Parisians take ‘time-outs’ seriously and often. Everyone  in France gets the unwritten right to leisure time in a café.    They are natural speed-bumps in the city’s daily rhythm.  The rest of us join the locals when our feet hurt from walking.  It slowly dawns on us that the American coffee break is a hallowed institution here.  It’s called a pause-café.

With the arrival of warm weather, outdoor cafes in Paris are blossoming with pauseurs.  In addition to refreshments, a café, like an oasis in the desert, is a place to rest.  Even when packed at lunchtime, the crowd at Café de la Madeleine, was surprisingly quiet as traffic from rue Tronchet streamed past on a recent sunny day.  They were enjoying the equally popular pause-déjeuner.   (Look in Petit Robert if you don’t believe me.)

Read more: La Pause Parisienne

George and I had lunch at Table d’Eugene the day after we arrived in Paris.  All the seats inside the restaurant were taken, but luckily, a small table outside in front was empty.  We took it.  On a warm, sunny spring day dining al fresco is no hardship.

Table d”Eugene is a featured dining stop on my weeklong culinary tour in Montmartre.  I could have reserved by phone, it’s true, but this time I was eager to deliver an article from last Sunday’s NYTimes Travel Section in which Mark Bittman, the Times food editor and Opinion writer, had raved about the lunch he’d shared at Table d’Eugene with cookbook author Patricia Wells.  Evidently Bittman was not expecting sophisticated dining in a part of Paris beneath his gastronomic radar.  (Patricia Wells praised the meal in her blog soon after their visit.)  All this attention is bound to increase tourist traffic to this tiny
restaurant.  As they say, there goes the neighborhood!

Read more: Lunch at Table d'Eugene