Bonjour! I'm back with another exciting episode of "adventures with language"! I left you at BHV, with Beth's face alight with happiness--a real cliffhanger. She apparently survived the ecstacy of the face cream application, because we set out Saturday night for a restaurant called Le Coude Fou, which is literally "the crazy elbow". I think they're referring to one's crazy bone, but it could be a reference to the sort of resaurant mishaps that come from having tables so close together, as French restauranteurs are fond of doing. (Zut alors! I've knocked over your glass with my "coude fou"!)
Anyway, the restaurant was almost deserted when we arrived on a Saturday night at 7:30 (remember this is the "la rentree" or return from summer vacation, so Paris is once again filled up with people for the school year). On previous trips, I thought this meant we had chosen a bad restaurant, but we found out that--even on a very busy night--virtually no one eats out in France before 8 pm. Sure enough, by 9, Le Coude Fou was full to the brim, with crazy elbows everywhere.
The food was very nice: Beth started with a tomato salad: a whole fresh skinned tomato cut in half with soft goat cheese between the halves, then had an entrecote of boeuf, a sort of steak with little potatoes, artichoke hearts and green beans (a very popular French side dish). I shared the tomato salad and had the fish special, a flaky sweet "merou" with a wonderful cream sauce. Unfortunately, I've forgotten a lot about that meal because I could hardly keep my eyes open after the first bite. You see, we had been up for about 30 hours at that point, minus the 2 little catnaps I took on the 2 legs of our flight.
On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a gelato shop for a cone. It seems like gelato is getting very popular in Paris, judging from the 4 or 5 gelato shops we passed in less than 4 blocks back to our hotel. Beth got a pistacchio cone and I had a chocolate and vanilla one. We made it to the hotel with our eyes barely open, and soon closed them for the night.
Next: Carnavalet and Victor Hugo...
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