Paris: Fried Foods and Fine Leather Goods

Bonjour from Texas, my friends! We have been home five days and I have spent most of them in Austin, enjoying my family and tending to our sadly neglected lake house. We missed the bumper crop of Texas wild flowers, but the jasmine is still blooming large on our fence, perfuming the house through open windows (for a few more days, anyway). It’s good to be home.

Yes, we still have no lake, but my sister’s house is on a part of Lake Travis that is still a little wet. We had a nice family dinner on the deck Saturday night.

Notice how much nicer docks look when floating on water than when perched precariously on rocks as in the photo from our house.

Not so long ago Mark and I enjoyed a wonderful dinner at a new restaurant in Paris called Ellsworth. The newest offering by the darling couple who owns one of our favorite special restaurants, Verjus, Ellsworth is more casual, serving tapas seven days a week. Here were a few of our favorites.

These were not your freezer’s corn dogs, my friends. The tender cornbread wrapper concealed duck sausage, and arrived with pickled mustard seeds and strong French mustard for dipping.

These flaky, golden scoops of goodness were fried chicken atop a slightly spicy slaw. Fried chicken is not easy to find in Paris, and this is the best we have ever discovered.

Dessert was apple fritters and cinnamon cream sauce. Oh my. I wish I could conjure some right now. They were so good.

of course there was some of this, too

Both Verjus and Ellsworth are centrally located near the Palais-Royale. Check them out the next time you are in the hood. Tell them Mark and Kate sent you.

After all those fried calories, we opted to walk home that evening. Our route took us right by the Hermes store, which provided me the opportunity to photograph the windows without the glare of daylight. I didn’t love them, but preferred them to the previous windows, which were just weird.

Thanks for stopping by Paris via Texas!