Le Baron Rouge in Paris: A casual well known wine bar around town.

If you want to mingle with a laid-back crowd—a mixture of blue and white-collar workers, young and old people, fashionable and less fashionable creatures, weirdos and mainstream Parisians—head for Le Baron Rouge. You can’t miss this place, there’s always a huge crowd spilling onto the street in the early evening (apéro time) or on Sunday mornings—there’s nothing like a glass of wine and a plate of charcuterie or a platter of oysters to start the day! The wines are very affordable and the plates of cheeses and charcuterie are generous and delicious. Sometimes the quality of a wine will be directly reflected in its price, but 3€ wasted on piquette (that’s French for cheap wine) is forgivable. It is Paris after all, and it’s hard to find such low prices in popular wine bars. It is also hard to find a table unless you come for a drink outside of drinking hours, so don’t expect to be comfortably seated. And if the only room you find to sip your wine is on the street then be ready to partake in some secondhand cigarette smoke while sharing the sidewalk with interesting looking people… Once I saw an older woman standing out there dressed up in a white leotard exhibiting a very nice body for her age and a pretty indecent camel toe. This alone was worth a stop.