High season for picnics in Paris

Apéritif along the Canal Saint-Martin Canal Saint Martin (Paris)
This is the peak season of the year to picnic in Paris, and this business seems not to experience the French gloom at all. Walk around the improvised picnic areas in Paris any evening and you'll see them occupied by 20ers and 30ers busy partying and chatting, drinking booze in a generally pacified manner. Girls make a good share of the public and the youth in general are too happy to take advantage of a nice freedom that makes this city a nice place to live.

As I wrote earlier, several reasons explain this surge in the use by the young people of public space to have dinner or apéritif together. First, eating out is not cheap in Paris, and with Twitter or Facebook you can set up a flash party without bothering if the venue will have room for every one. Latecomers can join the fray, they just bring a few things to eat and a bottle, or nothing, it doesn't really matter, there will be usually enough for everyone.
Then, with joblessness at 26 % among the French under 25, you don't go out that much (I mean in restaurants and the likes), so, with these wonderful postcard settings at easy reach where you can just sit and unpack you dinner and drinks, who needs these bars and restaurants ? Life is beautiful...

Party near passerelle Alibert But watch out, some people including the Greens (who co-run the city) want to target youth drinking, so enjoy the present and cross your fingers for the future. These new puritans are repeatedly trying to prevent the youth to enjoy relaxed moments where booze flows in the pretext that in some cases "there's a competition mindset in the alcohol consumption" among very young teenagers. In this interview of Corinne Bouchoux, a French Green from the Loire who co-authored a recent Senate report about this issue (youth drinking), she speaks about "rituals" and uses the pretext of early drinking to target the student practices. The Senate report itself makes it clear, with chapters about "the student parties", "the big festive meetings", "the Facebook apéritifs" and "the heavy drinking away from any framework".... Beware, folks, the morality police is after you.... On the Quai de Valmy side As you understand, our new favorite spot is the famed Canal Saint-Martin, a two-century old canal which was used originally to bring construction materials and other goods to the center of Paris with barges. All you need for an evening picnic in summer is a cool place, ideally a park or the banks of the seine or of the canal. The water opening the landscape and allowing to keep at distance the city noise. Quai de Jemmapes, lying on the cobble stones And these youths not only drink but many of them smoke, OMG, we have to find some way to get these people in line...
No, let's be serious now, smoking is not a good thing, even if we shouldn't think always in terms of health and so on, but they should indeed try to rein in this habit.
Here again, the strict laws against smoking in restaurants and bars may add with the rest in the motives of these young people who find more convenient and cheap to just sit in a cool place and enjoy their friends. But again, our health-conscious lawmakers are devising a general interdiction in such recreational areas. Early diners I wo,der why I like more this canal surrounding than the Seine banks where we were going the other years. Maybe a more intimate sense here, not in the sense of the number of people (it's crowded here) but because there's a cosy feel with these buildings nearby where you see people in their appartments, and you get anything you need (that you would have forgotten) at a close distance, it's really like if you had a picninc downstairs in the garden. In short, try the Seine if you never did it there, it's gorgeous too with the passing boats, the breeze and everything (definitely cooler than the canal by hot nights), but after a while you'll long for something more urban, then try the canal. Our favorite spot Here is our favorite spot along the canal Saint Martin, right where the canal curves in the direction of Jaurès/Stalingrad. I shot this picture when we saw this boat reaching for the lock while cruising from Stalingrad to the Bastille. B. and I had called a few friends including Japanese expats who tried this picnic spot for the first time, and believe me, watching a BOAT glide by along your table was not something they'd expect to experience during their dinner here. This was apparently a Dutch-registered yacht and one of the guys was having a drink and toasted in our direction. Couple along the canal Now, you wonder certainly about the wine....
Beyond the innocent peace perspering from this picture, there's an important clue to solve this issue : look at the purple blind behind the tree on the other side of the canal, this is no less than Le Verre Volé, a now-famous wine restaurant which is also a wine shop (as the sign pictured on the left says, "we are also a wine shop"), making indeed this section of the Canal Saint-Martin the best place in town to improvise a picnic.

Le Verre Volé has a price to go and a price to drink the bottle in the restaurant (with cork fee), and the wine choice will definitely be better than the one of the Franprix food mart nearby.

Just cross the footbridge and help yourself with the knowledgeable staff of Le Verre Volé, you should find a bottle in the range of 7 to 10 € (maybe no need to spend too much for a picnic) for example a bottle from Estézargues or Villemade, although the Villemade Cheverny red was alas sold out the last time I went there, and I opted for a Rhone by Elodie Balme (picture on right as a Verre-Volé staff grabbed the bottle for me), Elodie being a young vintner who makes very nice wines there. A first batch of bottles Of course the best thing is to begin your dinner early, like 7pm or 8pm, so that you can enjoy different lighting in your dinner setting. We all brought a few bottles of whatever available or desirable drink, B. and I brought an opened bottle of Patapon and a bottle of Chenin by françois Chidaine (les Tuffeaux 2007), and our Japanese friends brought several Japanese beers and sodas.

To complement the wine I walked nearby to Le Verre Volé with Yuichiro to show him the venue and I bought this bottle of Rhone by Elodie Balme, which I thought was a good after drink following the deliciously spicy Pineau d'Aunis (the Patapon, by Christian Chaussard). There were already patrons in the restaurant but the staff nonetheless helped me the best he could to choose a bottle according to my budget and taste (I wanted an easy-drinking red).
Junko who doesn't drink much alcohol loved Patapon and I told her that the wine was imported in Japan where it had its cult followers too. Yuichiro (who drinks easily) loved this Patapon too, as well as Elodie's Rhone table wine 2011, and I told him about the wine shop in Nishi Nippori where he'll find it when back in Tokyo in a few months. I can't tell about the Chidaine wine because I tried not to mix too much of different drinks and colors, it was apparently a wine with a bit of residual sugar but it still won applause among the party.
Mustafa joined us later, after we told him over the phone where we were sitting, and as unlikely as you might think by reading his first name, Mustafa eats pork and drinks wine, certainly a common feature in Kabylie, a region of Algeria where local ways resisted along the centuries to the arab-muslim rule. He brought along a bottle of Coteaux de Tlemcen, which reminds us that Algeria still makes wine, if in a less favorable climate and mostly through coop-size state wineries. The wine wasn't the most applauded that evening but it was better than expected. All the while eating a salad, various charcuterie and cooked meat, we had all these drinks and it was very interesting to sample a couple of Japanese beers I had never heard of. All were brought by Yuichiro, who wanted to share with us these rare beers.

Iki beer, first, is a Japanese hefeweiss beer made also with Yuzu and green tea. the beer is smooth, onctuous and delicious, with 4,5 ° in alcohol. It doesn't seem really Japanese and it seems to come from Holland.

The Coedo beer on the other hand is a truly Japanese beer, it's made in the Saitama prefecture north of Tokyo. This brewery also has a more expensive beer, Benakia, which is made out of local sweet potatoes. Coedo is the queen of Japanese beers, Yuichiro says. The beer is smooth and delicate, this one at least as he says that they have other, more bitter, brews. I look forward to tasting more of this brewery, possibly when in Japan as a bottle here costs no less than 5 €.

We had also lots of cherries, I mean real cherries, not ones from a shop as Mustafa has a house with garden outside Paris with a cherry tree on it, and I myself brougt back cerises from the Loire. I take the oppoprtunity to say that this is an incredible year for cherries, as if the cherry trees wanted to compensate last year's non-existent fruit load. This year there were so many cherries in my place in the Loire that the tree itself dropped many of them when still green (a few weeks ago), as if realizing that it wouldn't be able to feed them all. And still, now that the ripening time have come, the tree is still covered with a generous mantle of fruit... Party along the canal near the Franprix I forgot to give an important information which helps in the planning of your picnic along the canal Saint-Martin : there's a well-located convenience store along the canal, a Franprix (a food-store chain) where the prices will be very affordable for your dinner party. You can also find there plastic glasses and cardboard plates, although I usually try to bring at least a few wine glasses (how can you enjoy good wine in plastic glasses ?). The Franprix sign can be guessed in the center-right of this picture.
With Le Verre Volé at 67 rue de Lancry on the other side of the canal and this Franprix at 110 quai de Jemmapes, you have everything you need with an easy walk, except maybe good bread that you can source near Le Verre Volé. You can even excuse yourself and say that you need another bottle, using Le Verre Volé as your cellar (they close late). Meeting point Another tip : To meet your friends there you can either do like this woman who waits along the canal with her grocery bag full of (undoubtly) good things or just (like we do usually especially if people unaware of the area come along) stand atop the footbridge near rue de Lancry. That's a good option even if you're familiar with the neighborhood because the view from there is very pleasant and relaxed especially toward the end of the day. You see families passing by, lovers, locals walking home, all sort of scenes, close or far away. And if a barge or boat happens to come down the canal, you'll enjoy the rare view of a rotating bridge/street in action. According to this page the rotating bridges were built at the end of the 19th century.

As a photographer I can say that the view is perfect for shooting scenes and situations, and just within a few minutes the other day and all the while chatting with B. and Tuichiro who had already arrived, I spotted this anonymous smile [at me ! ] from a passing woman holding a bouquet of flowers, and this couple travelling on a single bicycle who knows where. If we hadn't this dinner spot to find before others grab it, I'd had stayed there more time... Urinal Here is something which I thought was gone from Paris for good since our PC rulers outlawed it for being sexist (not to speak about disability access) : the urinal. It seems that given the crowd of males drinking here and maybe in order to save the trees along the canal from certain poisoning, someone in the city administration has allowed them back here (if reluctantly I guess). Here is a twin-face urinal, which in my opinion doesn't offer enough privacy, and that's certainly why you still see men standing along trees or worse, between parked cars here and there. I guess women, who make a good share of the crowd here and seem to drink well too have to rely on sneaking in the toilets of the bars in the vicinity... Strolling along the canal Here is a video that I shot while leaving the area a few weeks from now. An this goes on a long distance on both sides of the canal, all the way to Jaurès/Stalingrad and on both sides. I took care to put our empty bottles in trash containers and I hope that every one does the same. Looks like diners behave properly on the whole, but the down thing for people living in the appartments on the street is that it must be noisy late at night throughout summer. Child looking at a model boat To finish on a more innocent note, here is something that makes the canal Saint-Martin look more like the family-friendly Parc du Luxembourg on the left bank. This was just before the apéritif/dining time, I mean almost, a few people were already enjoying drinks. A father and his son were looking at a model sailmboat which had just been taken out of the canal.

Comments

[Ben Wood]

We were there last year! Went to Verre Vole, and had some breakfasts on the canal right there. Next time I'll make sure we do a picnic dinner! It looks great! Thanks for writing this- I hope it's still legal next summer. It is very much not legal in NYC - at least right now. they only exception of this rule is the concerts in the parks, sometimes they will let you have a drink at those; however there is no glass allowed in the concert area.
Thanks,
Ben Wood