eat at Flottes O.trement as a business meeting conflicted with that reservation. Additionally, we spent one day visiting Versailles, where we were invited to a fantastic lunch at Veranda Restaurant at the Trianon Palace Hotel. Wow! But more about that spot on another day.

If I can make one suggestion to fellow foodies, it is to avoid trying to fill every meal with a storybook restaurant. How much more delightful to pick up a quick bite at a recommended wine bar or a crepe stand or to collapse into the seat at a strategically situated cafe to fill your eyes as well as your tummy! Be armed with options, but be ready for spontaneity. I had a short list for each day of bars and restaurants in the neighborhood we visited that did not require reservations, though most days at lunch we just dropped in to spots along our path or bought picnic supplies to eat in one of Paris’ many parks.

If I go back to Paris soon, will I choose to return to my carefully selected restaurants? Some, yes. Others, no. My reasons will be revealed as I review my chosen restaurants.

Each year, my job as travel matchmaker becomes exponentially easier with the availability of information on the internet. Sifting through all the information is a fun though sometimes frustrating job. And the best part -- I don’t gain weight just reading about the food.

--Hungry for Paris by Alexander Lobrano served as a trusted guide through the maze of restaurants.

Visiting Paris: a Costuming Conundrum

I have long been one to immerse myself in the culture of the people I am studying. Whether I'm researching family history documents or patterns for business clients, I set aside the time in which I live and attempt to imagine myself as a contemporary of the people about whom I am reading. This mindset serves as my travel guide as well, for when I travel I try to assimilate with the people I'm visiting. As I prepared to return to France, I remembered the times in years past when I had lived there, and I determined that, until I opened my mouth to speak my heavily Southern-accented French, no one would know I was an American, not because I'm embarrassed by my nationality but because I want to take on the culture of my vacation spot. I remembered from my school days there back in the 1970s disparaging elder French citizens who looked on all non-French natives as interlopers to be snubbed. I confess that I had more than a few qualms about this trip to France.

However, I found an entirely different attitude among the French during this most recent trip. Perhaps it's because France has so many immigrants or because their young people no longer settle in their home towns (sounds globally familiar, n'est-ce pas?), but I found the French people to be cordial, helpful, and welcoming. While they didn't go out of their way to lend assistance to travelers confusedly studying maps (they left that task to me, the helpful American), they were gracious to a person, from the ticket seller in the Metro to the gardener at Versailles. They suffered through my Southern-laden French and indulged me with slow, kindergarten-level replies that I could easily understand. "Vous parlez le francais? Quelle Surprise!" was a remark I heard often, laced with appreciation that I put forth the effort to speak their language instead of imposing English on our conversations. 

One reason they had no idea I was not French before I spoke was that I determined to avoid wearing the typical costume of the American tourist. You know the look, clunky white tennis shoes and summer beach clothes. Just as I always teach my theater and Rhetoric students, one should costume oneself according to the role one is playing. If you are going to Disney World, by all means wear shorts and tennis shoes. But, this is Paris, home of Balmain and Jean Paul Gauthier, Chanel and YSL. As such, I carefully packed black pants, crisp white shirts, and a jacket to go with my Ecco walking shoes, then a LBD and wedges for dinner. Perfect! And the best part was that all my clothes fit in my rollaboard suitcase.

With this mindset, I often sat at cafes and watched the people go by. It was interesting to me to notice a distinct lack of American travelers outside of Paris. Most of my fellow travelers were French-speakers, families on holiday in the wine-producing countryside. This microcosm was not so in Paris, though, at least at the tourist sights where busloads of American and British students and Asian tourists converged on Notre Dame, St. Chappelle, and the Louvre. And, yes, most of them wore the tell-tale white athletic shoes of tourists.

In defense of, however, and perhaps contrast to my fellow travelers' attire, I must comment on one of the latest fashion rages for summer in Paris -- the return of the Short-Short.  With increasingly warm temperatures enveloping Paris, most French women choose dresses and skirts as their summer frock. But last fall the Paris Fashion Week shows highlighted short-shorts as an alternative to skirts for the spring/summer 2011 season. And not just shorts and sandals. No, these shorts are worn over colorful tights or sheer stockings with high heels, wedges, or even boots. I thought I had been teleported back to 1974! I also noticed that Parisian women of all ages most often wore stockings, even with sandals. I seldom saw a bare leg under a dress. Furthermore, contrary to the mantra of "Parisians always wear muted neutral colors," the most popular color for this season's fashions, both for men and women, is a brilliant purple. It's a gorgeous color that I love to wear. I loved to visit the Saturday market where the colors of the produce vied with the colors worn by the chic women of Paris. So much for neutral....

Albeit, my geographic setting in Tennessee will not permit me to wear shorts with tights or even hose during the summer. After all, it's only June, and the temperature is already tapping on the door of 100-degrees hot. Nevertheless, I will be interested to see how purple short-shorts worn over tights and boots make their way into Nashville fashion. After all, Paris is the fashion capital of the world, mais oui!

The Matchmaker's Life: Souvenirs from the Villages along the Path of Life

Like most people who have reached "middle age," I often reflect on my life's path. Its general direction is somewhat as I had envisioned it as a child and a teenager, but it's the details along the path that are radically different. The seasons of my life, like villages in Tuscany, have similarities but are truly unique in appearance, context, and purpose. For instance, my first job during undergrad studies was as an assistant to the fashion buyer at a Memphis department store. Then, just out of grad school, I served as the Assistant Director of a graduate school's library, again researching concepts, purchasing goods, and processing them to the shelves. The next season of life saw me as a young homeschooling mom and manager for my husband's growing business. This common theme of research, seeking solutions to questions, designing appropriate processes to reach those solutions, and implementing those solutions seems to follow me from village to village along my path. About four years ago, I decided to put these skills to use in my own production management firm, a business my friend Shelia Mullican calls Matchmaking. 

Matchmaking, by its very definition, requires a network of acquaintances. I marvel that, as I've wandered through the villages along my path of life, I've met so many wonderful people. Artists, technicians, logitians, historians, celebrities, medical persons -- people from every walk of life with every personality temperament. Now, after walking so far along my life path, I can almost always come up with a "match" when my clients and my friends need help or merely need a new friend. I'm always saying, "You need to meet (fill in the blank)." Like said friend Shelia, to whom I'm forever sending running partners who then become so much more than running partners.

My most recent matchmaking project allowed me to overlap the research for three clients, all of whom are in the food and beverage industry. One is a restaurateur, one a winemaker, and one an organic gardener. My research took me on a storybook trip -- to France. My husband went with me, suffering through winetastings and 6-course meals, tours of vineyards and biodynamic gardens. It was hard work (wink, wink). Now that I've made my reports to my clients, I thought I'd share some of my findings and observations with you. So for the next several days, I will post on food, wine, restaurants, fashion, and my renewed love of France. Stick around. This section of the path is great!

Cut out of Granddaddy's Will: the Truth in Family Lore

Yesterday, I had the privilege of sharing Sunday lunch with some of the descendants of my great-grandparents, Georgia Spray McMillen and Mont McMillen, who lived and died in Lincoln County, Tennessee. Mont and Georgia had 9 children (that I know of). I descend from their youngest son, John Robert, who was born in 1897 when Mont and Georgia were both 40-years-old. (They had one more child, a girl, born in 1900.) While most of the children of Mont and Georgia were named the poetic popular names of the late Victorian era, my grandfather was named for both his grandfathers, John Spray and Robert McMillen. My father bears that name, too, as John Robert McMillen, Jr. We consider ourselves fortunate to have the privilege to be the links between family past and family future.

...Which is another reason we set aside vacations to keep this appointment with an ever-shrinking group of extended family members. Yesterday, my dad and one cousin were the sole grandchildren of Mont and Georgia present at the lunch. I can remember a time during my childhood when not only Mont and Georgia's family gathered but also Mont's sisters' families came to eat, sit in the shade, dip their toes in the lake, and share family stories. There were hundreds of people laughing and singing away the hot summer afternoon. Now, maybe 30 of us gathered. However, among the 30 was a great-great-grandson who bears the patronymic McMillen, though he has the good fortune to have missed the bald gene. David was the one this year who came to me, saying, "They say you are the one who has the family history." That phrase is music to my ears. 

I gave David much more information than he really wanted to know. You see, some people want only the names and dates for their forebears. Not me; I want to know everything I can find about the lives they lived. As I opened my notebooks and showed censuses, military records, marriage licenses, newspaper clippings, the family always asks, "Where did you get that?" To which I can only say, "I had to work to find it." But it's joyous work for me, even the work that leads merely to discarding a possible family tie because rejecting a path always leads to finding the true path.

One of the most important clues we have to ponder in family history research is a family story. You know the kind. "My great-grandmother was a Cherokee Indian princess." "Her daddy cut her out of his will for marrying Great-Granddad Absalom." These stories actually belong to my Whitsett family history, though I have no evidence to prove either story. They seem very unlikely, given the information I have on this family line. But there is almost always a nugget of truth in family lore, which is why I found a comment from my cousin David McMillen yesterday extremely intriguing. He told me he had always heard that our family had come to America because our immigrant ancestor had lost the castle in a gambling debt. Hmm. That's a new one for me.

Believing that there is truth in all these stories, I'm tumbling this story over in my mind. I will not reject it outright, though I am the one who discovered the immigrant ancestor and I know intimately his story. But I am willing to consider that this gambling debt might have occurred after they reached the shores of South Carolina. Perhaps they didn't lose a castle but instead lost a farm on the edge of the Georgia frontier. Perhaps it refers to the details I don't have of a maternal line, like that of my Great-Great-Grandmother Margaret Griffin McMillen. Her story is layered in heartache and mystery.

Nevertheless, I have a mystery to ponder this summer, much better than the new novel I just began. Where was the "castle," who lost it, and what was the gambling wager? Look out, John Grisham. This story will be a good one.

**The castle pictured above is Castle Sween, situated on a lonely, isolated loch in southwestern Scotland,  near Knapdale. It was home to my ancestors Alexander Macmillan and his wife Erca MacNeil during the mid-1400s. Neither he nor his children lost the castle by gambling. The Campbells took it in battle.