Berlin Reified | Food, design and life in Berlin

In the Orangerie

Finally in the Orangerie...

At the Jardin des Tuileries

I loved this woman with her lavender scarf.

Queuing at the Musée de l'Orangerie

E Dehillerin/Paris apricot tart

Of course the best part of coming home from holiday is tearing into all the packets you shored up against the anticlimax of being back. My tart pans from E. Dehillerin were quickly put into service to make Patricia Well's (or Verlet's) extraordinarily easy apricot tart, and that, with a cup of Chandernagor, was as soothing as I had hoped.

Note that my 23-cm/9-in tart pan took only about 90% of the pastry; dab hands at imperial to metric conversions will quickly note 4 oz of butter can't possibly be 12 g (I used 112 g, and 157 g for the flour); unsure of what Wondra is, I took a tablespoon of the potato flour brought back from Paris; and the Affenbrotbaum or baobob honey I bought from the ever-eloquent salesman at the Miriam Eva Kebe stand at Kollwitzplatz was perfect for the filling.

Crêperie de Josselin (Leaving Paris)

The Crêperie de Josselin was hot, crowded, and the perfect place for our final dinner in Paris. We traced our way carefully up the rue du Montparnasse, having been warned by Avital not to get confused by the competition. Our crisp galettes did not disappoint, and the waiter didn't blink when I sprinkled my second plain one with sugar to make a nonce dessert.

Crêperie de Josselin, 67 rue du Montparnasse, 75014 Paris
Open Tuesday-Sunday

Sacha Finkelsztajn, or Cheese blintzes in Paris

Amidst busy Marais shopping (tea, shirts, paper) a cheese blintz can revive a girl wonderfully - and all the better if it's only 3 EUR. Should I ever find myself back in that street, I'll try one of their fabulous-looking boreks.

The place made all the more special when Anne-Solène wrote to say it belonged to Benjamin's grandfather some twenty years ago...

Sacha Finkelsztajn, 27 rue des Rosiers, 75004 Paris
Open Wednesday to Sunday 10 am to 7 pm, Mondays 11 am to 7 pm

Proust's notebook (for James)

With thanks to James, for recommending I visit the Musée Carnavalet.

Rose Bakery Redux

For anyone planning to visit the Rose Bakery I can heartily recommend getting there early. You watch the place wake up, Rose instructs the servers to fill the capacious soup bowls a third of the way, a tall boy annoints a table of dough rounds with sauce and toppings, and the rooms are blissfully empty. You don't really notice the buzz building but suddenly the two seats beside you are the only ones unoccupied and you both rise to let the brunettes squeeze in with all their shopping. After a small salad plate ('small', but containing four generous helping of whatever you'd like to choose from the bowls up front) we decided to relinquish our choice windowside seat to two hovering Swedes and headed across the street for a half-dozen celebratory mini macarons at Arnaud Delmontel's.

Chez Gladine

Anne-Solène and Benjamin always know where to take us. Our meal at Chez Gladine was another hit, featuring delicious, affordable food from the southwest of France and Basque country, coupled with a sighting of Comédie-Française star Michel Vuillermoz, whose head you can see in profile above. I enjoyed my plate of Brebis with black cherry jam, and David wolfed down his Basque omelet, but if I were to return, I thought, I'd order what Anne-Solène had had: a generous dish of potatoes topped with gloriously bronzed Cantal. And indeed I did just that when we went back for my birthday dinner!

Chez Gladines, 30, rue des 5 Diamants, 75013 Paris
Open daily from 11.30