The Polidor!

 There is a special place in Paris, frequented by the protagonists of La libraia che salvò i Libri, latest book on Shakespeare and Co. and it is called Polidor Restaurant.

Opened at first as a cheese store by Bléry Polidor later became a restaurant thanks to the intuition of Froissard. Intellectuals of all sorts have spent some time there. Julio Cortazar wrote on the Polidor an entire chapter in "Maquette à Monter": Roger Leenhardt mentioned Polidor when wrote a book on the post-war  atmosphere of Saint-Germain des Prés. 

Caricaturists like Cabu and Wolinski, painters as Perot and Botero enjoyed the Polidor.

Till the 19th century the restaurant has been frequented by artists. The pennieless poet Germain Nouveau is an example, but also intellectuals, politicians from the closest neighborhoods.

Now it's more than 175 years that the Polidor welcomes the students of La Sorbonne, intellectuals visitors, tourists. The people of the Collège de Pataphysique enjoyed to eat and discuss topics at the Polidor. Eugene Ionesco, René Clair, Paul Valéry, Robert Vian. Polidor has welcomed also other writers:  Rimbaud, Jean Jaures, Ernest Hemingway, who mentions the Polidor in his book "A Moveable Feast", James Joyce, André Gide. 

As writes someone: entering the Polidor it's like opening a door to History. 

What is, after all the Polidor if not a stop in the tumultuous existences of these men and women?

The restaurant has been also protagonist in several movies, but where the Polidor has played a big role was in Midnight in Paris, directed by Woody Allen, where a writer in search of inspiration, in his midnight walks in the french capital, enters in the past, meeting the most important protagonists of the 1920s: Francis Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein...

Recently the restaurant welcomed some actors (Instagram page Ulysses100project) , fans of James Joyce, for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Ulysses, recreating a scenario only seen in 1922:

Polidor continues to be a temporal passport to the most beautiful and creative past seen in Paris.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Pictures from the Fb page of Polidor and Instagram page of @Ulysses100project. 

Autobiografia di Alice B.Toklas by Gertrude Stein edited by Alessandra Sarchi

 Autobiografia di Alice B.Toklas by Gertrude Stein

edited by Alessandra Sarchi is a wonderful book  if you want to understand the dynamics and atmosphere breathed in Paris during the  two first decades and more of the last century. 

Gertrude Stein's writing-style is not encouraging, or beautiful, let me write this: no. 

Her writing is hard, cold, and mainly autoritative and auto-celebrative. She mentions herself 760  times  in 285 pages! It's a continuous: Gertrude Stein, miss Stein, Stein met...etc etc.

This experience, the one of an auto-celebration passing through the idea of writing the biography of her companion is an escamotage for a promotion of herself and her vision, telling us who were the artists, painters, people of letters, or friends like Sylvia Beach and Monnier, passing through painters like Matisse, Picasso and many more, who visited their house. People still without fame, as Ernest Hemingway, who searched for Gerteude Stein once in Paris because a thing was more than sure: if Gertrude Stein loved your work, probably you would have become someone. For this reason, but also for passing some time together, in this fertile house, Gertrude and Alice organized constantly art exhibits. Whoever could stop by; it was maybe necessary a little introduction but for the rest, no one was excluded in this circle of creatives. The two brothers Stein were very well known in the environment and Leo was indispensible like the sister in the creation of a new idea of painting; not only; this place of aggregation that was Stein's house avoided the possible dispersion that in opposite case maybe would have characterized these beautiful minds without a guidance. Sometimes luck happens and in their case they found in Gertrude Stein and her brother a great shoulder for going on and becoming who they became now: Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway... What I appreciated the most of this particular historical period in Paris was the mutual help that surrounded them all thanks to the Stein

Only for this reason you should read this book.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Paris in Mind Edited and with an Introduction by Jennifer Lee

Oscar Wilde once said that if good Americans die, they go the Heaven; if they've been very good, they go to Paris and M.F.K.Fisher added that Paris "Should always be seen, the first time with the eyes of childhood or of love."
Paris in Mind Edited and with an Introduction by Jennifer Lee is an indispensable book, published on 2003 by Vintage if you plan a visit to Paris, because it gives you the essence of this city, beloved substantially by everyone. Divided in four sections, Love, Food, The Art of Living, Tourism, these writings, book extracts, letters, articles, involve important established American writers and politicians who decided at some point to live a part of their existence in Paris. Here their opinions about the french capital.


There are contributions of E.B. White and Wharton about the end of the first and second World War.

Why everyone is in love for Paris?
For the atmosphere first of all.


You will read an extract from the book A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway and in his memories of the years spent to Paris in the 1920s when he decided of giving up his career as reporter receiving a lot of rejections in the world of literature; he was pretty starved but close to him there was a reassuring angel guardian in Sylvia Beach, owner of Shakespeare and Company worried because he had to eat sufficiently good, and comforting him regarding his future as a writer.
We will read an extract of Sylvia Beach from his book/biography Shakespeare and Company.
Patrick Kuh worked on the Boulevards des Italiens and for a lot of time as well! Naomi Barry immersed herself in a land of chocolate. As adds the writer "Chocolate in France is seductive, recherché, noble and expensive." You will learn the favorite chocolate tastes of parisiennes, dark, unsweetened and intense. At La Maison du Chocolat the owner clarified: "Good chocolate won't make you sick. It won't ever make you fat. Bitter chocolate is full of potassium and magnesium."
You will learn how to prepare the best chocolate drink, while later you will discover thanks to Grant Rosenberg the magical atmosphere of a Parisian Café. Irwin Shaw, differently, will complain about weather in a funny piece where he describes Paris during its cloudy winter season.  Saul Bellow wrote: "Paris was one of the permanent setting, a theater, if you like, where the greatest problems of existence might be represented." Langston Hughes told that his visa had taken "Nearly all my money" but although in difficult conditions he found a way.
Paris in these written words most of the time is a place where a person finds the best of himself/herself thanks to the discovery of an enchanting city plenty of surprises, calm, harmony for everyone.


Anna Maria Polidori