Paris the culinary star of September Gourmet Magazine
August 26, 2008
Paris as the world capital of fine dining and restaurant trends dominates Gourmet Magazine’s September issue
Paris is the City of Light, but as most Paris lovers know, it is also the city of food, food and more food. From the sidewalk creperies to the odiforous and impossibly varied cheese shops to the restaurants and chefs whose followings rival the most zealous religious factions, dining in Paris is sport, sustenance and sensuality all in one.
No wonder Gourmet, the US-based magazine all about food, has devoted its September issue (on newstands right now) to Paris. September is, of course, the time of the “rentree”, when much of France returns from the summer holidays and restaurants shuttered in August come back to life once more, to the delight of afficonadoes who return to them like long-lost friends.
The September Gourmet takes readers on a trip through the lesser-known “double-digit” Paris arrondissements to find off-the-beaten-track restaurants worth tracking down. It also does a very classy pub crawl through the upscale and expensive famous hotel bars or Paris in search of the perfect cocktail. (Unfortunately, with the Euro still hovering near $1.50, you may actually need a drink after seeing your bill at the Hemingway Bar.) There are a number of stories musing about the food-soul connection one often experiences in Paris, one by famous novelist Jay McInerney, while celebrated food critic Ruth Reichl pinpoints her favorite Paris brasseries. The wine feature is all about French wines like Bordeaux and Burgundies, and the recipe section focuses on favorites you might find in traditional brasseries and patisseries in Paris, letting readers re-create classics like Coq au Vin, French Onion Soup and Macarrons with a more modern-read slightly simpler–twist for a busy American audience. Non-food stories on Paris in thie month’s Gourmet cover favorite flea markets and hotels.
If you’re a Paris lover headed to Paris anytime soon, or just want to recreate the flavors of Paris at home, the September issue of Gourmet Magazine should be on your reading menu and in your carry-on bag.
Paris sparkles in Jerusalem with the gift of a fountain
August 25, 2008
Paris Square in Jerusalem now has a fountain worthy of its name, a gift from City of Paris
A little bit of Paris has been gurgled forth in Israel this summer. On June 1, a 4-meter (13-feet) fountain – a duplicate of one of the fountains located in Paris – was unveiled in Jerusalem’s Place de France (also known as Paris Square) in the heart of the Israeli capital. The fountain was given to Jerusalem as a gift from Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë in honor of the State of Israel’s 60th anniversary. Delanoe was on an official visit to Israel when he joined Jerusalem Mayor Ouri Loupolyanski for the dedication of the fountain, whose constuction was said to cost the equivalent of $100,000. Fountains are a common feature in Paris, creating characteristic oases of calm in the city. Now Jerusalem’s Paris Square can be a cooler place for tourists and locals alike to hang out this summer. Mayor Loupolyanski expressed delight with the present, and said it would add charm to his city, which while embattled politically, is still a magnet for tourists.
France electric company to build nuclear plants in China
August 12, 2008
EDF of France in joint venture with China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp to build two reactors in Guangdong province
France, a country that gets 80% of its power from nuclear sources, is exporting its nuclear expertise to the fastest-growing Asian nation.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France hailed the announcement that two nuclear reactors will be constructed in China by EDF of France. The pact is the culmination of talks that began in the fall of 2007, when Electricite de France and China Guangdong Nuclear Power Company signed a joint venture agreement for the ownership, construction and operation of two new-generation European pressurized reactors at Taishan in the province of Guangdong, China. The newly-formed Guangdong Taishan Nuclear Power Joint Venture Company Limited, or TNPC, will construct the next-generation power stations.
The business arrangement between France and China comes at a time when tensions have been fanned by protests in France and elsewhere over China’s handling of Tibet. The Olympic torch’s progress through France was disrupted by protests, prompting Chinese to boycott French superstore Carrefour, all as China is in the world’s spotlight because of the Beijing Olympic Games. By compartmentalizing business and politics, Sarkozy hopes to keep a running dialogue going between France and China, while acknowledging the business reality that China is booming, and France should not be left out.
Sarkozy was quoted in French newspapers as saying that the agreement “demonstrates the quality of the Franco-Chinese partnership in the civilian nuclear sector” and that the deal “consolidates France’s status as China’s primary partner in the sector.”
Electricite de France wants to be the leader in nuclear power worldwide, and was already well on its way before the China deal. The French power company will control about one third of the French-Chinese nuclear partnership TNCP for 50 years. Areva, the France-owned nuclear manufacturer, will provide the nuclear equipment for the two facilities, while another French company, Alstom SA, will provide the turbine equipment. The Chinese company, meanwhile, will be responsible for providing the building site and will make its engineering and operational capabilities available. The two nuclear power facilities in China will be modeled on already successful plants operating in France.
It seems that Sarkozy’s 1000-megawatt diplomatic style has not dimmed, and his energy-export policy may yet light the way toward patching things up between France and China.
In Paris, US photographer Annie Leibovitz shows famous and not-so-famous faces
August 8, 2008
France welcomes Leibovitz, quirky but brilliant American photographer of media stars and the mundane
Annie Leibovitz is known the world over for the personality she brings out in her subjects, already personalities on the world stage, from Ella Fitzgerald to Queen Elizabeth II. This summer in Paris until September 14, she brings together an extraordinatu collection of over 200 prints. While Leibovitz has exhibited in France before, this collection contains photos shown for the first time in Europe. These are not only her famously well-known subjects but also intimate photos of the artist’s family and everyday life.
Organized by the Brooklyn Museum of New York, where it began its odyssey in 2006, the exhibition follows a chronological and thematic stream, assembling the two aspects of Leibovitz’s work; her private life are woven in with her public image. Leibovitz has been quoted as saying she makes no distinction between them. Certainly, as anyone who has seen the the scene depicting Leibovitz in the film “The Queen” can attest, she is known for treating the famous as though they were everyday folk. But most overlook her prickly personality, given that she is widely regarded as the best portrait photographer in the world.
In 2005, when the American Society of Magazine Editors unveiled “the 40 greatest magazine covers of the last 40 years,” they gave first place to a 1980 photograph of Yoko Ono and John Lennon that was taken for Rolling Stone on the day that he was murdered and second place to Vanity Fair’s pregnant Demi Moore wearing nothing but diamonds. Leibovitz shot both.
Leibovitz’s road to Paris and stardom began humble. Born in Silver Spring, Maryland, she went out West to study painting in San Francisco. In 1970, she started shooting rock-and-rollers for the pages of Rolling Stone. Now 58, she is an icon in American art, and France is welcoming her with open arms.
Portraits in the Paris exhibition show, of course, a number of celebrities such as Jamie Foxx, Nicole Kidman, Demi Moore, Brad Pitt, but also athletes of the 1996 Olympic Games, artists and architects such as fellow photographer Richard Avedon, Brice Marden, Philip Johnson, Cindy Sherman, and Mikael Barishnikov. Other pieces include editorial shots published in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, photojournalistic coverage on Sarajevo in the early 90s, Hillary Clinton’s senate election, and 09/11. There are also some contemplative landscapes. All in all, this Paris exhibition of Annie Leibovitz’s work reveals her not only as a chronicler of the rich and famous, but as a sensitive artist determined to portray the souls of her subjects in her work, be they movie stars, mountains or mothers. The Musee Europeen de la Photographie is located at 5/7 rue de Fourcy in the Marais district of Paris. The opening hours are 11am to 8pm, Wednesday through Sunday.
This summer in France, learn to dance before you fly
August 4, 2008
Paris airports offering summer vacationers dance lessons while they wait for their flights to New York or Buenos Aires.
France has many summer traditions. First, there’s the summer vacation almost everyone in France takes –up until recently, before globalization crept in, le tout Paris was MIA in August, with shops and restaurants closing their doors up to an entire month. Then there are newer traditions like Paris Plage, the man-made beach installed along the Seine in Paris as a surreal consolation prize to those Parisians stuck in town.
This weekend, the first of the official vacation season in France, will see millions clogging French roads, train stations and airports. For air travellers at least, now there’s a new summer happening in France, to make people leaving on vacation feel like they’re there before they board their flights. . Expecting 1,200,000 international travellers to leave France this week alone, Paris airports Roissy Charles de Gaulle and Orly are glad to provide something unexpected to make people smile instead of grumble about the long waits. So Paris airports are offering free dance lessons to travellers every weekend all summer long.
200,000 passengers are expected daily at Charles de Gaulle airport until next Sunday, the biggest in France, with 900,000 this weekend alone. That’s a lot of frazzled French vacationers. The director of Hall 2E and 2F points out that most are not seasoned travelers but French who may only come once a year to Paris airports and he wants them to have a good experience. He added that these French vacationers also typically arrive earlier for their flights and have more time to kill. Many also have already travelled for hours from other parts of France just to get to a Paris airport.
So in the the waiting area at international departure gates in Paris, it’s au revoir boredom, boujour disco ball.
The dance lessons last 15 minutes. Students hear music and instructions from teachers through headphones, so as not to disturb other passengers who are working or trying to sleep. Classes run all day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on busy summer weekends. On the dance card are oriental dance, mambo, modern jazz, rock’n'roll, tango salsa and hip hop, tailored to pasengers’ destinations. Hip hop pupils in Paris are bound for New York, while tango students are leaving France for Argentina. It’s all to get French vacationers in the holiday spirit, and reduce stress both for them and for overloaded French airport employees.
So far, most French passengers, even the wallflowers, have greeted the dance lessons with hard-won smiles and approval. Anything that breaks up the tedium of the long journey to fun is welcome. The dance lessons, which started in Paris airports Charles de Gaulle and Orly in June, have already instructed over 4,000 outbound travellers from France. Paris airports are expecting many more toes to be tapping as the tourist season in France ramps up this weekend. Only now, they’ll hopefully be tapping in rhythm, not in impatience.
Travellers can learn to dance in France before their flight every weekend until the end of the summer holidays.
In France, Parisians share bikes, but will they drive shared cars?
August 2, 2008
Paris’ progressive Mayor Bernard Delanoe looks into shared car program to model Velib, the successful system of shared bikes in Paris.
These days in Paris, it’s become commonplace and cool to use Velib’, shared bikes that can be picked up and dropped off at will at locations around the city. The brainchild of Paris Mayor Bernard Delanoe, the bikes cost only a euro per hour to use. The name Velib’ is a combination of velo, the French word for bike, and liberte. The Paris bike system was meant to combat pollution and congestion in the Paris city center, often clogged with traffic, with finding parking an exercise in futility worth of French playwright Jean-Paul Sartre. Fun and practical, the clunky, cute silver bikes have become a fixture on Paris streets, used by both busy French commuters and tourists to Paris looking for a cheap, green and healthy way to take in the sights.
Now Delanoe wants to progress to four wheels. If the flamboyant Paris mayor has his way, a new program would soon put 4,000 of the fuel-less vehicles on the streets of Paris and its suburbs. Autolib’ would mimic Paris’s widely successful Velib’ for bikes. The plan is scheduled to launch in about one year. But he is meeting with stiff oppositions from some in France who say that the shared car system in Paris would only make things worse.
Among Parisians who have fought the plan most are, oddly, members of the Paris’ influential Green Party. The cars that Delanoe proposes are electric, so pollution would be minimal. But the Greens claim that the goal of Paris should be to reduce car use altogether. Others worry about worsening the already notorious Paris traffic by putting more cars on Paris streets as those who don’t own vehicles use the shared cars.
Delanoe argues that the target audience are Paris residents who would otherwise use their own fuel-burning cars, or worse, buy their first. By putting lots in the suburbs, Autolib’ also would encourage occasional commuters to choose a gasoline-free alternative to get into the city. Not only would they save on gas, which is even more expensive in France than in the US, but they would not have to worry about parking in Paris. Like the bikes, the cars would simply be picked up and dropped off at hundreds of designated points around Paris and Paris suburbs. Some cities in the US and Canada have already experiemented with a similar system called Zipcar, run by a private company. Autolib’ like Velib’, would be run by the city of Paris.
In France, where being green has long been a part of mainstream life, and where nuclear plants provide 80 percent of the country’s power, the idea of putting more electric cars on the road has most Parisians agreeing, especially as Velib’ has been so popular.
But there are other complications. No one has decided what the rental costs would be, how to work out insurance, drivers’ licenses (could a foreigner rent a car?) or managing the lots, and then there is the issue of security. Some of Paris’ Velib bikes have been stolen and have been spotted as far away as Australia.