Les Pipos 3.22.09. Photo by Marcia Yapp
Dome Nuages
The amazing Hot Club of Detroit plays a luscious version of the best song of all time (eat your hearts out, superlative-haters!), Django Reinhart’s Nuages at a lovely little cafe that is no more, the Cafe Dome St. Paul, located at the corner of Rue Saint-Antoine and Rue de Sevigne, on a lovely march afternoon as the late sun shone on weary travelers and harried workers hurrying home from the metro stop. How about that siren syncing up with the accordion? How about that laugh of Marcia’s when the waiter cracks wise? Sigh…
Kostas Things
Diana Krall plays piano and croons the Cole Porter classic Just One of Those Things at a lovely little cafe on Rue Bonaparte. Sigh...
L’As Russian Rendezvous
Our favorite falafel shop on Rue des Roseries, L’A’s du Falafel, is the site for this excellent set from Brandi Shearer and the Robin Nolen quartet featuring Irving Berlin’s Russian Lullaby segue-ing into the Ben Charest tune Belleville Rendezvous from the animated feature The Triplets of Belleville. You can hear the noon-day crowd and almost smell the fried food which goes surprisingly well with, of all things, a kosher St. Emilion. Sigh….
Foolish Verre a Pied
Near the foot of old Rue Mouffetard stands the most lovely little place for a 4:30 pastis, La Verre a Pied. Jeane Birkin (former wife of the great Serge Gainsbourg) sings the most beautiful version of Eric Maschwitz and Jack Strachey’s These Foolish Things accompanied by Jimmy Roweles on piano. Sigh…
Dance Me Port Royal
Leonard Cohen’s amazing Dance me to the End of Love is delivered perfectly by Madeleine Peyroux at the outdoor cafe on Boulevard Port Royal on that sunny Monday when we walked 100 miles across Paris on nothing but coffee, pan chocolate and Bordeaux. Sigh…
Tenderly Fabian
Guitar legends Tommy Emmanuel and Frank Vignola soar through Walter Gross and Jack Lawrence’s unsurpassably gentle melody, Tenderly, at the open air cafe near the Place Col. Fabian that sunny afternoon just before we climbed the heights of Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Sigh…
Palette Honeysuckle Belleville
The Hot Club of Detroit again nails it to the wall with this spirited rendition of Honeysuckle Rose (Fats Waller) and Belleville Rendezvous (ben Charest), performed at La Palette on Rue de Seine on a warm Thursday evening (can you hear the car horn through the open windows?). It was a busy night…lots of laughter, a bustling waiter, a dropped glass between tunes (“uh ooohhhhh!!!”). Sigh.
Dome Gonzalo
A May morning at Cafe Dome…or has it become the Cafe Favorite by this time? Who cares…the guitarist is definitely the favorite–passionate Argentine virtuoso Gonzalo Bergara. He and his trio paint the Tue St. Antione pavement with joy on Gonzalo’s compositions Hungaria and Gonzology. Sigh...
Bistro Mirage 