Road Tips

Le Centre by Georges - Lyon, France

About 8 years ago on a trip to France with a number of our North American dealers, I stayed at the same hotel in Lyon - the Hotel Carlton.   One of the dealers, John Barnes from Denver, was telling me that the restaurant next to the hotel, Le Centre by Georges, was owned by a highly-rated and award winning chef and it was his goal to have a meal at the place when we were there.  He invited me to join him for lunch one day when we had some free time on our own, but I ended up going out with a couple of my dealers who made the trip over.  He spoke highly of the restaurant and I felt bad for not having lunch with John that day.  He was such a friendly guy and he tragically died of a heart attack less than three years after our trip to France.  On our trip to France earlier this year, I finally had the chance - along with my colleagues who made the trip - to go to Le Centre by Georges one evening.  

The Georges behind Le Centre by Georges is Georges Blanc, a highly respected and award winning restaurateur and hotelier whose eponymous restaurant in Vonnas, FR has held three Michelin stars - the highest award available - for 35 years.  Georges Blanc came from a family lineage of chefs - his mother was the chef of the family restaurant and inn before Georges took over in 1968 after graduating from culinary school and a stint in the French Navy (as the chef for an admiral).  Georges' grandmother - Elisa Gervais, also known as La Mère Blanc - ran the restaurant in the family restaurant garnering her first Michelin star in 1929 and a second one two years later.  She was famous for her Bresse chicken dishes - Bresse chickens are French-raised and are considered the finest table-served chickens in the world.  Georges Blanc is the chairman of the French association that oversees the proper way to raise Bresse chickens and they're still served in his restaurant today made with the same recipes handed down from his grandmother.

Pictured right - Georges Blanc

The inn in which the family's restaurant was located dated back to the early 1870's.  After Blanc took over the restaurant, he transformed the inn into a high-end boutique hotel.  He eventually took over other properties near the inn, adding a farm-to-fork bistro, three more hotels, a spa, shops and a garden area making the Village Blanc in Vonnas - about an hour north of Lyon - a famous and popular French getaway place.  

In addition to the two restaurants Blanc runs in Vonnas, he also owns seven other restaurants including Restaurant Le Saint Laurent in Macon, Restaurant Rouge et Blanc in Romaneche Thorins, and two restaurants in Lyon - Brasserie Le Splendid and Le Centre.  Each of the Georges Blanc restaurants have a different personality and menu.  

My colleagues and our host from our factory met up in the bar at the Hotel Carlton to have a couple drinks before walking literally next door to Le Centre which is located at the corner of Rue Grolée and Rue Jussieu on the peninsula between the Saône and Rhône Rivers in central Lyon.  (see map)   The restaurant, which opened in 1990, features contemporary fixtures mixed with large arching windows.  Along one wall were a number of proverbs or quotes in French from famous philosophers, artists, statesmen and authors such as Confucius, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Jefferson, Woody Allen and Henri Matisse.  

We were escorted upstairs to a small dining area that had similar decor to the main dining room with more proverbs and quotes on a wall, then around a corner to a smaller room with wonderful historical photographs of Lyon that was semi-private with one large table with 10 place settings.  There were only 8 of us there that evening as two of my colleagues didn't make the trip to France this time.  

Le Centre is basically an upscale steakhouse serving Black Angus beef.  And they had something on the menu that night that basically caught our interest - a 1 kilogram bone-in chunk of beef (about 2.25 pounds) that they would carve at the table.  It was served family style with fries, veggies and a salad before the meal.  We signed up for 4 of those bad boys after debating whether or not we should just get 3.  After I pointed out that the bone was part of the weight, we went with 4.  

Of course, we needed to have appetizers before the meal.  One of the plates featured a coconut-battered shrimp that came with some greens and a Rochefort cheese dressing.  I'm not big on coconut all that much, but these were pretty good.   

And foie gras was part of the appetizers, as well.  I love foie gras, but it doesn't like me because it's so rich for my stomach.  But it seemed like it would be a waste if I just left this chunk of foie gras on the plate with a balsamic drizzle on the side.  I had to have a couple bites.  It was killer.  

The salad was a mixture of greens, endive, tomatoes and red onions and topped house-made croutons with a creamy ranch-style dressing.  Everything was crisp, cool and fresh.  

But the highlight were the cheesy rolls that they served with the salads.  These had a hard outer edge with a wonderful cheesy taste and a spongy inner core that was warm and flavorful.  Oh man - I could have eaten a dozen of these things.

Finally, the steak came out - two at a time.  We had ordered a medium and three medium rare, so two of the medium-rare ones came out first.  As two waiters brought out our sides and placed them on the table, two other waiters were cutting the meat on carts next to the table.   

These were serious chunks of beef.  It took the waiter about five minutes to slice and remove the bone and fat from the beef.  We all waited patiently as they completed their carving.   

This was one of the medium-rare steaks before we dug in.  I've had Europeans tell me that they just can't get beef there like they can in the United States.  But this looked pretty darned good to me.  

Cameras came out from every direction at the table to document the food fest we were getting ready to have. We had multiple bottles of the Domaine Chevalier Pere et Fils Ladoix Crux, a full-bodied red that went well with the beef.  

The steak was very good - some of the best steak I've ever had in all of my travels to France.  Flavorful and juicy, the steak was lean and tender.  Along with the steak came frites (French fries) that were cooked perfectly with the crispy outside and the flaky and moist inside, mixed vegetables, a type of creamed corn, and fresh bread rolls.  Alas, they were not the wonderful cheese rolls.  

We were almost able to finish all four of the chunks of beef.  The medium-rare ones went quickly.  Only a couple guys were focused on the medium steak.  It was a lot of food and I was stuffed.  Well, until they brought out the dessert menu.  I had to try the lemon tort with an orange merengue topping.  Oh, God, was it good!  It was light, but still very rich.  I couldn't even begin to finish the whole thing, but I was very happy to have a few bites.  

Above right is a decadent chocolate cake dessert that was covered with a white cream frosting, then drizzled in creamy milk chocolate and served with a scoop of caramel ice cream.  It just looked decadent and rich.  I was offered a bite, but I was getting to the limit of bodily explosion if I had another bite.  

Finally, one of my colleagues got what was basically French toast served with dollops of a maple-flavored spread.  My colleague John said this thing was heavenly, but very rich.  I was happy with what I got with the lemon tort/orange merengue dessert.  But looking back, the French toast with the maple spread would have been the thing for me to get. 

During our meal, I thought a lot about John Barnes and the food that he raved about during his visit 8 years ago to Le Centre by Georges.  Finally having the chance to eat there, I could fully understand what he was raving about.  Everything - from the appetizers, the salad, the steaks, the sides, the desserts, to the wonderful wine we had, and even the service - was excellent.  One of my dreams would be to get to Vonnas to experience George Blanc's 3-Michelin Star restaurant, but just being able to eat at Le Centre by Georges was a wonderful treat.  

Le Restaurant du Musée - St. Etienne, France

On my first trip to France over 13 years ago, the first French meal I had was actually in a modern art museum in St. Etienne - Le Restaurant du Musée.  When we were over in France visiting one of our factories earlier this year, we were treated to a return visit at Le Restaurant du Musée.  It brought back a lot of memories of my first trip to France and I was happy that we were going back on this visit.  

Le Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain - the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art - opened in St. Etienne in 1987.  Initially, it was part of an industrial museum that also had a wing devoted to museum artifacts from the mining industry in the St. Etienne region.  St. Etienne is a highly industrialized city - there are over 400 manufacturing facilities in the city of 175,000 people - and it was the center of French arms and ammunition industries that date back to the 16th century, mainly due to its close proximity to metal mines in the mountainous region surround the city to the south and west.  (As an aside, St. Etienne is also an international "sister city" to Des Moines, IA.)  

The museum houses over 19,000 pieces of art, many of them contemporary pieces, but they also have some ancient pieces of art, as well.  There are works of art from Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and surrealist Victor Brauner.  Many of the more well-known works of art are regularly loaned out to other museums.  I've been to the restaurant twice now without going into the museum, itself.  

Le Restaurant du Musée features an ever changing menu of fresh and seasonal items.  Chef Stepháne Laurier mirrors the spirit of the museum by offering a contemporary mix of farm fresh items, fresh baked breads, and light lunch meals.  (Le Restaurant du Musée is open only for lunch to the public with evening dining for groups by appointment only.)   

The entrance to the restaurant is to the right as you walk into the main entrance to the museum.  As you can see from the picture at the top of the post, the entrance to the restaurant is pretty subdued.  There's a couple doors with portal windows and a small sign with the restaurant's name on the wall.  

Inside the restaurant, the lunch time crowd was in full force with the restaurant nearly full.  Our hosts had made previous arrangements and we were seated in a smaller room off to the side where tables were set up for larger groups.  The main dining room featured a small bar with contemporary tables and chairs throughout the room.  Contemporary paintings hung on the walls throughout the main dining area.  This was as close as I got to looking at any of the works of art at the museum.  

After we were seated, a waiter brought over a chalkboard with the day's menu on it.  Our hosts - and my colleague Francôis - were able to translate the menu for us.  I was able to pick out "poulet" (chicken), "boeuf" (beef), and "poisson" (fish), as well as "fromage" (cheese), "avocat" (avocado) and "champignons" (mushrooms), but didn't know the accompanying words describing the dishes.  

The three course lunch consisted of a salad for starters, a main entree and dessert for a fixed price.  Starting out there were two salads - an avocado salad with shrimp and mango slices with greens on the side, and a fresh greens salad with a mushroom purée on the side topped with a cream dressing with bacon bits.

I went out of my comfort zone on the salads and I got the avocado salad.  It was cool and creamy with the great avocado taste.  It had the consistency of guacamole, but didn't have the guacamole taste.  The mangos were fresh, sweet and citrusy.  Coupled with the small shrimp on the plate, the avocado and mangos went well with them.  

My colleague Matt got the salad with the mushroom purée and the way he raved about it, I was sort of unhappy I didn't get that salad instead.  But I liked what I got and that was that.  

For my main entree, I took the chicken.  It was a chicken breast that was cut and rolled around a filling of prosciutto and Fontana cheese.  The chicken was on a bed of stewed mixed vegetables.  The chicken was fine - it was a good hearty meal for a lunch.   

The other entrees included torbet - a flat fish that is found in the Mediterranean Sea just three hours south of St. Etienne.  I don't think anyone got the torbet, but the other entree was a locally raised chunk of beef that was resting on a bed of mashed potatoes and the same stewed mixed vegetables that I had with my chicken.  More than half the table got the beef entree and all seemed to like it.  

For dessert, the choices were a pomegranate puree with a side of sorbet, a cheese plate or a strawberry cake.  I went with the pomegranate and sorbet - and I'm glad I did.  The taste was simply outstanding.  This, alone, was worth the whole price of admission.  The puree was sweet, tart and refreshing.  Taking a small bite of the sorbet after a spoonful of the pomegranate puree helped cleanse the palate for the next bite.  The taste just exploded on the tongue.  The avocado salad was refreshing in taste, the chicken was more neutral and comforting, but the pomegranate puree was a "wowzer!"  I'm big on creme brulée when I go to France, but this beat any creme brulée I've ever had in all my travels to France.  

It's sort of interesting to eat in a museum and Le Restaurant du Musée is a special place for me as it was the place for my first French meal on my first trip to the country nearly 14 years go.  While I don't remember much about the first meal I had, this meal will be long remembered for the pomegranate purée dessert.  The chicken entree I had was fine and interesting, while the avocado salad was a nice start to the meal.  Maybe on one of my future trips to the factory in St. Etienne we'll be able to have lunch here again and then linger in the museum to see some works of art and to walk off the hearty meals they serve in the restaurant. 

 

Le Comptoir d'Ainay - Lyon, France

Our last night in Lyon, the upper management from the factory we were visiting invited us out to dinner.  The CEO, the director of products, and the international sales manager met our small group at a place not too far from our hotel, a little restaurant by the name of Le Comptoir d'Ainay.  (The Counter of Ainay)  We had eaten at some wonderful restaurants during our stay in France and we knew going in this would be no exception.  

Le Comptior d'Ainay has been in business for 5 years, owned by Claire Dreyer, with her kitchen headed by Marseilles native Chef Romain Renard who once worked under the renowned New York chef Daniel Boulud.   The restaurant is located in what is known as the Ainay section of Lyon which is known for their antique shops in the area.  The centerpiece of the neighborhood is the Basilica of Saint-Martin d'Ainay, a Romanesque church where parts of the building date back to the 11th century.  It was about a 15 minute walk from our hotel through Place Bellecour to Le Comptior d'Ainay on a cool, moist night.  (see map) 

Le Comptoir d'Ainay is a small, narrow restaurant with a small bar up toward the front of the restaurant.  We were seated along a wall with banquette bench seating.  The menu was in French on the wall above where we were seated.  Many of the items on the menu are selected based on their freshness and locality.  While it Le Comptoir d'Ainay had a somewhat upscale menu, I didn't feel that there was an ounce of pretentiousness with the staff.  

After getting three or four bottles of the Saint-Thomas red blend, we just started ordering up the food.  I started out with the foie gras ravioli - plump foie gras wrapped inside pillows of ravioli pasta and served in a beef broth with fresh parsley sprinkled on top.  These were just outstanding.  The foie gras was flavorful, but the broth gave it a bit of a salty and savory flavor.  Foie gras had upset my stomach earlier in the trip and I said that I wouldn't get it anymore.  But the foie gras ravioli was just too tempting to pass up and I'm glad I got them.

My colleague Francois was seated near me and he got the prawns topped with greens with sort of a guacamole spread with a passion fruit emulsion.  The presentation was superb and he said that the combination of the flavors with the guacamole, fresh greens and the prawns were outstanding.  The prawns and the foie gras ravioli were a popular choice.  Also on the starter menu were regular foie gras, an artichoke salad with prosciutto and parmesan cheese, and a salmon tartare.  

After a lemon and white wine aperitif to help stimulate our appetites, the main entrees showed up at the table. I got the Spanish wild pig shoulder served in a mushroom/brown gravy sauce.  New potatoes came with the pork shoulder.  The pork was slow-cooked, cut into thirds and topped with fresh parsley.  It was tender and had a great taste.  I was more than happy with my selection that evening.  

One of our hosts seated next to me got the duck breast placed on top of a bed of risotto topped with chips of parmesan and sprouts.  That, too, was a popular dish at the table.  The duck breast had been cut in half and pan fried.  I like duck, but it's almost too rich for me.  

The person on the other side of me got the shrimp cannelloni - two pasta shells stuffed with chopped shrimp and covered in a white wine sauce and topped with rosemary and parsley. The description of this by one of our guests who was translating the menu was mouthwatering.  I came about *this* close to getting this dish based on the description, but I was happy with my pork.      

My colleague Francois got the roasted lamb with mixed vegetables in a peppered brown sauce.  Lamb in Europe is better than lamb in the U.S., in my opinion, and this would have been a close third in my choices for dinner.  We traded pieces of my pork shoulder and Francois' lamb, and the bite of lamb I had was excellent.  He, too, thought the pork shoulder was very good.  "I almost got that," he told me.  "I was hoping someone would get it so I could get a bite of it!"  

My colleague Ian got the steak - a 250 gram (about 9 ounce) beef filet that also had new potatoes and a mushroom sauce like my pork shoulder.  Ian had three or four steaks while we were in France and he said this one was the best one of all that he had.  

The meal was very good, but we also had to get dessert.  I decided to break up my crème brulée routine by going with something that turned my head when it was mentioned - an orange cheesecake.  It came with a sugar crisp wafter with mint leaves embedded in the cheesecake.  Oh, God!  This was heavenly!  The cheesecake came with an orange emulsion that gave it a bit more of a citrus taste.  A couple times I stopped and shook my head side to side just taking in the unbelievable taste sensation of the orange cheesecake.  

My colleague Francois is big on dessert.  More than once we've waited on him to finish his dessert when everyone else was too full from dinner to eat a dessert.  This time, he got something that could only be described as two sugar crisp wafers with a lemon cream bedding in between.  

They also make their own ice cream at Le Comptoir d'Ainay and my colleague John got the lemon ice cream. It was more creamy than a sorbet.  I wanted to get all three of these desserts as I'm a sucker for anything lemon in a dessert.  But the orange cheesecake was one of the most memorable desserts I've ever had.  

Actually, the whole meal at Le Comptoir d'Ainay was quite memorable.  The Spanish wild pig shoulder was delicious, tender and full of flavor.  My foie gras ravioli was simply delectable and very interesting.  And the orange cheesecake with the citrus sauce was off the charts great.  Everyone raved about their meal and we were very thankful to our hosts for treating us to such a culinary experience. The overall meal I had at Le Comptoir d'Ainay was simply one of the finest meals I've had - ever.  

 

 

Le Rest'o du Champ de Foire - Bourbon - Lancy, France

During our trip to France, we took a nearly 3 hour trip up into the heart of the country to the small town of Bourbon-Lancy.  It's located on the west edge of the Burgundy wine region and the history of the town goes back over 2000 years.  It is centered in the middle of ancient Gaul and featured a medieval walled city within the town.  Bourbon-Lancy is where our speaker manufacturers cabinet factory is located and we were there to tour the new plant they built last year.   For lunch, they took us to a little place by the name of Le Rest'o du Champ de Fiore, a farm-to-fork auberge-style restaurant in the heart of the small town.  (See map)

Champ du Fiore literally means "the Fairgrounds", but I didn't know if there were any fairgrounds in the vicinity.  The restaurant was similar to any number of small restaurants in the heart of France.  It was a basically a small two room place with a series of tables.  It was clean, comfortable and cozy.  Most of the people in the place were locals in for a quick and good lunch.  

There was a nice little bar area in the front room and they had an interesting wine selection.  As a group, we ended up getting a couple three bottles of a Givry pinot noir that was from a winery in the heart of the Burgundy wine region.   

We were seated in the backroom of the place along the wall at a long table.  There was a salad bar that we were invited to peruse first - I don't remember if I got anything at the salad bar.  Lettuce was one of the things that I've gotten sick on in France in the past and even though I was popping a couple of Xifaxan's a day to help make sure that I didn't get a stomach ailment, I passed on the salad bar.  

Our choices of food was pretty limited - they only had three things on the lunch menu that day.  They had a Charolais beef filet with fried potatoes that I went with.  The beef was tender, juicy and full of flavor.  The steak was topped with a dollop of herbed butter.   I almost went with the hamburger that was topped with pan-fried foie gras instead of the beef filet.  My colleague John went with the hamburger and he declared it to be one of the best tasting burgers he'd ever had.  Even for as good as my steak was, I was envious of him and his burger.  

The other thing available for lunch that day was some sort of a French game hen.  One of our hosts was trying to describe it to us - it wasn't a quail or pheasant, nor was it chicken or a cornish hen.  Some of the guys in our group got it and they all said that it tasted very good.  It was served with broccoli and fried potatoes.  

Of course, there was dessert after the meal.  Everyone knows my fondness for crème brûlée - I think I had crème brûlée after every lunch and dinner during my first trip to France over a dozen years ago.  They had a little dessert buffet set up next to the salad bar and they had small bowls of crème brûlée in addition to fruit bowls and small pastries.  While it wasn't the best I've had, it was still good.  It's tough to find bad crème brûlée in France.  

This was a nice little lunch in a small French village.  These auberge-style restaurants are all over the French countryside and Le Rest'o Champ de Fiore was pretty good in its own right.  My steak was fine - not as good as what you'd find in the States - but it was good for French beef.  (Europeans who I know who come to the U.S. are always wanting to go to steakhouses because the beef is so much better than what they get on the continent.)  I really wish I would have gotten the burger, however.  My colleague said it was a great burger and I'm hoping I get the chance to get back to Bourbon-Lancy at some point to go through the cabinet factory and for the chance to get the burger at Le Rest'o Champ de Fiore. 

Le Grand Buffet du 1810 - St. Etienne, France

During a recent trip to France, we were at one of our factories for meetings and some refresher trainings.  For lunch one day, they took us to a place that looked promising from the outside - a place called Le Grand Buffet du 1810.  It's part of another more upscale restaurant by the name of Les Vieilles Pierres - the "old building" in French - a dance club by the name of Club 1810, and a wine bar simply called The Cave.  As the name of the buffet implies, the building dates back to 1810, over 200 years ago.  

A couple of our guys had been there before for lunch on previous visits to the factory.  We were told that the restaurants changed hands in 2015 keeping everything pretty much the same as it's been for a number of years.  It was a favorite place for our factory to take people - as in "a good value".  It was €22 euros - or $25 dollars - a person for wine, lunch and a dessert.  Not quite a cheap lunch as compared to the U.S., but not too bad for French standards.  The lunch buffet is served Monday through Saturday starting at 11:30 a.m and ends at 3 p.m. - or 15:00 as the French call 3:00 p.m.  

The interior of the place was a mix of old world brick walls and modern lighting and decor.  The low-slung ceiling gave it sort of a cozy feeling to the place.  My seven colleagues were joined by a number of people from our factory's office staff.  There's a bar in the room and a number of bottles of wine were ordered for our lunch. 

(As you can probably tell, I'm really trying to put my best face toward this place.  I'm not big on buffets and I know it was quick and inexpensive - to our hosts standards.  I tried my best to go along with the flow.) 

The menu at Le Grand Buffet du 1810 changes on a daily basis.  They have one side that is basically cheese, breads, veggies and salads.  It was pretty picked over by the time we had gotten there and they didn't appear to be bringing out a lot of things to replenish that part of the buffet.  

The other side had the hot entrees - some sort of a veal stroganoff, lasagna, some white fish, some pasta, as well as potatoes and some other earthy veggies.  To me, the pickin's were slim.

Now, I've gotten sick on nearly all of my previous visits to France - some sort of a stomach thing.  I made sure that I wouldn't get sick this time by getting a prescription for Xifaxin.  So far on this trip, the Xifaxin had done its job, but I was careful.  I tried to stay away from dairy - especially milk, which I love.  And I tried to stay away from rich foods - like duck that got me sick last time - and seafood - which got me sick a few years ago.  (I've had trouble with salmon ever since.)  So, my diet in France was pretty bland.  

I had some bread - French baked bread is the best in the world - and I took some of the lasagna, and I took some of the veal stroganoff.  Both were, well, not good.  At least I didn't think so.  Some of my colleagues thought their lunch was fine, but I guess it's just my aversion to most buffets that put me in the mood to not like much - if anything - of what they had out that day.  I did enjoy the bread, though.  And the wine. Immensely...

So, OK - I've had a number of meals in France over the years.  A number of those have been some of the most memorable meals I've had in my life.  But this meal at Le Grand Buffet du 1810 was nowhere close to the level of any good meal I've had in France.  To me, it just wasn't all that great.  It may have been the worst meal I've ever had in all my visits to France.  Given the number of good to great bistros in any city in the country, I don't know why anyone would want to visit a buffet. 

Blend - Paris

My colleague, Simon, had taken a vacation earlier in the summer to Paris with his wife.  One afternoon I was sitting in my office and I got a text message from him.  He texted, "When you come here for your training, if you want a VERY good burger, try 'Blend' - it's awesome!"  I talked to my colleague Ian about going there and while he didn't initially seem to be too whippy to go have a burger in Paris, Simon's exuberance about the place pretty much convinced him that we needed to give the place a try.  After getting into Paris via taxi from the airport, checking into our hotel and settling in, we set out to find Blend.  

After years of Frenchmen looking down their noses, decrying the burger as "American culinary scourge", they're beginning to become a staple in the French diet as they are in the U.S.   Since the culinary arts run deep in France, the quest to make the "perfect" burger has become a holy grail for many French chefs.  And Blend founder Victor Garnier is one of those who believed that he could make a burger that the French would favor.  

Garnier was an French foreign exchange student living in Malibu (What a great place to be an exchange student!) and he fell in love with American burgers.  The In-N-Out "Double Double" became an all-time favorite of his, but then he was exposed to gourmet burgers that featured blended meats.  He traveled across the U.S. trying a number of different burgers before going home to France.  

Garnier knew that there were gourmet burgers at high-end restaurants in Paris, but he wanted to bring a gourmet burger to the masses.  He came up with the concept for Blend and set out to develop a burger that was worthy of French culinary standards.  

He turned to artisan butcher  Yves-Marie le Bourdonnec, the owner of the famous butcher shop - or boucherie - Le Couteau d’Argent in the Paris suburb of Asnieres, to come up with the right blend of meat for his new venture.  Le Bourdonnec has long been a supplier of top grade beef to restaurants in Paris and his philosophy of the best type of burger is a lean mixture (no more than 5 to 8% fat versus muscled beef) and grinding the beef for nearly immediate consumption.  Using matured beef from both France and Ireland, Garnier and le Bourdonnec worked for a year to come up with the right blend that would be flavorful, but not so expensive that normal French people would have to dig deep in their pockets to enjoy.  The mixture of meat is sent to Blend each day and "minced" (ground) as needed in the kitchen.  

Pictured left - Yves-Marie le Bourdonnec and Victor Garnier.  Picture courtesy Philippe Servent Photography.  

Once Garnier conquered the correct blend for his burger meat, he turned to an American ex-patriot - Camille Malmquist - to help make the artisan buns and desserts that he envisioned in his restaurant.  Malmquist was a pastry chef from the Pacific Northwest who worked in restaurants in the U.S. until she moved to Paris in 2008.  In addition to working in restaurants in Paris, she is also a writer and has contributed to on-line web sites such as Secrets of Paris and Girls' Guide to Paris and she also has her own blog site - Croque Camille - but she hasn't had much action on that lately.  She also wrote recipes for buns and desserts in Victor Garnier's 2013 book Hamburger Gourmet.  A girl after my own heart, Malmquist is also a beer connoisseur and her quest is to seek out good beer in what is a burgeoning craft beer scene in Paris.  

Garnier then consulted with a French cabinet maker who ended up making the tables and butcher block stools with the Blend hamburger logo embedded in them.  With everything in place, Garnier opened Blend in 2012 and it was an immediate hit.  It was called by one reviewer as "The Best Hamburger in the Capital."  Due to popular demand, a second Blend location was opened in 2013 and a third location opened earlier this year.   

Our hotel was less than a 10 minute walk from the original Blend location.  Well, it would have been less than a 10 minute had my internal GPS been functioning.  I always get screwed up with directions when I go to Paris.  My sense of direction is completely out of kilter.  And because the streets don't always go North/South or East/West, I have trouble figuring out where I am.  (Downtown Minneapolis is the same way for me.)  What got me this time was going through the circle at Place des Victories.  We took the wrong street spoke off Place des Victories, not once, but twice.  Plus it was starting to rain.  Ian took a look at the map that was provided for us at the hotel and said that maybe we needed to go another direction.  Down a street, then a quick turn on Rue d'Argout and we found Blend.  (see map)

It was around 1 p.m. when we got there and, understandably, the place was packed.  Blend is not a big place to begin with.  It seats - maybe - 30 people if you cram everyone in. There were a number of people milling about in front of the place, but it turned out that many were waiting on orders to go.  We stood under a canopy out of the drizzling rain and took a look at an English menu one of the young ladies up front gave to Ian.  When a table came open about 10 minutes later, we went inside.

The menu isn't long at Blend - four different burgers, a grilled chicken sandwich and a veggie burger.  It was a pretty easy pick for both of us - we went with their signature Cheesy burger that is topped with cheddar cheese, bacon, zucchini pickles, fried onions, iceberg lettuce and housemade ketchup.  We both got an order of French fries with the housemade ketchup.  

The burgers came out and they were cut in half.  The bun was fluffy with lots of air pockets in the crown.  The cheese was oozing off the top of the burger.  It was a thick burger, I'm guessing probably the equivalent of a 1/3 of a pound.  And the taste was, well, it was exquisite.  It was different.  It wasn't like an American flat-grilled or char-grilled burger.  It almost tasted like it was steamed.  The blend of the meat was quite possibly the reason.  The grind was very fine and held together very well.  The total taste of the burger was excellent.  This was truly an outstanding burger.

The fries were sprinkled with fresh parsley and they were crispy on the outside and spongy on the inside.  They were fine along with the housemade ketchup that had a sweet vinegar taste to it.  But the star of the meal was the burger.  

Even Ian - who was initially disdainful of Simon's suggestion - said that he thought the burger at Blend was very good.  And it was.  This would be a great burger place if it was anywhere in the States.   Even weeks after we were in Paris, Ian and I are still extolling the virtues of the burger that we both had at Blend.  The French are definitely catching up with the Americans when it comes to good burgers. 

A la Chataigne - Paris

On our first full night in Paris, my colleague Ian - who is a wonderful planner when it comes to finding restaurants - made reservations for us at a little bistro by the name of A la Chataigne.  The restaurant features a number of Mediterranean-style dishes on the menu and it sounded interesting to Ian when he found it looking through La Forchette (The Fork) before we came to Paris.  By booking the meal through the web site, we were able to save 20% on the cost of the meal.  

Chef Yann Rebillard is the man behind A la Chataigne (which translates into "chestnut" in English) and many of his dishes are centered on rustic Corsican recipes.  Many of the dishes feature wild game or beef-based items.  

Now, Paris really screws up my internal GPS.  Streets don't necessarily run north and south, the Seine curves through the city and that affects street plots, and when it's cloudy and rainy - as it was that evening - I can't get a bearing on directions.  In what would have been a normal 20 minute walk from our hotel, Ian and I wandered about for over a half hour before stumbling upon A la Chataigne on Rue Miromesnil.  (see map)

Our reservations were for 7 p.m. - actually that's quite early to dine for most Parisians.  And because of that, we were the only ones in the small restaurant when we got there.  We pretty much had our pick of where we wanted to sit.  We took a small table along the wall.  

As we sat down, the lady who would be our server told us in broken English that their credit card machine was broken and that we'd have to pay in cash.  Ian said that he could go get a couple hundred Euros out of an ATM, but he needed to find out where the closest one was.  The lady told him that she knew of one a couple blocks away, so Ian set out on his quest for cash.

After returning with money, we got into the meat of the menu to check to see what they were offering that evening.  The first thing that I found on the menu was the beef carpaccio.  Only this carpaccio was a little different than what I've had in the States.  This carpaccio came with a honey balsamic drizzle and strands of an herbed mayonnaise sauce.  The taste of the combinations was wonderful.  Carpaccio on its own is pretty darned good, but the drizzle and the herbed mayo gave it a little more pizazz.

Ian ordered the charcuterie plate - a mix of housemade sausage chunks and thinly sliced ham and prosciutto.  Ian offered a couple bites of the ham and it was pretty salty, but very fresh in its taste.  

For my main entree that evening I thought about getting a steak, but then I saw something on the menu (by the way, they did have an English menu for the Anglos) that completely intrigued me - Ox cheeks.  Ox cheeks can be difficult to prepare because the meat is so lean that there's always the danger of overcooking it.  But these were slow-cooked Ox cheeks in a subtle sauce.  They pulled apart pretty easily and the taste was, well...  All right, I guess.  They seemed to be rather earthy in taste, not anything that I've ever experienced.  But I decided that I liked it enough, but not certain I'd order it again if I saw it on the menu.  I shared some with Ian - he's had Ox cheeks before - and he said that it was very good as far as Ox cheeks go.  

Ian got the veal chop - a massive one, at that.  He sort of chuckled when it was set in front of him and he just said, "Oh my!"  But he said the flavor and the tenderness of the veal was wonderful.  He shared a cut of meat with me and it was very good.  The veal chop had sort of a reduction sauce on it that had a bit of a spicy blend to it.  Even though I liked my Ox cheeks, I REALLY liked the veal chop. 

By the time we were finishing our meal, the place was beginning to fill up.  For a little restaurant in Paris, I was happy with my meal at A la Chataigne.  I got to open up my culinary horizon a little more, the service was very good and the atmosphere was cozy and homey.  I would have no problem giving A la Chataigne a high recommendation to try if you get to Paris.

Le SO - Paris

On my last full day in Paris earlier this year, I was still feeling a little queasy from my bout with what was either food poisoning or my body's rejection of a very good - and very rich - duck entree I'd had a couple days prior.  Our host from Devialet, Julien, specifically asked me what I'd like to have for lunch.  I had managed to down a croissant at breakfast along with some water, so I thought I could go for something a little more substantial, but not exotic.  I said, "You know, I think I need just a good ol' burger."  He knew exactly where to take us, a little bistro not far from the office by the name of Le SO.  

Le SO is one of those little Parisian bistros that isn't very big and features a small bar, sidewalk dining and a number of very uncomfortable chairs that are extremely too close to the floor to get in and out of.  We walked less than two minutes down Rue Montmatre to the corner of Rue Paul Lelong and to Le SO. (see map)

Le SO is named after the owners of the place - the initials of their first names are S and O - and features a menu of organically raised foods.  Their signature dish is their Le SO burgers which are all made with organic beef.  They also have organically raised chicken sandwiches, a veggie burger, and a handful of entrees including a steak salad, veal Milanese (a breaded veal cutlet), shrimp and quinoa, and an Argentinian organically-raised beef filet.  

Each of us went with the SO burger - organically raised beef topped with Comte cheese, fresh greens, sliced onions and served with a small splash of their homemade ketchup - which was more like a 1000 Island dressing - on the side.  They offered three or four different types of buns including a peppercorn bun.  I was intrigued by a peppercorn bun and I ordered that with my burger.  Well, actually, Julien ordered for me as the waiter didn't speak English.  But something got lost in translation as I got a sesame seed bun instead of the peppercorn bun.  We got a small bin of French fries to go along with our burgers.

Now, I ordered my burger cooked "medium".  There's a distinct difference in what the French call medium versus what we call medium in the U.S.  My burger was what I would categorize as rare.  And with a still somewhat queasy stomach, I was having a hard time downing the burger.  The taste of the meat was very good - don't get me wrong.  But I've had stomach problems with rare burgers in the past and coming off a previous stomach-issue episode, I didn't want to tempt fate a second time in Paris.  I had about half the burger before I decided that I couldn't - or wouldn't - eat any more than what I had.  

It's somewhat interesting that the burger revolution has hit in Paris, as well.  The organic beef is a huge key to the flavor of the burgers at Le SO.  It was a good burger, but was overly undercooked for my taste.  It may have been because both Julien and Ian had ordered their burgers as medium-rare and they cooked them all the same.  In any event, what could have - and should have - been a pretty good burger at Le SO was disappointing to me. 

Le Point Zero - Paris

Lunch in France is a little different than what we do in the U.S.  In France, lunch is a time to take step back from work, sit back and enjoy the food.  It's a 180-degree turn from how most American's spend their lunch time hurrying to get something to eat, then hurrying to finish their food, then hurrying back to work.  During our business trip to Paris to visit the folks at Devialet, we were treated to lunch on our first full day in Paris at a little bistro not far from the company's main office - Le Point Zero.  

In front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, there is a small brass compass star that signifies THE central point in Paris and the point where every distance is measured in the city.  Brothers Christophe and Laurent Guyader took the name of their little bistro from that landmark.  Along with chef Evangelos Guitry-Azam, they came up with a concept where the can go in any direction with the food they serve.  Le Point Zero is part bistro, part resto/bar, part "farm-to-fork" French auberge, part "fast food" (as much as a sit down restaurant can be fast food in Paris).  

It was less than a 3 minute walk from Devialet's main offices down a narrow side street to Le Point Zero. (see map).  The small bistro had a main dining room, but also featured a private dining area in the lower level as well as one on the second level of the building.  We took a seat along the wall of the restaurant.  Our server came over with a small chalk board that served as the menu that day.  Le Point Zero's menu changes periodically as they're searching for the freshest items depending upon the season.  

With our host Julien translating for us, the main entrees that day included a strip steak, a duck breast entree, a couple three seafood entrees, a salted pork knuckle dish, and a chicken breast entree with noodles.  They also had a burger on the menu - one that someone seated next to us got and it looked damned good.  But I was in France - in PARIS!  I wanted something exotic.  

I can't do seafood in France - I've gotten sick twice on seafood on previous trips.  And I try to stay away from lettuce and similar greens (sick on my very first trip nearly 12 years ago).  But the duck was calling my name.  Julien was explaining to me that it was actually strips of duck breast formed together in sort of a duck breast roll.  That sounded intriguing to me.

Julien knows that I like beer and he suggested a Paris microbrew that Le Point Zero served by the name of Gallia.  Gallia was a beer brewed in Paris as far back as the late 19th century.  About 50 years ago, the Paris brewing operation closed up.  I was told that for awhile after that most of the Gallia beer came from Romania.  It was still billed as "Paris' Beer" even though it was no longer brewed in the city.  Two young entrepreneurs felt it was time to bring Gallia back to Paris and they bought the Gallia name and opened their own brewery.  The Gallia I had - the Blonde - was actually pretty good.  

We all got gazpacho as a starter for our meal.  The deep orange color of the chilled soup came from the tomato base that was pureed with fresh vegetables.  Fresh chopped herbs were sprinkled on top of the gazpacho before it was served.  It was thick, zesty and very flavorful.  It may have been the best gazpacho I've ever had.  

My colleague Ian and our host Julien got the sirloin strip stak for lunch.  It came with a bed of peas and chopped potato cubelets.  A small pad of melted herbed butter came on top of the pan-grilled steak.  Both Ian and Julien said their steak was "good".   

Looking back, I wish I would have gotten the steak.  Or even the very good burger that I saw.  Oh, it wasn't that the duck was bad.  Quite the contrary - it was fabulous.  As Julien explained before I ordered, they took strips of duck breast and wound them together before it was broiled.  With a honey wine sauce and topped with fresh rosemary and thyme, the duck breast looked like it was a cinnamon roll.  Mashed potatoes and green beans with parsley were paired with the duck.  It was - oh! - so good.  But it was also - oh! - so rich!  

That night, I didn't feel well.  My stomach began to turn and I ended up getting sick - again.  This was my fifth trip to France - the fourth time that I had gotten sick.  But this one was the worst one.  I was up all night in the bathroom and had to miss the trip to the Devialet factory in Normandy the next day.  I don't know if it was a case of food poisoning or the other scenario a friend told me that my body probably couldn't handle rich foods - rich foods that it isn't used to consuming in the States.  All I know is that I ate something exotic to me and I got sick eating it.  I'm hoping it wasn't food poisoning or my body telling me that it needed to get rid of the food I had earlier in the day as quick as possible.  

While the food at Le Point Zero didn't agree with me too well, it was very darned good.  The duck breast roll was one of the most interesting things I've ever tasted.  It was a cool little lunch place in the heart of Paris and one that I wouldn't have a problem going back to - even though the duck probably made me ill.  I just wish I wouldn't have succumbed to temptation just to try the duck.  Oh well...

Bistrotters - Paris

We had finished our first full day in Paris and my colleague Ian took me to a place that he'd already made reservations at before we got to France.  Actually, our colleague Simon had made a reservation at the small bistro during a vacation in Paris earlier in the summer with his wife.  However, because he didn't have e-mail while he was on vacation, the restaurant had canceled his reservation because he didn't confirm the reservation 48 hours in advance per the restaurant's requirement.  He was understandably upset, but before Ian and I went to France, he told Ian that we "absolutely had to go to this place.  I need a full report!"  The name of the place was Bistrotters.

As I do on a number of occasions, Ian does thorough background research on some of the restaurants that he visits when travels.  He found that Bistrotters was angling for a coveted Michelin Guide - Paris star rating.  Owner Francois Gallice (pictured left) opened the small bistro in 2012 as a restaurant and a wine shop.  His thinking was that if you liked the wine you had with your meal, you can buy a bottle of it at a takeaway price as a memento or reminder of your evening at Bistrotters.  Chef Erwin Le Gahinet oversees the daily menu at Bistrotters which changes regularly to ensure the freshest ingredients and seasonal foods.  

Bistrotters is open from 12 to 2 p.m. for lunch and 7 to 10 p.m. for dinner Tuesday thru Saturday.  Ian was adamant that we needed to get there for our 7 p.m. reservation.  "They won't hold our table if we are even 10 minutes late," he told me as we climbed into a cab at our hotel around 6:30 p.m.  It took us about 20 minutes to get to Bistrotters located on Rue Decrès across the Seine from where we were staying.  (see map) When we got out of the cab we were somewhat surprised to see a number of people milling about in front of the place.  They, too, had 7 p.m. reservations (they try to do two seatings at night at Bistrotters) and were waiting for the doors to open.  Right at 7 p.m. the doors were unlocked at we went inside.

We were greeted by Francois Gallice and he checked us off his reservation list.  Tall and angular, Francois pretty much gave us our choice of tables.  (I was struck by his uncanny resemblance to one of my dealers back in Iowa.)  We settled for a small table on the upper level of the small restaurant.  The bottom dining area had seating for about 14 to 16 people.  The upper level sat around 10 more.  The small bar for the restaurant was on the left just past the front door of the bistro. 

The menu for the evening was on a chalkboard just above our table.  It was in French, but Francois also dropped off menus that were in both French and English.  His English was also very good with a distinctive French accent.  He gave us a recommendation for a light-bodied French red wine and we ended up taking him up on his suggestion of the Diane de Belgrave Haut-Medoc from the Chateau Belgrave winery in Bordeaux region of France.  It was very good.  

The menu that evening featured a couple of seafood dishes (I don't do seafood in France - been sick twice on seafood in France), a lamb entree, a steak entree and a pork entree.  I was sort of torn between getting the steak tenderloin filet and the crispy pork belly entree.  Ian was actually looking at the same thing.  We decided that I would get the steak and Ian would get the pork belly.  

The first thing that came out was a small cheese puff appetizer that was a nice introduction to the restaurant.  For appetizers, I ordered up some foie gras.  It came with a couple pieces of a toasted housemade French bread and some greens.  The foie gras was not the best I've had in France, but it was still very good.  

Ian had a small bowl of grilled fresh chorizo that he got as an appetizer.  I offered him a bite of foie gras, but I was surprised to learn that he doesn't eat foie gras.  He sort of shuddered and said, "Duck liver.  I've never warmed up to it."  When he offered me a taste of the chorizo, I declined.  I had a food poisoning episode with chorizo a few years ago and I've never warmed back up to it, either.   

My steak was a small filet dressed with some fresh grilled veggies and served with a peppercorn sauce.  I got it medium rare and medium rare in France is really rare.  As in REALLY rare.  (Medium in France would be what I call rare in the U.S.)  It had some fresh herbs on top and the taste was fine.  It was certainly not a Midwestern cut of tenderloin beef.

The pork belly was interesting.  The pork was layered with a crispy grilled outer shell.  It rested on a bed of cooked vegetables that were lying in sort of an au jus sauce.  Ian thought it was very good.  We exchanged cuts of our respective entrees and I have to say that the pork belly was, indeed, very good.  It was better than my steak, which was fine for what it was.  

Francois and another server tag-teamed taking care of the tables that evening.  After we finished, the other server came over to ask us if we wanted dessert.  We mulled over the choices and finally decided that we'd had enough.  It was a good meal as is.

While we felt the food was very good, the service was a little choppy at Bistrotters.  Ian remarked that they had a ways to go in the service end of thing if they were going to get a Michelin star designation.  But Francois was very friendly and outgoing.  He asked where we were from and he said he believed we were the only North Americans in the restaurant that evening.  For a little French bistro, I enjoyed the experience immensely.  They're working hard to please their clientele, so you have to give them that.  

Summer in Paris

I finally made it to Paris - albeit over two months later than I wanted to get there.  If you remember this post from a couple three months ago with the reasons why I wasn't in Paris at that time when I should have been, you'll remember that I was a very unhappy camper with United Airlines.  On this trip - thanks to the delays out of Quad Cities International Airport on my trip to the U.K. at the end of June - I made up my mind that I'd just book the flight to Paris directly out of O'Hare International in Chicago and drive in well in advance of the flight.  It worked out fine.  The only problem was that I had to get in the car after a 9 hour flight and drive back to the Quad Cities.  On the Friday afternoon of Labor Day weekend.  I was tired, there was a lot of traffic and I wasn't feeling very well.  (More on that later on.)

The reason for the trip to Paris was a 3-day training session with one of our companies - Devialet.  We got in on the ground floor with this company when it became available in North America and we have endured some growing pains with them.  However, the company is hitting on all cylinders right now, they have some great products - very unique in the consumer audio industry - and they invited individual sales people from our staff over to get indoctrinated in their philosophies, tour the factory and learn the inside poop about the product and features.  I was supposed to go in mid-June with my colleague from Montreal, Francois.  But that didn't work out thanks to United.  So, I re-booked for a late August trip with my colleague, Ian.  Ian and I travel well together and he's rather worldly and - most importantly - a planner.  I let Ian figure out what we were going to do and where we were going to eat.  

After a nine hour overnight flight to Paris, I got into Charles De Gaulle Airport around 10 a.m. on a Monday morning.  About four or five international flights got in at the same time and there were only 4 customs windows open for about 800 to 1000 passengers.  It was excruciating waiting for the line to slowly work its way to the French border guards in their individual booths.   It was close to 45 minutes before I was able to go up to a window as the border guard silently stamped my passport without asking me a question.  Maddening. 

Thankfully, Ian had gotten into Paris about 90 minutes before I did and was waiting for me outside customs.  We found a cab outside the airport and took it into the city.  It was about a 40 minute ride from the airport to our hotel.

Our hotel on this trip was the Hotel Malte Opera in the heart of Paris.  it is located near the Louvre, as well as the Palais Garnier - the Paris opera house.  (Surprise!  Hence the "opera" in the hotel's name.)  It is also right across the street from the Opera branch of the National Library of France.  

The elegant lobby of the hotel was replete with a number of French antique-style chairs and contemporary tables.  It featured a breakfast area and a front lobby desk where they invited their guests to sit down and enjoy a coffee or a bottle of water (sparkling or still) while they checked in.  

The room I was given was what I would say are typical of what you'll find at most French hotels.  The rooms aren't big at all.  (Check out the 1 foot gap between the end of the bed and the wall.)  The bathroom was also very small and - as I've found with other French bathrooms - the shower/tub had no shower curtain or shower door.  I've half-jokingly said that my goal in life is to move to France and start up a shower curtain store.  I still can't figure out why they don't use shower curtains in many of the hotels I've stayed at in France.  Water gets everywhere and you'll need a towel specifically to clean up the wetness on the bathroom floor.

The bed, however, was comfortable and I spent a lot of time in it thanks to getting food poisoning (or having a bodily aversion to some food that was super rich).  I was down for a day and still didn't feel well on my last full day in Paris.  I missed a chance to go out to dinner with colleagues who were in town for a separate manufacturer trip because I couldn't risk going out of a 20 foot radius from my bathroom.   It was pretty upsetting to me because I understand a good time was had by all when I was lying in bed instead.  This was my fifth trip to France - my third trip to Paris - and I've had stomach problems on four of the five trips.  But none of the previous were as violent as what I went through on this visit.  

And because of my sickness, I got to watch a lot of television when I wasn't sleeping.  The television system at the hotel featured, of course, a number of French channels, but I also found CNN International, some BBC programming, as well as American programs broadcast with French subtitles.  There were also a number of German channels including a sports channel that showed soccer non-stop, and there were channels from Italy, Austria and Portugal.  Interestingly, there was no channel that emanated from Spain.  Maybe there's no such thing as good Spanish television.  

After getting checked into the hotel after we arrived in Paris on the first day and grabbing a quick lunch nearby, Ian and I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Paris in what became a steady rain.  Ian's goal was to go to the Musée de l'Armée at Les Invalides (the French military museum) across the Seine.  He has visited a number of museums in Paris, but had yet to go to this one.  Anything that had to do with military history was fine with me.  

First of all, I love Paris.  It may be my most favorite city in the world.  And I love to walk around in Paris.  But the place drives me crazy when I try to figure out where I am.  I like to think that I have this innate ability to get a directional reckoning wherever I go.  (My colleagues call me the "Human GPS", although I will say that I've lost some of that super power ever since I went out and bought a real GPS a few years ago.)  In Paris, the streets meander in different directions.  The Seine loops through the heart of the city instead of a straight line.  You can follow a street into a roundabout where streets spoke out in multiple directions.  Street names change just by crossing a street.  It's utterly maddening for me to try and figure out where I am in Paris.  Even maps don't necessarily help.  But the beauty of the city more than makes up for the confusion I suffer as I try to navigate.    

To get to the Musée de l'Armée, we had to walk through the courtyard of the Louvre museum complex.   Architect I. M. Pei's  Louvre Pyramid is the centerpiece of the courtyard.  The glass pyramid features 666 individual diamond-shaped glass panels and serves as the main entrance into the lobby of the Louvre.  The wait to get into the Louvre was more than two hours, but Ian - the seasoned world traveler that he is - took me to a hidden and little known entrance later on that had no wait to get into the Louvre.  Since it was near closing time when he showed it to me, it wasn't worth it to spend the money to go in.  Someday...

We made it to the Musée de l'Armée and spent the nearly $20 per person to go in.  I wanted to take a picture of the front of the place, but it was raining rather hard at the time so I figured that I'd be able to find a similar shot on the Internet.  Here's a picture of the front of Les Invalides from Ian when he was in Paris in the summer of 2013. 

After going through a couple areas that showed medieval armaments and battle armor worn by combatants, we decided to look for the part of the museum that specifically dealt with World War II.  We had to go through the World War I part of the museum to get there, but we finally found it.  We lingered for a long while in that area, looking at the French side of the World War II story.  Although many of the signs were in French, we were able to decipher much of what was on display.  

While we were going through the museum, there was a large area that dealt with the liberation of Paris from Nazi Germany occupation.  As I was looking at some stuff, I noticed that Paris was liberated exactly 70 years ago from the day we were there - August 25.   The next day would be the 70th anniversary of the famous parade up the Champs-Élysées led by Charles De Gaulle.  (They had a ceremony that evening - in the rain - commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation not far from our hotel.)  Ian and I both thought it was rather neat that we were in Paris exactly 70 years from the day.    

We made our way into the rotunda area of Les Invalides known as the Dome des Invalides.  The Royal Chapel is part of the rotunda celebrating the reign of Louis XIV before it became a military pantheon during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte.  A number of French military commanders have been buried in Les Invalides which served as both a military hospital and a retired soldiers home into the early 20th century.  

The tomb of Napoleon is located in the center of the pantheon directly under the dome.  Some of Napoleon's relatives - including a brother and two sons - are buried in areas near the red quartzite tomb. To me, it was pretty interesting to see.  

The long day - complete with jet lag - was catching up with us.  We started to walk back to the hotel in a light rain, stopping off at a typical Paris sidewalk cafe along the left bank of the Seine to have a double espresso to keep us awake for dinner later on, and to get out of what was continuing to be a steady rain.  I'm still grateful to the guy who was selling cheap umbrellas in the courtyard of the Louvre for five euros.  

Other than getting sick - and the weather being less than desirable during our visit - I'm always grateful for a chance to get to Paris.  It is truly one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  The architecture, the history, just the feel of the city is so stimulating to me.  Sure, there are the usual touristy things to do, but just walking around the city and soaking up the vibe is what I really like about Paris.  I found myself already missing the place as I was on my way to the airport to come back to the U.S.

Carlton Hotel - Lyon

During our trip to France for Focal loudspeakers, they put us up in three hotels in the heart of Lyon.  Since I'm not a smoker, they put me in the Mercure Carlton Hotel, an ornate old hotel that caters to non-smokers.  The hotel sits right in between the Rhone and Saone rivers in the center of Lyon (see map).  The hotel is an Accor property, the largest chain of hotels in Europe.  Actually, I think I've stayed in nothing but Accor hotels on my trips to Europe. 

The Carlton, which was built in 1892, offers 83 rooms that range in price from about 89 Euros to 179 Euros a night (about $135 to $275 a night).  They had a list of a number of celebrities and dignitaries who have stayed at the hotel over the years.  I only recognized a handful of the names listed. 

I got a standard room with a small watercloset, a bed that literally filled up the room, and a large bathroom with a full bath and a bidet.  The air conditioner was lousy and I had to close off the doors to the bathroom and water closet just to get it comfortable in the room at night. 

One of the weird things about the bathroom at the Carlton was that the tub/shower had no shower curtain.  Here's the picture of the shower.  It was sort of tricky to not get water all over the bathroom.  The walls and floor had a very heavy tile on them and it could stand getting water splashed all around.  But it was all I could do to keep from making a big mess in the bathroom.  I was joking with one of my colleagues when I said I wanted to sell shower curtains to hotels in France.  I'd retire a multi-millionaire. 

The Carlton's lobby and bar area offers a lot of old world charm.  We spent a lot of time socializing in the bar and it was very comfortable and inviting.  The lighting was subdued, there was artwork and bunting on the walls and the architecture was pure French with a theater and opera theme to the room.  There was an old Yamaha piano in the bar that could either play pre-downloaded music, or could be played manually.  One of our dealers from Dayton, OH showed his prowess on the piano by playing a couple selections one evening.   It turned out that he had studied at Juilliard and had even played on stage at Carnegie Hall.  He was a very talented dude.     

One of the more neat old world things about the Carlton was it's elevator, or as they call it in Europe, the lift.  It was an open elevator and you had to manually close an outer door gate and then shut the two inside doors before the elevator would work.  The problem is that if someone got out on an upper floor and didn't close the outside gate to the elevator, the elevator didn't move.  That happened a couple times while we were there.  And it's a long walk up and down the Carlton's stairs.  The above picture is my colleague, Jon Baker, getting into the elevator and closing the outer gate. 

The bedroom area and the bathroom in my room had these floor to ceiling windowed doors that opened up and afforded a great view of the bustling street below.  It was really kind of neat to open the doors and get an outside feeling to the room.  It was like the room doubled in size when the doors were opened. 

Just down the street from the Carlton - actually in the same building as the hotel - is one of the most celebrated restaurants not only in Lyon, but all of France - Restaurant Nicholas Le Bec.  Chef Nicholas Le Bec is world renown chef whose seven course meals start at around $120 Euros ($175 bucks).  I actually had a chance to join John Barnes, the owner of Audio Unlimited in Denver, for lunch one day.  But I ended up passing as it would have been $100 bucks without wine and/or drinks, and would have probably been a three hour lunch. 

Still, the Carlton Hotel was in the middle of most of the main attractions in Lyon.   Other than some of the funkiness in the room itself, the hotel was a good place to stay.

La Tour Rose - Lyon, France

Everytime I've been to France, I usually end up with some sort of a stomach problem.  I think I've finally pin-pointed it to eating fish.  One of the meals we had while in Lyon this summer was at La Tour Rose and I had fish.  And the next day, I had stomach problems. 

I don't know what it is about the fish in France.  Maybe there's not enough mercury in the fish there, I really don't know.  Oh, the fish we had at La Tour Rose was very good, served with some vegetables with a cream sauce.  But each time I've had fish in France, the next day it's "Outta my way!  I gotta go!"

Once again, one of the major problems in traveling with a large group is that you usually don't get many - if any - choices for dinner.  It's usually a pre-determined menu that is offered for large groups.  This time it was either a choice of chicken or a sea bass filet.  Chicken just didn't sound good to me, so I went with the fish.  While the fish was very tasty, it was a bad choice. 

La Tour Rose is a combination hotel and restaurant in the old section of Lyon just over the Rhone River conveniently located on Rue Boeuf, or "Beef Street" (see map).  It has a wonderful bar area on the street level next to the check in desk for the hotel.  The restaurant is on the second floor and features a wonderful outdoor terrace.  Our group, due to its size, was seated in the restaurant and not outside.  Too bad as it was a beautiful evening in Lyon. 

The restaurant/hotel is housed in a building that was used in the 16th and 17th centuries as a textile manufacturing facility.  This is a picture of the tower where silk was made at the top and allowed to flow to the bottom.  I took this picture during my walkabout in the old city of Lyon in 2006.  This tower is where La Tour Rose (The Red Tower) gets its name from.  Little did I know that in a little over two years I'd be back here eating at the restaurant. 

Actually, the area in which La Tour Rose is located is populated with a number of great little cafes and restaurants.  As I've said before, Lyon is the gastronomic capital of France and Europe.  There are just hundreds of great little restaurants all over the city.  It's very difficult to find poor food in Lyon.

While the food at La Tour Rose was wonderful, the next afternoon I made a note to never have fish again when I go to France.  For me, it's better to go hungry than have to endure the stomach problems again and again from eating fish in France.

Le Passage - Lyon, France

Lyon is called the gastronomic capital of Europe.  More world class restaurants are in Lyon than any other place on the continent.  One of the best places to eat in Lyon is a place called Le Passage.  And we ate there one evening when we were over in France earlier this year.  

Le Passage is owned by Vincent Carteron and the head chef is Frederic Cordier.  Cordier is known for coming up with interesting dishes such as marbled foie gras with figs, lobster stew with cumin and a fricassee nut seafood casserole with thyme.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to try any of those items.

The main dining area of Le Passage is rather classy and ornate with heavy tables and padded red leather chairs.  Chandeliers hang from the ceiling and wonderful pieces of art adorn the walls.  Unfortunately, we didn't sit in the main dining room.  

Being that we were a large group of 30 people, we were seated in the private banquet facility on the second level of Le Passage, called Le Club.  And when you're dealing with that many people, your choices of food are limited.  Once again, it was a beef dish - a veal shank with a red wine sauce; and a seafood dish - salmon with a dill cream sauce.  Once again, I try to avoid fish like the plague while in France, so I went with the veal shank.

Before the main course was served, we were served a salad with a slice of foie gras on top.  The salad was OK, but the foie gras was fabulous.  I know some people have a problem with foie gras, especially by the way ducks are forced fed to enlarge their livers.  I don't have a problem with it.  Especially when I eat good foie gras. 

The veal shank wasn't great, it wasn't bad.  It was similar to "assembly-line" food that I've had in the states.  To help things out, we had a number of great wines from the Rhone wine region, of which Lyon is in the heart of.  I'm not as well-versed in French wines as I'd like to be, so I've been taking pictures of different the bottles of wine I've been drinking while in France.  It helps me remember what it was that I was drinking, plus I can see if a place like Sam's Wines has the wine.

I talked to a couple of colleagues who told me they'd eaten at Le Passage a couple times before.  They said the experience of banquet-style eating was nowhere close to the previous times they'd had dinner off of the regular menu.  The Michelin Guide gives Le Passage two stars which means "excellent cooking, worth a detour".  I would like to give it a shot sometime when I'm not involved in such a big group.  Hopefully, one of these days I'll have the chance.

La Grignotte - Bourbon-Lancy, France

During our trip to France earlier this summer, we boarded a bus in Lyon and rode about 2.5 hours to the small village of Bourbon-Lancy, located in the Burgundy region of France (see map).  The village, itself, has a ton of history behind it as it was once a medieval walled city.  Focal's cabinet plant, Guy H.F., is located in Bourbon-Lancy employing third and fourth generation cabinet makers from the original furniture maker that started in the late 1800's. 

The drive up through the French farm fields and vineyards was a continual photo opportunity.  The rolling hills in the central part of France were green and lush.  This was the second trip I've made up to Bourbon-Lancy, but the first time it was in the summer months.  It was a beautiful day with a hot sun and low humidity.

We were greeted at the factory by Jean-Paul Guy, the part-owner/general manager of the cabinet factory.  Jean-Paul's grandfather started the cabinet factory as a furniture shop in the late 1800's.  Over the years, the company grew to make not only furniture, but cabinets, as well.  And at one point, it employed 10 people in an automobile body shop.  Focal bought controlling interest of Guy's cabinet shop in 1999 and they now exclusively make cabinets for Focal's high-end loudspeakers.

Since it was late morning in Bourbon-Lancy, the tour coordinators with Focal thought it would be nice to take a walk to the old part of Bourbon-Lancy and have lunch at a little restaurant.  The streets in the center of the city are very narrow.  And many of the buildings in the center of the village date back to the 14th century. 

As I said, Bourbon-Lancy was once a medieval walled city.   This was the main entrance to the old city which was built back in the 13th century.  Bourbon-Lancy's history dates back nearly 2000 years.  The village plays up the medieval theme and has restored a number of the buildings in the center of the city to their original state.  Click on the picture above and look toward the very top.  They have a dummy of a medieval sentry looking out of the window of the bell tower. 

Just up the street from the main entrance of the old city is a little restaurant called La Grignotte.  I ate there one time before on my first visit to Bourbon-Lancy and I remember it being very good.

The inside of La Grignotte is very small and cozy.  Since we had a party of around 30 in our group, there was going to be no way we could all fit inside the restaurant.  What they did was set up a number of tables on the street (which in reality is now nothing more than a very wide sidewalk) and put up a number of umbrellas to shade us from the hot June sun.  It wasn't as comfortable as sitting inside, but it worked out pretty well.

Here is a portion of our group getting ready to enjoy their lunch.  Note my colleague, Todd, in the white shirt.  He had to sit in the sun because he was wearing a light colored shirt.  They gave him a series of hats to wear during lunch so he wouldn't get sunburned on his face.  One was an old time straw hat that made him look like Maurice Chevalier.  Then he wore a sailor's hat that made him look like Gilligan.  He took the good-natured ribbing in stride. 

We had our choice of either beef (a tenderloin filet) or fish (a salmon filet).  Something about fish in France doesn't agree with me, so I took the beef.  But before we got our main entree, they offered us a series of appetizers.  One of the appetizers was escargot - snails cooked in a butter and garlic sauce.  Well, I'd never had escargot before and I thought I'd give it a try. 

This is what it looked like as it was served to me.  With a little trepidation, I took my first bite.  Suddenly, it didn't look quite so disgusting.  It was just heavenly!  Oh, my God, the escargot tasted so great.  I can't believe I've never tried them before.  They were simply out of this world.

Soon after, our main entrees showed up.  It was a nice chunk of beef tenderloin, along with potatoes au gratin and a salad topped with a poppy seed dressing.  I'm not certain that I've ever had the salad served on the plate with the main entree, but when in France, do as the French do, I guess. 

Now, I ordered my steak medium-rare.  I've noticed over the years of traveling stateside with Europeans, they have a tendency to order their beef rare.  I see why - medium in France is medium-rare in America.  Which means medium-rare in France is, well, rare. This thing was still "mooing" when I cut into it.  A few of the people in their group asked to send their meat back to get it cooked a little longer, but I went ahead and ate mine like this.  It was very good - probably the best cut of beef I've ever had in my trips to France.

Of course, lunch in France can take two hours or more.  With all the food and wine, I don't know how anyone can work in the afternoon.  And on top of all that, they then brought out dessert.  Now, I'm not just talking about *a* dessert, I'm talking about a ton of desserts to choose from.  This one was a custard cake that was absolutely fabulous. 

Also on the dessert tray was this delectable peach pie.  It was interesting that the peaches were placed on top of the crust and not as a filling.  I didn't try any of the pie, but those who did said it was very good.  I can tell you I'd certainly never seen a peach pie like that before.

And this was an interesting combination - this was a date or fig pie with real chocolate pudding.  And I mean real chocolate pudding, not that powdery stuff you mix in a bowl.  It was sinful, to say the least.

We got a big kick out of the presentation of the chocolate pudding when they brought it out to the table.  It was all in a huge bowl and they just happened to set it down in front of my boss, Daniel.  We were wondering if he was going to share it with us.  Here's Daniel with Jean-Paul seated next to him fronted by the bowl of pudding.

After lunch, a few of us strolled down the little walkway of the old village of Bourbon-Lancy and found this wonderful little flower garden just a stone's throw from the restaurant.  This was actually the site of a religious school/college for monks that was originally founded in the 1400's.  It was such a beautiful day and a beautiful setting that we sort of hung around the area for a few moments. 

Here are a row of flowers and roses planted along an ancient wall in the garden.  Bourbon-Lancy is also well-known throughout Europe as having natural thermal water pools.  People travel from all over to a spa located outside the city to luxuriate in the warm natural spring waters.  The area has long been a place where Europe's elite have traveled to enjoy the warm natural waters of the thermal spa.

Just up from where we ate is this church - Church of the Sacred Heart - that was built in the late 1800's.  This cathedral was built in the neo-gothic style and sits on the site of a convent that was destroyed during the  .  There's also a small museum in the church which shows artifacts from previous churches in the area.  At one point in time, Bourbon-Lancy had 15 houses of religion in the town, including the aforementioned monk college and a monk convent, and two women's convents. 

The inside of the church was equally as impressive as the outside.  I'm not much of a religious guy, but it would be sort of cool to attend services just to take in the experience.  For a warm day in the central part of France, the church was cool inside and felt good to stand in there out of the hot sun for a few moments. 

Walking back to the restaurant, here is a picture of the bell tower from the other side.  It's a pretty impressive structure once you figure out that it was built in the 13th century.  This small area hosted a small number of bistro-type restaurants and bars. 

When we walked back to the factory, we went through an old estate that now housed what I was told was the park commission for the city of Bourbon-Lancy.  The grounds of the estate were now a park maintained by the city and had a number of exotic trees planted on the grounds.  I would have liked to have walked through the building.

One of the exotic trees that were planted on the grounds was this giant redwood tree brought over from California.  A couple of the dealers from California were incredulous that a giant sequoia tree was standing in France, but that's what the plaque at the base of the tree signified it was.  There were a number of other fruit trees, flowering bushes and berry-bushes located on the old estate.  I'm sure the long-ago owner of the estate planted them as many were very mature in size. 

After our factory tour, Jean-Paul took us up to a small church just up the hill from the plant.  Jean-Paul was the head of a group who was restoring the church and turning it into a small art museum.  This church was the only one left standing in Bourbon-Lancy after the French Revolution and it wasn't being used for much of anything.  The original structure dates back to the 12th century.  But a group of people have put in a lot of long hours and hard work to restore the structure.

Here's a picture of some of the restoration work they've done inside the church.  Two original tombs remain in the church, including one that has been opened and the skull and bones of the person entombed in the concrete casket are on display.  It was really kind of neat.  Jean-Claude told me it has taken about three years of volunteer efforts to get the church/museum to where it is today.  And there's still a lot of work to do before it's finished.

A number of artists had works on display on the walls of the church.  This one was a photo exhibit from a photographer.  He had some very pretty female subjects hauntingly posed for the camera.  I wish I had an eye for photography like that guy had. 

The church also had a very beautiful 15' X 15' tapestry that was being restored.  I took a picture of it, but it was too dark in the building for it to come out.  I tried it with the flash and it didn't look very good, either.  I probably could have futzed with my camera for a few moments to get the right exposure, but I didn't.  Thinking back, I should have taken the time because it was pretty cool.

After a quick walk back to the factory, it was time to say our good-byes and hop on the bus back to Lyon.  Bourbon-Lancy is one of those quaint little French villages with a load history behind it.  I certainly learned more about the place in the six hours we were there than I did on my previous visit.  Of course, it helps when you can walk around and see the sights along the way.  

Diana Krall - Vienne, France

As part of our trip to France recently, Focal took the North American sales managers and the handful of dealers who made the trip to Vienne, home of Jazz a Vienne, one of the largest jazz festivals in the world.  And it turned out the evening we went, the Grammy Award winning jazz artist, Diana Krall, was performing that evening.  

Jazz a Vienne takes place at a number of venues in the city, but the main venue is an ancient amphitheater built by the Romans some 2000 years ago.  When it was originally built, it held 13,000 people.  Today, the Roman Theater, as it's called, holds just over 8,000 for concerts.  The slope of the amphitheater and the sight of the old fortress above was just breathtaking.  It could be the best venue I've ever been to for a musical concert.   

Before the concert, Focal hosted the North Americans to a V.I.P. party at the old university near the Roman Theater.  It was called "Jazz en Vignes" (Jazz and Wine) and featured a winery from the rich Rhone Valley wine making region.  They served white and red wines along with hors d oveurs for about an hour and a half before the concert.  It was set in the courtyard of the school and it was a pretty cool deal.

Now, a lot of people were asking me what this V.I.P. party was all about.  Honestly, I didn't know much about it, but I sort of wondered if this was going to be a meet and great with Diana Krall.  I wasn't all that certain as to what the party would entail, even up until the time we got there.  However, there was another group sharing the party area with us that evening and one of the ladies in the group looked strikingly like Diana Krall.  So, I'm standing at a table with one of my colleagues, Chris, and a couple of the dealers and I said, "Oh, so Diana Krall DID show up for this thing." 

The guys turned their heads and looked at the lady.  One of them said, "That's not Diana Krall."

I said, "Bullshit!  That's her, all right.  This is a meet and greet before her show.  That's how much pull Focal has with this jazz festival." 

I was pulling their leg, for sure, but for a moment I had those guys and a few others believing it was Diana Krall.  This lady looked very much like her. 

But then I noticed that a LOT of ladies in the crowd that evening looked like Diana Krall.  I don't know if it was just coincidence, or if they were purposely trying to capture her look.  It was pretty uncanny. 

Our seats at the ancient Roman Theater were a bit off to the side and Diana Krall would have her back to us.  Still, they were good seats.  And the P.A. system was manufactured by a French company called L'Acoustics.  It turns out that Focal makes the speaker drivers for L'Acoustics' P.A. system.  Some of the same components that go into some of Focal's higher end home loudspeakers are part of the L'Acoustics P.A.  

Even though Diana Krall would have her back to us for the performance, we had a large monitor right next to us to be able to watch her facial expressions as she played the piano and sang.  It actually worked out pretty well as we could catch the action live on stage or on the huge monitor not more than 30 feet away. 

I wouldn't say I was a huge Diana Krall fan, but I do enjoy her work.  And I think she has genuine fun playing her music along with her back up musicians.  There was a lot of smiling on stage when she was playing.  I love it when musicians look like they're truly having fun playing music than some of the more serious or angry looks some performers will give during a show. 

But the highlight of the show had to be the venue.  It was a beautiful night in France, low humidity, light wind, not a cloud in the sky.  The sun sets late there so it was still a beautiful sun lit evening well up to 10:30 p.m.  The seats at the Roman Theater are the original stone seats, so Focal provided us seating pads for the evening.  Those things certainly came in handy because there would have been no way I would have been able to sit there for the nearly three and a half hours we were there.  I just found myself staring up at the crowd and taking in the majestic beauty of the ancient amphitheater.  I'm in still in awe of the process the Romans went through to build the place 2000 years ago.

Opening for Diana Krall was Avishai Cohen, a world-renown jazz bass player who was the bass player for Chick Corea's jazz trio and who has accompanied the likes of Herbie Hancock and Bobby McFerrin.   Accompanying Cohen this even was the 21-year-old piano prodigy Shai Maestro.  Cohen played his upright bass with such energy and conviction that he had the crowd on its feet at the end of his performance.  Many of the songs they played that evening were from Cohen's recently released album, "Gently Disturbed".  I really liked the free form nature of his music and his passionate playing helped draw me into the music.

Sometimes I bitch and moan about my job - the travel, the long hours, the politics involved.  But a night like this certainly makes me put a different perspective on my job.  We were treated wonderfully, it was a superb evening, the venue was awesome and the music was great.  I turned to my colleague, John, during the performance and said, "It certainly doesn't suck to be us this evening..."

I'm in France!

Right now, I'm in France for the unveiling of the new Focal Utopia G3 loudspeakers along with my North American sales colleagues and a handful of dealers from across Canada and the U.S.  On Tuesday evening, I flew from Moline to Detroit, then took an overnight flight to Amsterdam.  We arrived in Lyon, France on Wednesday mid-afternoon.  

After touring the cabinet factory on Thursday, we heard the new speaker today.  We've had some great meals and some good wine and I'll be sure to report on all the particulars.

But what I'm looking forward to is a performance tomorrow night of Diana Krall at the Jazz a Vienne 2008 festival that runs on weekends from mid-June to mid-July in Lyon.  The festival is held at an ancient amphitheater built by the Romans when Lyon was part of the ancient Roman Empire.  I'm sort of looking forward to that.

Then it will be a short night as I have a 7 a.m. flight from Lyon to Amsterdam (12 midnight back in Iowa), then going on to Minneapolis/St. Paul and home around 5 p.m. on Sunday.  This will be my shortest trip to France, which is fine with me.  But this will be the first time that I'm not in Paris for at least one night.   

Look for some of my France entries in the coming days!

Driving in France

We had a couple of the Renault Espace vans for rentals when we were over in France recently.  The engine is a 3.0 liter, V6 diesel and it incorporates a six speed transmission.  These little things actually will seat 7 somewhat comfortably, but don't think about putting any bags or carry-ons in the van when you try to put that many people in the thing, or you'll be carrying them on your lap. 

The Renault Espace had a little "git-up and go" from the start, but it was a real pooch when you needed to jump on it in second or third gear. 

One of the unique things about the Renault Espace was the way you started it up.  First of all, there is no key.  The "key" is a card about the size of a normal credit card that you insert into a space next to the stick shift.  Once the card was inserted into the slot, you hit the "Start/Stop" button to start the car.  The vehicle automatically went into the parking brake mode when you'd start it up. 

I got to drive one day and it's a little weird to drive in France.  No, you drive on the right, like you do in the States.  But the yields and right-of-ways are a little confusing.  Actually, you may be driving down a road and suddenly you come to an intersection where a road is coming in at angle.  It could very well be that the road coming in at the angle has the right of way.

And the signs are a little confusing.  I knew what the "yield" signs were all about, but I couldn't understand what the "no" with the blue inside meant.  (Found out later that it meant no parking.) 

Driving on the freeway system, or highway, was a little confusing since signs for exits seem to come up rather quickly, especially when you're going 90 kilometers (about 55 mph) or faster.  Or signs to towns, such as Saint-Etienne, don't always take you to Saint-Etienne.  Actually it took me a day to figure things out - both with the vehicle and with the directions - to make me feel comfortable enough to get around on my own.

We had to take the vans back on Thursday night, so our host, Dominic Baker (right) got one of my colleagues, Jon Baker (no relation to Dominic), and myself to follow him in the vans.  He took off from the hotel like a bat out of hell, screaming down the street, around the roundabout, then down one of the main streets in Saint-Etienne.  He got on it and passed a car and I followed suit, except I got hung up in the left lane and needed to turn right.  I aggressively nudged over and got in behind Jon who was smart enough to stay put in the right lane. 

We took a right and Dominic took off again up a hill.  The Espace just wouldn't keep up his Volkswagen Passat.  I was on Jon's tail and Dominic pulled over to the left lane and got into the left turn lane at the light.  He turned when the light went yellow, Jon followed suit when the light turned red.  I tried to follow, but got hung up by oncoming traffic - who, for some reason, didn't allow me to turn left when I had a red light and they had green.

I finally waited and turned left on a red light - hitting the median curb in doing so.  Hey, it was a rental!  And as I learned years ago, in times of need, you should treat all rental cars as off-road vehicles. 

I did catch up to Dominic and John with some more wild driving through the side streets of Saint-Etienne and then ended up going the wrong way down an alley way to drop off the vans in front of the Hertz rental office.  It was a large time to drive like that with a "devil-may-care" attitude behind the wheel.

But the hell of it is - they ALL drive like that in France.  Signs and rules, be damned.  You have to be overly aggressive or you're going to be going around and around the damn roundabouts for 15 to 20 minutes at a time.  Streets are narrow, the highways (freeways) are curvy, and then you have to worry about how main streets must yield to people coming in from side streets. 

I'm glad I've had years of driving experience in the Chicago area.  It has certainly schooled me on how to properly drive in France they way their drivers do.

The TGV

Even though you're not driving when you take the TGV in France, it's still one of the neatest experiences you can have while traveling. 

The letters "TGV" are short for "train a grand vitesse" or "high speed train" in French.  The TGV's are run by the French government's rail operator, SNCF.  The first TGV went between Paris and Lyon in the early 80's and since then more engines and lines have been built with a number of European countries connecting with the TGV's central hub in Paris. 

With speeds of up to 200 mph, the TGV has taken over as the primary way of moving people from city to city throughout France and parts of Western Europe.  It's especially appealing for trips of 3 hours or less because the train stations in most French cities are centrally located and there is minimal check-in and pre-boarding security that you find in most airports these days. 

Here's what happens when a TGV hits a magpie at 200 miles an hour.  Check out the lower left front of the TGV engine.  Most TGV lines have high fences and raised grades to all but cut down on the chance of a collision with an animal or motor vehicle. 

The TGV car cabins are spacious and comfortable.  With the low axles, the specially built tracks and the amazingly high speeds, the TGV is one of the smoothest rides one can have in any mode of transportation.  I have trouble staying awake when I ride on them.

And you should stay awake.  The French countryside between Paris and Lyon is sensational.  The rolling hills of Central France soon give way to the foothills of the Alps as you go further to the southeast. 

My colleagues and myself flew into Charles De Gaulle airport northeast of Paris and all met up at the train station within the airport.  The TGV has a direct line from the airport to the station in Lyon, France's second largest city.  The train station at De Gaulle is modern and clean (except they charge you 50 cents euro to use the bathrooms).  Not only can you board TGV's, but conventional trains can take you to points in Paris and beyond, as well.

The trip to Lyon is a shade over 2 hours.  Lyon is about 287 miles from Paris, so you're averaging speeds of about 140 miles an hour.  The French countryside zips by so quickly that it's tough to take pictures out of the window of the great views.

The train station in Lyon - Gare Lyon Part Dieu - is sort of a big shopping center and community hangout.  It's situated right smack dab in the center of Lyon and handles hundreds of thousands of people annually.  The "Part Two" part comes into play because Gare Lyon Part Dieu was built in the early 80's to accommodate the TGV's that began to come there from Paris. 

The train station in Saint-Etienne is part of a renovation area in the Ville Centre (central) area of town.  I remarked that the next time we come back, the area around the train station is going to be drastically different.  A number of shops, modern buildings and office areas are being built within 100 meters of the station. 

And Gare de Lyon, the main station in Paris for all points south and east, is one of the architectural marvels of western Europe.  Built between 1895 and 1902, the Gare de Lyon was designed by French architect Marius Toudoire and opened during the 1900 Exhibition Universelle (World's Fair) in Paris.

Toudoire was helped by over 30 artists to make the Gare de Lyon one of the most spectacular buildings in Paris.  Known primarily for it's stately clock tower, the Gare de Lyon was the starting point for thousands of Parisians who would make the annual trek to the Mediterranean coast for their vacations, or "holidays". 

The Gare de Lyon was modernized in the 70's and 80's to be able to handle not only the TGV's, but the increased traffic in and out of the station to and from Switzerland, Italy, Greece and the French Riviera. 

Traveling by train in France is a great experience.  I can't tell you how many times we wondered why there wasn't anything remotely close to this in the U.S.  One of our guys said that the airline lobby would never allow something like this to happen.  I know there have been studies about regional high speed rail lines between St. Louis and Chicago, Boston and Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco - with trains that would approach the speeds acquired by the TGV.    

But if you ever get the chance to go to France and want to venture outside of Paris, take the TGV.  Just once.

Harry's New York Bar - Paris

I had the pleasure of going to France for business in February of 2003 with my company, Audio Plus Services.  We stayed a couple nights in Paris and had a chance to walk around the city and see the sights.  We went to the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre (although we didn't go in to see the Mona Lisa), the Arc de Triomphe, and Place de la Concorde.  We saw the artists and bohemians on the Left Bank, toured Notre Dame Cathedral, walked by the Opera House and Moulin Rouge, and we walked the length of the Champs d'Elysee - twice. 

But what I wanted to do more than anything was to go to Harry's New York Bar and get a Bloody Mary.  Now, the guys in our group kind of looked at me like, "Huh?"  But when I explained to them that Harry's invented the Bloody Mary in the 20's, they all followed suit. 

Actually, Harry's wasn't that far from the Opera House or our hotel.  It's not a huge place, but it's very ornate with a lot of dark wood paneling on the walls, covered with pictures and other offerings from over the years.  It's definitely got an English/American feel to the place as the staff and bartenders all spoke English - quite well, actually. 

We all had a Bloody Mary and it was a spot hitter.  It was a little expensive - 9.50 Euros, which, at the time, was about $9.00 US.  But what the hell.  I had two. 

We looked around the place and ended up going downstairs into their piano bar room.  One of the waiters let us go down, even though it wasn't open.  It wasn't very big, almost gave me a clausterphobic feel to it.  The waiter said that George Gershwin used to play the same piano they had in there when he was living in Paris years ago.  He said that people such as Elton John, Harry Connick, Jr., and Diana Krall had all been in the piano bar in recent months playing the piano.  Unfortunately, the lid was down and locked or I would have played chop sticks.

The walls of the piano bar were also adorned with some interesting French sketch art.  I kind of liked it, but some of the guys in the group were making noises about being bored, so we took off (always happens when you're in a group of people). 

I know that Harry's isn't a beer bar, and it probably isn't a destination, per se.  But I'm glad we went.