Eye Prefer Paris is an ex-New Yorker's insider's guide to Paris. Richard Nahem writes his blog from his fabulous 18th century apartment in the fashionable Marais district of Paris
I went on a quick trip to Toulouse for the first time in late September. Toulouse is sometimes called the Pink City because most of the buildings are constructed of a light color brick that has a pink hue to it.
I captured great and unusual doors, some that were truly unique. If you look at the sides of the doors you can spot the pink brick on a few of them.
Please read the article I wrote for Luxury Travel Advisor-French Escapes: Three Hours or Less From Paris
In my latest A Bite of Paris video, I've taken a break from food tasting to visit my friend Jessica at La Vaissellerie, my favorite tabletop, dish ware, and kitchen shop, located in the Marais.
Please remember to hit the LIKE button if you like it and SUBSCRIBE button to subscribe to my channel.
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
When I heard there was a new exhibition of shoes at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs , I quickly dashed there as soon as I could.
The exhibit encompasses the evolution of the shoe and its cultural significance starting from the middle-ages to the present day in western and non-western civilizations. The ambitious display features over 500 pairs of shoes plus posters, artifacts, ads, photographs and films.
A significant point of departure for the show is a black shoe owned by Marie Antoinette, which measures 8” long by 2 “wide. The answer to the question “How could a 37-year-old woman wear such a tiny size? lies in the fact that women of aristocracy and royalty of that time walked very little and therefore their shoes were not made to walk in (Fast forward to the present time with 6 inch high Louboutin shoes and it’s almost the same case). The phenomena of the small foot continues with the bounded feet in China.
Although I enjoyed seeing the footwear from various periods in time, I was most interested the 20th century models, as I could relate them on a particular level, since I worked in the ladies’ retail shoe business for fifteen years. Salvatore Ferragamo designed the most modern and advanced style shoes in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the influence of his creations are still reflected in the shoe culture today. He also brought the platform shoe and wedge into vogue in the 1940s and they were reinvented again in the 1970s. Other shoe innovators and style makers of the late 20th century include designers Charles Jourdan, Maud Frizon, Pierre Hardy, and Roger Vivier.
A fun interactional part of the show is a designated “fitting room” where visitors can walk in eight different types of historic and modern shoes recreated by shoe designer Fred Rolland.
One room has a clever display of vitrines with black curtains over them in which the viewer can choose to part them or not. Behind the curtains are a selection of extreme styles which capture the fetishist side of shoes brought forth in the 20th century.
The end part of the show is where modern designers including Benoît Méléard, Noritaka Tatehana, Masaya Kushino, Alexander McQueen and Iris van Herpen use their imagination to push the boundaries of footwear, making them into art pieces rather than wearable shoes.
In my latest A Bite of Paris video, I've taken a break from food tasting to visit my friend Jessica at La Vaissellerie, my favorite tabletop, dish ware, and kitchen shop, located in the Marais.
Please remember to hit the LIKE button if you like it and SUBSCRIBE button to subscribe to my channel.
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
I first saw the film Funny Girl in 1969, at the impressionable age of 13 and was blown away. The film had an immeasurable impact on my psyche and I had never before witnessed such a spellbinding force of nature on screen such as Barbra Streisand.I eventually wore out my eight-track soundtrack, learning every lyric, gesture, pause and breath by heart.
When I saw the Theatre Marigny was mounting a production in Paris, I was ecstatic. It’s almost inconceivable that there has never been a Broadway revival since it was first staged in 1964 and now it was coming to Paris for the first time. Whoopee!
Certainly my expectations were high and I was also biased by the Streisand effect, so this was going to be a tough test to win me over.
Before the curtain opened, the house lights dimmed to a soft light and as the orchestra played the overture, my pulse started to race with excitement hearing some of my favorite tunes, live.
The first act was well performed and staged. Christina Bianco had all the right qualities to play Fanny Brice- funny, brash, feisty, vulnerable, and nervy, and performed her songs well, but she didn’t seem to have that je-ne-sais-quois charisma needed to bowl us over. Also sometimes the orchestra seemed to be playing a beat too fast and if felt like Bianco was sometimes one beat behind trying to catch up. Nicky Arnstein, played by Ashley Day, is a handsome hunk with impeccable manners and effortless charm, who serves his role well. Not until the end of the first act did Bianco really start commanding the stage with a rebel rousing, can’t-keep me-down rendition of Don’t Rain on My Parade, which brought the house down with an avalanche of well-deserved applause.
It’s only the second act the production comes into its own. The perfect marriage starts to split at the seams and in the dramatical moments in between the songs, Bianco and Day, show off their excellent acting chops, sometimes moving me to tears. Bianco beautifully fulfills her part in the second act as the mature Fanny Brice, still a fumbling mess around her beloved Nicky Arnstein, trying with all her might to love and keep her man, no matter what. He ends up going to jail for eighteen-months for embezzlement and his sudden and surprise visit to Fanny in her dressing room comes just a few minutes before she is to go on stage. He announces that he wants to end the marriage because she will never understand him and in return Fanny, with heartbreaking vulnerability attempts one last desperate act to save her marriage, before she realizes it’s over. She then goes on to sing a heart-warming and sometimes heart wrenching version of The Music That Makes Me Dance.
I was humming all my favorite tunes from the show on the metro coming home and Bravo! to Christina Bianco for creating a fierce and formidable Fanny Brice, making her a memorable Funny Girl.
Do not miss this production if you are in Paris or if you have to, make a special trip.
In my latest A Bite of Paris video, I've taken a break from food tasting to visit my friend Jessica at La Vaissellerie, my favorite tabletop, dish ware, and kitchen shop, located in the Marais.
Please remember to hit the LIKE button if you like it and SUBSCRIBE button to subscribe to my channel.
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
I’m always inspired when I attend Paris Photo, the prestigious, international photo show held every November at the Grand Palais. I was especially fired up this year and didn’t have to go very far to find inspiration; I walked across the street to the Petite Palais and there it was in plain sight.
I have always loved the immense mosaic floor covering the area of the main floor with a mix of earth colors, patterns, curves, angles, and geometry.
Almost every time I visit the Petit Palais, I photograph the floor but for some reason have never been satisfied with the results. This time I studied the floor more intensely, looking for different angles to shoot than before and I liked the results enough to post the photos today.
How do you like them? Do you have some favorites?
Entrance to the Petit Palais is free.
In my latest A Bite of Paris video, I've taken a break from food tasting to visit my friend Jessica at La Vaissellerie, my favorite tabletop, dish ware, and kitchen shop, located in the Marais.
Please remember to hit the LIKE button if you like it and SUBSCRIBE button to subscribe to my channel.
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
In November of 2017, I wrote about Maison Aleph, a newly opened pastry shop which combines mid-east and French pastries in a new form.Maison Aleph has been quite successful since then and had a pop-up shop last summer in the esteemed Le Grande Epicerie at Le Bon Marché.
I passed by Maison Aleph a few weeks ago and noticed they introduced a number of new products since I was last there. One thing that stood out was a bento box with home-cooked, middle eastern cuisine, a welcome addition to the otherwise all sweets menu. I bought one to go, curious to see how the savory treats measured up to their pastries.
The main course was chicken with a highly spiced Aleppo red pepper paste, cumin and dried mint. Alongside was a richly textured and flavorful mix of pumpkin, sweet potatoes, lentils, in a sesame and hazelnut sauce. A portion of pickled cauliflower, beets, and carrots were a blast from the past with their tangy, sour vinegar taste, a reminder of jars of them lining our family refrigerator when I was growing up. Another fond and funny memory came up while eating the pickled vegetables; I drove with my sister one day when I was about ten-years old to pick-up some pickled, green-peppers from a woman who pickled her own vegetables. When I got back in the car, we were so anxious to try them, we opened the jar on the front seat and dug in. While my sister was driving, after each traffic light, we would dig in again and quickly close it in time for the green light. About 10 traffic lights later and a sour feeling in our stomachs, we realized we ate the entire jar.
Moutabal is much like baba ghanoush except it uses tahini, whereas baba ghanoush doesn’t. It has a smoother, creamier texture, and the Maison Aleph version topped with pomegranate seeds was sensational. I couldn’t get enough of the zaatar-flavored pita chips to scoop up the moutabal and wished I had a second portion of therm.
Last but not least was one of Maison Aleph’s pastries, a square of baklava with layers of chocolate, crispy and gooey all at once.
Another new item I had to try from Maison Aleph was their ice cream. The pistachio with caramelized Iranian pistachios spoke to me loud and clear. I loved the creamy, almost yogurt like texture, and the pure essence of the pistachios without out a lot of sugar to disrupt it.
The bento box comes in three combinations: meat, vegetarian, and seafood.
In my latest A Bite of Paris video, I've taken a break from food tasting to visit my friend Jessica at La Vaissellerie, my favorite tabletop, dish ware, and kitchen shop, located in the Marais.
Please remember to hit the LIKE button if you like it and SUBSCRIBE button to subscribe to my channel.
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
