Water Bus – Budapest

I could have used one of these on my last trip when the bridges were washed out from the floods

Pretty sure a strong wind would blow this thing on its side. It looks amazing though.

Stern Beer – Krakow

Harsh, but fair

This name cracks me up.  Tiara doesn’t find it funny. We leave it to you, readers.

Gummy Walker – St Paul De Vence

It came from a mediocre bistro!

These gummies came with the bill at a thoroughly unremarkable restaurant. From humble beginnings come great things…

Bootleg Cars Display – Czestochowa

For some reason the strip mall in Czestochowa had a bunch of cars that had been chopped up and made to look like Cars. The steering wheel in this one is actually hooked up. Impressive chop jobs.

Cairn – Trail around Vence

This cairn has no fewer than 13 carefully balanced rocks!

Fun fact, Tiara and I have taken dog surveys (highly scientific!) that say we should own a Cairn Terrier.

Bathroom Sign at Hanage Restaurant – Berlin

This speaks for itself.

I have an acquaintance who admitted to me of using western toilets in a squat toilet manner (figure 4). So it is possible Hanage has had these other problems as well.

These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty – Copenhagen Airport

Apparently we couldn’t wait long enough to take a picture before ripping into these thirst-inducing treats

Tiara and I have been slowly rewatching Seinfeld on this trip after hours. Obviously, we had to own this bag of These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty.

Pirate Wine Glass at La Cantine Restaurant – Paris

Yo ho, ho, and a bottle of Rosé

We had a really great set lunch at this place, and I fully intended to write about it. The skeleton chef wine glass will have to suffice.

I have no idea at Jardin d’Acclimitation – Paris

In the future, we will all be cows.

Okay, so I looked it up, and apparently transhumance is a real word:

the action or practice of moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle, typically to lowlands in winter and highlands in summer.

But I’m still going to picture a parade of variegated transhuman cow-people roaming the astroturf.

Le 6 has a great wine list and a nice variety of small plates, but we chose the chef’s tasting menu.  For €44 you get three savory courses and one dessert.  The whole table participation is required, and the menu is a surprise – you don’t know what they will bring you ahead of time.  Our waiter did hint that there would be “a lot of fish,” which was enough to get us all excited about our choice.  Jess and Koshi ordered a nice bottle of red wine, since they know about such things.

When our first courses arrived we were amazed to find that not only were they all beautiful and delicious, we each had something different.  Even more surprising, our dishes were even different from what we saw at the other tables around us.  We liked to imagine the chef in the kitchen just making things up on the fly with the fresh ingredients he had on hand.

I had a salad of raw fish with mustard greens, ricotta, and tomato, while Ian had pieces of lightly cured fish with apricot and tomato.  Both were excellent:

For the next two courses, we all had the same dishes: fish with zucchini, chard, and tomatoes, and veal with carrots and artichokes.  The vegetables were the star just as much as the meat.  It’s hard to get me excited about zucchini but this fish dish did it:

For dessert we each had our own dish again.  The chef proved he knew me well by bringing me a magical berry soup.  I didn’t even know that I wanted soup for dessert but it turned out I really did.  Ian had apricots with lemon verbena ice cream.

With four excellent courses for €44 we were really impressed with the value and with our experience.  It was a special way to celebrate our last night in Paris, made even better by friends.

The C4. Now that’s my kind of breakfast.

The C4 was a suped up V8; I’m assuming that’s what they were going for with the name. It’s carrot juice, celery juice, citrus, gin, honey-pepper syrup, and a little bit of magic. I don’t generally go for the savory vegetable drinks (no thanks Bloody Mary), but I’ll make an exception for this one.

Have it your way. The bramble comes with a shot of cassis on the side, so you can get just the right amount of berry flavor.

The bramble is another riff on a classic. They substitute genever for dry gin and add gentian liqueur.  It’s a lovely fruity refreshing drink on a hot summer day, with a little extra complexity from the changes.

We also had to go back for another smoking car. I snapped a video of the alchemy when the sidecar hits the orange peel smoke:

Drinks

Sazerac (left) and Green Beast (right)

The cafe portion (upstairs) focuses on aperitifs. They stock exclusively French spirits, and get creative with their menu. The “Sazerac” is made using cognac instead of bourbon (plus numerous other tweaks), and the Green Beast is an absinthe drink invented by a famous French bartender.

We chatted a lot with Tristan, one of the bartenders, who was super excited about the craft.  These guys are very into tradition; they even have an original Jerry Thomas Bartender’s Guide from 1862. While they share the same French-only focus as Le Syndicat, A La Française focuses on the traditional craft of cocktails, avoiding the molecular gastronomy/mad scientist style work at Le Syndicat.

Tristan shared a lot of both knowledge as well as samples of some of the ingredients they use:

Strawberry Liquor (left), and Elderflower (right). Despite appearances, these are super solid liqueurs. I strongly prefer the elderflower to the more famous Saint Germain.

Prices are incredibly reasonable; happy hour is €6-7, which makes them about half the price of other top tier drinks in the city.  There is also a downstairs lounge bar open during nights only.

There’s also a downstairs bar that I didn’t succeed in getting good pictures of. It’s more loungy and has the club lights, as you can see in this snap of an incredibly awesome rum Tristan shared with us:

Vintage single cask French rum. Yes please.

The highlight from downstairs was the house Old Fashioned, which again was an all French adaptation of the American classic. Sadly I neglected to take a photo, but I encourage you to go take one for me.

Food

We came for the drinks, and happened to be hungry on one of our return visits. Lucky us, the food was outstanding. I already posted about their epic hamburger, but here it is again:

Tastes like Freedom…. and surrender. It’s confusing.

I just can’t say enough good things about that burger. Gravy, shredded potatoes, tomatoes, perfectly cooked ground beef, and french cheese to top it off. Best burger I’ve had in any restaurant.

A friend got the fish of the day (trout) which was also delicious.

Tasty whole trout with side of veggies

Verdict

You should absolutely go here while in Paris, preferably around lunch or dinner. Get the burger. Start with the Eau Fraiche, or the Caïpi Byrrh if you want something fruity.  Then put yourself in the hands of the more than competent bartenders.

The bistro is just a 10 minute walk from Pere Lachaise Cemetery, which you are probably visiting anyway.  So really you have no excuse not to go.

Let’s start with what isn’t rum. Bacardi is not rum, at least not the kind of rum I care about.  It’s flavorless sugar-alcohol masquerading as one of the world’ great spirits.

Good rum is bursting with flavors, ranging from the fresh grassy herbaceous quality of a rhum agricole to the rotten fruit and burnt tire of a dank jamaican pot still rum.  It’s also a bargain; a decent XO cognac will set you back at least $80, but you can get a killer 12 year old sipper rum for $30.  (Note: All links go to K&L wines, sorry if you don’t live in California).

So yes, rum is awesome, but why is it so big in Paris? Are they growing sugar cane in France? Actually, yes. Thanks to the miracle of colonialism, there is a little patch of French soil smack in the middle of the Caribbean; the island of Martinique.  French people like their AOC stamps, and they created AOC Martinique Rhum Agricole to protect the particular style of rum made on the island. It’s an agricole, which means it is made from fermented fresh sugar cane instead of the typical molasses base.  If you’ve ever tried Cachaça or something from Barbancourt you’ve had a rum in this style.

Now that I’ve bored everyone with rum education, let’s get on to the drinks.

Monk’s Swizzle

I was intrigued by this one. The primary spirits are Wray and Nephew Green Chartreuse, and Becherovka  Green Chartreuse is a famous French spirit made by Carthusian monks. It’s strong (55% ABV) and herbaceous (130 different herbs are infused into it), which gives it the potential to overpower a cocktail. Wray and Nephew is one of those big overproof funky Jamaican rums, and Becherovka is another herb driven spirit.  Put them all together and what do you get? A surprisingly tiki tasting concoction that goes down way too easy consider all the overproof juice in it.

Trader Who?

Tiara got this one, a riff on the classic Mai Tai, which was ostensibly invented at Trader Vic’s in Oakland in the 40s.

As Mai Tais go, this was as good as it gets. Lots of complex rum, creamy mouthfeel from the orgeat, and some well made curaçao to round it out, there’s nothing to complain about here.

Verdict

If you like rum, you should go to Mabel. If you don’t like rum, you should go to Mabel so they can change your mind. If you don’t care about rum, get the hell off my blog.

The one downside is the interior was distinctly tropical. Not in the “full of cute tiki elements” kind of way, but in the “humid and 110 degrees” kind of way. Again, it’s a heatwave in Paris, but I recommend saving Mable for a day that’s a little on the chilly side.

Finally, for you serious nerds that want to noodle on the recipes, here’s the menu.

Love that koi flag running the length of the restaurant

Kunitoraya specializes in udon, those fat Japanese noodles that are most commonly encountered in scalding hot broth.  Given that the air outside was basically scalding hot broth from the heat wave, we tried some different dishes.

Tanuki Zaru Udon

Those little fried bits top left are the “tanuki”

Literally “cold raccoon udon.” I don’t know what it says about my Japanese that I recognize the word for raccoon on site. Probably that I played too much mario bros as a kid.

In case you are wondering, no, this does not include actual raccoon; it’s just fried crunch bits of dough.

This dish was well made, noodles were perfect, dipping sauce was good, and it was nice and cold/refreshing on a hot day. The flavors were kind of subtle, but this is a characteristic of the dish more than a fault of the restaurant. If you want a flavor bomb, you might consider Tiara’s dish.

Gyudon

Best gyudon I’ve tasted

Tiara skipped udon entirely and went for this killer beef rice bowl. I have had a lot of gyudons in my life, and most of them are not half as vibrant or interesting. When they’re bad they’re mostly just grease and rice, and look something like this sad thing.  When they’re good, they look like that picture Tiara took of her lunch. You’ve got a couple kinds of pickled things, eggs, seaweed, scallions, and perfectly cooked delicious beef.  With a harmonious blend of sweet, sour, biter, salty, and umami components, the thing is firing on all cylinders.

Verdict

If you need a break from the French cuisine in Paris, this places gets my highest recommendation. It’s also just a short walk from the Louvre or Jardin de Tuileries.  We kept planning to make a return visit while we were in Paris, and somehow couldn’t get it together.

Note: Protocol was a bit confusing here; there’s no putting your name on a list or anything like that. If the place is busy, line up outside the door and a hostess will tell you when they have space.

The bar at Lulu White uses a pretty ring of old-timey Edison bulbs.

Lulu White is a really neat spot; they’re doing three things I’ve never seen from another cocktail bar.

1. No Citrus

This doesn’t sound like much, but it’s totally insane. There are fundamentally two kinds of drinks in the modern bar cannon: citrus driven (think daquiris, sours, margaritas) and spirituous (old fashioneds, manhattans, rob roys, etc.). Every cocktail bar worth its salt juices a bunch of fresh limes and lemons before service to handle the citrus side of the menu.

Every bar, that is, except Lulu White. They still makes drinks with sour components, they just drive them with house-made fermented syrups and shrubs – essentially fancy vinegars. We tried a pair of drinks in this category and they were both outstanding. Fresh, tangy, and balanced, all without touching citrus. Impressive work.

Jade Terminus Oxygenee (near) gets sour flavor from fermented pineapple. Mango Melt on Tango Belt (far) uses a mango shrub

The bartender gave us a sample of the fermented pineapple syrup and it was delicious. Not as sour as a shrub, but tangy and complex.

2. Every Drink Has Absinthe

Every, single, drink.

This is also a crazy challenge for a bar to take on. Absinthe has a lot of weird lore around it, but the key takeaway is that it is an herb infused liquor that typically has a heavy anise flavor. It’s incredibly easy for absinthe to overpower a drink, and cocktails that utilize it well are legendary – try my favorite, the Corpse Reviver #2! Building a full, diverse with distinctive drinks that all incorporate absinthe is a world class accomplishment, even without the citrus handicap.

3. They have  a Kombucha Program!

Denial Is Not a River in Egypt (right) pairs house made Kombucha with cognac and dill. Prima’s Paradiscia is just a generally solid rum drink

I asked the bartender about the nasty looking jar with bubbling muck on top. He explained that they have a house kombucha culture that they are continually brewing from.  It’s basically like a sourdough starter: they make a batch, strain out the bacteria/yeast raft, add new sugar water, and repeat. Again, the bartender gave us samples of the raw ingredients. The tea they’re using has a delightful smoky flavor. I’d buy it if they sold the stuff, and I’m not generally a fan of fermented tea beverage.

The Verdict

This bar was awesome. The staff were super friendly in explaining the drinks and ingredients. Cocktails were inventive and the self-imposed constraints led to some very different tasting concoctions.

While Lulu White did not have the best drinks I tried in Paris (that honor goes to Le Syndicat), they were delicious, and the mad-scientist level of inventiveness is worth a visit in itself.

1. Siamese Dead Guy

This one really gives a whole new meaning to “turn the other cheek.”

I heard he was a two-faced son of a bitch

2. Too much sadness for just one wreath

If there were some lightning bolts or eagles or something this would be wicked metal. Instead it’s just sad.

At long last I have found it. The gothest thing in the world.

3. Father, dog, children. In that order

This one takes a little interpretation. I read it as a monument to the man on the middle tier. Above, in a position of honor, is his father. At his level, his loyal dog. And scrabbling for light, down below the dog’s feet, are his two spindly children. I’m pretty sure my mom has something like this in her will.

Stack ranking for all eternity

4. The Escapee

Must have been amateur hour at the cemetery. Everybody knows that step 1 is to make sure they’re dead before you lock the door.

The window was forced… from the inside!

5. The Mysterious Bulge

That’s a curios polishing job. Yep. People.

I heard he left behind a large endowment.

250lbs of metal and glass makes for one hell of a light fixture.

This guy makes things that are just too cool (sometimes literally). I kind of want to be him when I grow up.

Bonus video of the terraced watefall from Foundation Louis Vuitton. Watch it on loop to achieve nirvana.