One of the most remarkable items in the exhibition on spies and espionage “Guerres Secrètes” (“Secret Wars”), currently on show at the Musée de l’Armée, is a French intelligence file on a Vietnamese man by the name of Vo Nguyen … Read More
The tiny 20th-arrondissement restaurant Chatomat is as good as it was when it opened more than five years ago. Sadly, the candlelight our reviewer commented on in 2011 was gone, but the wine was as strong as ever: the 2015 Terre d’Aigles Côtes du Rhône from Domaine Richard we ordered had a 15-percent alcohol content!
Paris seems to be taking a fresh interest in American culture. The musical comedy, an alien art form here, is now a staple at the Théâtre du Châtelet, where 42nd Street is currently packing them in, and the Musée de … Read More
The festivities have already started, at least for me. The other day, I had lunch and dinner in two Paris bistros worthy of the name. The first, Jouvence, in the 12th arrondisse-
ment, is both very new and very old.
Was Cy Twombly the painter whose work first elicited the comment “My three year old could have done that!”? Probably not, but he is a good candidate. Universally admired, even adulated, by the art world, he seems less popular with … Read More
The second edition of Dining Out in Paris, by American in Paris Tom Reeves, has just been published in paperback. This indispensable resource for new visitors to Paris delivers on its subtitle: “What You Need to Know before You Get … Read More
I must be losing my touch. Not far from where I live is a restaurant called Café Philippe that has been there for two-a-half years but that I had never noticed before. I discovered it while searching for a lunch spot in the Marais.
After a good BD (bande dessinée, or graphic novel), what a French person loves best is a good animated film. I recently saw two that stand out for their great humanity and empathy: Louise en Hiver (Louise by the Shore) … Read More
Strange to say, but until fairly recently Paris’s restaurant scene was rather provincial. If you didn’t want French food, you had to settle for mediocre, dumbed-down Chinese, Japanese, Italian or Indian. Mexican was pretty much nonexistent. The occasional exception was for food from former French colonies in North Africa or Vietnam.
In 2011, at the age of 51, the artist Maurizio Cattelan announced he was giving up his art career, an event marked by a major retrospective (or “artistic suicide,” as some termed it) at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. … Read More
