London-Paris-London: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  September 19, 2016]

Mid-September 2006 I embarked on a food trip, pure and simple. I rarely travel just for food, not matter how important eating turns out to be on the journey. But this was explicitly a pilgrimage to the classic bistros of Paris.  No trendy restaurants bistronomiques, no Michelin four star indulgences.  The solid mainstream: because you don't know what you've got till its gone.

It will take all week to tell you about it, but we'll start off by touching down in London, booking into Hazlitt's Hotel on Frith Street, and taking a pint at the Coach & Horses before a late supper.

The Ivy, of course, serving late enough that it was comfortable to get there after the day flight from New York:

Potted ham

Roast grouse, jus, bread sauce, game chips, savoy cabbage

Cheeses

And a drop of claret. I'd reserved the next day, Sunday, for the museums. Kandinsky, "The Road to Abstraction" at the Tate Modern, then--after a ham and mustard sandwich for lunch at the Morpeth Arms--the old Tate for a major Howard Hodgkin restrospective.

In the evening, a tour of my Soho hostelry circuit, then dinner at Andrew Edmund's wine bar. Dressed Colchester crab (you know you're in England) and a daube de boeuf. 

Next morning, the Eurostar from Waterloo to the Gare du Nord, reading Rip It Up by Simon Reynolds and Berlin's autobiography, Berlin Bromley. I checked into one of those very plain, traveler's hotels near the station and spent the afternoon on a walking tour to pee through the windows of some restaurants which didn't make my list: Aux Lyonnais, Gallopin, Drouant, and the Grand Véfour. Tomorrow: what's for dinner?