A Coup de Foudre of Love and Voila - PARIS IN CHICAGO

A Coup de Foudre of Love and Voila - PARIS IN CHICAGO
By Michele Kurlander
Copyright by Bonjour Paris
April 2010
http://www.bonjourparis.com/story/coup-de-foudre-love-and-voila-paris-chicago/

Paris in Chicago restaurantJean-Claude Baldassari fell in love in Paris last year with a visiting Chicago finance expert named Jane. He fell so fast and so hard (a “coup de foudre” is what he told me yesterday, his eyes sparkling as he held up the wedding photo that is his response to “why did you move here from Paris?”) that he quit his job at a Marais pub, followed his Jane to Chicago, and just this January opened Paris in Chicago on north Halsted (in Chicago’s “boys’ town” area), a café-style restaurant where he personally serves warm croissants and espresso at 7:00 a.m. and spends over 100 hours a week cooking and serving the quiches, tartes, soups and other simple daily fare of his hometown.

Jean-Claude is trying very hard to learn to speak our language, so we spoke mostly in English (though he seemed to also appreciate reverting to his native French as we discussed his “coup de foudre”). We talked at length yesterday as I enjoyed his soupe de tomate, boeuf bourguignon, and lemon tart dessert.

I had impulsively grabbed a bus to his restaurant at 3310 N. Halsted after receiving an email from a friend yesterday, just six days after returning from my latest visit to Paris. She had forwarded Jean-Claude’s press release about his restaurant opening, and for just a moment I was pulled out of my re-entry malaise when I read that Jean-Claude, a “recently transplanted Parisian, has re-created a small shop that reflects the sensibilities and eating habits of his hometown.”

What I found was an intimate restaurant decorated in black and cream, with black and white early twentieth century photos on the wall, both French and American 1920s and 1930s music playing overhead, a fresh-cut red rose on each table, a kitchen that is really an enlarged grill at one end of the room (where Jean-Claude personally prepares everything, with the help of Dan Tarver, his only employee), and a business that represented the culmination of a love story - so very French. Dan, who took my order and served my food, is a friendly fiftyish man with over twenty years of restaurant experience in the Chicago area.

Jean-Claude is young and adorable and in love. He is slim but muscled, in his late thirties, talkative, charming and fun. He was dressed in blue jeans and a black short-sleeved shirt, with his buzz-cut hair crowned by one of those overgrown lawns that only the young can carry off. Between running back and forth to the kitchen, making sure tables were cleared and properly set, and catering to my needs (including replacing the Americanized ice-filled carafe - “Americans love ice” was his explanation - with my (and his) preferred iceless and Parisian carafe d’eau), Jean-Claude was happy to talk to me about how much he loves his Paris, but how much more he loves his Jane.

He told me how barely two months after the coup de foudre from his lovely lady who pierced his heart on December 27, 2008 (the exact date, he recalls, when he met Jane in Paris), he decided he couldn't live without her. Since Jane could not move to Paris, he had to move to Chicago. After six trips to Chicago to “make sure,” he moved here permanently on July 14, 2009. “No significance,” he laughed, as I hummed the Marseillaise while sampling his boeuf bourguignon. They married shortly after. Love is still the major motivator if you are young and French.

The restaurant serves everything from typical French breakfasts to quiches, croque monsieurs, tartes, charcuterie (which includes pâté de foie gras), and wonderful soups (if my hearty soupe de tomate yesterday is a sample – it was pink and frothy with cream and beautifully spiced) and “specials” (such as yesterday's boeuf), and a prix fixe brunch on weekends for $15.95.

Paris in Chicago is unpretentious, simple and warm. But, most importantly, you cannot go there without experiencing the personal charm of the all-French Jean-Claude Baldassari, who came here because of love.

Paris in Chicago is open from 7:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 7:00 a.m. until midnight on Friday, 9:00 a.m. to midnight on Saturday and 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday. Most sandwiches and quiches are $7.75 served with salad, and can be taken out (sans salad) for only $3.95 (quiches) or $4.95 (sandwiches); and the Soupe du Jour is $3.65. You can also purchase tartes, cheeses and jams to take home with you.

Paris in Chicago 3310 N. Halsted

773-883-7288 b.y.o.b.