“From Macarons to Marrow”
July 1966
PARIS, France
I woke up in the Luxembourg Gardens just as dawn was breaking, the sunlight ever so slightly caramelizing the crust of sugar and egg whites on my lips.
I sat up, licked my lips, and tasted almonds and vanilla. I shrugged and fell back into the wet grass as a group of schoolgirls paraded by, looking down at me with a combination of fear and disgust.
I was strung out on macarons. I spent the night before binging at Dalloyau, Ladurée, and who the hell knows where else. It was all one big blur. In fact, I could barely remember anything that happened.
There was something stuck in my bra. Was that a bouchon?
I reached down to scratch my ass and discovered a crushed cannelle. How the hell did that get there?
I had really hit rock bottom. I was supposed to be in Paris on assignment for Pastrygirl magazine, writing an article on the city’s best patisseries. But before long, I found myself spiraling into a pastry addiction. I was turning into a junkie, and it was taking its toll.
And now, here I was, fucked up on sweets and all alone in Luxembourg Gardens. It was pathetic.
But while it may have been my lowest point, it was also the moment when everything changed for me. Because that was when I met François, the man who transformed my life forever.
I don’t know what he saw in me, this broken-down wreck of a person covered in macaron crumbs with various pastries protruding from my undergarments. But we looked at each other from across the park and immediately locked eyes. He started right toward me: a big, strapping Frenchman on a unicycle. At first, he rode toward me at top speed, swerving around the schoolgirls, grinding tulips beneath his tire. And then he leapt right off the unicycle and started running—sprinting, actually—right toward me until he dived into the grass.
He rolled over right next to me.
It was a little scary to feel magnetism this strong, but it was mutual. He didn’t speak a word of English, but with his hand gestures and my rudimentary French, we started to communicate in a primordial fashion. He motioned to his backpack, pulled it off his broad shoulders, and dropped it to the ground. It made a resounding thud from something heavy inside. What was it?
He unbuckled the top and pulled out a lobe of foie gras. He held the giant engorged liver up to my lips, but I looked away. I was still a vegetarian at that time, if you can believe it. But he grabbed me by the chin and pulled my head toward his.
“Mangez,” he commanded in a soft, raspy voice.
“No,” I told him. “I don’t eat meat.”
Unconvinced, he told me, again, to eat the foie gras.
I don’t know what came over me, but I did as I was told.
I sunk my teeth right into the foie. And then he grabbed me and pulled me to him and we kissed, an amazing and unforgettable emulsion of European saliva, unfiltered cigarettes, animal fat, and macarons from last night’s binge.
Somehow, he uncorked a bottle of Côtes du Rhône using his furry bare hands and gave me a swig to wash everything down. It was a taste memory I will never, ever forget. And from that day forward, I would never call myself a vegetarian again.
It was a whirlwind. He strapped his unicycle to the top of his Citroën and drove me straight to the Marché International de Rungis, the wholesale meat market. I silently watched—gawked, really—as I saw François in action bargaining with the purveyors for meat. His arms waved madly. Sometimes he shouted. Other times he whispered. Transactions were made. Cash was exchanged. He bought cuts of meat and organs I had never heard of before. The flesh came in stunning shades of red, ruby, and purple. And, it came from animals whose names mystified: German horsecow, Lithuanian fishgoat, Alsatian rabbit-eared lamb, and an incredible oddity called an Iberico pig-tailed chicken.
Somehow, he stuffed the incredible bounty of meats into the trunk of the Citroën, and we sped from market to market, filling the broken-down car with even more incredible food: cheeses that smelled like farts, the freshest fruits and vegetables, wine, and fatty charcuterie.
He took me back to his apartment. We trudged up the steep, creaky stairs with our gastronomic loot to the top floor. When we made it there, he lifted me up with his burly arms, carried me through the doorway, and tossed me onto the bed. I closed my eyes, shimmied out of my clothes, and waited for him to join me. But he didn’t. Before long, I heard the sounds of him cooking madly in the kitchen: bones breaking, pans crashing, pepper grinding, flesh tearing, sinew sinewing. And the smells—they were simply intoxicating. I got up to join him, but he motioned at me to sit back down.
“Asseyez-vous,” he yelled from the kitchen.
OK, OK, I said to myself, and got back in bed.
I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, François was back, and all of the food was cooked.
And we sat in bed as he fed me things I had never tasted.
In his best broken English, he told me, “We must eat from zee nose to zee tail.”
And so we did. There were cheeks, snouts, ears, even chins. Then we moved on to the shoulders, ribs, loins, and organ meats. He juggled thymus glands of various breeds and then popped them into my mouth. We shared a braised beef heart, gnawing at it together. We bobbed for foie gras in a vat full of absinthe. He whipped me with lambs’ intestines and massaged me with lardo. And you know what? I loved it. And I wanted to let him know.
“This is so incredibly unctuous,” I told him after happily taking a bite of fatty braised pork belly.
He frowned and wagged his finger.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just so good. I love the mouthfeel.”
“Non!” he yelled curtly.
“Um, OK,” I said. “It’s really ‘to die for’?”
“Jamais!” he yelled, exasperated.
“How about ‘toothsome’?”
“Non!”
“Delish?”
“Merde!!”
“Yummy?”
“Ta gueule!” he shot back, using the French slang for “shut up.”
“Listen, François,” I cried. “I just want you to know how fucking good this shit is!”
“Parfait! Parfait! Très bien!” he shouted. This time, he was pleased. He smiled, beaming at me. Struggling with English, he whispered, “In this way—how do you say—you will not be une douchebaguette.”
What a dick, I thought. But he was right. All I knew were clichéd food terms. It was a revelation. To this day, I have never uttered the word “toothsome” again.
Later, after clearing the bed of our dinner, François came back to the bedroom with a bottle of absinthe and two straws. We dispensed with the ritual of pouring the liquor over sugar, and sipped it together. Before long, I hallucinated that I was inside a pig eating my way out. It was as disturbing as it was delicious. And then I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up the next morning in a pile full of half-chewed meat parts and aioli smeared all over my body.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that François was gone, and I was all alone. He left behind a note that he was married, that he could never see me again, and that I should pack my things and go before he returned that evening. I burst into tears and collapsed into the bed, sucking on marrow bones as my only solace.