The Paris Blog: Paris, France Expat Tips & Resources » Blogging

An Odd Request

An American Mom in Paris — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 21:39:31 +0000

I often get weird emails requesting I mention something-or-other on my blog. I rarely pay them any attention because I’m not interested. I don’t write this blog for money so there’s no need to pimp it out. But this guy…. this Damien…. this guy was different. He had something special. Here are the most important parts of his email.

Damien: I’ve just visited your dazzling blog…
MJ: You have fine taste. I’m listening.

Damien: …and thought I would contact you. My name is Damien Luce. I’m a French pianist & actor. I’m a former student of the Juilliard School and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
MJ: OK, impressive credentials, but where exactly are you going with this…

Damien: In January 2012, I will be performing Cyrano de Bergerac as a clown…
MJ: Bam. Done. Damien, I’m yours. It’s all you all the time from here on out, you clown with wacky awesome ideas.

Go to this website if you want to know more about Damien. He’s trying to drum up funds to produce his project. If we were still going to be here in January 2012, I would give him five million dollars right now just to make sure this performance happens.
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Why You’re Here

Laurie — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:27:49 +0000

I don’t care why you come or how you got here…just glad you made it to The Paris Blog.

An Expat’s Palate

Laurel Zuckerman — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 04:30:25 +0000

David Lebovitz worked for 13 years at Alice Water’s legendary Chez Panisse restaurant and was named one of the Top Five Pastry Chefs in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Chronicle. His writing has been featured in Bon Appétit, Chocolatier, Cooking Light, Food+Wine, Cook’s Illustrated, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The New York Times, People, Saveur, Sunset, and USA Today.

In addition to his excellent blog, David’s books include Ready for Dessert, the Perfect Scoop, The Great Book of Chocolate, Room for Desert, and The Sweet Life in Paris which was a finalist in the Best Literary Writing category, in the 2010 Cuisinart/International Association of Culinary Professionals awards.

Laurel Zuckerman: For you, which came first, writing or cooking?

David Lebovitz: Cooking. I started working in restaurants when I was 16 years old. Even though I learned to write a little earlier than that, I was a professional cook before I started writing, like I do now.

LZ: Do they compete for your attention? If so, who wins?

DL: Nowadays it’s kind of a wrestling match between the two, with me in the middle. I prefer to be in the kitchen, but writing takes a lot of concentration and I need to buckle down to do it, so my time it divided. The best part about writing is there’s no dishes to wash. But when I’m cooking, at the end of the day, dinner’s ready. So I’m not sure which wins, but anything that involves less dishes may have the edge.

LZ: What brought you to Paris, and why do you stay?

DL: It’s funny because that’s my number-one asked question by visitors. I used to just stand in the middle of the street, throw my arms up, and say “Look around you!” but I got too many looks from people passing by, wondering what the crazy American with the croissant crumbs on his jacket was doing standing in the middle of the street, twirling around shouting, with his arms in the air.

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Thanks, Paducah

Laurie — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 23:04:26 +0000

Next month The Paris Blog turns 5 years old. This little snapshot from our “Who’s On” traffic report shows me the blog is reaching exactly who I wanted it to.

Restaurant Central

Laurie — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:39:58 +0000

A friend of mine had a health scare a few years ago. “I decided if the doctor told me it was terminal, I would move to Paris and eat myself to death.” Luckily, she recovered. But for some people, a terminal diagnosis is not a prerequisite for a trip to the City of Light led mouth-first. Now, finally, there is a blog just for such foodies. A really good one. Paris by Mouth boasts some of the city’s most prominent food writers, such as Dorie Greenspan, Alexander Lobrano, and Meg Zimbeck, who also moonlights here at The Paris Blog. On top of the smart writing on the restaurant scene—plus details on events each week, such as wine tastings—the site features a tool that helps you find a restaurant narrowed down by neighborhood, price, and days open. Bravo!

Blog-ebrity David Lebovitz

Meg Zimbeck — Sat, 22 May 2010 22:41:04 +0000

On a hot and humid night in July 2007, I made my first visit to Hidden Kitchen. The “underground supper club” was brand new and still buzzing from a write-up that had appeared on Chocolate & Zucchini. I had brought a new boyfriend and was trying to convince him that I was cool and cosmopolitan. That illusion was shattered when we entered the apartment and a certain someone caught my eye. “Holy crap!” I blurted like a jittery school girl, “you’re David Lebovitz!”

Cornered in the kitchen, David had no choice but to suffer my stalker-like admiration. He was sweet and polite (while inching almost imperceptibly toward the knives) as I rambled on about my favorite blog posts.

I was thinking about that embarrassing encounter recently during a dinner that David and I hosted at Hidden Kitchen. A lot has changed in the three years since that first meeting. David has published three additional books and seen his blog skyrocket to become one of the world’s most popular food sites. Hidden Kitchen has transitioned from being a word-of-mouth secret to something that’s splashed across the front page of the New York Times. And I, well, I’ve learned to control myself and stop acting like such a groupie.

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Yelp Arrives in France

Paris by Appointment Only — Sat, 08 May 2010 17:46:41 +0000

Ladies and gents, I’m pleased to introduce you to my new baby —— Yelp France! Yelp is a website that connects people to great local businesses. Its purpose in life is to give people a platform to share their favorite (and not so favorite) addresses with those in their community. That means straight talking, no-nonsense, authentic reviews of everything from dentists and designer shops to bakeries, nursery schools, public parks and cocktail bars. For years, this incredibly tool has been limited to cities in English-speaking languages only. But today marks a huge turning point in Yelp’s fabulous little life, because it’s the day that Yelp arrives in Paris!! This is a big deal, not only because it’s the first time that Yelp has entered a non-English city, but because it will be a fabulous tool not only for Parisians, but for visitors looking to have an insider experience in the City of Light.
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American Library Starts a Blog

Laurie — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:37:13 +0000

Good news! The American Library in Paris, an expat membership institution, has just launched Browser, a blog covering expat subjects and literary news and events (and not just ones at the Library itself). An inaugural post announces an event worth planning for:

Since the mid-1990s the Library has been fortunate to host the talented and inventive San Francisco performing arts company Word for Word for annual productions of American short stories. The stories are performed exactly as written — that is, the actors speak not just dialogue but the narrative in its entirety. Watching these performances is an exercise in the unexpected on one level; on the next, it puts a writer’s style and tone into an entirely new context. The experienced is heightened, in my experience, by reading the story beforehand so that you can concentrate on its interpretation.

This year, on Thursday 15 April, Word for Word brings us a 1951 Tennessee Williams story, “Two on a Party.” Williams is best known for his plays — “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Night of the Iguana,” “The Glass Menagerie” — and wrote few stories, but these too reflect his staging and pacing skills. “Two on a Party” is about two lonely drifters, hookers we might call them today, who strike up a strange bond that transcends their different sexualities and their separate longings. As Williams writes in the closing section, it’s about “a female lush and a fairy who travel together, who are two on a party… Two queens sleeping together with sometimes a stranger between them…”

Anyone queer or queer-friendly knows the importance of this seminal (pun intended!) short story. It’s sure to be an exciting evening. If you can’t make it, bookmark Browser for alerts to other cool events.

666: Magical or Menacing?

Laurie — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:32:26 +0000

The Paris Blog has hit a devilish milestone in the number of fans on its Facebook Page. (What, you haven’t joined yet?)

Frog-Adjacent

Laurie — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:14:06 +0000

A reader who lives in the States, and is apparently more Francophile than even me, has sent in his photo and asked that we publish it. How could I say no? He looks so French with his fisherman’s sweater, hair matted from infrequent washing, mechant little mustache, and a tongue sticking out to either French kiss someone or taste some obscure animal innard. Readers, if you have images of yourself that illustrate how much you love France and the French, send them in! A suivre…