🇫🇷 💌 The Paris Love Letter #139

This Week In Paris

Bonjour, Friends,

I hope you had a great holiday with friends and family and that you’re enjoying these last quiet days before “real life” starts again. From Paris, we’re sending you good wishes for a calm end to the break and a very happy 2026!

We took visiting friends to Place des Vosges, which is still one of my favorite squares in Paris. We stopped into Carette for hot chocolate, which is less a drink and more a lifestyle choice. It arrives thick, rich, and with a ridiculously high heap of chantilly on the side. Expensive, yes. Regrets, zero. Well, zero regrets except for the massive sugar high my son had immediately afterward. 😳

We also wandered around Montmartre, where the Christmas market is still hanging on at Abbesses. The cold air, lights, and vin chaud are a combination I never think about for eleven months of the year and then suddenly treat like an essential food group in December.

One afternoon, we ended up at Chez Marianne on rue des Rosiers, one of my favorite Mediterranean spots for falafel. Warm pita, generous plates, and that slightly chaotic Marais energy that makes you feel like everyone had the same idea at the same time.

So, that was this week in Paris: hot chocolate, mulled wine, falafel, friends, and a lot of gratitude. Not a bad way to walk into 2026.

Linking You to Paris

➡️ BBC Travel – A local’s guide to visiting Paris: Written by a long‑time New Yorker turned Parisian, this guide gets into how the city really works now: which museums and parks are worth your time, how Parisians actually eat and drink, and why bikes, terraces, and natural wine bars have quietly reshaped daily life here.

➡️ Saveur – The History of Paris Restaurants: A fascinating look at how Paris went from revolutionary dining rooms to Belle Époque brasseries and today’s neo‑bistros, and what that history means for the way we eat in the city now.

➡️ HiP Paris – What to do in Paris This January: A very practical round‑up of January in Paris: what the weather is like, what to pack, and a long list of exhibitions, light shows, fashion events, and winter activities. Great if you’re daydreaming about a winter trip or already have tickets booked.

➡️ Travel + Leisure – Ducasse Baccarat Named Most Beautiful Restaurant: A look at Alain Ducasse’s new restaurant in the Maison Baccarat townhouse, recently named the world’s most beautiful. Think historic Paris mansion, crystal everywhere, and very dressed‑up French cuisine.

PARIS CAFE CULTURE
The Secret History of the Parisian Bistro

Most people sit down at a Parisian bistro and think of Hemingway, red banquettes, and romance. But the bistro’s real story is a lot grittier than the postcards. It wasn’t invented by chefs or food critics. It was built by coal.

In the 19th century, waves of men from the Auvergne region in central France arrived in Paris. They were called Bougnats. They took the jobs nobody else wanted: hauling and selling coal and wood so the city could stay warm through cold winters.

To make a little extra money, many of these Bougnats started selling wine and coffee out of the front of their coal shops. You’d come in to buy fuel for your stove, and on the way out, you’d have a glass of red at the counter or a quick, rough coffee before heading back to work.

That counter, by the way, is why so many old-school places still have that iconic zinc bar. Zinc was cheap, easy to clean, and tough enough to survive coal dust, wine spills, and cigarette burns. These places were part workshop, part living room, part neighborhood rumor mill.

Over time, the coal sacks disappeared, but the signs didn’t. If you look up as you wander through Paris, you’ll still sometimes see the faded words “Vins et Charbons” painted above a corner café – “wine and coal.” That’s the bistro’s original job description.

The food came later: simple, sturdy dishes for workers who needed calories, not tasting menus. A plate of sausage and lentils. Steak frites. A carafe of wine that didn’t need its own Instagram account. The point wasn’t to impress. The point was to feed people and keep them company.

That, to me, is the soul of the Parisian bistro: A place born out of cold apartments, dirty hands, and the very practical need for warmth, fuel, and a drink.

So the next time you’re in Paris and you lean against a worn zinc counter with a coffee or a glass of house wine, you’re not just in “a cute little bistro.” You’re standing in the descendant of a coal shop run by an Auvergnat who decided to sell a little warmth in a glass along with the warmth in your stove.

On my walks through the Paris streets, I love pointing out those ghostly old façades where “Charbons” is still barely visible above a café door. They’re tiny reminders that this city wasn’t built by romance. It was built by people who were cold, tired, ambitious, and in serious need of a drink.

FRENCH SONG OF THE WEEK
Vanessa Paradis, -M- - La Seine

A jazzy, festive duet from the film Un monstre à Paris, this one imagines the Seine as a playful, mercurial character, sometimes calm, sometimes wild, always at the heart of the city. It’s light, swingy, and feels just right for ushering in a new year in Paris.