Dinner was at L'Alsaco (map here), a charming little restaurant that strives to recreate the feel of a small village establishment in Alsace, with wood-paneling all around, medieval-style paintings, and exclusively Alsatian wine, beer, and bottled water options. Pretty much everyone there orders one of their choucroute options. Choucroute is French for sauerkraut but the word is often used as shorthand for choucroute garnie, which is any preparation of hot sauerkraut with meat and potatoes. The meat is usually an array of sausages but other variations include a large ham hock or a selection of seafood (choucroute de la mer).
We started with a dish called pipalakass, made from sour cream, onions, parsley, and cumin with a small boiled potato on the side. It reminded me somewhat of the dip that one makes with French onion soup mix, but far better. The flavor profile is subtle, with nothing jumping out at first except the smoothness of the sour cream followed quickly by the crunch of raw onions. The raw onions didn't have the sharp flavor one might expect and were quite sweet. Hints of cumin and parsley then come into play late with a very feathery touch. The restraint of the flavors makes this dish easy to eat in quantity; it's basically flavored sour cream and unsurprisingly it went quite well with the boiled potato. We also had a dish of mini-pretzels on the table, and dipping them into the pipalakass proved to be quite addictive.
For my entree I ordered choucroute with jarret (ham hock). This tickled me, as my most distinct memory of eating choucroute with colleagues several years ago in Le Havre is of looking over at another table who ordered communal plates of choucroute that included a Flintstone-sized hunk of meat-on-a-bone. My recollection may be faulty but I recall it appearing to weigh at least 4 or 5 pounds and looking awesome. As such, it's hard for me to pass up the opportunity to order a large lump of meat so I can chuckle at the memory.
I also want to note that French-style sauerkraut is different from the German-style sauerkraut we're used to in the States. Choucroute is not nearly as sour as the German stuff and has just a little bit more crunch with hints of sweetness and spices (one almost always finds several whole cloves in every pile of choucroute). Accompanying meat is placed on top of the choucroute and the whole thing is always served warm; typically the plate is placed over a couple of Sterno-type heaters to stay that way.
My buddy Jon (like my bologna, my buddy has a first name) ordered the traditional choucroute garnie with an array of sausages and bacon (called lard in French so don't be fooled). There's no need to go into a detailed blow-by-blow description of the entrees -- I know it's shocking that I'd pass up the opportunity to throw in a few hundred more words on this blog since there's clearly not enough sesquipedalian bloviating going on already -- but suffice it to say that everything was delicious and flavorful, with the fattiness of the various meats (especially the crisp and salty hock) nicely balanced by the light acidity of the choucroute.
(Apologies for the quality -- or lack thereof -- of the pictures; it was dark but we didn't want to disturb the other diners with flash photography.)
That night, we decided to get our club on. Jon did some pretty extensive research since this is really his métier and identified a number of hot nightspots in Paris, with a club called Batofar (map here) seeming like the most interesting of the four or five coolest options. It's ranked #38 on the list of 100 top dance clubs in the world and has many of the hottest global DJ's on tap. And it's located in the belly of a lighthouse boat floating on the Seine! The boat's not huge but there's a decent-sized dance floor (I'd estimate about 15 meters square) and 3 bars inside, with another restaurant/bar full of smokers topside. It was raining lightly but insistently as we walked the quarter-mile from the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand Metro station a little before midnight on Friday. We were a little concerned that we might not get in because it was already late and it didn't look like the boat could hold too many people. Our fears proved to be unfounded as we boarded and entered the belly of the boat; no one was on the dance floor and there were less than a dozen people down below in total, though the music was banging and the multi-colored lights were swinging about with gusto. We headed to one of the bars for a drink and tried to figure out the deal: were people put off by the rain / was it still too early for the party to get going / was this club no longer "it"? We decided to wait it out and wandered onto the edge of the dance floor to people-watch. We took up station at the base of the stairs that everyone entering had to descend, so we were well-positioned to assess the inflow/outflow situation. For the next hour or so, people entered by twos and threes, looked around to see if critical mass had been achieved, then mostly went back up the stairs after satisfying themselves that it hadn't. One particularly energetic fellow took to the dance floor and went to town with inscrutable but sincere dance moves. The slowly-gathering crowd looked on approvingly, as it usually takes a brave soul or two to catalyze the formation of the dance mass. Eventually the crowd grew large enough that it spilled over onto the dance floor, with folks beginning to get their groove on. The DJ's for the night were posted on the walls with precise timeboxing and record labels included so we could see that it was DJ La Grande (Bric-à-Brac Electro) energetically bouncing about in a Ramones t-shirt and spinning some fantastic music.
A couple of notes about proper Euro-style clubbing, as many clubs in the US don't do it particularly well. In Europe the clubs are DJ-driven, with the DJ on an elevated stage at the front of the crowd. The DJ is truly performing, constantly tweaking beats/transitions/volume/etc. to match or direct the energy and mood of the crowd. No self-respecting DJ would be caught dead simply playing a record; all of the music has to be either hand-crafted from scratch or remixed into something truly unique. One of the real keys to clubbing nirvana is a carefully managed set of ups and downs in energy level; the go-meter can't be stuck at 10 the entire time. There's a regular point at which much of the bass and beat are removed and the sound spectrum is fairly narrow. At this point, most people aren't dancing energetically but just kind of swaying, catching their breath and waiting for what's to come. The DJ then slowly begins to build tension, most often with a repeating riff that rises incrementally in pitch but other techniques include the manipulation of volume and fullness of sound. The energy of the crowd begins rising and people begin moving with more vigor, but the air is tight because everyone wants to bust loose yet the DJ won't allow it, just teasing the crowd. The music keeps building in intensity and as it hits a point where you can't take it anymore, the DJ keeps it going just a little bit longer, uses a subtly different sound pattern to signal that relief is coming, then brings in a thunderous crash of music with fat bass, pounding beats, a catchy riff/melody, and just a generally full palette of insistent sound that absolutely demands terpsichorean satisfaction. The lights go mad and the crowd screams their approval and dances with renewed abandon. The feeling of release after the agonizing buildup of tension is marvelous, especially since one is able to actualize that joyous feeling with the most direct form of personal physical expression. A skilled DJ not only micromanages every aspect of that process to maximize the euphoria, but also knows when to begin another cycle. I imagine that DJ's must get their own special rush of power and joy to be able to control and be responsible for the happiness of so many people. Another interesting aspect of DJ-driven club culture is that most dancers are oriented towards the DJ. My experience in US clubs is that the dance floor is made up of a series of self-enclosed units; I think of it as a series of circles with inward-pointing arrows. Euro-style, most (but not necessarily all) arrows point in the same direction.
By 2am, the club was rocking at full capacity and the next DJ (introduced by a young woman carrying a placard, just like rounds are displayed at a boxing match) was in full stride. I affirm for the record that Jon has skills on the dance floor. At one point while he was tearing up the dance floor, a very cute French girl leaned in to say something intimate and complimentary into his ear. The exchange ended quite abruptly and later on, he explained that she said something to him in French and he slightly panicked, reflexively answering in his too-honest fashion that he didn't speak French. This clearly turned her off and the conversation was over. Lesson learned, folks: when hitting a French dance club, either learn French or learn how to lie. *Shaking his head sadly*
Grabbing a drink at the bar near the bow of the boat, it was amusing to note how tilted the entire boat was towards the stern; we hadn't thought about how the addition of several hundred people might affect the way the boat sat in the water. Looking out the portholes, one could see that the boat was ever-so-slightly bobbing in the water though it wasn't really noticeable with the sensory overload going on in the background. We left at around 3:30am and caught a cab home, club itch scratched. Or so I thought.
Cost in Euros of a small Dixie cup of beer at Batofar: 5
Cost in Euros of a bottle of whiskey/vodka/rum at Batofar: 100
Current value of 1 Euro in US dollars: 1.48
Approximate cost in dollars of bottle service at a typical Vegas club: 700
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