Please Help Me with these Paris Questions
 

As a first timer to Paris I have a number of questions which have been bothering me:
1. Can you really take a pastry into a cafe to eat with your coffee?
2. Can you really take a picnic with wine on the Seine boats?
3. At Hotel Monge I have read "no food in the rooms" and people talking about putting food in the room frig. Help?
We have reserved tables at Jules Verne, La Truffiere and Tour d'Argent:
3. How do you order wine in a good restaurant if they are different than the ones we get North America? By price? Do you order house wines in good restaurants?
4. How much should I expect wine to cost in restaurants? If I let the wine steward suggest will they be too expensive?
5. Can you get wines by the glass to compliment each course?
I know these sound like uptight questions and they are! I just want things to go smoothly.

Hi Rob,

1. Some of them

2. Yes

3. Clean up after yourself.

3a. Casually, with a very slight sneer at the poor offerings on the carte.

4. Anywhere from quite reasonable to outrageous. Depends on the restaurant.

4a. After you see the wine carte you will get an idea of the cost of the wins. Ask the waiter or sommelier for recommendations in your price range.

5. Quite often, yes.

Enjoy your visit.

((I))

1. Some café owners will not mind if you bring in a pasty - others will. I don't do this. If I want something with my coffee, I order a tartine or a croissant from the proprietor. Why risk a negative reaction? You can eat a pastry anytime; it doesn't have to be at someone's café. And if you want a pastry AND coffee, there are plenty of places to enjoy both.

2. I think there are some Seine boats that do allow you to bring a picnic on board. There have been discussions about this on this board - try a search for Seine Cruise Wine Picnic and see what comes up.

3. Don't know the Hôtel Monge, but I've never stayed at a hotel in Paris where I couldn't bring food into my room, and I wouldn't.

4. You'll be given a wine list at any good restaurant. Maybe you should try drinking some French wines before your trip so as to familiarize yourself with some of them. Really good restaurants don't tend to have "house" wines. In your average establishment, the house wine is usually fine. If you have questions, ask. That's what waiters and sommeliers are for. Don't be goaded into paying more for a wine than you want to. You can pay anywhere from 5€ to 500€ fcr a bottle of wine. Know what you like ahead of time.

5. You can probably order wine by the glass for each course at any number of types of restaurants, but a) that's probably going to be expensive, and b) since you admit to being uptight, why would you want to make two or three or more wine choices during dinner rather than ask for the waiter's advice to begin with about one good bottle?

This wining and dining stuff is supposed to be fun and relaxing, by the way. You really don't need to stew about this stuff. Just start drinking French wines now so you have some sense of what appeals to you and what does not. Then you can make sensible choices when you get there without angst.

It's just Paris. It's nothing to get uptight about.

I have learned to get over my scruples when asking the waiter to help with a wine selection. I no longer have any qualms in a "medium" priced place of saying "a nice full bodied rouge, we'd prefer to spend about 30 euro, we like bordeaux if you have something nice in that price range" or something like that. I find that they often will surprise you and offer something below your suggested budget that they are particularly proud of, oftentimes not even on the list.

I also couldn't imagine taking my own pastry to a cafe, until we asked while sitting at a cafe at the corner of Buci and Mazarine if they had pain au chocolate. The waiter said no, all they had were plain croissants, but pointed out a place across the street where we could get great ones and bring them back to have with our coffee. I think the bottom line is don't take pastries into a place that sells a variety of them. But if it is more just a coffee place and they don't offer a lot, take your own, but I'd still ask before opening it and enjoying it in front of them.

Hi
At the fancier places like Tour d'Argent, they are likely to bring you a carte de vins that is quite lengthy and can be intimidating even for wine lovers.

Wine lists at French restaurants are organized geographically. American wines tend to to be labled by the variety of grape (Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, etc), but French wines are labeled by the region (appellation) where the wine is made. The most common appellations are Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Loire Valley, Alsace, the Rhone, and Champagne. Most regions only use certain varieties of grapes. For example, all white Burgundy wines are made from Chardonnay grapes, while most Burgundy reds are made from the Pinot Noir grape. Beaujolais uses the Gamay grape. Beaujolais is a subset within Burgundy. Beaujolais is a very popular wine for the French to order with a bistro meal of meat, chicken, lamb, steak frites, cheeses. It can be a very fine wine, but because it uses the Gamay grape it is usually not considered at the same exalted level as the top Burgundies, and so is comparatively medium-priced. Beaujolais is easy to like. There are 10 vineyard areas (crus) that produce Beaujolais (even this can’t be too simple) and each cru has its fans. Don’t confuse true Beaujolais with the "Beaujolais Nouveau" that your local wine store in the US advertises every November.

If at home you prefer Chardonnays, look through the list of white Burgundy wines. If you like Pinot Noirs, look at the red Burgundies. If you prefer Cabernet or Merlot, then look at the red Bordeaux; most red Bordeaux wines are blends of these two grapes, along with some other grapes in smaller proportions. The Syrah grape, (Shiraz, in Australia) is used, along with others, in Rhone wines. Then of course there are the other wine regions…
The above is a simple summary, there are nuances and details that I'm absolutely not qualified to discuss.

Most wine bars, bistros and even formal restaurants have available a choice of wines by the glass, and these can be excellent. Casual neighborhood restaurants might have available red wine by the “pichet” (a small pitcher) or a carafe, and this house wine is sometimes offered (price included or not) with the price-fixed dinner (the menu). If you want to order from the wine list do as suggested above and ask your waiter for advice. Usually they will offer 2 or 3 suggestions. I've never found any waiter or sommelier that was snotty about giving advice on wine, even if you only want to order one glass and aren’t sure what to choose.

I think the above are all really good responses, but for the record:
1) I don't usually do this, but have a couple times in rather rudimentary student cafes where I saw others doing it. I wouldn't do it in a place like Le Dome. I have been in some cafes where I think it would have not been viewed very well, but that is my gut feeling, I'll admit from the ambience and staff. I have not seen this happen very often in the cafes I go to -- I mean observing others. I wouldn't ever bring in something they sold in the cafe.
2) don't know
3) I've never stayed in a hotel that had rules posted like that. I don't eat much between meals, so it really isn't an issue for me and I don't really want to put food in the frig very much. I have occasionally bought some camembert cheese and put it in the minibar when I was going to a performance for the evening and did not want to go out to dinner after that as it would be too late but knew I'd want something to eat. I might have a roll or some small style bread to go with it, which I just keep in a sack I put on the desk or something with some of my stuff, of course, to have with it. I've certainly kept a chocolate bar or something also to have as dessert (not sure if that qualifies as "food"). The fact that you added that after your reservations about the fancdy restaurants I'm not sure I understand. I have never taken leftovers from a restaurant (and hardly have any leftovers, I don't order food I won't want to eat).
4) I order wine based on what I want, I know types of French wine well enough to know what I want. I don't know labels that much, I order by the kind I want (Saumur Champigny, Cotes du Rhone, Macon, etc). This isn't any different to me than the way I order in North America. I usually dine alone and don't buy large bottles of wine, just a carafe or demi-bouteille, but the menu (carte) tells you what kinds they have available. Sometimes I have a prix fixe dinner that comes with wine and then the house pretty much has a certain label they give for that, you don't get to choose except red or white.
4 and 5) I think you are getting over my level of wine consumption, I don't buy expensive wines and am not sure I've dined in a place with a wine steward. I have sometimes asked a waiter about a couple different choices of roses, for example, if I don't know them, telling him my preferences for lighter, dry wines, and that I don't like fruity or sweet wines.

I don't buy large bottles, but suppose I spend about 4-7 euro for a glass of a good wine (not unnamed table wine).