"Un Express, S'Il Vous Plaît."
In many people’s imagination, Paris is a breakfast. And what arrives on the table tells you something about a place, just as much as its colours, its furniture, or the way its interiors are put together. Five plates, five different expressions of the city, each belonging to one of the Collection’s Parisian addresses.
La Réserve, Paris
On Avenue Gabriel, you arrive without a reception desk in sight. A maître d’hôtel leads you instead to the 1854 staircase, dismantled and rebuilt inside this private mansion, built for the family of the Duc de Morny. For breakfast, ask for the library that bears his name.
Plump morello cherries sit alongside tender slices of peach, like a Flemish still life. Further on, jewel-like grapefruit and orange supremes bring a fresh brightness to the table, where ripe orchard fruit meets a more deliberate sense of composition.
Sliced, Squeezed
After the bacchanal of fresh fruit comes a savoury interlude. In the same sculptural spirit - and light, it goes without saying - soft slices of avocado sit atop barely toasted country bread. On top, a few graphic sesame seeds, and petals. Pour over the lot, generously, the wedge of lime provided for the purpose.
A Providential Ground
The white “Express” cup holds what was once called green gold, before the beans ever met the roaster. Best enjoyed black, with the garden beyond the window and nothing on the table but coffee.
There, red
A few sips of coffee later, your eyes settle on the voluptuous stems of gladioli and alliums filling the salon that doubles as reception. There is something almost theatrical about the setting, yet entirely natural to the place — a little piece of home on Avenue Gabriel.
