not drinking poison in paris

A side effect of habitual contact with food and wine criticism - as a writer or as a reader - is susceptibility to the delusional belief th...

No way we could have done our Jura Bike Trip without our friend J. A caviste / wine director with heaps of experience leading bike tours in...

A defining feature of the blog era is that it permits anyone, just anyone, to publish criticism on a given subject, regardless of his or he...

My landlady S and her husband G have become sort of like a second family to me over here. So it's the happy custom, whenever my actual ...

There are a number of things wrong with my current living situation. I have no oven, for instance, just a cruddy little wall-mounted toaste...

There is actually nothing on earth more dull than a conversation about the relative merits of bottled water brands. It's a subject on w...

A perennial problem I have, leading friends about Paris, is we invariably wind up, after three days or so, in a kind of hungover fog throug...

Truth be told, I'd intended to save the birthday bottle of 2006 Drappier Champagne "Charles de Gaulle" my friends A and C g...

Update: 23/10/2013: I've just heard Le Dirigeable has closed. Bummer.  Well, I was gently hassling my friend Guy about having serv...

Due to a long ridiculous histoire involving arrests, my sister J3 and her boyfriend J4* missed their intended flight to Paris from Los Ang...

The paucity of posts this week has been due to a bike trip through the Jura, a region in eastern France north of Burgundy abutting Switzerl...

One of the perks of my other, paying job is that it is not in the Marais, but allows me to float pleasantly through said neighborhood sever...

I'd intended our dinner at 12ème Italian-ish restaurant Rino earlier this month to be a celebration of the much-anticipated arrival in...

It's not wine-related, but I'm unable to resist posting a small word of appreciation for the under-sung merits of the modest Italia...

Nothing brightens a hassle-strewn rainy Monday afternoon like visiting your favorite nearby sandwich bar ( Balt ) and receiving, as a rando...

On our final night in Rome our friend / host B made it back to town, having been pulled away by conflicting business and family obligations...