rebirth of cool: entrée des artistes pigalle, 75009

Everything about Entrée des Artistes Pigalle proprietors Fabien Lombardi and Edouard Vermynck's previous bar-à-manger on rue de Crussol evinced a stubborn, cloistered dedication to cool, which often superseded practical concerns. Each cocktail took up its own page on the finicky list. The wine selection was fearlessly obscure. Hospitality could feel a bit teenage. The music program consisted exclusively of canonical rap.

When I heard they were uprooting that original successful address in favour of a larger space in Pigalle, I worried it might be a case of two artistes fixing what wasn't broke. As the album work - as opposed to the early mixtapes - of an MC like Action Bronson attests, sometimes it's folly to polish an idea whose virtues lay in messy spontaneity.*

But it took no more than a footstep beyond the unassuming threshold of Entrée des Artistes Pigalle to realise I'd underestimated Lombardi and Vermynck's ambitions. The dazzling space is gilt-edged, multi-tiered, Escher-like, with two floors, each with its own bar, served by a kitchen perched on what is, in essence, a stair landing. Gone is the air of bedroom hero-worship that characterised the old address. Lombardi and Vermynck have done what a succession of better-financed Paris bars (Silencio, Le Perchoir) have so far failed to do: create a mature, transportive ambience of Parisian cool, un-derivative of other cities.

n.d.p. in burgundy: domaine gros frère et soeur, vosne-romanée

Driving away from the monkishly spare cellars of Domaine Denis Bachelet, I joked to J that for M. Bachelet to raise neither his production nor his prices despite years of acclaim and overwhelming demand seemed to indicate a lack of imagination. "He's got all he needs," said J. "What would you spend the money on?"

First thing, I said, is I'd go everywhere via helicopter. To hell with traffic. If you can afford to be a prince of the earth, why waste time? 

We were to remember this conversation about thirty minutes later, while tasting Richebourg with Bernard Gros at the rather more elaborate cellars of Domaine Gros Frères et Soeur in Vosne- Romanée. The tasting room looks like it was lifted straight from a David Lynch set, magenta lighting, piano, and all. Then in the course of some topical repartée about the Greek crisis, M. Gros mentioned that while he could not accept payment in drachmas, he was happy to accept payment in dollars - because he used the latter currency to pay for helicopter fuel.