Badaude

Badaude's Paris Address Book - Ladurée

Why haven't I reviewed Ladurée before? Surely everyone's been there? Well, not me. Until last week.

 

This is the place where Ladies who Lunch lunch in Paris. Ladurée is well-known as the home of the most famous macarons in Paris. Macarons are nothing like 'macaroons' and hardly a visitor goes home without one of their little duck-egg-blue patisserie boxes. Where we see a fairly dry tea biscuit, the French see high art. A Ladurée macaron is two light, meringue-y cakes stuck together with a layer of creamy goo, and it comes in any flavour from caramel au beurre salé (salty butter-caramel) to citron-basilic (lime/basil). Some of them taste as powdery as they look: violette is like perfume, almost like eating your own lipstick. But then Ladurée did produce a range of lipgloss for Sephora. And somehow I love food that tastes a little like non-food. For the full effect, choose a plateful of the mini-versions from the counter downstairs.

 

 

Head upstairs to the shady tearoom on the upper floor and, after your decadent Ladurée signature club sandwich with foie gras, your waitress will bring up your little plate of heaven along with your pot of Oolong.

 

Favourite flavours below, please!

 

...Or imaginary flavours (I recently read an interview with Laduree's chief patissier in which he said he dreamt of creating a carrot-hazlenut macaron. He also gave a basic recipe and I actually had a go at making macarons at home, with surprising, though not completely elegant, success).

 

www.laduree.fr

21, rue Bonaparte, 75006, Métro: St Germain, tel : 01.44.07.64.87

The Oxford Murders

A month ago I was at a party in Paris when I first met Todd Zuniga of Opium Magazine who also runs Literary Death Match. Being English, I made the unguarded comment, 'You should do that in Oxford. Everyone there's a writer.' Being American, he replied, terrifyingly, 'Sure - how about the first week in November?'.

Luckily I know Xander Cansell, Oxford's literary Mr Fix. Despite a slow start persuading people to be involved (might have been something to do with the word 'death' in the title*?) we ended up with a fine line-up including judges: multi-award winning poet and writer, Kate Clanchy; Idler editor, Dan Kieran and last-minute (I mean literarlly 30 minutes before) replacement for Tom Greeves, Ben Walker, who was not only lanconically hilarious but improvised on his guitar to order.

Reading were the fabulous Jake Wallis-Simons, Miranda Ward, Megan Kerr and LDM champion, George Chopping ('the love child of Hugh Grant and John Hegley' - Kate Clanchy). Here he is:

The pen is mightier than the sword. Those who live by the pen, die by the pen (or perhaps by a particularly savage game of musical chairs...).

Oh yes, and I did some live drawing...

 
  
 
(Poster and bad photo by me. Good photos by Garrett Coakley)

*No living authors were harmed during the making of this event.

Suddenly Hiver

Last week, the season turned in Paris. The trees are skeletons. 'Grog chaud' is suddenly chalked up on all the menu boards in the Tuilleries' cafes. Time for a change of clothes.

I finally took the plunge and bought some stupid trousers. These are See by Chloe. The sweater's A.P.C., the scarf last season's Isabel Marant and the jacket, this season's Vanessa Bruno and my patent lace-ups by B-store - about a year old but this is the first outfit I felt was 'right' with them.

(Incidentally, what exactly is 'Grog Chaud'?)

Hemingway & Company (Plus Big Badaude Giveaway!)

Crazy week at Shakespeare & co.So what was it like? Well, most days went a little like this:

Morning, walk to work past Notre Dame, gleaming. Arrive - tumbleweeds everywhere: unswept, unslept. Giro Playboy in the bathroom ('Would you like a coffee? A glass of wine?' 'A coffee.')

Corinne sawing shelves, tatooed, silent mostly. ('My right arm is dedicated to Alice in Wonderland, my left...')

Intruder:'Cela n'est pas un metier des femmes.'

Sylvia (in yellow boots) 'Mais ca change, ca change.' 

Maitresse in refuge from a bad smell, working in the corner. Me, working up a ladder, pen in mouth, a Groucho Marx cigar. Booktourists arrive, documentarymaker arrives: my ass photographed from 100 angles.

Michael: 'A glass of wine? Anytime. A coffee? A coffee. Got to keep the balance.'

I draw through lunch.

Balanced on the benches, one foot in the door to George Whitman's apartment, I catch a whiff of WIFI from the office.

Syliva's amythyst necklace: Maitresse's amythyst necklace.

After hours: still working. Lauren shelves books, Gemma and Gemma shelve books. Sylvia shelves books.

Magazine editors arrive, photograph the walls. I notice - books in George Whitman's library: 'Naked They Prayed' (snortle); another. What was that title? Can't remember - but worse! (giggle). Third, a book by Arnold Bennet labelled in equal capitals BURIED ALIVE BY ARNOLD BENNET (barely-repressed hysteria). 

Half an hour on the phone. Coquette, Maitresse, Badaude (salonistes? superheroes?) wait to leave. Am I finished? Coquette tells a sale story: where should we meet, eat? Ici ou ailleurs? Ici ou ailleurs?

'A glass of wine? A coffee? Just ask me. Any time.'

(It was always wine, never coffee).

I've finished drawing. I write on the wall of Shakespeare & Company:'My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want puce gloves. You were a student, weren't you? Of what in the other devil's name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: physiques, chimiques et naturelles. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone: when I was in Paris, boul' Mich', I used to. Yes, used to carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder somewhere. Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February 1904 the prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me. Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. Lui, c'est moi. You seem to have enjoyed yourself.'

(BIG BADAUDE GIVEAWAY! The first person to identify this quote in my comments box, leaving an email contact, will WIN AN ORIGINAL BADAUDE DRAWING!)

Getting there...

 

Beautiful Strangers*

Wednesday last week (28th). Things are shaping up at Shakespeare & Co...

 

...and at the Centre Nationale du Livre where I, along with Maitresse and Meg Zimbeck, I attended a bilingual q&a session organised by the French-American foundation, featuring Todd Zuniga of Opium, Paul Morris of Bomb, Chad Post of Open Letter, Eli Horowitz of McSweeney's as well as high-powereds from the world of traditional publishing. After hours, Ms Zimbeck led all of the above over the river to a little place she just happened to know which was still open and conjured wine, bread, terrines, saucisson and cheese for something approaching 20 and let us stay 'til some sort of late hour...

But it's back to work again in the morning...

(*the title is because I got confused by picking up a leaflet about les belles etrangeres in the lobby of the Maison des Livres. Nevertheless, all the stranger I saw tonight couldn't have been more beautiful)

First Pencils...

Tabula rasa...

 
 
 

It's a privilege to draw on these old walls and, oddly, rather hard on the pencil. More tomorrow...

photos (c) Lauren Goldenberg at Shakespeare & Company - thanks, Lauren!

Crazy Week in Paris

So, Sylvia of Shakespeare and Company asked me to draw on the immortal bookshop's historic walls... This happened to conicide with a conference on the electronic book (edition numericale) involving all sorts of visiting American luminaries, talking and partying.

Which made for a somewhat crazy week. 

Here are the designs I sent to Sylvia:

This is for the main staircase of the shop. The theme: English-language writers in Paris (Proust didn't make the cut, obviously, but Proust is always good to draw...).

Kind of a trompe d'oeil gallery of author portraits, inspired by Shakespeare & Co's original staircase decor which looked like this:

Incorporating a poem was Sylvia's idea. I searched but, although Anglo prose writers made Paris their home, I was hard-pressed to find poets who wanted to write about the city. Here I made do with Rilke's Im Jardin des Plantes...

...and this is for the children's section: what happens on your bookshelf at night.

But will they work in practice? Watch this space...

Badaude's Paris Address Book - Marché de Saint Ouen

There are few better ways of spening Sunday morning than at the northernmost tip of Paris at the Marché aux Puces (yes, that means fleas) de Saint Ouen at Clignacourt. Take line 4 from St Germain all the way up to the top. Cross the boulevard Ney under the Périphérique Paris ring-road then keep going straight ahead, ignoring the cheap clothes and jewellery stalls as you approach the market.

 

 

You won't find many fleas here any more - or many bargains either. But you might find intricate marble fireplaces from defunct chateaux, stylish art deco leather chairs and entire suits of armour. If you think you could have a little trouble taking some of these home, maybe opt for antique textiles and posters from the rue de Rosiers, one of the many individual covered markets on the site.

 

The Puces website will give you a good guide round the stalls.

 

Want to look but not buy? You can also catch the last of the exhibitions for the 4e Mondial de l'Antiquite which run 'til the end of November.

 

Lunch at le Soleil or one of the many cheap and cheerful bars scattered between the stalls and market halls. I love to go here on frosty mornings and sit and watch the chestnut sellers and the card sharps plying their trade along the avenues of the market.

 

Open Saturday, Sunday, Monday

 

Le Soleil, 109 av. Michelet, St-Ouen

tel. 01-40-10-08-08

www.restaurantlesoleil.com

About Them

The fabulous Brandon and Arlene of Twentythirtyforty.net, Chicago's finest online fashion emporium, asked me to illustrate their About Us page.

Surprise, surprise, like many good ideas, theirs happened to have happened in Paris...

 
(Brandon is on the left, Arlene is on the right)