I’m at Café-Bar Artéfact in Auberge Saint-Antoine seated comfortably beside a cannonball. It’s of French manufacture, shot some 260 years ago from a small French cannon aimed, I would imagine, at the British. Still embedded in the hunk of wood in which it was found, it relaxes next to a section of stonework that was the base of a fortification called the Batterie Dauphine. The cannon is there as well, its guts plugged up to prevent the English conquerors from making use of it. All of these treasures are behind glass next to my table.
The cocktail I’ve been handed, however, is thoroughly 21st century… (Click on cover image to read further.) 