Bob's Kitchen

Our street is kinda quiet and sleepy, but rue des Gravilliers, 30 seconds away, is a hive of cool places to eat and drink (such as Derrière, the rather wonderful apartment-cum restaurant that we mentioned here).

Now there's another cool eating emporium to add to the list: Bob's Kitchen. Bob is actually called Mark Grossman. He has a juice bar in the 10th arrondissement (here, near the canal) that very quickly became one of the hippest places in town to have lunch, brunch or a smoothie (which the French tend to pronounce smooooosssy. Makes me laugh every time).

He's also a cheery bloke and minor star after having two books published with his delicious muffin recipes (subtitled "different and authentic") and smooooosssy recipes (truthfully but verbosely subtitled "fruit and vegetables cocktails by an American in Paris"). Up until now, the main problem has been the size of Bob's Juice Bar: tiny. So I was really pleased to read the other day that Bob/Mark had opened a new place next to the Great Apartment called Bob's Kitchen. Yay! And one morning last week I went down there to take some photos of it! Double yay!

The place has the same minimalist and kooky vibe as his juice bar. Lots of wood, lots of white, plus enough space for an electric guitar, a piano and Woody Allen-style jazz tinkling in the background.

The menu is short and simple with several varieties and two sizes of juice/smoothie/milkshake available with or without spirulina or maca supplements, soups, salads, stews, vegetable rolls...

And of course Bob wouldn't be Bob without his famous desserts, both healthy and yummy: apple pie, porridge with fruit and muesli, organic yoghurt, pancakes (for the brunch on Sundays), cookies, muffins... Yum! (Check out the menu here). And if you like what you eat, you can even buy the book!

There are lots of other little details that make Bob's Kitchen a relaxing place for lunch (they're not open in the evening). We suggest you try it out.

You can check out all our photos of Bob's Kitchen here: tinyurl.com/bobskitchen.

Bob's Kitchen is at 74 rue des Gravilliers, this far away...



They're open every day except Saturday from 8am - 3pm (Sundays 10am - 5pm).

They're also on our wonderful map of everything near the apartment that you can peruse by typing www.tinyurl.com/nearthegreatapartment or is.gd/wwff.

And if you become a hardcore fan, perhaps you'd like to join the Bob's Juice Bar Facebook group here?

Flowers thriving

There's been a bit of a heatwave in Paris recently, and after having not visited the apartment for a week, I was worried that all my flowers would look microwaved. Not so.

The main window box is looking fine, thriving even...

But the biggest surprise was the geraniums at the bathroom window. I always thought that geraniums were plants for grannies, but you have to admit that they can resist flooding and chronic underwatering, both of which I seem to subject them to.

You get a hint of greenery even when the window's closed...

...but once it's opened, you can really see how they're flourishing. A surprising success story!

Music to your ears

You may not know that we are music nuts. Not music lovers, music nuts. We are nuts about music.

I used to work in music (retail, and then a couple of labels) and DJed for fun for quite a while. Over a period of about 10 years, both of us bought tons of CDs (often at nasty import prices) and trawled round the key shops on the day they got their deliveries to make sure we could get our hands on the rare produce. I still have 10 boxes of vinyl I don't quite know what to do with, and thousands - yes, thousands - of CDs. Nuts.

As we wanted the apartment to be more like a home than a room, music was always going to be part of the equation. As well as the selection of CDs we've left at your disposal, there are some special CD-Rs in a red binder that deserve your attention.

The CD above is one of the most overlooked albums of the last ten years. International Pony was a three-person German group (DJ Koze is still very much around, the others have more or less disappeared). They made one great album and one average one before dying off completely. We Love Music is a masterpiece that starts off very calm and lures you in before going all bananas towards the end. The CD we've provided for your listening pleasure is an extended version of the album with some b-sides and remixes added to the end. And it's all brilliant.

Of course, we're not interested in just providing copies of stuff. We like to personalise things a bit more. Like the two CDs above: the one of the left is loads of great house and garage from the 90s that I've gleaned from various blogs (heard of Frankie Knuckles? David Morales? Steve "Silk" Hurley? If so, you might like this). It also includes several re-edits of tracks that I've done myself, so it's packed with exclusive versions. And not only that: it's an mp3 CD, so there 6 bloomin' hours of music on it! Some of it's divas, some of it dubs. I feel it dates from a time when music wasn't so darn boom boom boom all the time.

The CD on the right is a compilation of DJ Yoda's cut 'n' paste albums. DJ Yoda is a brilliant, hilarious hip-hop DJ who doesn't take himself seriously, and his cut 'n' paste efforts have everything and the kitchen sink thrown into them. If you think you don't like hip-hop, you should listen to these.

The RAVE! CD on the right is for when you just want some pounding, acid techno vibes. Of course we would never condone drug use, but if I ever took drugs this is definitely the CD I would listen to. Loud. Several times.

There's a completely mad, unreleased James Holden remix of Britney Spears on there that you shouldn't miss (I kid you not). James Holden mixed one of the best/most surprising house/techno compilations of the last few years recently. You should buy it (very cheap here, for example).

And on the left we start getting into the 5.1 zone. You know the apartment's kitted out for surround sound right? Well, I've found this site that make surround sound recordings available for download. Not strictly legal per se, but many of the albums are old quadrophonic vinyl mixes that don't exist any more. Take these two albums by Joni Mitchell for example. Beautiful stuff, and even more wonderful when you're sat on the sofa and the music's coming at you from all sides. What a shame fruity cigarettes are forbidden at the apartment eh?

These are another couple of surround sound CDs that might get you all gloopy. I love a bit of Beck in surround sound, so the CD on the right is a mix of Sea Change and Guero. Surprising, if you've never heard them in surround sound. Sea Change is especially good for chilling out.

As for Herb Alpert and Enoch Light (whom I'd previously never heard of), they'll deal you out some kitsch easy listening if you're in the mood for something completely bonkers. You will laugh, believe me.

And if all that it too 'out there' for you, too 'different', then we even have stuff for the old fogey in you too. How about some classic Roxy Music in surround sound (supposedly one of the best surround mixes ever made)? Or some cracking David Bowie in surround sound? Or the lush trip-hop of Groove Armada in surround sound? Go on, treat yourself...

There's more coming of course. Any suggestions? We're always ready to listen to something new.* And if you're interested, I have my own music blog here: www.themixesandthedubs.com (mostly house and garage from the 90s). Otherwise I suggest the hype machine (a music blog aggregator) or last.fm for discovering new stuff.

And by the way, we may have a few CD-Rs in the apartment, but believe me, whenever we come across something we love, we buy it. Make sure you do the same.

*Current faves: DM Stith, Grizzly Bear, Ohbijou... Check 'em out.

It's all in the details

I've said it before and I'll said it again, we wanted the apartment to feel like a home not just a room, and we try to pay attention to detail. Perhaps there are certain details that even our guests don't see? How about this one...

These are our lovely velvet curtains. Eagle-eyed guests may have seen that there are marks on them. Well, these marks are gold paint, and in fact the curtains are a one-off design, screen printed by the very lovely designer Anne Gelbard. Anne is mostly known for her work with designers like Christian Lacroix, John Galliano and Givenchy as she has a patented process for embossing fabric with metallic paints (I wrote an in-depth article about her here a while ago with loads of lovely photos of her workshop). She is also behind our epic, lush wallpaper (that I still love).

Anyway, back to the curtains: so they have lines on them. So what? Well, the full splendour can only can be seen... at night. When the sun goes down and you close the curtains, another golden sun comes up. This one:

OK, it's not a great photo, but you get the idea. At night, in the cosy setting of the apartment you have the gold of the wallpaper, the gold of the curtains, the softness of the sofa and above all the calm of the cobbled courtyard.

I like the idea of a little detail like this, a sweet surprise just before a good night's sleep!

Our incredibly useful Google Map just got incredibly more usefuller

Yeah, the blog's great, blah blah. Yeah, it's full of lush photos and insider information about the area around the Great Apartment. But did you know that we have a mighty fine Google Map that shows you where it all is?

All the places mentioned in the blog are shown here, and we do our best to make the map as simple and attractive to use as possible:

- special icons for restaurants and bars so you can find them quickly,
- coloured pins so it looks all priddy,
- plus, clicking on any item will give you a link to the corresponding article on the blog and a little photo to give you a taste of what's in store.

But wait, there's more. We've even given it a super-simple address so you can find it easily:

tinyurl.com/nearthegreatapartment

or (even shorter but perhaps less easy to remember):

is.gd/wwff

We'll be adding to the map each time there's a new article, so before long it should be a sparkling sea of coloured pins leading you to all the coolest places in the area.

Altogether now: Thank you Great Apartment in Paris! You're amazing! ;-)