Finally really in Paris!

It's old wisdom that new parents should have a standing babysitter night so that they can get out regularly and remember the life they had before baby. It's also pretty standard for new parents, for reasons of fear and financial stress, to ignore this advice. Finally, with Eric almost 11 months old, the nanny stayed late and we got to go out to an entire meal without the baby. It was divine, in every possible way!

We went to a very small bistrot, reservations essential, in the 9th, called Bistrot Lorette. It is the number one rated restaurant in Paris on Trip Advisor and I can see why - warm, welcoming, filled with love, it looks like it's just two men - one working the front and the other working the kitchen. My sister and her husband are visiting so as a foursome we each found a different item on the set menu that appealed, and so we got to taste the widest possible variety of their offerings. I hope to update this post with the photos they took of the meal, but in the meantime I can say that Doug's foie gras was the outstanding appetizer, for pure quality of ingredients, while I was still very enamored of my beet carpaccio with smoked salmon and little bricks of goat cheese (meaning they were wrapped in what seems like one sheet from a stack of phyllo dough and pan fried).

For our dinners the sea bass I had with whole anis seeds is an idea I want to bring home and try to re-create. Daddy had a guinea fowl and I would have liked to know what the special treatment of that was but he just quietly and quickly ate it all. It must have been good!

For desserts we were blown away - from fruit to chocolate, each plate was perfectly balanced and *special*. We left the restaurant having fallen back in love with Paris.

I won't lie, moving to Paris has been a hard adjustment. So much has changed in our lives so quickly. New roles as parents, new country, different language, it's been a lot. I was chatting with a work colleague about how much I value my job for so many reasons right now, and one more reason is that it's pretty much the only thing that hasn't radically changed in my life recently. It occurred to me later I should have included Daddy in that category, but with his new job and new 3 hour commute each day our relationship has changed immensely too. This dinner out helped me remember who we had been, why we love(d) Paris, and affirmed that we can simultaneously be the people we were and who we want to become.