Michael and Ruthie's adventure in Paris

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Le Machon

After sating ourselves on the tasty, succulent esthetics surrounding us - the art of the many Eras and the beautiful spaces, augmented by a moody sky throwing shafts of light onto the galleries,

reminding me that there is no inside or outside to beauty - it's everywhere!! We were off to lunch at Le Machon. 

Crossing the Seine

I think it's an interesting phenomena, that what I remember best, what seems to stick in my memory the longest, are the events that are either my failures or are the most confusing-befuddling at the time. For example, I took a Biology class thirty years ago and I got all but one question right - yes! The only answer that I remember is the one I got wrong!! Our search for Le Machon is an example of the latter, it was a filet of confusion, sauteed in desperation with a sprig of angst. At the time we first went there in 2002, we had had only mediocre experiences with French Restaurants. But we had confidence in our guide 'The Lonely Planet' so we decided to try their restaurant recommendation. Well, it turns out that this restaurant, their recommendation, Le Machon, was on a back alley on a side street near St Sulpice. On a street not on our map!

We were able to find St Sulpice a church that took a 140 years to build, judging by the scaffolding that clad the church they were still at it!

A friend who lives in France once said, the French love to be helpful, and will always give an answer to any question you ask - whether they know the answer or not. Well - I hate generalizations, and we have to admit the confusion may have been ours - but - we talked first to a group of gendarmes, then a nearby passersby and even several nuns who had a store selling religious chachkas, across the street from St Sulpice. All gave different directions and none seemed to get us any closer to our goal - LUNCH. We'd make one turn here and voila! we found ourselves in front of St Sulpice. We seemed to be hopelessly caught in a mobius strip of ineptitude . Le Machon becoming almost mythic, like a culinary El Dorado, we began to believe our destiny was to search for it but never eat there. Mysteriously, as so often happens, just as we were ready to give up, we finally stumbled upon it by pure accident.

It turned out it was up a small street and down another alley on Rue Guisarde about fifty meters from where we had been asking directions! - This time around, six years later, we felt confidence in our creaky memories. We guided ourselves there almost like we were returning to an old friend. St Sulpice ever clad in scaffolding a reminder that construction and remodeling never seem to come to an end -

At the restaurant - the space cozy and intimate, the meal was delightful. Ruth Anne had succulent duck and I had lamb. We shared a bottle of wine, had our birthday toast, then espresso and an apple tart.  What fun!

Happily, in a haze, we wended our way back to the Louvre

for an impressionistic viewing of the Cubistic vision of Picasso's - 'The Algerian Women'

A take on Delacroix's 'Algerian Women in Their Apartments'

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