Honoring Chartier Restaurant - the French Bankers' Lunch Spot in Paris (France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Honoring Chartier Restaurant – the French Bankers’ Lunch Spot in Paris (France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

(Note: In the US, a chain like Williams-Sonoma might be able to offer cooking classes to make the dishes listed below.  Or, use French and Italian cookbooks.)

In the 9^th arrondisement in Paris (France), there is a restaurant that caters to the banking and finance industry called Chartier. 

The “tablecloths” are white paper for easy clean-up.  The waiters write up your itemized bill on a corner of the tablecloth and tear it off for payment at the cash register.  Chartier always gives sales receipts.  They mention that they do catering on the receipt.

Most of Chartier’s banker clients come from the higher rent 8^th arrondisement next door.  Chartier can offer less expensive lunch meals, because they are in a less expensive city neighborhood.  Lower rent carries over to less expensive prices charged on meals.

The 9^th is also easy to access with food and drink due to its proximity to several of Hausmann’s “Grands Boulevards.”  These large boulevards lead into the 9^th from the Périphérique or ring road around Paris.  Logistics companies love its location for ease of delivery (no tickets for obstructing sidewalks) and not too much gas used thanks to fewer stoplights.

The rent is high in the 8^th because there are many bank headquarters there as well as apartments owned by aristocrats.

Chartier’s menus are simple, but excellently prepared.  I do not remember all of them, but the book entitled Champagne Uncorked about Krug champagne jarred my memory about meal rotation.

I learned how to make Chartier’s menu offerings at home when I began working part-time once my daughter Florence was born when my family lived in Paris.  I have added to them now that I am back in the US in California.  You can find recipes for most of these items in cookbooks or online.

Drinks:

-gazpacho from Spain, if made traditionally with bread it may qualify as a full protein - grain from flour plus seeds in the vegetables and in the olive oil.  Factcheck needed from Purdue University.

-Thai iced tea

-apple cider

-pear cider

-Vouvray – fruity white from the Loire Valley (located close to Paris via highway and train, including TGV)

-Montlouis – fruity white from the Loire Valley

-Saumur Champigny – light red from the Loire Valley

-Bourgueil – light red from the Loire Valley

-Moretti amber beer from Udine, Italy

-Taittinger Champagne for deals signed and “name days” instead of birthdays for everyone.  (Taittinger is also the brand of the LA Rapper Notorious B.I.G., who was killed in New York I believe – factcheck needed.)

-Champagne Deutz – Not as well known, but very good.  My family served this at my daughter Florence’s baptism party held at the Chateau de la Jonchere at Bougival next to the Seine River outside Paris.

-Lillet - Sweet cordial from Bordeaux in both white and red

-Cointreau - Sweet orange cordial from Angers

-Tyrconnel Irish whiskey

-Dalmore Single Malt Scottish Whisky

-Johnnie Walker Blended Scotch Whisky

-Bombay Gin

-Tanqueray Gin

-Courvoisier Cognac

-Marc de Champagne or Burgundy to add to espresso, if desired.  This is called a café coretto in Italy.

-Mariage Frères Teas

-Lavazza Coffee for café crème

-Carte Noire for espresso

-Black currant liqueur to make kids with sweet white wine or Kir Royal with champagne

Hors d’oeuvre:

Offer a selection of 3 of the following items while guests wait on the rest of the meal:

-Roquefort with cream spread on toast squares

You can substitute the following cheese selections for Roquefort to make the dish above.  Sometimes your main supplier might be short of supply for any number of reasons, so it is good to have two or more other suppliers that you order from:

-Maytag blue – from US

-Cabrales – from Spain

-Gorgonzola – from Italy

-Carrot Purée made with butter and olive oil to spread on toast squares

-Sliced radishes served on top of buttered toast squares

-Braised red cabbage made with brown sugar with crumbled bacon sprinkled on top

-garlic-butter toast squares

-apple slices with cheddar cubes

-lentil salad made with lemon juice, olive oil, cumin, and chopped Italian parsley.  (Claudia Roden recipe)

-chopped iceberg lettuce, cashews, tangerine slices, and orange-blossom water with lemon juice dressing (Riff on a Paula Wolfert recipe using walnuts instead of cashews)

-cheddar-butter-paprika cheese balls

-smoked salmon, hard-boiled egg slices, and horseradish sauce on toasted pumpernickel squares

(This is great with Moretti beer and maybe Tyrconnel whiskey.)

  

Entrées

A choice of one of the following:

-Seasonal vegetable soup – puréed with cream offered on the side.  Cabbage, by the way, is a little easier to digest, if it is puréed in a soup.

-Greek Village salad with oil and vinegar dressing and two slices of feta cheese

-Plain salad with a choice of blue cheese dressing, Ranch dressing, or balsamic and vinegar dressing

Main Dishes

-Monday

Coq au Vin (Chicken Stewed in red wine with buttered tagliatelle on the side), or

Gratin Dauphinois (from the Jura Mountain area of France – potato casserole made with sliced potatoes, crème fraîche, butter, liquid cream, and grated gruyère on top)

-Tuesday

Seafood Pasta – use an Italian recipe for whatever is freshly caught that day.  If the catch is bad, make gambas al ajillo (Spanish garlic shrimp) with frozen, raw shrimp, or

Gratin Dauphinois

-Wednesday

Roast Chicken with potatoes and puréed spinach on the side made with cream and butter.  You can vary this by making Greek lemon-garlic chicken sometimes, or

Gratin Dauphinois

-Thursday

Boeuf Bourguignon – (Beef stew made with red wine and served with buttered tagliatelle), or

Gratin Dauphinois

-Friday

-Baked Fish (Cod) with sheet-pan, baked potatoes with Italian herbs, chopped garlic, and olive oil, or

-Gratin Dauphinois

Cheese Platter

Offer a selection of 8 different cheeses with a choice of 1 or 2 with two baguette slices.

Vegetarian Options:

There are vegetarian options for a main dish from several world cuisines.  I have listed several below that I like that can be served with bread made with California black olives and olive oil:

-Turkish-Lebanese-Egyptian – Spinach and or Cheese Phyllo Pies

-Thailand – Panang Curry with Vegetables (The curry is made with stewed peppers that can mild or spicy.)

-Greece – Salad buffet Greek Village Salad, Tomato and Onion Salad, and Tzatziki dip for toasted bread

-India – Vegetable curries, saags, and vindaloos

Dessert:

-Fruit Salads with cream on the side

-Fruit or vegetable breads or muffins such as banana bread, zucchini bread, or carrot cake served as a bread or muffin.

-Valrhona chocolate muffins

-Vanilla custard made with cream, eggs, sugar, and vanilla beans from Madagascar

Coffee and Digestif Alcohols as Desired

I loved eating at Chartier and have always believed that real food should not be limited to the bankers of France.  

This little spiel is a manifesto in support of the real food movement from Italy.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Antwerp, Belgium's Home of Flemish and Dutch Masterpiece Paintings with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Antwerp, Belgium’s Home of Flemish and Dutch Masterpiece Paintings with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My husband Laurent and I bundled up Florence, put her in her car seat, and set out for a weekend in Belgium on a cold, winter day in Paris, France.

The destination I had in mind was Antwerp, Belgium to visit the Koninklijk Museum.  The famous Rubens paintings of wealthy, corpulent women were being restored, but there were still galleries full of paintings by Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Brueghel, and Memling to admire.

My favorite painting by Abel Grimmers (1570 – 1619) was entitled Springtime.  Springtime showed men planting gardens and making their vegetable gardens tidy and lovely.

That desire to beautify one’s surroundings was something I loved about the French, Belgians, and Dutch.  I liked making a little vacation home for myself like the French still do in this way, too.

We walked from the Museum to Antwerp’s Grande Place where we ate mussels with French fries the way the Belgians do; you dunk the fries in mayonnaise. 

That combination sounds awful, but tastes great with canary-yellow, homemade mayonnaise.

We drank Trappist wheat beers made by monks with our meal.

After dinner, we walked around the cold port and returned to Brussels for a good night’s sleep before returning home to Paris the next day.

You can take a TGV (French Speed Train) from Paris to Brussels (Belgium) as well.

I love how you can go all over France and to Italy and Spain on those TGV trains.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Orleans, France: Where Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget Rode Ponies with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Orleans, France:  Where Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget Rode Ponies with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

A town my husband Laurent and I passed by often on the way to other towns in the Loire Valley was Orléans.

We finally visited Orléans one weekend when Laurent’s uncle and aunt invited us for lunch, so we could meet their little son.

When we arrived, Florence played with her cousin on the piano while we ate lunch.  The children had a table next to the adults’ table with appetizers and smaller portions of the adults’ meal.

Laurent’s aunt was fluent in German (Hochdeutsch not dialect) and had all kinds of German books in the library along with German-language magazines like Der Spiegel.  I busied myself looking at tomes of Goethe, Heine, and Grasse.

I wanted to read German one day like I was able to in French and Spanish, but Italian was the next language in line for me to learn.

After lunch, we took the children out for pony rides.  The children were adorable.  I loved riding ponies as a child on Belle Isle in Detroit (Michigan).

On the way home, we stopped in the city of Orléans to see where Joan of Arc made her way into Orléans on April 29, 1429.

She told the English forces gathered in town that she was sent by God to run the English out of France.  On May 8, 1429, the English left.

The Cathedral in Orléans was badly damaged during the French Revolution and never repaired, so people go there just for mass not art appreciation.

Our outing with the family in Orléans was fun, especially for the pony riding.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Blois, France's Loire Valley Chateau Made Famous by Catherine de Medici with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Blois, France’s Loire Valley Château Made Famous by Catherine de Medici with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

To celebrate my finding a part-time job as an English teacher, my husband Laurent, baby Florence, and I went to visit France’s Loire Valley Château at Blois.

Blois was more interesting than other châteaux in the Loire Valley where the life of the châteaux seemed to revolve around hunting and dining.  Blois had conspiracy associated with it like murder and poison.

In 1415, Charles d’Orléans was taken prisoner at Azincourt by the English.  He remained in captivity for 25 years.  In 1440, he was allowed to return home and ran a cultivated court at Blois.  When he was 71, be became the father of a son, the future Louis XII.

Louis XII succeeded King Charles VII in 1498 and lived at Blois happily with his wife Anne de Bretagne just like in the fairy tales. 

Francis 1^st, the next king, was happily married to his wife Claude de France, too, but she died in childbirth after her seventh child was born.

The history of Blois becomes bloodier with King Henri II, who organized the assassination of his rival Henri de Guise in 1558.

After the Duke of Guise was murdered, his body was burned in a chimney at Blois.  The Duke’s ashes were spread on the Loire River.  Eight months later, King Henri II was murdered by Jacques Clémant in Paris.

Queen Catherine de Medici had a roomful of small, wooden cabinets at Blois, but I think she kept Florentine stationery and pens in the cabinets not vials of poison.

Blois has a great double staircase, which allows people to go up and down without seeing people on the other staircase.

The rumor is that Leonardo da Vinci designed the staircase when he lived at the Clos Lucé by Amboise Château.

Blois is a defensive château that sits high above the Loire River guarding the entrance to the pleasure châteaux downriver on the Loire.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Chania and the Samaria Gorge in Greece with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Chania and the Samaria Gorge in Greece with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My husband Laurent and I visited the town of Chania on the Greek Island of Crete on one of our Greek vacation days.

The seafront at Chania is set up so you can walk along comfortably without motorbikes or scooters zooming beside you.

We went to the Historical Museum in Chania, which was very well documented in the Greek language. 

We were the only tourists there.  Most of the museum was devoted to the Resistance Movement during World War II in photos.

“That was a great visit for not being able to read anything in Greek,” I said to Laurent as we left.

He laughed.  We both wished we had a Greek friend to translate for us.  The same was true when we went to the Maritime Museum.

Natural wonders not cultural wonders were on our agenda the following day as we planned to go to the Samaria Gorge.

I was wearing heels and not hiking boots, so I kept slipping in the Gorge on the way down.

I went topside to a café and read while my husband Laurent continued down six kilometers to the bottom of the Gorge.

I read the Greek history book I bought while sipping lemon soda.  When Laurent returned, he had some soda in the air-conditioned café, too. 

Our last place to visit was the Monastery at Moni Prevelli, which was another Resistance movement refuge during World War II.

We toured the site and admired the mountain scenery before getting ready for our flights to Athens and Paris the next day.

Our beach holiday turned out to be cultural and educational as well as a much needed rest from long hours at our Parisian jobs.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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