Have you ever wondered why some restaurant openings are “events” while others are simply overlooked? The recent opening of Ze Kitchen Galerie Bis provides some clues about media coverage and what it takes to draw the hounds.
#1: Give us a name we can play with. No, I don’t mean this restaurant’s full name, which is just a longer [...]
Most Americans know better than to ask their friends how much money they earn or to ask how much was spent on a large ticket item like a house. It is considered uncouth for us to be so nosy. The French, on the other hand, take the subject of money to a whole new level. [...]
Stylish, understated accessorizing—there are few things the French do better. Especially the men, and especially when it comes to their scarves. After a decade of careful observation I’m convinced that the entire French male population has been genetically perfected to give good scarf. Believe me, if I had a dollar for ever time a visiting American [...]
Prix de Flore-winning author Frédéric Beigbeder may have a second calling as a film comedian. I see him in a Judd Apatow boy-man type role, with a dose of French swagger. Last night was Paris’s first Literary Death Match, a throw-down organized by Opium magazine where authors read their work in competition before a live audience and jury. It started [...]
Once upon a time, when the country of France as we know it today did not yet exist, there lived four beautiful princesses in a magical kingdom known as Provence. Not one of them pricked her finger on a spindle, kissed a frog, or was locked up in a forgotten tower. Actually the true story [...]
Walked past the most amazing pair of eyes today. They had been plastered onto the stone of the walls of the Seine, just next to my favorite tree. Plastered = using the same method as the dudes who put up advertisement posters in the metro – long-handled brushes and big buckets of water. The dudes doing [...]
Hawaii and France are two places that are besieged by tourists, even in off season, and even during times of economic bust. So far this year, the Hawaiian islands have received nearly four million vacationers — about four times their total population. In France, the local-tourist ratio is even more pronounced. Paris alone has had 15.9 million [...]
In Paris instead of seeing large rats hanging out down by the subway tracks I’m more likely to see little mice instead which are not nearly as ugly or threatening as their NYC counterparts.
This morning however, everything changed and a barrier was crossed. As I sat enjoying my commute to work as best as I [...]
This old statue in the Jardin des Tuileries can’t believe his eyes at the sight of the modernistc statue forms now on display.
The recent Journées du Patrimoine gave me the opportunity to visit a museum that had long been an unobtainable grail for me – the very private Musée des Moulages Dermatologiques (Museum of Dermatological Casts) within the walls of the Hôpital St Louis. An extraordinary experience, but certainly not one that I would recommend to everybody!
The building dates [...]
