Exploring the dark side of the City of Lights
for enRoute Magazine 2010
Paris’ roots are underground. For a quick taste of history, I head to Montesson and visit Angel Moioli, who farms in an abandoned underground limestone quarry. The last of about five champignonnières in the region, mushrooms now come from automated ‘black houses’ in Holland. I buy a kilo of pleurottes, pieds-bleues, and champigons de Paris from his walk-in cooler carved into the limestone, draped in moss and vines, and discover firm mushrooms with very delicate, earthy flavours, like fresh butter, hazelnut and oyster brine.
Next up: Alléosse Cheese shop, an award-winning cheese retailer with and urban aging cellar under the city. I meet with Philippe Alléosse, who tells me that that cheese is a living thing, with an immune system. “Anyone can put cheese in the fridge at 4 degrees Celsius for two months and call it matured—but nothing has happened.”
I remember my last time in Paris, my uncle Olivier asked his neighbourhood fromagier for a cheese that would be perfect in three days. He wanted to send me home to Canada with a souvenir that would be ripe the moment I stepped off the plane. The fromager disappeared and returned with a very strong cheese my cabin mates likely never forgave me for. He checked it between his thumb and forefinger like we would an avocado, and placed it in the bag.
But without wine, cheese is celibate. Paris’ renowned wine cellar la Tour d’Argent’s famed caves house 400,000 bottles, including an 1874 Romanée, and a 1788 Cognac Clos de Griffier. Claude Terrail, then owner, hurriedly walled in the cellar one night in 1940, hiding treasures from invading Nazis. Folklore has it the cellar was cat-burgled years later, a blank cheque left in place of one priceless, must-have bottle.
Since few of us can partake in such legends, the Musée du Vin has an affordable restaurant deep within a 15th century cellar abbey. The regionally themed soirées are an excellent crash course in wine tasting. Visiting, one begins to realize the history of wine is as old as the history of time well spent.
In the evening I show up to the Opéra de Paris a few hours early and wait in line for a remaining ticket. The Palais Garnier is an acoustic marvel, with its own legendary lake in the basement. (A gigantic cistern holding thousands of litres of water fills the base of the building, a solution to underground pressures caused by a subterranean river.) Alain Martin, head of the Choir of the Opéra de Paris, and violist Anne-Aurore Ansttet take me on a flashlight tour of the vaults. We run into scuba-rescue firefighters executing blind dive drills in the dark waters. I get a ticket for 21 euros and coincidentally it’s Rossini’s Lady of the Lake. Luck is on my side.
Where to go to finish the night depends on your whimsy, but there is something for every taste: the classic deco sous-sol of La Coupole, an all night café made famous by basement swinging, as in Jazz, Josephine Baker, the Caveau de la Huchette, a jazz club in a cellar or the Rex with dancing and DJ’s. However you decide to play it, it’s a fact: Parisians have no shortage of imagination when it comes to what to do in the dark.
Micah Donovan
Angel Moioli
Champignonnières Les Carrierès
Intersection of l’avenue du Général de Gaulle and rue Jean Macé, down the drive way
Tel 0609062152
http://www.fromage-alleosse.com/
Alléosse Fromger – Affineur
13, rue Poncelet
75017 PARIS
Tél. : +33 (0)1.46.22.50.45
Musée du Vin
http://www.museeduvinparis.com/
5 Square Charles Dickens
75016 Paris, France
Tel +33 (0)1 45 25 63 26
Subway: Passy
Tel +33 (0)1 71252423
info for tours and tickets
at the corner of rue Scribe and rue Auber,
Paris 9ème
Métro: Opéra, lines 3, 7, 8
RER: line A, station Auber
La Coupole
102, bd du Montparnasse
75014 Paris
M° : Vavin
Parking : 118, bd du Montparnasse
Tel +33 (0)1 43 20 14 20
Caveau de la Huchette
5 Rue de la Huchette
75005 Paris, France
Tel +33 (0)1 43 26 65 05
REX CLUB
5, Boulevard Poissonnière
75002 – Paris France
Tel +33 (0) 1 42 36 10 96