La Maison - a taste of France in Dublin


It was a pleasant Friday evening at the start of a long weekend as we set off to Castlemarket Street in Dublin to dine at La Maison. Knowing that we appreciated French food and wine some friends had recommended the place to us and had talked expansively about their own choices. So with table easily booked online and with some advance checking of the menus we were full of expectation.
The street was packed with scores of people - after-office party goers; young; young-at-heart and visitors like ourselves. We moved through a covered terrace and were shown to a ground floor table near the door. Our warm welcome was soon supplemented by a tray of breads and a pâté of pureed gherkins, onions and shallots - délicieux ! To get further into the mood we settled back with a pastis and took in the surroundings: the most obvious thing about the décor was the crispness of it all - sparkling glassware, white paint and linen, posters and black and white photographs.
Friendly and professional staff took our orders and it wasn't long before we got tucked in to a trio of scallops:


and a side by side dish of escargots and cuisses de grenouille:




This was an impressive start and augered well for the mains to follow. But not quite yet for our waiter arrived with a little something to freshen the mouth between courses. Don't you just love it when that happens?
Then on to the mains: Turbot with a herby pea purée and foam for my other half:




and a substantial, classical cassoulet for me:




both of which were delightfully presented, tasted delicious and were washed down to perfection by a lovely wine, Lombeline - a vin de pays du Gard.

I didn't need it, as the meal was already substantial, but still ordered a side dish of ratatouille. It's not everyday that you are in a restaurant of this quality and it is a dish I don't often get so........ maybe I was a little more gourmand than gourmet!
Remember those friends who had recommended the place? I had quite forgotten their key piece of advice about leaving room for dessert. We hadn't! They had shared a crêpe suzette on their visit and said that we should go for it! Not this time though, that's a pleasure that will await our next visit.
Instead we opted for a couple of digestifs - deux cafés cognac s'il vous plaît - and relaxed over them for a while longer before joining the thinned but still substantial crowd of party goers.
Thanks to Breton chef Olivier QUENET and his team for a most memorable visit and this taste of France right in the heart of Dublin.
We'll be back.

Parisianer pic framed


The PARISIANER picture, as explained in a previous post, arrived as promised and was soon off to be framed. Here it is in its new home and a lovely talking point it is too. Nice to have been associated with this project. Do check out the previous links for more information.

 

Annecy: News to take your breath away



The beautiful Alpine town of Annecy, near the border of France and Switzerland has been in the news recently as a result of poor air quality. Apparently the cold air from the mountains keeps pollutants closer to ground level and causes a build-up of nasty micro-particles.  This is paradoxical in a way because the famous lake at Annecy is one of the cleanest in the world.

Low-cost flights to Geneva make it easy to get to Annecy and that's what we did a few year's ago. We're thinking of going back because it was one of the most relaxing (and we think healthiest) holidays we ever had.

Here is how Le Dauphine newspaper treated the story.

It uses the term coup de grisou which admittedly I had to look up. It means "firedamp", a miner's name for a methane explosion that occurs when the gas comes into contact with air.  Sounds about right.

That got me to thinking though ... what's being done about it?

The town is certainly taking it seriously and according to another report this month, while acknowledging that there are still some instances of pics de pollution, it looks as if there is an improving trend.
Check here for current details.

It does seem that France takes its air quality seriously.  I wondered in all this talk about Annecy being the 2nd most air polluted town in France how our own local air quality compares. At first click, it is not that obvious.  Check this online map to locate your town.

Find it?  What do you think?
Did you notice that the map has details of more towns in France being surveyed than most other EU countries?
Details are given for approximately 70 towns in France, Austria: 4, Belgium:1, Germany 6 and UK: 10 - Belfast not among them.

In fact, air quality in Northern Ireland is widely measured and there is some monitoring equipment near where I live.  It is reassuring to find that pollution at time of writing is low.
Still that way? Check here.

Even so, I think I'd still rather be in Annecy.

Parisian style lovelocks on bridge in Belfast


Having heard about the lovelocks appearing on the Lagan footbridge I took a stroll to see for myself. There may not be as many as on the bridges of Paris where several years worth have been fastened to the metal grilles and the key thrown into the Seine but there are certainly enough to show that the trend has taken hold.

Will they be allowed to stay?
Campaigners in Paris have been urging city officials to remove them arguing that they spoil the view of some of the most beautiful parts of the city. So far, as reported earlier on this blog , no action has been taken. Just last week however a section of railing fell off raising further concerns about the safety of the bridges. Check out this piece on BBC for more on that and a hyperlink to a comment piece on whether locks on bridges are romantic or a menace.
Will they be allowed to remain in Belfast? Should they be allowed? Is there a middle way? An alternative?

 

Saving wine bottle corks



A friend's post on social media directed me to this article  focussing on cork growers and why cork has such a positive effect on the environment.  The challenge is that recycling of cork is a work in progress and much more needs to be done to avoid it ending up in landfill sites.
So from now on I'm saving wine corks like this one from a recently enjoyed Moulin A Vent -  after all what goes around comes around.

Cadenas: No plans to remove Paris padlocks

When workmen were seen taking away a padlock festooned section of balustrade on the Pont des Arts in Paris last week it sparked off some concerns that the "love locks" - cadenas - would be removed from other bridges too. The Libération newspaper reports here that there are no plans to do this however it also pointed out that not everyone is in favour of them and would like them removed.
A no love locks campaign has been set up and has organised a petition. Check it out here. Since they first appeared about 6 years ago the locks have multiplied to approximately 700,000 and on the Pont des Arts alone are estimated to weigh about 40 tonnes.
The locks on the much smaller Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor, formerly known as Passerelle Solférino and don't look as if they would cause too much trouble. But how to remove them should that be necessary? By replacing the balustrade. There are no keys as having locked their love couples throw them into the Seine.
The locks are good publicity to those promoting Romantic Paris and if they have to be removed it will no doubt be with a heavy heart.


CFB explores French connections

The origins of this talk by Hélène GUILLET and Philip McGRORY date back to an idea of then French President, Nicolas Sarkozy to mark Ireland's chairmanship of the European Union. He had the idea of an exhibition charting connections between the two countries.

The exhibition was set out in a series of panels with commentaries in English, French and Irish. We were therefore honoured that the person tasked with providing the French translation was none other than our speaker, Hélène.




Our speakers explained the origins of the Collège des Irlandais in Paris on the rue des Irlandais near the Sorbonne. Hélène showed us a picture of a wedding ceremony being performed in the famous cultural centre. It was her wedding from two and a half years ago in which she married Cairan who also worked on the President's commemorative project mentioned above.

Next, Philip brought us closer to home and into Lisburn. He shared a little known fact that Lisburn was the only town in Ulster to have a French church, in which the minister conducted and the congregation followed services in French.

Did you know that there were relatively few prisoners in the Bastille when it was stormed in 1789? And that one of them was Irish? And that there were Bastille day celebrations in Belfast in 1791 and '92? We learnt that.


Sir Richard Wallace was Conservative and Unionist MP for Lisburn in the period 1873 to 1885. He spent a lot of his time at his home, the Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne. Clicking on the following link to the Bagatelle reveals an interesting connection with Marie Antoinette.

Detail on fountain at Wallace Park, Lisburn
Philip and Hélène's talk covered military connections especially in the 20th century - we heard about Redmond, Messines and Samuel Beckett's resistance role in World War 2 and they shared a recent photograph showing troops from both sides of the border working with their French peers to train soldiers in Mali.

There was still plenty to connect... we looked at the French background of local, familiar faces - former Taoiseach Sean Lemass, previous Unionist leader, James Molyneaux, Field Marshall Montgomery and to the Irish background of the familiar General Charles de Gaulle whose maternal connections include the McCartan's of County Down. In fact there were so many connections that Philip tested our knowledge with a picture quiz of 20 people with Franco-Irish connections. These included artist Sir John Lavery, engineer Peter Rice, and designer and architect, Eileen Grey.

Our speakers were bringing their fascinating talk to a close but there was still something to explain. Notice for the talk had referred to a sea-going snail, what was that about? At the foot of several of their slides we had noticed a picture of a snail. They hadn't referred to it but all was about to be revealed.

It turns out that one of the earliest Franco-Irish connections is embodied in a snail, the Irish cepaea nemoralis. Apparently this genus is found only in Ireland and the Pyrenees area. How did it get from there to here?

Hélène and Philip left that to their appreciative audience.