Hemingway lied when he called Paris a moveable feast—if it were, I wouldn’t have to book a transatlantic flight to taste my favorite bistro’s addictive steak frites sauce. It’s one of the quintessential flavors of the French capital, reassuringly unchanged since 1959. The city’s restaurant scene has undergone quite a renaissance in the decades since, from the bloom of neo-bistros in the early 2000s to the recent-ish proliferation of natural wine bars serving seasonally-inspired small plates.That’s perhaps the best thing about dining out in Paris: there’s always somewhere new and exciting to try, while the classics stick around. Whether you prefer more old-school outposts or track the newest restaurant openings around the city, there’s something for every type of Francophile and food-lover on this list, from timeless French bistros and Japanese-inspired tasting menus to seafood-focused stalls tucked into the city’s oldest food market.Below, the Vogue guide to the best restaurants in Paris.
Category: Travel
The Best Restaurants in Paris | Vogue
The 18th-Century Spy Who Gave Us Big Strawberries – Gastro Obscura
IN 1711, THE WAR OF the Spanish Succession was going poorly for France, a country ruled by Louis XIV, a monarch who loved strawberries. Those two facts—the status of an intercontinental European war, and Louis’ favorite fruit—may seem unrelated. But strawberries and espionage were about to collide in unpredictable ways.Louis’ grandson had recently been placed on the Spanish throne, which dramatically shifted the balance of power in Europe, sparking the conflict. Fearing that France might be shut out of Pacific South America in a peace treaty, Louis sent a military engineer by the name of Amedée François Frézier through the pirate-infested waters of the Atlantic and around Cape Horn to map the area and collect intelligence. Frézier posed as a merchant, “the better to insinuate himself with the Spanish governors, and to have all opportunities of learning their strength, or whatever else he wanted to be informed of,” according to the English translation of his account: A Voyage to the South-Sea, And along the Coasts of Chili and Peru, In the Years 1712, 1713, and 1714.
Source: The 18th-Century Spy Who Gave Us Big Strawberries – Gastro Obscura
BC Conservatives would kill plans for new protected areas | The Narwhal
A BC Conservative Party government would walk away from the province’s commitment to protected areas 30 per cent of its land base by 2030, party leader John Rustad told The Narwhal in an interview.“The Conservatives would absolutely axe doing that,” Rustad said. “That’s nonsense.”“It’s 30 per cent of all of our ecosystems,” he said. “What are we going to do if we have 30 per cent less food production? What are we going to do if we’re going to have 30 per cent less forestry production? What are we trying to achieve here as a province?”Rustad’s comments come as the BC Conservatives surge in the polls five months before the provincial election, with Premier David Eby calling the Conservatives “a real threat” to the NDP’s chances of regaining power. An Abacus Data poll released May 14 showed the Conservatives only eight points behind the BC NDP, which has been in government since 2017. A Pallas Data poll released May 16 put the two parties in a dead heat, with the BC Conservatives leading the NDP by one point at 38 per cent of the vote.Rustad has led the upstart BC Conservatives for just over a year, after being kicked out of the opposition BC Liberal caucus in 2022 for promoting a social media post that expressed doubt about climate change science. Since Rustad’s acclamation as party leader, and as the popularity of federal Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre grows, support for the BC Conservatives has steadily climbed.
Source: BC Conservatives would kill plans for new protected areas | The Narwhal
McConnell suggests ‘discipline’ for Dem senators pressuring Supreme Court over Alito flags
That’s it McConnell keep sucking on those golden beers because you just will never be Wiser!
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., suggested that the Supreme Court should “discipline” Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.Those senators and other lawmakers have called for Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from key cases related to former President Donald Trump.McConnell argued that Blumenthal and Whitehouse, who are members of the Supreme Court bar, were “potentially engaged in unethical professional conduct before the court.”
Source: McConnell suggests ‘discipline’ for Dem senators pressuring Supreme Court over Alito flags
Danielle Smith’s Flawed Vision of a Quebec on the Prairies | The Tyee
It’s said that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and Quebec’s Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon isn’t keeping his political plans hidden in the dark.ANNOUNCEMENTS, EVENTS & MORE FROM TYEE AND SELECT PARTNERSCONTEST: Win Two Tickets to Monteverdi’s ‘Vespers’One lucky Tyee reader will snag a pair of seats to see a rare performance of the 17th-century masterpiece.A Heady Glimpse into the Soul of BCWhy The Tyee’s new book, ‘Points of Interest,’ is an ideal travel companion this season. A Q&A with the editors.At a recent party conference he said, “One thing is certain, our moment will arrive earlier than we think… before the end of the decade. We will indeed experience a third referendum.”It’s a plucky strategy for a PQ party leading provincial polls, as sovereignty is unpopular in Quebec at the moment. Making it the centrepiece of an election campaign seems risky when the party is likely to win without rocking the boat.But perhaps Plamondon imagines that if he can take his party from the three seats won in the previous election to the 69 seats that he’s projected to win today, he can lead a similar rise in sentiment over the sovereignty question?
Source: Danielle Smith’s Flawed Vision of a Quebec on the Prairies | The Tyee
The Return of Late Night Dining in New York City
On the first warm night of spring, around 11 p.m., the dining room at Blue Ribbon Brasserie sat mostly empty. And it didn’t bother me a bit, since I had coupe filled with shrimp cocktail, a flute brimming with crémant, and half a fried chicken set before me.Brothers Eric and Bruce Bromberg opened the restaurant in 1992 as an ode to Paris’ 24-hour Au Pied de Cochon. “We wanted to do something for people who didn’t have normal schedules,” says Bromberg. “And we kind of did it for ourselves, to have a place where we could go and eat what we wanted whenever we wanted.”
Leonard Leo the architect of the Supreme Court
The consulting firm led by Leonard Leo the architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, has worked for billionaire Charles Koch’s political advocacy network and a dark money group that is currently arguing a Supreme Court case designed to preempt a wealth tax, according to documents obtained by Rolling Stone. The firm even worked to promote a book by Donald Trump cronies Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie.
Leo has played a central role in shifting the high court and its decisions far to the right. As former President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser, Leo helped select three of the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices. He also leads a dark money network that boosted their confirmations, and helps determine what cases the justices hear and shape their rulings.
The Supreme Court connection has paid off for Leo – big time. In 2021, he was gifted control of a $1.6 billion political advocacy slush fund. Over the past decade, Leo’s dark money network has plowed more than $100 million into his for-profit consulting firm, CRC Advisors.
One CRC employee’s 2024 resume says his clients include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a dark money group arguing a case before the Supreme Court this term that is designed to slam the door shut on a federal wealth tax. Experts say the case could upend the nation’s tax code.
“In the last Congress, legislation to establish a wealth tax was introduced in both the House and the Senate,” CEI wrote in its petition to the Supreme Court, adding that justices should act now to “head off a major constitutional clash down the line.” During oral arguments in December, Justice Samuel Alito presented a hypothetical where “somebody graduates from school and starts up a little business in his garage, and 20 years later, 30 years later, the person is a billionaire,” and asked whether the government “can Congress tax all of that.”
According to the CRC employee’s 2024 resume, Leo’s firm has also worked for the Koch network’s political advocacy arm, Americans for Prosperity. AFP’s super PAC spent more than $40 million supporting former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s failed Republican primary campaign against Trump this election cycle. AFP’s charitable arm has supported a case at the Supreme Court this term pushing justices to block the government from influencing content moderation by social media platforms.
The CRC employee’s resume also notes the firm has worked with Lewandowski, the former Trump campaign manager. The employee writes that he “helped generate extensive, positive news coverage” for Trump: America First, a book that Lewandowski co-wrote with Bossie.
“It’s no surprise that Leonard Leo’s for-profit consulting firm – which has pulled down a whopping $100 million from Leo’s own nonprofit network – counts the Koch network and the group leading the Supreme Court billionaire bailout case as clients,” says Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone. “We knew that Leo’s fingerprints were all over these far-right causes, but now it appears he’s directly profiting off of them, too. There’s no cause Leo won’t take up if it means he’ll profit.”
By reshaping the Supreme Court under Trump, Leo secured his largest-ever policy victory: the 2022 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to ban abortion. That ruling, the culmination of decades of work by the conservative movement legal movement, put a spotlight on Leo and his operation as well as the Supreme Court. Last year, reporters revealed that conservative justices accepted and failed to report luxury gifts – casting an ethical cloud over the court.
Leo has played a key role in the ethics scandals. Leo reportedly arranged Alito’s seat on a private jet flight – paid for by a billionaire hedge-fund chief – as part of an undisclosed luxury fishing trip in Alaska. He also allegedly steered secret consulting payments to Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife.
Senate Democrats subpoenaed Leo after he refused to detail the gifts and payments he has directed to Supreme Court justices and their spouses. The District of Columbia’s attorney general is also reportedly investigating whether Leo has misused nonprofit laws for personal enrichment.
Documents show CRC has worked with major corporate clients as well as ideologically conservative startups.
In 2020, E&E News named one of the firm’s corporate clients: Chevron. The outlet reported that CRC had sought to get journalists to write about how green groups had wrongfully “claimed solidarity” with black protesters while “backing radical policies like the Green New Deal which would bring harm to minority communities. The message’s tagline suggested it was sent by Chevron.
The CRC employee’s 2020 resume file lists another corporate client: pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. Like its competitors, the drugmaker has faced scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers for jacking up the price of insulin products that diabetics need to live. While Lilly announced a price cut last year, The Los Angeles Times noted that the new price was “still higher by two-thirds than it should be,” and the company could actually end up collecting higher profits.
One of Lilly’s drugs was included in the first round of Medicare drug price negotiations, as part of the Biden administration’s landmark program. Lilly’s CEO last year expressed concern about the negotiation plan, saying he is “really worried about the harm this will do to new cures and possibilities in medicine.” (Virtually all countries besides the U.S. negotiate drug prices.)
While much of Leo’s work has focused on the judiciary, he spoke at length in a recent podcast interview about wanting to influence corporate America, as well as the media and entertainment industries.
Along those lines, CRC worked with GloriFi, a failed “anti-woke” banking startup that promised customers they would be “free to celebrate your love of God and country without fear of cancellation.” GloriFi’s bankruptcy documents list CRC as a creditor.
CRC has also worked with the right-wing social video platform Rumble, according to company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Inside Pathways Alliances request to fast-track a project | The Narwhal
I guess you have ask to skirt the rules when you intend to break them?
A lobby group representing Canada’s biggest oil and gas producers has asked the government to fast-track a major industrial project in a move the federal environment minister says could “circumvent” the law.The project is a proposal by the Pathways Alliance, a group of six fossil fuel companies that wants to capture massive amounts of carbon pollution from oilsands facilities in Alberta and transport it hundreds of kilometres to an underground storage hub. The lobby group delivered its request in a letter sent to four federal cabinet ministers in January 2023 and included in internal government correspondence obtained by The Narwhal.Oil companies say the project requires billions of dollars in public subsidies to proceed, and that it can help reign in pollution from a sector that is Canada’s fastest growing source of climate-warming emissions including carbon dioxide. Environmental groups and some First Nations have balked at the prospect of subsidizing Canadian companies that have reported hundreds of millions, or billions of dollars, in quarterly profits this year and loosening environmental oversight for an unproven plan that could impact natural ecosystems.According to the letter, Pathways Alliance president Kendall Dilling asked the government for a series of commitments that it said would give it the confidence it needed to proceed. These would include an “assurance that the Pathways pipeline, hub and capture projects would not require a federal review under the Impact Assessment Act.”
Source: Inside Pathways Alliance’s request to fast-track a project | The Narwhal
CEO’s Populists Survival Guide
This year Western bosses must work their way through a lengthy list of obsequious phone calls. Around 80 countries, home to some 4bn people, are holding elections in 2024 (not always freely, as in Russia in March). Some chief executives may already have drafted their compliments for Narendra Modi, who is almost certain to keep his job as prime minister of India, where citizens are now casting ballots in a weeks-long festival of democracy. After Mexico’s election in June most corporate leaders expect to be congratulating president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, the anointed successor of the incumbent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.Western firms working to reduce their reliance on China have turned to India and Mexico. But neither prospect fills them with unadulterated delight. Mr Modi may have made his country an easier place to do business, by simplifying its tax system and investing in infrastructure, among other things. But he has also raised tariffs on goods like cars and increased the tax advantage that domestic firms enjoy over foreign ones. Mr López Obrador has been nationalising the assets of Western firms in industries from construction materials to energy and has allowed Mexico’s criminal gangs to run rampant. Indonesia, another market that has caught the eye of Western businesses, elected a populist of its own, Prabowo Subianto, in February.
These Elections Are Like None Before | The Tyee
The Tyee intends to make investigating and exposing disinformation — players, tactics and lies — a major focus.
If that sounds like an exaggeration, let me explain. (I base my views on the 20 years I’ve spent as The Tyee’s founding editor and 34 years as a B.C.-based journalist.)The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in CanadaLet me share, as well, how The Tyee intends to meet the important challenge at hand — with your help and support.Over the next three weeks, we’re aiming to raise $65,000 to equip our newsroom to do in-depth journalism leading up to and during these elections. Help us get there and sign up today.The surprise surge of the BC ConservativesJust several months ago it seemed the David Eby-led B.C. New Democrats had sewn up re-election with broad support around the province and the right split evenly between Kevin Falcon’s BC United party and an upstart, farther-right B.C. Conservative party led by John Rustad.How fast fortunes can shift. Today, polls show the B.C. Conservatives have blown by BC United and some place them nearly even with the BC NDP, signalling a populist, rural brush fire.What is fuelling this rise? Is it the B.C. Conservatives’ hammering against trans rights and gender education? Do they share the upsurge in support for Pierre Poilievre’s federal Conservatives? Is it the party tapping anti-vax and other culture war grievances on the fringes, or gaining trust on bread-and-butter issues? Why hasn’t BC United, a retread of the BC Liberals, gained traction? How are New Dems and Greens playing in key ridings and why? What issues really matter most to voters and where do the parties stand?
