The Avenue Trudaine is wide and stately, as beautiful as any of the grand streets of Paris, but it's only three blocks long, a boulevard to nowhere. It's hidden at the top of the 9th, just one street away from the busy Boulevard de Rochechouart, a real boulevard with traffic and a métro line. It also runs into the trendy Rue des Martyrs, easily one of the hippest shopping streets in Paris and one that is always packed. But the Avenue Trudaine is mostly empty, and some mornings I'll take one of the shaded sidewalk tables in front of Sole Caffe and join the expats reading the Guardian and the Gazzetta dello Sport.
If you go to Paris often enough, you stop working so hard to collect showstopping moments, and instead you start to appreciate the accidental beauty of places like the Avenue Trudaine. And, in fact, of this entire arrondissement.
One of the city's least-known neighborhoods, the 9th is also one of its most intimate. In recent years, it has become popular with bobos, who have been moving here to renovate airy apartments in pre-Haussmann buildings. But the gentrification isn't quite an invasion. True, if you have Sunday brunch at the Hôtel Amour, you'll see fashionably tousled couples ordering oeufs Bénédicte, and, like elsewhere in Paris, this area is home to a handful of tragically trendy bistros. But the 9th still has an appealing sleepiness, and even when a neighborhood spot gains an international reputation, like the tiny Rose Bakery, you can still find a seat in the back room and linger over a bowl of ricotta and lemon ice cream.
Rose Bakery might draw the stroller-and-scooter crowd from across the city, but the neighborhood's character is really found in the backstreets: in the guitar shops on the Rue Victor-Massé, in the philatelic auction houses on the Rue Drouot, in the Orthodox Jewish district around the Rue Richer, and in the prostitute-filled bars on the Rue Fontaine, which is also where you'll find Denise Acabo, a wood-paneled candy store where Madame Acabo, still wearing pigtails at an age when many would consider retiring, presides over glass cases stocked with exquisite confections.
And it's found in Spring, a 16-seat restaurant that's easily the most difficult reservation in Paris. It opened two years ago and almost immediately received the highest rating from the critic of Le Figaro. Other raves followed. The restaurant's formula is simple. There's a four-course set menu for $66, an inspired, affordable wine list, one waitress, and two cooks.
Olympe Versini, another neighborhood celebrity, was one of France's most important chefs in the 1970s, and one of the first women to earn a Michelin star. She closed her flagship restaurant in the late 1980s, then opened Casa Olympe—a cozy place on the nearby Rue Saint-Georges that vaguely reflects her Corsican roots and manages to be both sophisticated and homey—in 1993. It is just down the hill from the Place Saint-Georges, a small roundabout where the number 67 bus darts around a bust on a marble column. The figure, I found out from Peter Miller, an independent curator, is of Paul Gavarni, a lithographer and satirical cartoonist who was one of the most famous artists in Paris in the 1840s and who illustrated several Balzac novels. Miller, who now leads tours of the 9th, realized that many of the artists who interest him, such as Eugene Delacroix, had worked in the area.
"This was the great Bohemia from the Restoration to Haussmannization," Miller told me over coffee on the Place Gustave-Toudouze. "It was built from about 1815 to 1840, and in the 1820s and 1830s this was the most modern part of Paris, where all the new money was." Real-estate speculators built apartment buildings and set up their mistresses here, and when the market was glutted, they happily rented to artists who needed space but couldn't afford to pay much.
For an engaging tribute to this era, drop by the Musée de la Vie Romantique, a cheerful house with green shutters that you can reach by walking down the Cité Chaptal, a tree-lined path that still looks something like the country road it was 150 years ago. And yet the string of porn stores on the busy Boulevard de Clichy are just two blocks from this quiet enclave.
Lafayette Gourmet, the food hall at Galeries Lafayette (hidden on the second floor of the men's building), I discovered, is every bit as excellent as the Grande Épicerie, in the Bon Marche. In addition to what you'd expect—the aisles of olive oil, preserves, and nougat—parts of the store are organized like a perfume department, with different vendors presiding over their own stands: Kaiser, Bellota Bellota, a foie gras counter 35 feet long.
Another surprise came in the form of Chartier, a 112-year-old working-class restaurant where the food is unremarkable but the visual experience well worth it: My $17 pot-au-feu, for example, was served by a waitress with the same nose and swirl of red hair as Carmen Gaudin, the Toulouse-Lautrec muse.
To get to the restaurant's soaring Belle Epoque dining room, you first have to pass through a shabby courtyard. That's typical of the 9th, where even places that open onto the street keep a low profile. As a friend put it: "It's a very strange part of town that doesn't seem like Paris. I had no idea it was here." With any luck, this quiet, quirky part of the city will continue to inspire such surprise for years to come.
9th Arrondissement Address Book
Alice à Paris 64 R. Condorcet (01-48-78-17-31). Elegant children’s clothes.
Après Réflexions 25 R. Henry-Monnier (06-23-39-25-19). Great midcentury furniture.
Arnaud Delmontel 39 R. des Martyrs (01-48-78-29-33). Some say they make the best baguettes in Paris.
Caramella 47 R. des Martyrs (01-44-53-09-56). Don’t miss the salted-caramel ice cream.
Casa Olympe 48 R. St.-Georges (01-42-85-26-01)
Chartier 7 R. du Faubourg-Montmartre (01-47-70-86-29)
Context (contexttravel.com/paris). Featuring walking tours led by Peter Miller.
Dell’orto 45 R. St.-Georges (01-40-78-40-30). A sophisticated Italian restaurant.
Denise Acabo 30 R. Fontaine (01-48-74-59-55)
Et Puis C’est Tout! 72 R. des Martyrs (01-40-23-94-02). Lovely antiques.
La Ferme Saint Hubert 36 R. de Rochechouart (01-45-53-15-77). Fantastic cheese store.
Fromagerie Molard 48 R. des Martyrs (01-45-26-84-88). Another fantastic cheese shop.
Au Général La Fayette 52 R. La Fayette (01-47-70-59-08). A brasserie open daily until 4 a.m.
Hôtel Amour 8 R. Navarin (01-48-78-31-80)
Lafayette Gourmet 48 Blvd. Haussmann (galerieslafayette.com)
Musée de la Vie Romantique 16 R. Chaptal (01-55-31-95-67; vie-romantique.paris.fr)
Musée Gustave-Moreau 14 R. de la Rochefoucauld (01-48-74-38-50; www.musee-moreau.fr). Featuring the life’s work of the eccentric Symbolist.
Aux Pipalottes Gourmandes 49 R. de Rochechouart (01-44-53-04-53). A resto-traiteur that sells oils and spices and serves delicious food.
Rose Bakery 46 R. des Martyrs (01-42-82-12-80)
La Rose Noire 67 R. Condorcet (01-40-16-02-70). An antique bookstore with a large selection of erotica.
Sole Caffe 1 Ave. Trudaine (01-42-81-11-34)
Spring 28 R. de la Tour-d’Auvergne (01-45-96-05-72). The chef offers cooking lessons on Saturdays.
Le Vin en Tête 48 R. Notre-Dame-de-Lorette (01-53-21-90-17). A tiny, wonderful wine shop.
White Spirit 30 R. Henry-Monnier (01-44-91-92-60). At this home store, everything is colorless.
Woch Dom 72 R. Condorcet (01-53-21-09-72). A store with ’70s vintage clothes and accessories.