After walking along for an hour or so, I turned into the city for dinner. Restaurants, brasseries, cafes are everywhere. Armed with an iPhone and Yelp and TripAdvisor, I went from place to place, looked at the menu and read the reviews. This is where it became very evident, and comical, who the reviewers were. Some were French. Those were easy to tell mostly because the translation to English via the apps was not perfect. Also because their reviews were intelligent, that was a leading indicator. The other reviewers self-selected into good Americans (subsets of these discussed later), ugly Americans (their reviews made you ashamed to be American) and then other foreigners, and these were interesting. Anyway, after going from restaurant to restaurant looking for the "perfect" first dinner in Paris, I turned down this small side street to cut over another major street and found La Haute Cloche.
I went in and in my best Bonsoir, je suis désolé, je ne parle pas français, est-ce que ça va? the server, a young woman, smiled widely and said that's OK, I speak English and we laughed a little. She turned out to be from Mexico who is studying at a top culinary school in Paris to be a chef, and is apprenticing at this restaurant as part of her studies. We talked a lot about cooking during the night.
The food was very good to excellent. I typically ordered and ate enough for two at each and every sitting. Drank a lot of wine!
Walking home around midnight or so.
