Postcards from St Maurice: A lovely meal at Le Procope, Paris

Dear Mother,

When visiting brother Paul in Seattle several weeks ago, he was excited to learn that we would be connecting with Mark and Amy in Paris, and that I was thinking of showing them the historic restaurant, Le Procope. Paul thought this a great idea, in part, because of Mark's interest in novels of the 1750-1830 period. Le Procope was very busy back then, and still is. Paul paused in his musings, excused himself, and returned with a cheque to cover the meal! What a brother. At my request, he composed a letter several days later, which I read at the table--no eyes were dry.

We began with a half bottle of champagne, which went superbly with the oysters Amy and I enjoyed. They were enormous and very filling, served with little slices of rye bread, butter and a vinaigrette. One of these days, I must learn to restrain myself (in this regard).

Mark wisely selected their traditional French onion soup. The Emmental cheese was very rich and stringy. Frankly, it was a meal in itself, something anyone would treasure after a hard day of work (or sightseeing). They used a chicken broth, which we found much more interesting than the traditional beef broth. All of which led to lengthy detailed brotherly discussions of how best to make broths, roasting, pressure cooker, etc.

Janice had some veggies (egg plant) with goat cheese made into a fondant, but my photo is so badly focused that I can't really tell.

We then had a bottle of Chateau Brown (a terrific white Bordeaux) with the duck breast three of us received (but only two had ordered it). We mentioned the error, and I guess Janice's pronunciation of mackerel sounds like duck breast (maigret) to an overworked waiter in a noisy restaurant, going flat out, and so, even though the waiter kindly offered to make the change, she kept the duck.

We had coffee/tea to conclude, and then visited the washrooms upstairs. They are worth the trip, letting you look into rows of private dining rooms for groups of various sizes. It would be nice to be able to rent such a room someday.

The meal over, I took a shot of them heading back to their hotel. We went to some bookstores and found a good, very detailed road atlas for France. Janice requires detailed information for her work on genealogy, and we have been discovering that many new and/or renamed roads do not show up on our atlas from 1988.