I HAVE BEEN a fan of this essay since its original appearance in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1991, and it continues to bring a big smile to my face.
ADAIR LARA wrote a popular (and often very funny) twice-weekly column for the Chronicle for twelve years, and her award-winning columns have been published in several collections: Welcome to Earth, Mom: Tales of a Single Mother (Chronicle, 1992), At Adair’s House: More Columns by America’s Formerly Single Mom (Chronicle, 1995), and Slowing Down in a Speeded-Up World (Conari, 1994). Lara is also the author of Naked, Drunk, and Writing (Ten Speed, 2010), You Know You’re a Writer When … (Chronicle, 2007), Hold Me Close, Let Me Go (Broadway, 2001), The Granny Diaries (Chronicle, 2007), and Normal Is Just a Setting on the Dryer and Other Lessons from the Real, Real World (Chronicle, 2003), among others. She has contributed to numerous magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Departures, Glamour, Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Good Housekeeping. San Francisco mayor Willie Brown declared May 17, 2002, Adair Lara Day.
PARIS—IT was a pleasant café in Montparnasse, the famous artists’ quarter of Paris. An American sat at a small table, took out a yellow pad, and began to write. A cup of coffee steamed at her elbow. It was good to sit in a café and watch the people go in and out.
Before coming to Paris, she had read A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, who lived here in the 1920s and wrote in the cafés. Her friend Bill had hated the book, in which Hemingway wrote terrible things about people who were nice to him in Paris but had the poor timing to die before he did. Bill was afraid she would start stringing all her sentences together with and too, but it was Paris in the warm summer, and she did not care what Bill said. He had gone to the American Library without her and would stay carefully away all morning to let her write.
She had chosen her café after some deliberation. It was a clean, well-lighted place on the Avenue du Général-Leclerc, near where Hemingway had penned his short stories at the Closerie des Lilas, where F. Scott Fitzgerald had written at the Dôme, and where stacks of other authors had written at the Deux Magots.
All the writers had horrid cheap flats—that’s why they went to cafés. The American and her friend had a cheap flat too, owned by a depressed Frenchwoman named Marie-Claude, who nailed all the shutters closed, turned off the gas, took the TV, and told a friend to rent it if he could.
So conditions were perfect to nudge the American with the very overdue novel and the tiny, dark flat into the cafés, where, she thought, if she sat where Hemingway sat and drank what he drank (though it seemed a tad early for a rum Saint James), she might write a novel too.
She would sip the good Parisian coffee and watch the French hurry to the Métro to work, and write about the way the ladybugs had swarmed on the bush in the sea-damped hollows of Lagunitas when she was eight and afraid of her father.
“Write one true sentence,” Hemingway said, and the American thought, then wrote, “I hate that kind of advice.”
She liked better what Steinbeck said: “Don’t start by trying to make the book chronological. Just take a period. Then try to remember it so clearly that you can see things: what colors and how warm or cold and how you got there. Then try to remember people. And then just tell what happened. It is important to tell what people looked like, how they walked, what they wore, what they ate.”
Next to her an elegant young couple were chatting and smoking. The French know that smoking is bad for you, but they don’t care. The American, temporarily at a standstill with the ladybugs, wrote down everything they were wearing, her shiny black flats and his pink tie, and everything they ate and drank. Then she nibbled the end of her pen.
After a while the American put away her yellow pad. She was tired and sad and happy, as she always was after trying to write, and though she felt she had done some very bad writing indeed, she would not know how bad until she read it over the next day.
She sipped her cold coffee and looked around. Mozart and jazz played softly in the background, and a good cup of coffee cost four francs, and they left you alone, not even coming to wipe the table, but maybe it was not the right place for inspiration to come. She frowned. What was wrong?
It was pleasant. It was clean. It was in the heart of Montparnasse. It was McDonald’s.
The Art of Eating
One of my favorite food magazines is the Art of Eating, an excellent, critical, superbly written quarterly newsletter by Edward Behr. It’s been referred to as “the must-have foodie quarterly” by National Public Radio, and by me as one of the best publications of any kind, ever. I can’t resist sharing some other accolades it has received: “A publication of great class and pedigree. It is worth every dollar” (World Class Wines); “He could care less about cover notes, entertaining his readers, or providing vicarious thrills to make them renew. If you want an in-depth look, it’s one-of-a-kind stuff. He’s not pandering to anybody but [only to] his own curiosity” (Chris Kimball, quoted in the Boston Globe); and “I’m a devoted reader” (Corby Kummer, Atlantic Monthly).
Behr founded the quarterly in 1986, and although it’s not exclusively about France, over the years Behr has devoted several issues to various aspects of French food and restaurants, each of them worth the effort to special order. All of these below are still available for purchase, and don’t let the fact that some of them are more than a decade old deter you: this is top-notch food writing and is still very much relevant.
Paris (Again) (Number 60, Winter 2002) features a fantastic and interesting annotated address book that covers Paris and examines French food, land, culture, the parable of the sauce spoon, the advantages of fashion, bread, charcuterie, cheese, chocolate, kitchen tools, meat, open-air markets, pastry, restaurants formal and informal, spices, and wine—with an in-depth look at croissants.
In Paris (or What is French Food?), Part I: Posing the Question and the Classic Parisian Baguette (Number 45, Winter 1998), Behr asks, “What today remains distinctly French about the food in Paris?” and he embarks on a search for real French bread. Part II: More Answers and Places that Are Truly French (Number 46, Spring 1998) offers recommendations for some good food-related addresses in Paris and poses a final question: “How long will French food last?”
Check out the Art of Eating Web site (artofeating.com) to learn more about interesting topics such as dark chocolate in Paris, new Paris bistros, wines of the Loire and of Anjou, Champagne, and foie gras, and more. A subscription is the best way to regularly get the magazine, but copies are sold at some retail stores, such as Whole Foods and Kitchen Arts & Letters.
“If you’re an oyster eater, the first thing to do is head for Huîtrerie Régis. It’s at 3 rue Montfaucon in the sixth arrondissement, a short walk from the Mabillon Métro station. Paris is filled with restaurants and cafés selling oysters, but this one is special. It’s tiny, decorated in all white, and dead serious: the minimum order allowed is a dozen oysters per person. Whether you walk in the door liking oysters or loving them, you will walk out feeling like you understand them. They’re impeccable here, fat and shiny with a flavor that rings in your mouth like a bell.
“After you eat your oysters, if it’s nice outside, take a walk. I love the smell of Paris, and walking is the best way to catch it. It changes from season to season, but it’s particularly fine in late spring, before the heat comes, when the air is light and quick. The city smells then like a mix of croissants in mid-bake, car exhaust, new grass, and roses, the ones waiting on the sidewalk outside every flower shop. It’s not a perfect smell, and sometimes it’s not even a good smell, but it’s resolutely Paris. It’s the first thing I notice when I arrive and the thing I miss the most when I leave.”
—Molly Wizenberg, food writer, author of A Homemade Life, columnist for Bon Appétit, and co-owner of the restaurant Delancey, in Seattle
As mentioned earlier, David Lebovitz’s award-winning blog (davidlebovitz.com) is a great resource for travelers to Paris, especially those with culinary interests. Lebovitz is a former pastry chef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley and the author of The Great Book of Chocolate (2004), The Perfect Scoop (2007), and Ready for Dessert (2010), all published by Ten Speed Press, and The Sweet Life in Paris (Broadway, 2009). His blog includes listings for his favorite places to eat in Paris as well as his favorite dining and travel guides; even better, he offers some excellent essays that I highly recommend (type these into the search feature): “10 Common Ordering Mistakes People Make in Paris,” “10 Insanely Delicious Things You Shouldn’t Miss in Paris,” “Tipping in France and Paris,” “Romantic Restaurants in Paris,” “Where Is the Best Duck Confit in Paris?” and “Tips for Vegetarian Dining in Paris.” Lebovitz also conducts chocolate and gastronomy tours in Paris, which sell out immediately (or so it seems). I wish he offered these more frequently; if you’ve been fortunate enough to secure a reservation, I’m sure you’ll agree!
