What Went Down at Sequana Today? - Wednesday, 26 October

Near the western tip of the Ile de la Cite sits a beautiful small restaurant "hidden in full sight," as resto blogger John Talbott says. It's called Sequana, and we had a terrific lunch there today.

The place is comfortable, welcoming and lovely - mostly wood, greys and burgundies, with a great splash of turquoise in the banquettes.

our beautiful amuse bouche - braised leeks with a thin slice of radish and little turnovers stuffed with lentils

first course - leeks, carrots, scallions, and a tiny taste of fabulous Colonnata lardo

a substantial portion of veal with little cubes of butternut squash, mushrooms, celeriac puree

fig tarte tatin with rosemary ice cream (WOW!) and honey 

coffee with tiny house-made white chocolate and verbena macarons

In addition to the food and beverages going down, there was some kind of police SWAT team action going down just outside the resto. Yikes! It's not unusual to hear a lot of sirens in the center of Paris, but there were suddely more than usual while we were eating, and traffic stopped on Pont Neuf, and several police cars drove right past the resto window, and then several policemen in hoods and partial masks carrying rifles started looking around the cars parked just outside. In a couple minutes they were gone and things returned to normal. We never learned what this was all about - didn't see anything in the news - happily, it must have been some empty threat.  C'est la vie! Life in the big city!

72, quai des Orfèvres http://sequana.paris/en/

Thanks to Wikipedia, I learned that in Gallo-Roman religion, Sequana was the goddess of the river Seine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequana  Hey, maybe she was watching over us today!