Lunch at Le Train Bleu

Posted on April 26, 2024 by borysSNORC

This famous restaurant was conceived in 1900 around the time of the Universal Exhibition. At that time, it was the Gare de Lyon’s station buffet, which later became Le Train Bleu. It was a famous architect named Marius Toudoire who was responsible for the Gare de Lyon clock tower and the façade of the building who was entrusted with the design and works of the restaurant. The management of the railway company wanted to create an unmissable gourmet expierice for people travelling through the Gare de Lyon.

The station buffet was opened by then French President Emile Loubet and became Le Train Bleu in 1963, the name apparently a tribute to the ‘Paris-Vintimille’ line from 1868 on Le Train Bleu (the legendary train that services the towns along the Mediterranean Coast and the French Riviera). The decor of the restuarant retains that sumptuous ambiance that the Belle Époque (c.1871 to 1914) is so famous for.

It’s like a time capsule…

The restaurant is quite large and has a large lounge/bar area as well, so I looked up to see how many diners they can seat and it’s a huge 200 people that can be seated here at any time. That is quite a considerable number of people and certainly explained the general hustle of the place; totally consistent with being in one of Europe’s very busiest train stations. I also learned at this time that Le Train Bleu is a two Michelin Star restaurant. Seems 2024 is accidentally becoming a ‘Big Year o’ Fine Dining’.

Naturally, we decided to stick to our resolve to drink as much champagne at every opportunity while in France… the Bollinger, always a good choice (for breakfast, lunch or dinner!), was delicious and moorish.

The meal started with a small purée of herbed carrot that wasn’t on the menu… very tasty!

I spent more time looking at the ceilings than at the menu!

Just beautiful!

Mr K looking very happy with his wash… bit of Bolli before lunch will do that.

M. Alain preparing Mr K’s entrée, table side…

Devilled eggs and Petrossian caviar for me; herbed Green Asparagus with vinaigrette for Mr K…

M. Alain returned to prepare Mr K’s main meal table side also… I thought these staff members were wait staff, but it seems they need to be capable chefs too.

Pork medallion Mignon, with champignons for me; braised lamb shoulder with garlic and potato au gratin for Mr K…

Delicious so far – and large portions! Like, pushing American size portions.

I was amazed at how quickly they could turn the tables over. There were loads of people waiting for tables when we arrived. We had booked this on the recommendation of some colleagues before we left home, so had no trouble getting seated but many were standing around for quite a long time waiting for a table to be vacant, but I swear the party opposite us finished up and paid their bill, a new party of diners were being seated within about 3 minutes… impressive.

I had had an elegant sufficiency so passed on dessert, but Mr K had ordered the Iranian pistachio soufflé served with Turkish sour cherry gelato at the beginning of the meal, (as is usually the case with soufflé!). I had a tiny taste, and it was delicious! Seriously, it was a next level super tasty dessert – likely due to the complete lack of chocolate! 😉

A lovely long lunch in a gorgeous restaurant – certainly would recommend it to anyone coming to Paris as an opportunity to step back in time, and have a lovely meal in absolutely beautiful surroundings.

Le Calife Seine Dinner Cruise

Posted on April 25, 2024 by borysSNORC

Since learning we’d be in Paris leading up to the 2024 Olympics for work, I’ve been following some Americans who moved to Paris on YouTube – their channel is called “Les Frenchies”, (yes, I know… but what can you do?), and they have some great, up-to-date content for people visiting Paris. One of the things they highly recommended, was something I thought would be way too touristy for my liking, but based on their frequently voiced dislike of highly touristy experiences, I thought we’d give it a try. So, I booked us a dinner cruise on ‘Le Calife’.

Seeing we are now staying in Saint Germaine (*wipes away faux tears* – it’s lovely, but it’s not the Georges V!), we had only a short 350m walk to the Pont des Arts, where ‘Le Calife’ is berthed.

I love this! I wonder if this was dedicated before she passed away in 2020… ‘On 23rd September 2021, “The ‘Place Juliette Gréco’ was inaugurated in Paris. It can be found beside the Church of Saint-Germain-de-Paris, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.” Bummer.

This is not out boat.

This is our boat. Le Calife was originally built in Belgium in 19as a cargo carrying ship and has large twin stream engines, but when this type of transportation became less popular it was sold to an enthusiast for restoration. It apparently took 18 years to restore and transform it into a restaurant; it has its original engines still operating. The ship is all fitted out with red mahogany, brass and other decorative details, including seriously vintage stained glass lamps from 1789… which I will no doubt mention later!

Square du Vert-Galant…

Pont Neuf…

We were welcomed aboard at 20:00 with a glass of champagne, and a set menu with several delicious choices for each course…

Our delightful waiter asked us if we would like a bottle of red wine or white wine, all chosen by the chef… we had both chosen meat for dinner so opted for a bottle of red. Which may or may not have been a bit of a mistake, because we didn’t realise that we weren’t going anywhere until 2045, and the first course of dinner wouldn’t be served until roughly 21:30..!

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris… still under masses amounts of scaffold as the restoration after the 2019 fire, but expected to reopen December 2024.

A nod to the teams of people working on the Cathédrale…

L’entrées… the vol au vent of chanterelles with foie gras and morel mushroom sauce for me, the Label Rouge salmon fillet gravlax with fresh cheese and herbs for Mr K:

Ah, there they are, the fabulous antique stained glass lamps through the verandah of the boat. A lovely touch, but perhaps not so practical when it comes to photography reflections!

The mains… Rossini style beef tenderloin, with foie gras, Dauphinois potatoes and roasted vegetables for me, and Lamb shoulder confit, with seasonal vegetables and baby roast potatoes for Mr K:

Just as dinner was being served we sailed into view of the Eiffel Tower. Gorgeous! I particularly love the stained glass motif they have incorporated into the lighting! 🙂

It is a striking element of the Parisian skyline for sure. A little after these pictures were taken, we swung around and the tower started to ‘sparkle’ as they have the flashing lights going for five minutes on the hour every hour… kinda gave up on the photos by now though.

The underside of one of the several bridges we went under… complete with reflections of someone’s dinner. 🙂

Dessert… Lemon cheese cake, with lemon cream, lemon sorbet and limoncello for me, and Chocolate lava cake, custard and Madagascar vanilla ice cream for Mr K. The lemon on lemon with a lemon motif was really quite good!

Alas we were back to the quay all too soon; not really it was just before midnight. The dinner cruise was really lovely. The food was nice, but we made the mistake of doing this *after* we’d had the fanciest meal of our lives at Le Cinq! When will we learn… you don’t go China straight after you go to Japan and you don’t go to a *good* French restaurant the night after going to a internationally famous three Michelin star’d French restaurant!

The Georges V Wedding Anniversary

Posted on April 24, 2024 by borysSNORC

Concierge: Oui, madame?
Kate: Yes, bonjour. Do you speak any English?
Concierge: Of course. This is the George V, not some backpacker hovel.

Ever since seeing those hilarious and famously snobby lines in the 1995 movie, French Kiss, with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kleine, I’ve wanted to come check out the Georges V hotel in Paris… and here I am nearly 30 years later finally getting a chance to do so.

The hotel has an artistic director, and one of his responsibilities are the famous floral arrangements that are found throughout the hotel’s foyer, restaurants, bars and rooms. The flowers are replaced every 21 days like clockwork and they order between 12,000 to 14,000 stems per week with a budget of around $.1.4M (and I assume that is USD) per annum! Seeing that it is spring, I was expecting bright colourful displays something akin to what we saw at the Kukenhof only, indoors… instead it was a rather understated affair with the boldest element being masses of yellow roses:

Juliette checked us in and let us know that she was available to assist us with anything we might need. She congratulated us on our silver wedding anniversary, and showed us to our room personally. Along the way, she confirmed that our dinner at Le Cinq was confirmed and should we need anything at all special at dinner, to please let her know so she could take care of it for us.

The room was beautiful – and enormous. We booked a standard king room, but Juliette led us to a superior room with a balcony. As a general rule, the hotels of Paris are busiest in the high season, but in the shoulder season, like this, the busiest time of the weeks is Wednesday to Sunday with many rooms remaining empty on Monday and Tuesday nights… so hint for new players; best chance for a room upgrade on Monday or Tuesday nights.

Juliette was sure to let us know that the Georges V wished us a very happy anniversary and they offered us a bottle of champagne with their compliments, (a bottle I later spotted on the room service menu for €170)…

Also was a piece of chocolate cake that I am sure Mr K will enjoy later…

And some very pretty love heart chocolates filled with liqueur…

It seems sweet treats are the favourites in this part of the world, as we were also bestowed a box of delightful macarons, and a special chocolate and pecan brownie from the hotel’s patisser.

Juliette wished us a very nice stay and handed us our keys, and I got to poke around properly. lol.
The keys, btw… beautiful.

We had a delightful space to make tea and coffee with a ceramic and leather kettle, a coffee machine and a huge variety of teas and coffees to choose from.

We also had a well stocked mini-bar, and the fridge was bursting with goodies also… though I’m wary of the price point on some of these! That’s the problem with hotels of this level of luxury – they’re usually catering for people who don’t care what the bill comes to! Not people like us, who are splashing out as a one-off!

The bathroom had a beautiful and deep bathtub, which I took full advantage of!

The bathroom was as stocked with amenities as a minibar – loofah, bath salts, dental kit, sewing kit, nail kit, shaving kit, cotton buds, make-up wipes, comb, hair brush, shower cap, mouth wash, dental floss, shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, hand wash, moisturiser… you name it, it was probably already here for you.

This is *half* the walk in closet, complete with safe, slippers, bathrobes, laundry bags and god knows what else.

The bed looked so good, I almost didn’t want to jump on it… but I did!

Complete with monogrammed pillow shams…

Every little detail was beautiful… I had a lovely hour relaxing in the tub followed by the decidedly thoughtful champagne; felt thoroughly spoilt.

Dinner was booked months ago when we booked the hotel. The Georges V is famous for its Le Cinq restaurant… of course with claims like this, you wonder if it will live up to the hype.

The restaurant is actually quite small, seating only 60 guests and very elegantly appointed. I snavelled some stock photos of the restaurant as it was quite dimly lit and I forgot to stop and take a picture.

Before we even saw a menu or the wine list, (which btw, is like a 200 page book!) we were presented with some delightful canapés… the caviar was the really good stuff!

The degustation menu looked really good, so we decided to order that. Given we have no allergies or anything, the only information we provided the staff, was that I don’t like chocolate, so would be grateful if the chefs could find a different dessert course for me.

Mise en Bouche:
White asparagus and carrot and champagne foam.

Foie Gras poached like a pebble in a iodised broth…

Truffled Gree Asparaus, with a Château-Chalon wine mousseline…

Matured Ossetra Caviar and Bulltermilk with warm smoked salmon… (this dish was my favourite).

Pistachio Sorbet with Citrus Flavour and lobster bisque…

Black Pudding scented with passion fruit and coffee…

M. Roman came along at this moment with the highlight of the meal… le chariot à fromages magique! We chose about six different cheese, and they were all delicious.

Mignardises…

Dairy Iced with yeast flavours…

Crunch Grapefruit, preserved and raw…

Chocolate and Hazelnut Crisps with malt whisky ice cream…

Vanilla mousse served with Strawberries and pesto…! Which sounds bizarre, but tasted amazing.

M. Roman with a Chocolate trolley also filled with ‘Pastry from My Childhood’. Mr K took a selection of chocolates, truffles, marshmallow and other sweet things, but I well and truly felt I had exceeded my sugar quota for the month by this point!

We were also presented with a small chocolate plaque beside some vanilla ice cream to acknowledge out special occasion.

Mr K looking happy and relaxed*
(*He hadn’t confronted the bill yet, lol… oh, and I should mention this, as you don’t see it much anymore – my menu had no prices in it, only his did! Que c’est démodé?

Even when we thought dinner was over, we were presented with two little boxes full of fudge to take back to our room…

… which another staff member promptly put into bag with two more little boxes of fudge and another box with a breakfast pastry, ‘in case you need a little something in the middle of the night!’

All up we had an amazing night. The staff were attentive and super friendly. The sommelier was generous, down to earth and told us she is doing an apprenticeship in wine so she goes to study wine one day a week. I realised after dinner that I had expected this to be a stuffy affair – but everyone was friendly and their English was certainly fluent enough to be bantering with the guests, so that kept the atmosphere light and entertaining… and the food was amazing! I don’t know that we would ever do this again, but it was certainly an experience we won’t forget in a hurry.

My mum has alway said, “I wonder what the poor folk are doing today?”, when she was in a luxurious mood… and now I feel like I know what the really rich people are doing!

Mr K posted this on FB:

🌿 Celebrating Our 25th Anniversary 🌿

On this day, a quarter of a century past, we entered into the marrriage, witnessed by our friends and family, to embark upon a partnership of profound affection and mutual respect. I could not have imagined a greater setting to celebrate our love and 25 years of marriage than to be with you now in Paris. This is a significant occasion, and I am compelled to reflect upon the years we have shared, each marked by trials and triumphs that have but strengthened the bonds of our union and have deepened my love for you.

These 25 years have been as full as my heart if of my love for you, as we made a wonderful home together, built multiple careers and now a business, studied, laughed, loved, and grew a family through the blessing of our dear son, Angus. Everything I cherish, and everything I have done of worth in this life was only important to me because you were there and only possible because of your love, belief, and support.

I have always loved you, (and told you so in the first three weeks after we met) but I never believed that anyone could love another more than I did you then. Yet here I stand by your side 25 years later loving you more every passing day as our adventures continue, my love for you deepens, and our friendship grows.

So today know that there is no limit to how ardently I admire and love you, and with great joy can express my deepest gratitude and love on this, our silver jubilee.

May we continue to walk together, guided by affection and esteem, through whatever our future may hold and to embark as soulmates on new adventures until we can no longer travel and then, we can sit together and reflect on what amazing lives we shared and enjoyed together.

To our next adventure, and our next 25 years.
Love your dedicated (and hopelessly in love) husband.”

The next morning we decided to just sleep in and luxuriate in the beautiful room. Juliette had given us a late check-out… 3pm! Which is unheard of, (again Monday or Tuesday night bonus apparently!), so we decided to take advantage of the down time before we had to face the work that would be taking over this week. We are here to meet with bus people and Olympics transport organisers for the 2024 games, which happens in less than 100 days, so there was going to be plenty to do. We ordered in breakfast around 10:30am.

Eggs Benedict. I loved the little stamped cultured and uncultured butters… you guess which is which.

We had an amazing stay… the hotel really pulled out all the stops. I’m not sure I would want to stay here a week, even if we could afford it, mostly because this area doesn’t really reflect my perceptions of ‘typical Paris’, but it has definitely been an amazing anniversary interlude in the middle of a work week – even if we did end up on zoom meetings this morning!

Just when we thought they couldn’t exceed expectations any more with the personal touches, Juliette came to see us as we were checking out with yet another gift, this time containing a candle that has the Georges V’s signature scent – and indeed, the box smells just like the entire hotel does!
I❤️ Paris!

Transit – Lyon to Bucharest

Posted on July 11, 2022 by borysSNORC

Oh dear god, who planned this transit!

Got back to the hotel after the concert at 0130 having walked about two kms away from the stadium to try and get an Uber driver. Not as easy as it should have been and there didn’t seem to be any regular spot or any recognisable system to try and get a taxi other than to be closest to where the taxis might enter the complex which of course kept creeping further and further away! Not great network planning French Transport People.

Anyway – 0130 at the hotel, 0450 alarm set to make sure I’m all packed and downstairs by 0515, which of course meant I was wide awake by 0430 in anticipation of the alarm. Sigh… it’s always the way. Taxi turns up and ‘Out madam, non probleme.’ Off we whisk to the airport, only at some point his Waze tells him that there are blocked roads ahead and he tries twice to get around it before doing a complete 180 and heading back where we came from. I’m overtired and rather cranky, but with it enough to know that I should check my seat belt when he starts barreling along a highway doing 140km to make up the lost time. The fare which should have been 15-17mins, ends up being more like 25 and he wants €59 for getting lost. Twice! I put in on the credit card, and he says ‘No tip?’ And I say, ‘Yeah right, you were lost and speeding and you want a tip?’ First bit of shitty customer service since we got to France. Wanker.

After rushing to get to the airport for the 0530 requested check-in, I find myself in a queue of about 250 people being checked-in by TWO airline staff. By the time I get to the top of the queue, I’m well and truly over being on my feet and my back is reminding me that we sat in Great Seats but seriously shitty chairs for several hours the night, so much so that the guy checking me in asks if I am okay… I tell him I am in great pain and he lets on that the flight is over-booked and he will try and move me to business class and I think my day is looking up because a little more space would be appreciated when I’m in in a lot of pain. I then go rough security and customs and all that rigmarole, down to the boarding gate and it’s literally now 0710 and boarding has commenced. Onto the plane we go, the lady at the gate gives me a new boarding pass for the business class seat and says, ‘No meal.’ I haven’t eaten but I don’t really care so I take my seat. The business breakfast come out and look like carbs on carbs with a carbs motif anyway, so hard pass. The economy section of the plane gets offered a selection of things to purchase (but I didn’t notice this until the connecting flight).

Arrive in Frankfurt – a little late. Urgh… stairs down onto the tarmac and a bus to get to the terminal. My 50 minute layover now whittled down to 30 mins and suddenly it’s hurry up and get to the right gate again. We arrived at Terminal 1, A Gates and I needed to be at B24, which turns out to be in an entirely different building, cleverly hidden by a 1.5-2km underground tunnel that isn’t really on the airport map. I make it to my flight and have a passing through for whether or not my luggage has made it, and settle in for the remaining 2.5hrs to Bucharest. Make a vague attempt to sleep, get handed a bottle of water and for whatever reason – there is no food offerings on this flight. It’s getting a little ridiculous at this point, the last thing I had to eat was at 2pm the previous day before the concert where we got too distracted to find dinner Saturday night and then it was too late to find anything.

So I turn up in Bucharest after an uneventful flight with an uncomfortably hard landing and lo and behold… no Luggage! The little telltale Air Tag tells me it never left Frankfurt. Fuckity, fuckity, fuck fuck! I have a airport transfer booked and he’s getting antsy waiting for me in the arrivals hall and I’m trying to wait in the line of other people’s whose luggage was also lost and get an email saying – ‘We’ve located your luggage in Frankfurt’ like they’re fucking proud of their efforts or something. So I click through a form on the website and lodge a request to have it sent to the hotel in Bucharest when it finally turns up, and go out to meet my cranky driver in a cranky mood myself.

Buckled in once again for another crazy drive with another crazy person at the helm but at the end of it there is Angus and hugs and a few hours of rest. In the meantime, I get some emails from Lufthansa saying my bag had been booked on a later flight and would be arriving in Bucharest at 1800, and I’m thinking I don’t trust these bastards to get that suitcase to me by the morning. So Angus spoke with our guide, Gorgi who said we should head to the airport to pick it up before we went for dinner. Sounded like a good plan at the time. The AirTag was telling me it was located in Bucharest Airport from 1815 as we head out there and you’d think this would be a ‘Here is my luggage tag in exchange for a suitcase’. kinda deal – but you’d be wrong! There is no outside customer service desk for claiming lost luggage, just a courteous phone with a bunch of numbers for different airlines. NONE of which were answering, not even when we tried customer service numbers for the airline in Germany or the offices located in Bucharest. Which meant, we ended up loitering outside the border restricted area and literally jumping on every single employee who was swiping to go into the restricted area to send out some goddamn Lufthansa staff.

There were four of us all waiting on luggage, two of us standing there with our iPhones showing them where out suitcases are on the AirTag apps. EVENTUALLY – after roughly 45 minutes of haranguing staff – someone agreed to sign me in (with my passport) and let me locate my bag and get the fucking hell out of there. Which took all of three minutes once I got someone’s attention. You’d really think there would be some sort of, oh I don’t know, System (TM) in place for reconnecting people with their belongings when this happens, which I understand it does with alarming regularity. :/

It was quite 20:45 by the time we got out of the airport and were trying to find somewhere for dinner. Georgi, bless his cotton socks was suggesting we get out of the bus in the middle of a busy section of town, walk about 1km to a food court in a shopping centre, when I shanghaied the entire group by encouraged them to go to a wee Italian trattoria which was about 100m from where the bus was parked. We had a nice risotto and some truly dreadful house red wine before getting back to the hotel around 23:30 and collapsing in a heap!

And all this because I wanted to go to Rammstein. Such a pain in the arse! And I’d do it all again tomorrow if it meant going to see that concert!

RAMMSTEIN in LYON!

Posted on July 9, 2022 by borysSNORC

So in January 2011 I went to my first and last Big Day Out style concert… and the only thing that enticed me to go was Rammstein was on the bill. The 20-25 mins they were on stage was easily the BEST music gig I have ever been to (second runner up would have to be Pavarotti’s Farewell Tour – ooh goosebumps just thinking about that one), and sadly felt like a teaser trailer with such a short set.

Anyway, I have this one photo taken when we saw Rammstein in 2011, and I’ve always loved it; blurry mess of non-image forming blown out highlights, that it is… myself, BigSal, Yale and DA were at the show and man, did we pity poor Tool who came on after them and seemed so completely flat and boring in comparison. Ever since, I have always wanted to go see them do a big stadium show in Europe – preferably Berlin, (but the dates just were not going to play nice – and I’m so not gonna be fussy on this one). This has literally been on my ‘Things to Do Before I Die List’, and last night I finally got to see them in Lyon, France.

It was a fucking amazing, visual and visceral spectacular… and so worth the wait. I have uploaded a pile of photos here – mostly because this page has slightly less crap image compression than when you share images on FB. Most of the pics below are mine from last night, and ah and full at the end are some from a Rammstein Forum where they encourage people to steal/share and spread the fiery goodness. 🙂

One thing that is particularly evident – mobile phone image capture quality has improved considerably int he last 11 years! 😀
Stephola and I having a few ‘no shit, here we are!’ moments when we arrived and found out that (due to language barriers) I had booked us seats in a corporate box and the view was excellent of the entire stadium! Spent half the night wishing I was in the mosh pit; the other half of the night thanking fuck I wasn’t! 😉 When these huge flames leapt into the air, seemingly punctuating the music, I swear it felt like our eyebrows had been singed off! The heat was intense.There was a small stage half way through the GA area that the support act had used earlier in the evening – a duo of pianists playing effectively, Rammstein Unplugged. It really got the crown going. The band also turned up on this stage to sing, ‘Engel’ which was beautiful, the crowd sang along (German surtitles provided) and lots of mobile phone torches made for a beautiful backdrop.After they finished that song, they crowd surfed back to the stage on rubber dinghies. Caught this pic of Till Lindemann’s flaming backpack, you can see the accelerant has sprayed out, right before the streams are ignited. Way to go iPhone 13 Pro… not bad under difficult lighting.It’s a crazy thing to do – fly 15,000 kms to go see a band, but was so totally worth it. After seeing this stadium gig, I imagine we won’t ever see anything like this in Australia. We don’t have the populace to warrant the equipment, expertise and expense of bringing this show or anything like it, Down Under.

So glad we went. Even the walking and try to get an Uber for an hour couldn’t dampen our elation…. Though I was having second thoughts when we didn’t get back to the hotel until 0130 and I had to be up for my flights at 0445.