Nissim-Camondo Finally 2-18-16

Well today we finally made our pilgrimage to the Musee Nissim-Camondo, over by Parc Monceau.  I mentioned it several days ago and we focused today and made it.
Also our dentist mentioned that there was a good restaurant very near him so we tried that today as well, since the park is right there.  It's called  Le Central, so in honor of our 30 year love affair with Le Central in Denver we decided that we would continue the tradition, but here in Paris.  It was just the right decision as the restaurant was very good.  We both had soupe de poisson for the first course and it took us back in time to the week we spent in Normandy chasing the soupe
 de poisson from restaurant to restaurant.  Each one as different as the chef who prepared it and each one delicious, it was almost as if we could look out the window and see the waves coming in from the English Channel.  For the next course Deb had Blanquette de Veau, a dish of veal braised slowly in a cream sauce and served with buttered noodles, while I had Gigot d'Agneau, lightly braised lamb in a brown gravy with Scalloped Potatoes as an accompaniment.  Both were yummy.  Then we shared a Paris-Brest for dessert, more like a hazelnut filled cream puff than the traditional round wheel like pastry, but again yummy.   Not a normal occurrence but today we finished with a digestif, two glasses of Vieille Prune, the plum brandy that we both love so well.  Our waiter beamed with pleasure when we ordered it and said that it was his absolute favorite after dinner drink, and that the one they served in the restaurant was in his opinion one of the best. Sort of a last drink in honor of Le Central in Denver.

Then we walked across the park and went to the museum.  I mentioned before that it was a very wealthy late 19th early 20th century Parisian family that left the house and contents to the Museum of Decorative Arts of Paris after the only son was killed in World War I.  The rest of the family perished in the concentration camps of Germany during WWII.  
The museum is a time capsule of what a wealthy person who was convinced the pinnacle of French design for furniture, painting, printing, and sculpture was the 18th century.  He then backed it up with his purchases of significant works as they came to market.  He was also somewhat obsessive about bring together pieces that had been created together and later dispersed.  In one instance he waited 25 years to buy a second matching commode to go with the one he already owned.   He paid close to 1 million francs for a set of furniture that
 had belonged to Madame de Pompadour at one point and he got it from the estate of Richard Wallace before the rest of the furniture was shipped to London as the basis for the Wallace collection.




A new thing since the last time we visited was the restoration of the kitchen and domestics dining room, it looked like it was right out of Downton Abbey.  So beautiful with the large coal fired range and a large cast iron oven against one wall.  Also the two shelves of large copper cooking vessels ranged along one wall.  Totally modern for the time period.  We also spotted one of the copper pans made by the same company that made the one we bought yesterday, fun.