Crème Brulée a La Maison de la Truffe

I’m planning another trip to Paris to stay with my dear friend Helene. In 2006 I stayed in her beautiful 9th arrondissement apartment near Montmartre for three weeks and roamed free each day while she worked, meeting up in the evening to eat. My days would start with a goal, a galley or museum, a market or garden to visit. Deliberately, I would take a less known route and wander off course, often finding hidden treasures and byways and maybe a hideaway restaurant or bar to while away a few hours with drawing pad and a digestif. There is something very enticing about finding your way around a foreign city on one’s own, daring to lose oneself both geographically and introspectively.
The day I took this photograph I had lunch in La Madeleine at La Maison de la Truffe, something wonderfully truffly and finished with this vanilla packed crème brulée (yes, it was difficult to stop eating it long enough to photograph it). La Madeleine is certainly not a back water, but sometimes you have see the sights and I could hardly visit Paris without joining the jostle of tourists at her most famous grocery stores Fauchon and Hediard, both now over 100 years old and cornucopias of the exotic and sensational. The other photograph was taken later that day, enjoying an early evening Campari Spritz, (alternatively known as The Venetian Spritz, indeed a drink I came to know and love in Venice) in the heady daze of a tobacco-filled bar. No smoking in Paris bars these days, of course, how I’ll miss them this time round.