Halfway Through Dinner in Denfert Rochereau
We live in the Denfert Rochereau area in the 14th district of Paris. As I was cleaning up this blog, I stumbled upon this series of pictures taken in the vicinity with my then brand new second-hand 35 mm lens.
Norredine, the cook and owner of A Mi Chemin (Halfway Through) walking past his restaurant rue Boulard in the area
Halfway through Dinner in Denfert Rochereau
A Mi Chemin (Halfway Through, literally), is situated next to the town hall in the 14th arrondissement, around Denfert Rochereau. It’s been one of our favourite restaurants for the past fifteen years. Good fusion food (a touch of Tunisian inspiration and more standard French fares), good value for money and a warm welcome, not forgetting the local black cat haunting the red leather seats. In the above still, it is pictured from Villa Louvat, an early twentieth-century Art Nouveau beauty of which we only see the porch here on this snapshot.
Denfert Rochereau is an area in the south of Paris. One can recognise the square that is adorned with a defiant lion. The square used to be named ‘d’Enfer’ (from Hell). After the invasion of France by Prussia and the debacle of 1870, it was named after the Colonel Pierre Denfert Rochereau who is responsible for the defence of Belfort in Alsace.
About Prussia
The lion is the emblem of the French resistance to the Prussian invasion. Belfort remained French as an independent territory (it still is a separate department, no. 90). The lion was sculpted by Bartholdi, he who made the Statue of Liberty. The Paris lion is a bronze reduction of the red sandstone statue of Belfort. Both in Belfort and in Paris, the lion isn’t turned toward Germany. Instead it’s turning its back on them. You never know, they might come back (in fact, they did twice).
Let bygones be bygones.
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