Favorite Sites

Destinations in the 10th: Canal St Martin

• Canal Saint-Martin

  (Thursday, 05 June 2008)
  Take a nice, picturesque walk (without traffic!) in the up-and-coming neighborhood that continues to be, well, up and coming along this special canal and feel that you've left the big city behind, although you'll still be right smack in the middle of Paris. The Canal Saint Martin is a three-mile canal that is great on the budget because it’s more hanging around and being in the Zen mood, rather than spending money in a money spending mood.

• Musée de l’Eventail

  (Friday, 25 July 2008)
  The Fan Museum, or more officially, L'Atelier Hoguet Musée de l'éventail, showcases around 1000 fan items from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The museum is housed in a once well-known fan manufactory created in 1893 by éventaillistes Lepault and Deberghe. Conserved in its original state and in the style of Henry II, the Fan Museum also shows the materials and techniques of fan making.

• The Pink Flamingo

  (Tuesday, 21 July 2009)

  Figs, pistachios, goat cheese and honey. If you think this sounds like a desert concoction at your corner bistro, think again: these were the toppings of a recent “pizza du jour” creation at Pink Flamingo, Paris’ most avant-garde pizzeria. (On a funny side-note, they named this pizza the Brangelina….perhaps because it’s sweet with an exotic flair?)

  Jamie and Marie, a chef from New York and former actress respectively, first opened the Pink Flamingo in 2004 near the Canal St-Martin in the 10ème arrondissement. Thanks to booming business, they have now opened a second location in the heart of the 3ème arrondissement and are looking to expand to Berlin soon. The pizzeria’s working mantra is  pas comme les autres (not like the others), and their menu certainly lives up that, offering about a dozen crispy thin-crust pizzas, each topped with fresh albeit unconventional ingredients, and given a catchy moniker. For example, the Ho Chi Minh is tangy blend of chicken, shrimp, green cury, lemongrass, fresh coriander and crushed peanuts while the La Poulidor offers duck breast with goat’s cheese and apple slices.  At an average of 13  per pizza, the Pink Flamingo isn’t overly extravagant, and definitely good value. My only complaint is that some of the pizzas were hard to eat by hand because the thin crust occasionally collapsed under the weight and moisture of the toppings – not the largest fault, but enough to ask for extra napkins!