Barbra Austin

I was already planning on doing some kind of year-end summary — mainly because I am lazy and thoroughly entrenched at the moment in a holiday cycle of eat, drink, sleep, repeat — but I also because I wanted to highlight some of my favorite posts of the year for new readers, and there are a lot of you, thanks to a certain foodblogging juggernaut who was kind enough to invite me to do a guest post on his site.

Casse-Noix means “nutcracker” in French, and so I’ve pretty much had the Waltz of the Snowflakes in my head since reading about this restaurant a few weeks ago, reinforced by what has seemed like daily dropping of neige here in Paris. That is not a complaint. As of today I’m officially finished complaining about the weather, since it improves neither the weather nor my mood.

So yes, there’s a new bistro in the 15th called Le Casse-Noix and yes, there are actual nutcrackers involved, at the end of the meal when you’re presented with a bowl of walnuts still in their shells. There is no dancing.

For those of you love ice cream as much as I do but are disheartened by the cold, or for those readers who simply wish to raise their cholesterol level, I’ve found a solution.

It’s not even technically winter yet, but you wouldn’t know it in Paris these days. A cold snap worthy of deepest January settled in last week, and didn’t let up until Saturday during a substantial snowstorm, turning those pretty flakes into freezing wet drops.

Never mind that it comes from a very warm place: The Vietnamese noodle soup known simply as Pho, a beef and charred onion broth, aromatic with spices (yes, that is cinnamon you smell) is a perfect cold weather food.

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,” starts the classic American holiday tune, but it’s the French who really know how to make chestnuts sing.