Moutarde, a popular French bistro on Fifth Avenue and President Street, is shuttered, presumably for renovations. In the movie Julie & Julia, the restaurant played a real 1940’s Parisian bistro. Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci ate a fabulous meal in there in a wonderful early scene.
So why did they shoot the scene in Brooklyn and not Paris. Well, it could have been budgetary issues. But I’ve also heard that Nora Ephron’s location team could find no restaurant in Paris that looked so convincingly like a restaurant of that time period.
Funny that the restaurant is renovating now that it has been immortalized on film. You’d think they’d want to keep it the same for its film history value.
Or maybe it’s time to make a change.
Re: J&J. We shot there because the budget was geared to shooting MOST of the film in New York. Some was shot in Paris because there was a part of the budget that could afford to do so as to capture what is unique – (aka French exteriors). It makes no financial sense to shoot an interior in another country when you can do it here. So viva la New York and Brooklyn for it’s fabulous stand ins!
They’ve painted the place purple! I’ll miss the wooden paneling