I arrived in Paris quite unprepared, not speaking French not knowing what to expect. Lindsey moved to France the opposite way (and in my opinion, the right way), with a background in French literature, studying in France, and having a boyfriend, who is now her husband. Even so, the move still presented some challenges.

I thought it would be fun to talk to Lindsey about her journey—what motivated her to make the move (and how she answers the eternal question from visitors: Is it permanent?), what she loves about the city and living in France, as well as some of the downsides of living one’s life abroad.

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In Lindsey’s first book, The New Paris, she chronicled the last decade in Paris, during while time the city’s food scene had lost some of its some of its luster, and showcased a new generation of young, engaged Parisians who changed the landscape, rebooting Paris’ reputation as a thriving, world-class gastronomic destination, that continues to evolve.

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In The New Parisienne, Lindsey tackles the perception of the Parisian woman, profiling pastry chefs, creators, artists, activists, and even the mayor of city, who have changed the image of the French woman (rather than adhering to the stereotype), and who continue to shape the city today.

Lindsey also just finished The Eater Guide to Paris, focusing on the bistros, wine bars, pastry shops, cafés, and cocktail bars in the city, which will be released in the spring of 2025. In addition to writing books and articles, Lindsey is the host of her own podcast, The New Paris podcast, and writes the newsletter, The New Paris Dispatch.

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We had a great time talking about our lives in Paris, including what’s changed in the city since we arrived, if Paris really is a good place to live, what are some of the difficulties of living here (#paperwork), what are some of the cultural differences one must navigate, our thoughts on the French healthcare system, and why we’ve both ultimately chose to call Paris our home.

I hope you enjoy our chat!

-David

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Lindsey Tramuta

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If I had a nickel…or cinq centimes for everyone who’s asked me over the years, “Why don’t Americans use the metric system?” I’d be able to hire a team to do all the metric conversions for me in my recipes, or the conversions to cups and tablespoons. Frankly, I’d be fine with either, as long as we’re all on the same page, which definitely includes the pages of cookbooks.

It seems to be a golden rule these days that you’ll come across a measurement conversion that’s either wrong or weird. The weird ones are when a cookbook is converted to cups/tablespoons, and you see things like “5/8 teaspoon heavy cream,” which I once saw in a French>U.S. cookbook. Then there are the cookbooks that don’t work the other way, which call for “121 milliliters of milk.”

1 milliliter = .202 teaspoons of milk, and I’ve yet to bake something where a few drops of milk would radically change things.

I don’t know about you, but baking with a scale isn’t really fun. There’s no word for “home baker” in French, and while people do bake at home for pleasure, it’s not enough of a thing for someone to come up with a term for people who enjoy doing it, as we did in English. But considering there are words in French for everything from flâneur, describing someone who likes to go for a stroll, to having a bouffée delirante, a psychotic disorder that Wikipedia describes as “uniquely French,” maybe it’s time someone did.

I’d do it, but I’m too busy converting recipes, which, when you write a cookbook with a hundred recipes, each averaging eight to ten ingredients, is about a thousand conversions to get right.

Although I’m used to it, I have to say that I’m not ready to give up my measuring cups. (Unless, of course, the U.S. goes metric. Then we’ll talk.) But baking with cups and tablespoons is more viscerally fun. With a scale, you switch on a machine, place a bowl on it, spoon flour into it, and wait for the right numbers to show up on the screen. Then you zero it out and do it again with the next ingredient. While one could argue that it’s more efficient, and uses fewer dishes, if you’ve ever been weighing out ingredients like that and suddenly your scale turns off, it’s a moment of panic for a baker, prompting me to have a psychotic disorder, which could also use a name.

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When I use a measuring cup, I open the bin of flour and dig my spoon into it to stir it up, the wheaty goodness of the flour rising to meet my nose. I like to swipe the excess flour off the top of a measuring cup with the edge of a knife, further making me feel like I’m participating in the process of baking. It allows me to appreciate the smell of the flour and its texture, which reminds me of opening my mom’s flour tin, with colorful flowers printed around it, and her digging into it. And I knew that something sweet and delicious would be coming out of the oven shortly.

If you’re not convinced, consider the difference between melting butter in the microwave versus on the stovetop. One could argue that it works better, and more efficiently, in the microwave, but I’d miss the sizzle and smell of melting butter, and watching it melt, too. Same with chocolate.

America was all set and ready to go, to convert to metrics in the ‘70s, which never happened for a variety of reasons. While every product in American supermarkets is nowadays listed in metrics (as well as ounces), the metric system was never adopted.

I could go on and on about it, and some people do on discussion boards. And somehow, some even think that I can do something about it, so let me be clear: If there were policies that I could change in America, going metric might be one of them. But there are a few other things that I’d tackle first.

Going metric, however, is in my Top Ten Things I’d Change because when you’re a recipe developer and you’re working on a recipe and you find the frosting for a cake is too much, and you want to reduce it by a third, you need to figure out what one-third of 5 ounces (~140 grams) of chocolate is. 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

But 140 grams? Reduced by a third is 95 grams, which doesn’t make my brain hurt as much as that video does. And if you’re trying to reduce 1 cup (140 grams) of flour for a cake recipe by 10%, you’re talking 125 grams. When you figure out what 10% of the cup is…you’re hired!

Another reason to go metric (and this time, again, it’s personal), recipe writers wouldn’t have people challenging our metric conversions for 1 cup of flour, which runs the gamut in cookbooks and online, from 120 grams to 142 grams. I had to stop answering messages on the subject because I wanted those hours of my life back that I spent responding. I used to reply with a video of me measuring and weighing flour. But — well, those pesky hours of my life kept creeping up.

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As you can see from above, my measuring cups have been getting such a workout that the numbers on some have faded beyond recognition. People (outside of the U.S.) make fun of measuring cups, but they have them in France, called doseurs or verres à measure.

They’re often marked by ingredient — semoule (semolina), farine (flour), sucre (sugar), riz (rice), and tapioca, the last of which is interesting because I’ve never seen anyone use tapioca here in a recipe, and I don’t know any French dishes that use it. So I did a quick online search and found a bunch of them here, but anyone faulting American measuring cups for not being an exact way to bake, I think I spot markers for flour on that glass, which is also in German. (On a related note, I’ve come across recipes in France that call for a “wine glass” of milk or a “coffee spoon” of baking powder, which aren’t exactly precise…I’m just saying…)

When I worked at Chez Panisse back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, we baked mostly with measuring cups. A friend who is a culinary instructor in New York came to visit and was apoplectic when he saw us using them. But anyone who’s worked at a restaurant in America likely knows these…

I bought the one above at another American invention, a sidewalk sale. It’s illegal to do that in France without governmental authorization (and lots of paperwork), and Romain was stunned, and delighted, to discover people selling stuff on the sidewalk in front of their apartments in the U.S. Someone in my neighborhood in Paris was trying to organize one, and I was going to participate, but I made it through two of the six pages of paperwork and decided that I didn’t have time to find my mother’s birth certificate and proof that I was an author, which I once actually had to prove at an official meeting, and when I came back carrying eight of my books, with my name on the cover, I was told, “That’s not enough proof.”

I also brought the measuring cups above to Paris with me when I moved here. We used the same ones at Chez Panisse, which were there when I arrived, circa 1983. I remember finding one at a thrift store in San Francisco and was overjoyed, and eventually, I found another. (I recently saw one on Etsy listed for $25 with a comment that it was a “rare find.” ) Lindsey Shere, the executive pastry chef, had a thrifty streak (which I inherited), and she may have brought them in from her home kitchen when the restaurant started in 1971 as she was tasked with making desserts. Back then, a three-course meal cost $3.95 and things were a bit humbler.

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Or maybe they were a gift? Back in those days, when you opened a bank account, or brought a friend to open one, or even made a deposit, they’d give you a toaster oven, a percolator, garden tools, or a tennis racket.

Duz used to put a drinking glass in each box of detergent as a gift — a gift I’m sure some lawyers would have a field day with nowadays. It seems unimaginable today, although I couldn’t have imagined that eating laundry detergent would become a trend. So what do I know?

But some of the best bakers in America used measuring cups: Flo Braker, Marion Cunningham, Edna Lewis, Nick Malgieri, and Alice Medrich, no matter where they got them.

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So when I was in the U.S. a few months ago, I replaced my faded measuring cup with a new one, a sparkling clean Pyrex measuring cup.

Pyrex is pronounced in French as if it rhymed with T-Rex, which I read online was originally a French brand. Yes, in the land of metrics, a company of measuring cups may have blossomed. But that’s not the case, as is the case for not believing everything you read on the internet.

Pyrex was developed by Corning Glass, in Corning, New York, and was launched in 1915. Its name was a mashup of “pie” and “Nonex,” the latter of which was based on a line of borosilicate glass (which could withstand extreme temperatures) that the company used for making lanterns and batteries. When the wife of one of their scientists, Bessie Littleton, asked her husband to bring some Nonex home with him so she could try baking in it, she found it worked well, and eventually the company started making measuring cups.

While the rest of the world hates (or says they hate, even though they have them, too) measuring cups, I love them and am not ashamed to say so. I have a slew of Oxo measuring cups, and, like everything Oxo makes, these measuring cups measure up.

But they do have a minor problem, which is when you’re measuring cream and thicker things in them, such as honey and oil, stuff tends to cling to the ridges inside. However, on my list of problems, that one is pretty far down there. I also like them because they’re lightweight, stack well, and have all the different measurements on them, from cups to milliliters. Plus, they’re easy to read.

But I started missing the visceral feel of glass, and it was a joy to unpack my new pyrex measuring cup when I got home from the States.

Yet, being the internet, people spread the news about the new pyrex (in small case) measuring cups, which are no longer being made of borosilicate glass. Instead, they’re made of tempered soda-lime glass, which is said to be more durable, but more likely to explode when taken from the refrigerator or freezer and put directly in the oven. Several people warned me about that happening, but I’ve been baking for more years than I want to admit and will admit to never taking a measuring cup full of something out of the freezer and putting it directly in the oven.

And there hasn’t been room in my freezer for anything as large as a casserole since 2011, when it was brand new, so that hasn’t been a concern. But when I saw PYREX (in all caps) for sale on a flash shopping site in France, I grabbed a bunch of them, since they were priced from 4-6 euros each, which was about half of the price of their American counterparts. And yes, these are made in France.

When they arrived, I excitedly unpacked them, relegating my other measuring cups to the storage shed. But, like a number of conflicting things in France, the flier that accompanied them said they are not for use in a microwave or conventional oven. However, the sticker on each measuring cup seems to say otherwise.

I’m pretty sure that little symbol on the right is a microwave oven.

After I spent the afternoon soaking and scrubbing all those stubborn labels off, I was ready to rejoin my friends in the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar, who are the last holdouts in the world of not using the metric system, and started baking with them.

I was feeling all high and mighty about myself, especially for being a do-gooder and switching from plastic to glass (even though that old plastic isn’t going anywhere — it’s already a done deal), and hauled out my flour bin, bottle of milk, and container of sugar to begin baking something with my shiny new measuring cups.

But when I went to measure out 3/4 cup of milk into one, I looked and noticed that they don’t have cup measures. None of them. Say what? They have liters, milliliters, pints, and yes, even friggin’ ounces, but not a cup in sight. What kind of sick joke was that?

Especially to someone who writes recipes in two different systems of measurement? I thought we should be thanked for our service, not scorned.

And to make matters worse, each cup had a printed warning that the cups may not be accurate either. When your sole job is to be accurate, and you can’t promise that, you’d better rethink your place in the world, and in my kitchen, monsieur PYREX. (The one in all caps.)

I can’t change the measuring system in America, and doubt I have any clout in Liberia and Myanmar. But I’m thinking about changing back to my old measuring cups, and yes, my trusty scale, which has only let me down back in the days when no stores in France were open on Sundays and I would be in the middle of a baking project and the batteries would die. Fun times.

One could keep spares on hand, but I’ve got my hands full with scraping labels, answering questions about why America never switched to metrics, explaining that a 1/2 teaspoon difference in flour really isn’t going to be noticeable in a cake recipe, wishing that my bank would give me something like an electric carving knife or a trowel when I come in, rather than a grimace that I’m interrupting their day. But I shouldn’t be too hard on them since, if you read my book The Sweet Life in Paris, you know that because I was a cookbook author, they let me open an account there, which allowed me to stay in France.

So here I am now, with a few dozen measuring cups, and three scales to boot, along with a sizable back-up supply of batteries. And I’ve also got wine glasses and coffee spoons, too, so I’m ready to bake any and all recipes, no matter where your loyalties lie.

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There’s a lot to say about the past year, but I’ve been keeping my head down and working on my own projects…and hoping for the best as we round the corner to 2025. I retreated into my work for the last few weeks, which involved finishing photos for a future book, keeping things up to date here in the newsletter, as well as trying to figure out social media. Is it just me, or has much of it shifted from us sharing stuff we like, to a keep-on-scrolling and tapping scrum?

I signed up for Bluesky, but to be honest, I think I prefer to say everything I want to say here rather than on someone else’s platform. I remember when Facebook and Twitter started, how exciting it was to communicate with friends and network with others. Now my Facebook timeline is filled with AI pictures of Paris, and Twitter…well, it’s X now.

Heading into December, farmers in France have been hitting the streets and the highways, upset about foreign imports coming in and undercutting them with lower prices. (There may be disruptions on December 9 and 10th, so if you’re traveling on one of those dates, best to remain flexible with your plans.) Farmers have been spraying municipal buildings in France with dirt and reversing signs for towns or villages so they’re upside down or, in some cases, tossing them over fences:

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What’s interesting is that the new rules allowing more imports from South America are coming from the European Union, not France, and the president of France has stated that he is also against them. But there are a lot of rules in France about growing food, which means extra red tape and paperwork for farmers.

On the other hand, people are concerned about rising food prices, so I’m not sure what the solution is. I’m no economist; my job is to make brownies. The goal seems to be: How to make good, healthy food accessible to people at affordable prices, while paying and properly compensating the people who grow it for their efforts.

I now buy almost of my produce from shops that sell fruits and vegetables culled from small producers, such as Terroirs d’Avenir, Miyam, Roots, and Pari Local. Their prices are a little higher than supermarkets and the outdoor markets (where most of the produce comes from the Rungis wholesale market, outside of Paris), but the produce is a lot better, and it’s nice to support smaller shops, even if they charge a bit more. For example, pears at the produce shops I go to are around €5,50 per kilo, or $2.80 per pound, versus at the supermarché, where they’re €3,95 per kilo, or $2 per pound. But to those on tight budgets, 80¢ makes a difference.

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Since I dress like a slob most of the time (well, when I’m at home…) and Romain cuts my hair, I use that money to buy local strawberries in the summer and légumes oubliée (forgotten vegetables) in the winter, ones that may be a little dirty and misshapen, such as parsnips and rutabagas, but that doesn’t bother me. I shop for flavor. It’ll be interesting to see how the talks play out. I think we all want to see farmers succeed and thrive. We need them.

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A lot of people come to Paris and are on the lookout for The Best, and people often ask me everything, from how to find the best croissant to the “best” baguette. But if you spend a minute in any bakery in Paris, and watch people order baguettes, every single person will ask for theirs baked as they prefer, from pas trop cuite (not too cooked, with a soft crust) to bien cuite, well-baked and crunchy.

For the record, I usually get baguettes from Maison Landemain, Terroirs d’Avenir, The French Bastards, Pépite, and Graine, and I like the sesame-curry baguette at Utopie, even though their standard baguette took the top prize as the best baguette in Paris in this year’s competition. No matter where I am, I always skip the baguettes ordinaires (white flour baguettes made with yeast) and choose a baguette tradition or baguette campagne, which are heartier (made with natural starter), hand-shaped, and often available with grains in them.

Speaking of bests, when my photo team was here, someone asked me about the jambon-beurre (ham and butter) sandwich at the bakery of a well-known ritzy hotel, which sells for €15. It’s made with puff pastry, rather than bread. I haven’t tried it, but the excellent sandwich at Caractère de Cochon is still at the top of my list for sandwiches in Paris, whose price has risen to around €12, but is packed with ham (most bakeries just slip a slice or two in there) and is absolutely delicious..

On one of the final days of shooting, one of the stylists working on the book headed over to Le Petit Vendôme, on my recommendation, and brought a jambon-beurre (and fromage) sandwich back for each of us. They’re so good that even Lady Gaga stopped in on her way to the airport after singing at the Olympic opening ceremonies, to grab one before leaving town. I can’t decide if I need to try the puff pastry one at the Ritz. Something about it sounds as if it might not work, although puff pastry is often paired with savory foods, so maybe it’s not such a far-fetched idea after all. Would you try it?

I know I should take one for the team and grab one, although I’m saving my centimes for a real haircut and perhaps a pair of pants that don’t have an elastic waist. Oh, and there’s then also the €30 jambon-beurre with truffles that people are lining up for at Cédric Grolet. But maybe I’ll save that one for when I can get the photo team to come back, and make sure those are included in the photo budget.

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Speaking of photo teams, I loved having a duo of world-class food stylists in my apartment last month, who kindly stocked me up with the best gifts a home baker could ask for:

My haul included 2 half-sheet baking pans (French baking pans are smaller, for smaller ovens, and I have a full-size oven), a stack of 200 sheets of pre-cut parchment baking paper (for those half-sheet pans), and tins of natural cocoa powder. We get great cocoa powder in Europe, but it’s Dutch-process, which can behave differently, so it’s nice to test recipes with both, for your baking pleasure and for best results.

There were boxes of zip-top bags (don’t worry — I reuse them a gazillion times), extra-wide heavy-duty Reynolds Wrap, two rolls of Stretch-Tite, maple sugar candies from Vermont, American bean-to-bar chocolates from Taza, Dandelion, Woodblock, Guittard, and Dick Taylor, Graham crackers, Lazzaroni amaretti cookies (for some reason, you can’t get this brand of Italian cookies here in Paris, even though Italy is next door), black cocoa powder (to make these brownies), and a can of professional non-stick spray, which you may wrinkle your nose up at, but, well…it is what it is. And how can you resist the allure of a product called Bak-klene ZT?

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Contrary to popular belief, food stylists don’t put marbles in soup or make fake ice cream from Crisco. I did, however, find this “cheat” in the baking aisle of my local supermarché, a crème chantilly/whipped cream stabilizer that I got for them as a parting gift.

When they left, however, I noticed they took the Dandelion chocolate bars back to the States with them. I don’t blame them — I wouldn’t leave them behind either. But don’t worry about me. They didn’t take the French chocolates I amassed while they were here, back to the States, which I initially felt bad about — until I noticed the missing Dandelion bars. So I guess we’re even.

Now that we’re into December, the days are getting even shorter in Paris. Last week we had a snowstorm. Flights and trains were canceled since they’re not accustomed to snow here. (People from Boston or Chicago often get a kick out of how a 1/4 inch/6mm of snow can ground flights.) It didn’t freak me out, and I took a walk in it, letting the delicate flakes land on me. I like the calm of snow. It quiets things down, and the flakes brighten things up, making the cold bearable.

Here’s hoping you all have a calm, yet bright(er) December. I’m the kind of person who has a hard time getting away, but we’re taking a few days to head to the south to be near the ocean, eat oysters, and read. I’m still trying to do what in French would be called être — to just be and avoid doing anything else. Even after all these years, I’m not quite there yet. But I’m trying.

-David

Links I’m Liking

-Major changes to the Paris transit system for locals and visitors coming in January. (Secrets of Paris)

-A Bay Area couple finds moving to — and living in — France not as easy as they thought it’d be.* (CNN)

-You might be storing cheese all wrong. (NYT Cooking/possible paywall)

-Yes, a non-alcoholic Martini is possible. (Taste)

-Lindt admits its chocolate isn’t “expertly crafted with the finest ingredients.” (Fortune)

-Restaurants in Paris getting hit (again) by thieves stealing wine… (MSN)

-…and someone swipes 24,240 bottles of tequila from Guy Fieri. (USA Today)

-Racing mind making it hard to sleep? Readers mentioned two podcasts, Nothing Much Happens and Sleep with Me, the first being sleep stories, and the latter is a fellow who has the remarkable ability to talk about n’importe quoi (nothing), while simultaneously being interesting and boring. Bonne nuit! 😴😴

-The Bonne Maman jam-packed advent calendar has become a “hot commodity.” (NYT/article unlocked)

-Starting in January, visitors to the UK will need to apply for electronic travel authorization* before entering. (Washington Post/article unlocked)

[*It’s similar to ESTA, which foreign visitors to the U.S. have had to apply for, in order to travel there, which began in 2008. Europe is also adopting a similar program, ETAIS, sometime in 2025.]

-Lost in transit? Unclaimed Baggage website is filled with things that travelers lost, from gold watches and Hermès belts, to pajamas and power tools. (Unclaimed Baggage)

The Point of Sale Machine

The “point of sale” (POS) machine has arrived in Paris. For a long time, we’ve had credit card machines that the servers bring to your table when it’s time to pay the check, which they process tableside, unlike in the States where someone whisks your card away and swipes it (and in some cases, swipes your number). But now there’s a new generation of POS machines in France that have buttons for leaving a tip.

And…it’s confusing.

While it’s customary in the U.S. to leave a tip (a custom that came to the U.S. from Europe), in France, service is included and any extra you’d like to leave, called a pourboire, is optional. If you want to leave a pourboire, most people either round up the bill or leave 5% to 10% in coins or bills, but only if you were happy and/or the server did a good job. Generally, one wouldn’t leave more than €20, which would be considered generous.

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But will that change?

The new generation of credit card machines ask what percentage of tip you’d like to leave. When I first saw the machines, a year or so ago, when handing me the machine, the waiter would tell me that I didn’t need to leave a tip. Now that the machines have become more common, I rarely hear anyone saying that you don’t need to leave a tip anymore.

I’ve been handed machines that “suggest” that I add a 20% tip. No one in France would leave €40 on a €200 check. It’s not because they’re cheap, it’s because waiters don’t make less than minimum wage, as they do in some U.S. states, where they depend on tips to make a living.

Personally, I’m happy to live somewhere where the street cleaners, supermarket clerks, housecleaners, painters, and trash collectors get the same benefits as everybody else. There are inequalities, and Paris isn’t an inexpensive city to live in, but everyone is entitled to a baseline of care, and salaried workers get paid vacation and health insurance, provided by their employers. (Self-employed people don’t and have to pay the charges themselves, which are about 25% of one’s income.)

So what to do if you’re visiting Paris, dining in a restaurant, and they hand you a machine with a suggested tip when it’s time to pay? First of, relax. I remember fretting to a neighbor about what kind of tip to leave, when I used to get my haircut down the street from us, and he said, “Don’t worry about it so much. This isn’t America.”

You’re welcome to leave a tip if you’re satisfied, which is appreciated but not required. No one will run after you down the street if you don’t leave anything, nor should you feel bad leaving 5% (or 10%), even if you live somewhere where 20% is expected. It’s fine to leave 5% to 10%, the latter being on the high side. If they’ve done a good job and you’ve had a nice time, feel free to show your appreciation with whatever makes you comfortable.

But I do wonder about what’s going to happen in the future in France, if leaving a tip will go from being optional to being expected. I’m interested in what you think…

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Things I Like

When friends come to visit, I’ll sometimes ask them to bring me things that you can’t get here. And one thing I always insist on doing is paying them back. They invariably wave payment away, but I want them to keep bringing me things (and not think of me as a freeloader), so I insist.

So when a friend came bearing some necessities, she also brought me a jar of Fix & Fogg Everything Butter. I have cupboards of condiments and spreads that I’ve been given over the years, which are on my docket to try — from smoked preserved cherries to jars of premixed baking spice mixtures, which are a nice idea, but I can’t use them in recipes that I share because I’m sure exactly no one would appreciate a recipe that calls for 1 teaspoon of a baking spice mixture they had to order by mail. But it’s the thought that counts.

While I sometimes request crunchy organic peanut butter, someone came up with something better. This magical mélange of peanuts, almonds, hemp, pumpkin, flax, and sunflower seeds, comes together in this spread that has little crunchy, crackly bits of nuts and seeds, some roasty and others a bit smoky. There’s a lot going on in every swipe, and I ate almost half of the jar right after I dug into it.

For better or worse (the latter because I would eat a lot of it…), I haven’t found it available in France. Yes, there are some places that ship, but those pesky shipping, taxes, and customs charges really jack up the price. The company’s website only ships to New Zealand. But I see that it’s available in the U.S. and other countries. So while many people are contemplating moving to France, if you do, please bring a few jars. Otherwise, get one for yourself. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

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In Memoriam

Paris lost a member of its cocktail community, Forest Collins of 52 Martinis, who passed away this week. Forest was a pioneer and “owned” the Paris cocktail scene, chronicling the fast-moving world of bars in Paris, getting to know all the bartenders and spirit-makers, writing about them on her blog, and featuring them on her podcast. (She was a guest on my podcast, which you can listen to here.) Forest also wrote a field guide to Paris cocktail bars and created a free app for readers to find her favorite addresses for drinking.

Forest helped me when I was writing Drinking French. I’d asked her to assist me with listing places where people could find cocktail paraphernalia and French spirits in Paris, as she knew them all. We had a great time and Forest (as she always did with everybody…) was happy to share her knowledge with me, and my readers.

She’d recently gotten her French citizenship and while she lived on the opposite end of the city, we kept in touch and kept promising to meet up for drinks. But as so often happens these days, things get in the way, and she and her partner often retreated to their house in the countryside. We kept postponing, and it was sad to hear of her passing; my thoughts are with her family, and she’ll be missed by fans and friends, too.

*There’s a lot to say about this article, and some people have replied rather tartly to it. But there’s some truth to what the couple says. France, and French people, can be a challenge and friendships don’t come easy here, especially if you don’t speak French. While you’ll come across quite a few people who do speak English, you’ll have a much more authentic experience if you can converse in French.

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And yes, the food can be quite rich, which they pointed out, but no one I know eats “…brie, pâté, pastries and French bread all day long.” When I have houseguests they love coming back from the bakery in the morning with bags of croissants and pastries to share with us, but most mornings its toast with butter and jam or honey, coffee, and a bowl of fresh fruit mid-morning.

The bureaucracy is, indeed very (very) burdensome, especially if you’re not used to it. It drives native French people crazy too. They’re just used to it and it’s just something you need to constantly tackle if you live here. A newsletter from a relocation specialist recently wrote:

Many Americans in France have a hard time accepting the changes they need to make in how they live to adapt to life here. Regardless of how many books, movies, and documentaries people aspiring to move to France, Americans never really register deep down how different French life is!

Living abroad isn’t for everyone, which the couple in the article admitted. Change is hard, and it’s easy to imagine life is going to be better elsewhere, which it certainly can be. I arrived with a suitcase, with some similar sentiments, and had to adjust. France is an amazing country, but it comes with its own unique set of rules and codes which you to adapt to, if you plan to stay.

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I know this is the time of year where everyone is telling you to buy things. Those gift lists and listicles everyone is posting have so many things to buy! But I’m here to tell you about something you don’t need to buy. In fact, you’ve already bought them: Butter wrappers.

I go though a lot of butter, probably more than most people, and I also spend a lo…

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I had a surfeit of apples left after a photo shoot, and while “surfeit” I’m sure is one of those words you’re not supposed to use in food writing, which also includes “unctuous” and “opt” (the latter is supposedly because people don’t use that word in daily life…but I do), I think some of you might not be thrilled if I said I had a sh**tload of apples. So maybe I should just say, I had a lot of apples left over, since I think we’re all a little burnt out on so many controversies, and I’m here to offer up cake.

The French love apples, and even in the height of summer fruit season, 10 times out of 10, if we go to someone’s house when peaches, cherries, nectarines, and strawberries are at their peak, invariably they’ll have a bowl of apples in their kitchen. I think people forget they’re seasonal, but I also think people like the fact that you don’t have to survey them for ripeness every day, which, to me, comes with the “summer fruit” turf. I, too, love apples, but wait until the fall to use them.

This cake is called gâteau invisible aux pommes, invisible apple cake, since (theoretically), the apples meld with the batter as they bake, and the apples become (somewhat) invisible once the cake is baked.

In France, people tend to mix apples in desserts like this. You want an apple that’s not too dry (so I wouldn’t use apples like Granny Smiths, Pippins, or Golden Delicious here), nor do you want one that’ll turn to mush when baked (such as McIntosh) — but you could do as I do, and rather than have a specific apple in mind, go to the store or market and see what they have. I like to eat crisp, tart apples; here, you want one that leans toward the sweeter side, such as Fuji, Honeycrisp, Braeburn, Pink Lady, or Jonagold.

Also, theoretically, you’re supposed to use a mandolin to slice the apples for this cake. When I worked in restaurant kitchens, if all of a sudden you heard someone scream out in pain, you could be pretty sure that it was a person using a mandolin.

I had a fancy Swiss one for a few years, which I never used and gave away during one of my moves. I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I’m guessing a lot of you don’t own one either. If you do have one, great…and this is the place to use it. (Although, please be careful!) I just use a chef’s knife and slice the apples very thinly. The good thing is that any scraps or imperfect slices don’t matter - they’ll just meld into the mix once baked.

More fruit dessert recipes here

As with this French Apple Cake, I often advise my American compatriots to resist adding cinnamon to French apple desserts. French bakers rarely, if ever (okay…never), add cinnamon, preferring to let the flavor of the apples take center stage. They also don’t habitually add vanilla either, but here I do add a little, although you could use a splash of cognac, Calvados (apple brandy), or rum in its place.

The cake may look humble, but it’s really good, packed with apples and apple flavor. I like to serve it with something simple, such as a drizzle of caramel or salted butter caramel sauce or even maple syrup.

But if you want to take it in another direction, a spoonful of fruit sauce, such as raspberry, blackberry, or black currant would do nicely as well.

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Invisible Apple Cake (gâteau invisible aux pommes)

Twelve servings

2/3 cup (90g) flour

1/2 cup (100g) sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder, preferably aluminum-free

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup (80ml) heavy cream

1/3 cup (80ml) whole milk

(Or you can use 2/3 cup (160ml) of half-and-half, or 2/3 cup of whole milk)

3 large eggs, at room temperature

3 tablespoons melted butter, salted or unsalted, cooled to room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 pounds (900g) apples, about 4 large apples, or 5 medium apples

3 tablespoons coarse granulated (such as turbinado) or light brown sugar (optional)

Lightly butter a 8 1/2 to 9-inch (23cm) loaf pan, or a longer, narrower European-style 12” (30cm) loaf pan*. Cut a piece of parchment paper so it fits across the bottom and up over the two long sides, creating two overhangs that you’ll use to lift the cake out of the pan later. Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC).

In a medium-to-large bowl, make a custard by whisking together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, heavy cream, and milk until there are no lumps. Whisk in the eggs, melted butter, and vanilla.

Peel the apples and remove the cores and seeds. Slice the apples as thin as possible with a chef’s knife. Don’t worry if some look scrappy or break; once baked in the cake, you won’t see any difference between them and the perfect slices.

Fold the apples in the custard with a spatula as carefully as possible, trying not to break apart the apple slices. (Despite what I said in the previous step, I do try to keep the apple slices here from breaking if I can, just because…)

Use your clean hands to put one-third of the apples soaked in custard into the prepared pan. Level the top so all the apple slices are lying flat, then add half of the remaining apples, leveling the top, then add the remaining apples, making sure all the apples on top are level. Pour any remaining custard over the apples in the pan.

Sprinkle the top with brown sugar and bake the cake until the cake feels set when you press it in the center, about 40 to 45 minutes. Best to go by feel than by exact baking time since apples, and loaf pans, bake differently.

Remove the cake from the oven and let cool 30 minutes. Slide a butter knife around the two shorter edges of the cake, where there’s no parchment paper, to loosen it from the pan. Carefully lift the cake out of the pan using the overhanging parchment paper as handles and place it on a wire cooling rack. Let the cake cool completely to room temperature before serving.

Slice the cake using a serrated bread knife.

Storage: The cake can be kept in the refrigerator for up to three days.

Invisible Apple Cake

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*In this post (below), I discussed a little more in depth what size and type of cake pan I use for cakes here in France, which is 12” by 4.” King Arthur Baking called it a Tea Loaf Pan.

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Tucked away in a little corner of a courtyard near the Bastille in Paris is AXS Design, a shop filled with vintage finds: glassware, fabrics, dinnerware, and more. I’ve been meaning to go for a while, but when a friend who’s a food stylist came to town, we stopped in.

This has been the rainiest year in Paris in a long, looong time; one day we had the heaviest rainfall in a hundred years. So it was a relief to pop inside AXS on that rainy afternoon and find shelves and shelves of plates, glasses, pitchers, tureens, and more. I’d visited their website so knew what to expect, but it was nice to see much more of what they have in stock.

Owners Ariel Novak and Sydney Sabatier work with restaurants, shops, designers, and photographers, finding and choosing pieces that fit their clients’ personal aesthetic. But anyone can shop here.

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Okay, I guess I’ll be honest here and say that I was here with my food stylist, seeing if there was anything interesting we could use for my next book. On cookbook photo shoots, you have a food stylist and a prop stylist, the latter of which brings plates, linens, forks, bowls, cutting boards, and anything else you might need in a variety of colors, sizes, and textures. It’s hard to tell what will look good in front of the camera until you actually set a piece of cake or a few cookies on it.

We decided not to use a prop stylist on my book since my friend (the food stylist) said the book would be more charming, and be authentic, if we used things that I already had. Thankfully, I’ve picked up a few things over the years, here and there, that look nice with my food on them.

AXS design website

While I’ll admit that I do have quite a few plates and platters, around here, it’s nice to see what else is out there, since we’re shooting around eighty photos, and even I don’t have that many forks and dishes. (Well, I probably do. But I’m not admitting it.)

But it’s fun to look around and see what else is out there.

There are no cornichons in my next book, unfortunately—it’s just desserts. And I couldn’t see how or where to fit them in to justify bringing home that pot, above. But as my mom used to say when she slowed down whenever she saw a garage sale in progress, “It never hurts to look.”

And look we did. I did like the café table, below, with the unusual base. It didn’t look as stable as the four-footed variety of café tables, but I’m sure we could find room in our backyard for it. However, I left it for someone else.

Paris Flea Markets and Thrift Stores

I have quite a collection of mortar and pestles already, but as my mom said, “It never hurts to look…”

I won’t say whether I added any more to my collection or not, but I’ll admit that we did pick up a few other items that were in my style, including a handful of forks, cake plates, and other serving pieces that I may abscond with after we’re done with the photo shoot next month. The book comes out next fall, so I’ve got time to think about it.

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AXS design
12 rue Saint-Sabin (11th)
(Opening hours on their website and Instagram page.)

It’s very easy when you live in Paris to take the city for granted. Sometimes life feels like a series of microaggressions: people challenging you to get out of their way on the sidewalk (as if you don’t have somewhere important to go, too); the race to bag your groceries at the supermarket while trying to find your fidelity card, get your credit card to line up with the right place on the machine while fending off the person behind you who is sighing loudly (on purpose); and the cyclist behind me last week who cursed at me for stopping to let an ambulance with its light flashing and siren screaming, go in front of us. I almost turned and used some language I don’t normally use, even in English, but figured wherever she had to go was a lot more important than where the ambulance was going.

I proposed having the Olympics 365 days of the year in Paris since it was a whole different city. But like the mayor’s proposal to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower forever, my idea didn’t seem to catch on.

While I was walking in the Place Voltaire recently, I noticed many people looking up at something, so I did the same. It was just after a rainstorm, and the light was hitting the tops of the building, and the sky was a gauzy violet color that my cameraphone couldn’t quite capture, but it was so breathtaking to see the city like that in real life, even locals were captivated.

It’s easy to take for granted things like access to excellent bread, cheese, and wine, which are far more important than paperwork, stepping in front of someone else in line (imho), and sidestepping les crottes du chien. (Someone actually makes a chocolate candy named after them. I don’t know about you, but if I was making chocolates, that’s the last thing I would want people to associate them with.)

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In the past few years, the word “tourist” has gotten a bad rap. We’ve been told that when we’re traveling to do things like learn a few phrases of the local language and to avoid restaurants with English menus. But when I was in Vietnam, unless you can read Vietnamese, it’s like being handed a menu in Greek…which happened to me in Greece.

Speaking as a former waiter, it’s easier for servers to hand people menus in a language they understand rather than translate the entire menu, then stand there while people decide what to eat, especially when you’ve got other tables that need your attention. Restaurants don’t offer menus in English to make you feel like a lesser person. They do it to help you order, so you get what you want.

On one of my first trips to France, circa 1997, I ordered a dish that I thought was a Cassoulet, but was actually a casserole of tripe, which I learned when I was presented with a very large, steaming bowl of stomach lining. No offense to anyone who likes tripe—I’ve met people who hate what I like: coconut, cilantro, beans in chili, nuts in brownies, etc.—but when it comes to innards, a little goes a long way with me.

When I was in Lebanon, I did my darndest to try to learn a few phrases in Arabic and also tried to learn a bit of Arabic on Duolingo, but I didn’t go very far with either since the language is extremely challenging. I can count to ten in Korean and say “Thank you” and “hazelnut” in Turkish, but I do wish I’d learned the right way to say “Vietnamese coffee” before I went to Vietnam, because when I tried to order one, they’d ask me if I wanted a “cà phê sữa đá,” which to me sounds like “coffee soda” and waved that idea away. I don’t know if that makes me a bad tourist, but I did miss out on a lot of Vietnamese coffees.

Here in Paris, among friends, we’ll often say we’re going to “play tourist” when we get to do fun things around town, like go to a museum or take a boat down the Seine. If you want to “live like a local” when you travel, you could stay in your room and pay bills, try to get a plumber to come on a Sunday, get woken up at 6:15am by your upstairs neighbor’s kids, or commute with a gazillion other people on the métro during rush hour, but I’d rather go to a bistro or drink Champagne on a boat slowly winding its way down the Seine. I don’t see any upsides to not being a tourist.

I do tell people who feel uncomfortable about being a tourist in France (or anywhere), that if they were coming to their home country, that stiff waiter or gruff cab driver would likely make gaffes too. But I do recommend learning “Bonjour” and “Merci” if you come to France, as la politesse is a lot more important in France than it is in the States, where the staff at CVS gives me funny looks when I thank each and every one of them after I’ve paid for my M&M’s.

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In mid-October, we began a lengthy photo shoot for my next book. One of the great things about writing a book and being part of the photo shoot (many authors aren’t), in addition to getting to eat macarons and traipse around town visiting chocolate shops and bistros, is that I get to work with great collaborators, such as photographer Ed Anderson and food stylists George Dolese and Elisabet der Nederlanden, who crossed the ocean to work on the book. I can write recipes and stories, but when it comes to coaxing food into place and taking photos of it, I leave it to the pros.

And let me tell you, there’s nothing better than having two meticulously clean people leave your kitchen looking like a surgical scrub room at a hospital at the end of every day. I am going to miss that when the shoot is over. And while at first the idea of a second refrigerator, and a third freezer (both of which I bought), seemed like overkill at the time, I’m considering keeping all of them, even if my kitchen looks like an appliance showroom.

Shooting the book also helps me to see Paris through a different lens. (And the food stylists make my recipes, so they go through another round of testing.) But I love hitting the streets and seeing the city because there are so many spectacular places here that are easy to forget about, until you take the time to visit them.

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So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last two weeks of October and continuing through this week and next. It’s been really fun, and I will miss having my kitchen cleaned on a daily basis. (I think I need a live-in food stylist…taking applications!) But the book will be out next fall, and I hope you like it as much as I did working on it.

Vote.org

You don’t need me to tell you that a lot’s been going on in the world, but most of us are fortunate that we can vote, and personally, I love voting. My father was a politician, but times were different then, and the stakes are now higher as the world is a different place. But we’re still all in this together.

For those in the U.S., Election Day is just around the corner. If you can vote…please do so! If you’ve been impacted by recent weather events or need help voting, Vote.org can help you sort it out and exercise your right to vote.

-David

Links I’m Liking

For those who ask, “How long will that keep?” you might be surprised that some bakers are recommending aging cake. (Taste)

This is not the time to give up wine… (NYT/Unlocked)

Watch cranberries being harvested. (Kottke.org)

A baker in France wonders if the bread in France is all that it’s cracked up to be. (The Guardian)

Costco is selling a set of Le Creuset cookware that costs a cool $5K. (Taste of Home)

I like the look of these bistro forks, knives, and spoons…although the price is a bit steep. (Sabre Paris)

This article on the 17 best bagels in New York makes me want to try them all. (NYT/unlocked)

A thieves steal nearly 50,000 pounds of English cheddar from the fine folks at Neal’s Yard dairy in London. (BBC)

Doctor gives a great video tutorial on what to do if you’re by yourself, and choking. (Instagram)

And here are some new cookbooks I’ve got my eye on:

Sift: The Elements of Great Baking: London-based baker shares the building blocks to making great desserts.

Classic German Cooking: The follow-up to Classic German Baking, serves up German comfort food with easy-going recipes you can make anywhere in the world.

Crumbs: Cookies and Sweets from Around the World: Food writer Ben Mims explores the wide world of sweets and cookies.

The Bean Book: 100 recipes for cooking with heirloom beans, from Rancho Gordo founder Steve Sando, who knows more about beans than anyone else.

Zoë Bakes Cookies: Ace baker François shares here new collection of recipes for cookies and bars galore. I want that cover cookie!

The Elements of Baking: A baking substitution guide for making any recipe gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, vegan…and more. If you’ve got food allergies, and like to bake, this book might just be just for you.

Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking: Washington Post food editor Joe Yonan shares over 300 globally influenced recipes for plant-based cooking, with tips and techniques

Nature’s Candy: Nothing warms my heart more than candied fruit so when I heard about Camille Wynne’s latest book, I put it on my wish list to pick up next time I’m in the States. (With France getting more assertive about collecting customs and duties on overseas purchases, I’m giving e-books a fresh eye.)

Small Batch Cookies: Baker Edd Kimber’s newest book features cookies that feed one to six people, which are perfect if you just want to bake for your favorite person (yourself!) or close friends and family, if you’re okay with sharing.

Things I Like

I was reading newsletter, Lettre Recommandé, recently. When she first launched her newsletter, I got an email with the subject “Lettre Recommandée” in my Inbox and panicked. In France, people aren’t fond of registered letters, which are invariably bad news, and you do your best to avoid going to the post office to pick them up. (Someone at my local post office told me only 10% of them get picked up.)

I never suggested she change the name, but I open it 100% of the time. Lauren recently pointed out that the top search engine terms for last year in France were, #1 and #3 being “meteo” and “météo,” (weather and weather). A bit further down the list, at #11 and #12, were “bon coin” and “le bon coin.”

What’s Le Bon Coin, you might ask?

Le Bon Coin bills itself as a site de petites annonces gratuites, a website of free announcements. It’s where individuals, particuliers, buy and sell anything and everything. You’ll find a few professionals on there as well, but it’s far from petite — it’s a giant marketplace where people offer everything, from houses, apartments, and vacation rentals to clothing, cars, lamps, towel bars, clocks, hammers, and even green walnuts, which I learned about in June when I was planning to make Nocino and couldn’t find green walnuts in Paris.

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The site went through an upgrade a short time back, and people would post offers along with their phone numbers, and you’d call them to discuss whatever it is you wanted to buy. Like registered letters, I avoid talking on the phone as much as I can. And if my phone rings, 10 times out of 10, it’s either Romain or spam.

There are so many things on Le Bon Coin, above are just a few samples. You have to scoot around and see when the announcement was posted as people tend not to remove them once sold. And delivery is another issue; shipping a postcard is cheap, but shipping a Le Creuset or copper casserole isn’t. Fortunately, there are so many people in Paris on it that you can often find what you’re looking for and pick it up from the seller, or vice-versa. (There’s a detailed explanation of how to buy, and pay for things, on Le Bon Coin here.)

I’ve bought everything on Le Bon Coin, including a stainless steel towel rack that was only €5, which only required biking over to the 18th arrondissement to pick it up. The place we stayed at in Brittany this summer was found by Romain’s brother on Le Bon Coin, with no fees — which was also listed on Airbnb…along with a 14% service fee and an €80 cleaning fee. The same rental on Le Bon Coin had neither.

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Fees, etc., aside, Le Bon Coin is the place where everybody in France goes to get everything. Even if you’re just visiting for a few weeks, if you know someone in France (other than me), you can have things shipped to them, or perhaps your hotel or wherever you’re staying. It’s also more ecological to shop there; it’s a great place to reuse and recycle things, such as towel racks and cookware. Another bonus: If you shop there, you’ll be living very much like a local.

Le jambon-beurre

A few years ago (2014, to be exact), I wrote about Caractère de Cochon in Paris, a shop that specializes in ham and makes ones of the best, if not the best, jambon-beurre sandwiches in the city. (Another contender is Le Petit Vendôme.) I stopped by the other day to pick up sandwiches for my photo crew just before noon, and as I was leaving, a long line had already formed outside the tiny shop. Things have certainly changed in Paris with video influencers highlighting places, and I’m sure Caractère de Cochon is one of them, as is Chez Alain Miam Miam (26 rue Charlot) just down the street, which has gravitated from being a crêperie, to serving generously overstuffed sandwiches.

Not to brag (or sound like a fossil), I featured him in my book, The Sweet Life in Paris, in 2009. Back then, he waved me away when I wanted to take a picture of him. Now, like many businesses in Paris, times have changed and everyone is mugging for the camera, including stalwarts like Ladurée, where visitors used to be routinely scolded for taking pictures (they once booted me out for bringing four visitors in), which now has their own Instagram account.

Get The Sweet Life in Paris

When I got home wiht the sandwiches, everyone loved theirs — including me. Loaded with lots more ham than the local bakeries add, the admittedly higher price (~€15/$16, twice what a bakery charges) was well worth the upgrade, which included slices of Comté cheese, cornichons, and a swipe of butter. While mustard isn’t traditional on a jambon-beurre—mustard isn’t used on sandwiches as it is in the States, a few of the crew couldn’t resist, which is another perk of being a visitor ; )

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One thing nice about living in France is that when people invite you to dinner, everybody appreciates a home-cooked meal, whether it’s spectacular or not. You have to be pretty close to someone in Paris to be invited to their apartment for dinner.

One could chalk it up to the perceived stand-offishness of Parisians, but I found out (before I got a dryer, myself) that because so few people in Paris have clothes dryers, they hang their clothes around their apartment. And you don’t want people coming over who you don’t know, seeing your bras and undies hanging up to dry. Actually, I don’t think even people close to us want to know whether we wear boxers or briefs…or our cup size. (Although, I suppose if boxers and briefs listed the “cup” size, they might take more interest in that information.)

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When you are invited, there isn’t a lot of hand-wringing over things like fallen tart sides or burnt spots on quiche. Those details don’t tend to be issues as they are elsewhere, and no one in France has ever asked me how to, say…keep tart or pie dough from getting soggy. If you spent a few hours buried under a warm pile of fruit, you’d probably have a hard time staying dry too.

Another common concern (as if we don’t have enough to worry about in our current world…!) is cakes sinking in the center. Like my stomach, which is moving in the opposite direction that I’d like these days, nature happens, and some cakes naturally sigh a little in the middle after they’re baked.

I can’t speak for other bakers, but you could probably add more flour or less liquid. But speaking for myself, I have a chocolate cake in my repertoire of recipes that sinks a bit in the middle. I worked on it for a loooong time, and in the end, I realized that it tastes best the way it is. So why try to “fix” something that’s not broken, just different?

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A few years ago, I visited several Pineau des Charentes producers in a region of France known as the Charente, where Cognac is also made. Legend has it that it was originally made by accident when a Cognac producer centuries ago added fresh grape to a barrel of eau-de-vie (a clear distillation of grapes), intended to be aged for Cognac. He let it rest, and age in the barrel, and when he tried it, he was surprised at how good it tasted—and thus, Pineau des Charentes was born.

Nowadays, Pineau des Charentes comes in white, red, and rosé varieties, with the rosé version aging the shortest amount of time to some of the reds and whites, which are aged for a decade or more, although most Pineaux des Charentes are aged for a year or so before they’re bottled.

Pineau des Charentes is one of my favorite French apéritifs, which I wrote about in my book Drinking French. During my travels for researching the book, and diving deeper into the world of French spirits, I was fortunate to meet various producers, and it was gratifying to see what care they took to made their liqueurs and apéritifs. Two of my favorites were Amy and Jean Pasquet, of Maison Pasquet, certified organic producers of Cognac and Pineau des Charentes.

Amy, an American, married into this Cognac-making family and was recently elected to be the president of the Comité National du Pineau des Charentes, an honorary position, guiding the producers of Pineau des Charentes and helping to spread the word of this grape-forward apéritif, which is a mixture of Cognac (about 25-30%) and fresh grape must, a blend of the juice, skins, and seeds.

Get Drinking French

I’ve been enjoying Pineau des Charentes for years and was happy to spread the word in my book, with some recipes for making drinks with it, but I love drinking it all on its own, with an ice cube or two in it. Just before my visit to Amy and Jean, I’d visited another producer and asked for some ice, and when I plunked one into my glass, I wasn’t aware of it, but apparently, it shocked a few of the people around me.

When I told Amy that story, she showed me an ad from years ago that pictured a glass of Pineau des Charentes (PdC) with ice in it, with the word “Osez!” (or “Dare!”) above it. So depending on how you look at it, I was daring and was either before my time or after it. Nowadays, they are pushing adding ice to Pineau des Charentes…

Whether you drink it chilled, over ice, or in a cocktail, I love Pineau des Charentes and am particularly fond of the PdC made by Maison Pasquet, which has a unique freshness that makes it brighter than other PdCs. They also make an excellent rosé Pineau des Charentes, which give other rosé-based French apéritifs a run for their money; if you’ve been drinking Lillet, give PdC a try.

Visit the Pasquet website

[Added: Amy gave me a promo code for anyone to use if buying through their website to get 20% of their Pineau des Charentes and raspberry-flavored Marie-Framboise. Just enter PDC24 as a promo code when ordering. If you have questions, you can contact them here.]

Recently, I invited Amy into my kitchen in Paris, where we talked about what Pineau des Charentes is, how it relates to the Cognac-making region of France, favorite ways to drink it, and even some differences in the French way of doing business versus the American way, as she offers her perspective of both.

While it’s not as well-known as other French apéritifs outside of France (98% of the Cognac produced in France is exported, whereas only 20% of the Pineau des Charentes is exported), we both agreed that it deserves to be better known.

I hope you enjoy my chat with Amy about this uniquely French apéritif, and give it a try yourself!

-David

• You can find Jean-Luc Pasquet Pineau des Charentes on Wine Searcher.
  

• Follow Jean-Luc Pasquet on Instagram.
  

• Visit the Jean-Luc Pasquet website. (You can also arrange for a visit and tasting if you’re in the region)

Harvest Spritz Cocktail

Try my fall-friendly Harvest Spritz Cocktail, made with Pineau des Charentes.

Every summer we go on a road trip of sorts, sometimes to visit and stay with friends, other times we stay in gites, which are rental houses or apartments* usually in rural locations, or chambres d’hôtes, bed-and-breakfasts where you get a room in a home. Breakfast is often in a common dining room, and you mingle with other guests. I’m not especially fond of socializing until well after I’ve had my morning coffee, but my partner makes up for it and is happy to carry on spirited conversations while I do my best to welcome the day at my own (sloooooow) pace.

But I will get up for a flea market, and one thing we do share in common is that Romain likes going to them too. His father had a stall at the Saint-Ouen flea market in Paris, so he knows a fair amount about French antiques. I wrote more about Paris flea markets and thrift stores here.

Paris Flea Markets

Scattered throughout France are antique stores, consignment shops, thrift stores, and flea markets, which usually take place in warmer months — especially the summer. They can be hit-or-miss, and it’s disappointing when it’s a miss…and great fun when it’s a hit. You never know. Same with thrift stores. Some are real duds with lots of plastic children’s toys, CDs, and cheap housewares, but I’ve scored some great things at others.

A FAQ I get is “Where do you keep everything?” which is curious because when I’m in the States and see people with overloaded shopping carts at Costco or Trader Joe’s, it doesn’t occur to me to ask someone with sixteen cartons of Top Ramen, two dozen boxes of Trojan’s, or ninety-six rolls of toilet paper where they store all that stuff or, in some cases, how fast they’re planning to go through it.

For the record, pretty much everything I get is used for cooking or serving, so everything either goes on my kitchen shelves or in a small storage shed I have to store bakeware and cooking supplies. A few things linger in my home office, which float between the kitchen and the storage shed. So there ya go.

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Another question I get is how to find the flea markets in France. Most are found because we arrive somewhere and see signs for them while driving around. When I do, I snap a picture of the sign with my camera phone so I can look up the town or village when I get back to where we are staying. Often, they’re posted at roundabouts since those are high-traffic areas, although you have to be quick because French drivers tend to lack patience; mine, initially, didn’t like the idea of going around the roundabout a second (or third) time, which is a bit of a foreign concept to French drivers. But now he’s used to it and—get this—even slows down so I can see the sign better.

Since moving a few years ago, I’ve gotten a lot more selective about what I buy. I’m especially fond of things that cost €1 (~$1.10), and some of my favorite things were only just a euro or two. But if I see something I really want, I’ll spend more.

My favorite find this summer was this mini marble mortar at the Villeneuve-Les-Avignon brocante. Not sure how old it is, but it was originally €80, and I kept circling back to it. Finally, I decided I couldn’t go home without it and returned to the stand…and got it for €40 😊 It doesn’t take up much room, in case anyone’s asking, and I’m going to store salt in it.

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Before hitting the road, you can research through websites and apps like Brocabrac, Vide-Greniers.org, and Brocmania, which lists flea markets by départment (region) and town or village. Their websites and apps all have quite a few pop-up ads, so they can be frustrating to use on your phone while in the car, so best to do your research on them before heading out. If it’s raining, do check the listing for the flea market the night before or that morning as they may get canceled if the weather is bad, and they’ll often update that information there.

We arrived at the one above, and instead of finding tables of items to comb through, we arrived at an empty, soggy field.

Here are a few flea market tips:

• What we call a flea market in the U.S., in France, is called either a vide-grenier or a brocante. (In Paris, there is the famous marché aux puces flea market in Saint-Ouen, but it’s actually a collection of indoor antique and vintage vendors.)

  A vide-grenier is technically an “empty the attic” sale, so you’ll often find the majority of items are used contemporary housewares, clothes, kids’ toys, and other things people are trying to get rid of, although you’ll likely find some vintage things mixed in; I’ve found Le Creuset pots and gratin dishes, and Mauviel copper cookware, cheaply as younger people aren’t as interested in cooking with them as we are.

A brocante is used to describe an outdoor market where older items are sold, and often there are dealers there selling, as well as regular folks. But it’s also used to describe stores (like the picture at the very top of this post) or brocantes, like the one above, located in a hangar, which bills itself as a “grand brocante.”

Dépot-ventes are technically consignment stores, where people leave items for sale and the store takes a cut, but in my experience (i.e., visiting a lot of them), few actually are consignment stores and most are brocantes. The term braderie is sometimes used as well. In the past, it was used as a place where shopkeepers sell off their stuff at a discount, but like the enormous Braderie de Lille, it could just be a flea market. An antiquaire is a standard antique shop, run by a professional.

A Broc Troc is a store where people bring in old appliances, DVDs, stereos and electronics, used computers, and modern, used furniture to sell. Anything with Troc (which means “barter,” in French) or Cash (such as Troc Cash or Easy Cash) in the name is usually one of those places. They’re not good places to shop if you’re looking for anything vintage.

To find flea markets in France, I often look for them on Google Maps. When we’re driving around I use the “search this area” function. I used to try all the different names for them—’brocante’, then ‘dépot-vente’, then ‘antiquaire’ all of which yielded inconsistent results—until I decided just to type in ‘depot vente brocante,’ which does the trick. Note that some are better (or worse) than others, so look at the photos, which will give you some idea of the quality and types of items that they carry. Also check opening hours; In France, businesses adhere strictly to them, and many shops outside of Paris close for an hour or two at lunchtime.

• Emmaüs thrift stores are also favorite places to stop at in France. Most cities have an Emmaüs shop; some are small and mostly carry used clothes and used (contemporary) housewares, but others are large warehouse-like places, generally located outside of town.

Emmaüs stores have wildly varying hours; some are only open one day a week or one afternoon a week, and others open several. So best to check their website or hours on Google. Their thrift stores differ radically in terms of selection and quality; some have great vintage finds, and because the stores also serve underprivileged communities, others may have only used clothes, toys, and everyday housewares.

When you shop there, items may or may not have price tags on them. Most stores are divided into sections, and when you find what you want in one section, say, Books or Kitchen items, you bring it to the desk in that section where they tell you the price (if they’re not marked), then they give you a paper ticket to bring to the main cashier to pay for everything. Then you go back with your ticket, marked as paid, to retrieve your items.

• I often rely on Google Maps, rather than the website, to find their stores. The ones located in cities, such as downtown, are generally as good as the ones outside of town. Note that Emmaüs also provides lodging, assistance finding work, and help for people in need, so not all of their addresses have thrift stores. I usually look at the photos on Google Maps to determine if an address is a thrift store.

  

• Get to flea markets (brocantes and vide-greniers) early in the morning for the best selection. You’ll find better things early in the day (starting around 8am) when people are setting up, but getting there early means you’ll have to walk around while people unpack. While prices may get lower around closing time, the best finds are in the morning.

That said, people in the countryside aren’t necessarily on the lookout for vintage cassoles (cassoulet dishes) or tians (the cassole’s Provençal cousin), bistroware, and wooden cutting boards, but antique dealers may be. However, I bought that large cassoulet dish, above, around 11am, which no one seemed to be interested in. That one, I’m not sure where I’m going to put it; however, I was not going to leave it behind.

I also got a vintage flame-colored (called Volcanique) Le Creuset enamel gratin dish at a very crowded flea market that was in perfect condition, just sitting there, untouched in the early afternoon. They retail new for $150-210, and when I asked the price, she told me it was two euros ($2.50). So I bought it.

A few more tips:

• Bring small bills and coins. Spend a few days before you hit a flea market by breaking any bills larger than €10. Few people will have change early in the day, and you also don’t want to haggle someone down a euro, pleading that something is too expensive, then whip out a €50 bill. I like to bring a lot of change, too, since things I like are often €1.

• Bring a big shopping bag. Supermarkets in France sell large reusable shopping bags, and Ikea stores do as well. They’re lightweight and great for hauling things. I make sure to bring one with a shoulder strap.

  Pro tip: My favorites are the ones from Leroy-Merlin hardware stores (they have a few stores in Paris), which are wide, so things lay flat in them, and cost around €2. Bonus: Because they have a lie-flat bottom, they’re also excellent for transporting cakes and tarts.

• Don’t be afraid to bargain. When we travel, many of us tend to be more timid than we are at home. But it’s almost expected that you bargain. Not everyone wants to lower their price, and, yes, like everywhere, some people are unfriendly in France. You don’t want to insult anyone by offering €10 for something that’s marked €100, but offering 10-30% less isn’t unheard of, and yes, sometimes people offer 40-50% less and get it.

  If something is €20 and I want to buy it for €15, I might start at €12. If you’re timid, as I can be, start at €15 and prepare to be firm, although you’ll likely end up paying €18. The French have an expression: To cut the pear in two, which means you split the difference with a vendor. If you throw out that expression, “Couper le poire en deux,” they may chuckle that you even know that expression, especially if you have a foreign accent, and go for it.

  When negotiating, hold the item in your hand as it’s “flea market manners” not to butt in when someone is negotiating for something with a vendor. But once you put it down and take your hand away, you might lose it. That happened to me with a nice mortar and pestle at the Aligré flea market in Paris. Once I put it down, a dealer quickly grabbed it.

  My advice is always: Decide how much you want something while you’re bargaining, and if you end up paying a little more, don’t worry about it. You got something you wanted. Sometimes you’ll pay too much, and for other things, you’ll get a bargain. In the end, it all works out.

• Check the condition as everything you buy is buyer-beware, sold as is. Any scratches or discolorations are normal, but chips and especially cracks will/should greatly reduce the price. Always tap the sides of any bowl, vase, or plate you’re buying and check to hear if it’s solid. If it feels a little crackly when you tap it, it’s a sign there may be a hairline crack in it. Some are barely noticeable to the eye so take a good look.

• Many brocantes, depot-ventes, and antique stores aren’t open daily, so be sure to check the opening days and hours. Almost all are closed on Sunday, and some close midweek when they’re less busy. Google does a pretty good job confirming with merchants when they’ll be open (one merchant told me they get an automatic message every two weeks to confirm their hours), but the hours are not always 100% right.

  

  Before driving a long distance, call first. A number in France that begins with 06 is a mobile phone number. A lot of antique stores and brocantes don’t have websites, but many have Instagram and Facebook pages, and you can sometimes send a message there and get a response, or they’re more likely to keep the opening and closing hours updated there, rather than on a website.

One of our last stops was an antique shop out in the middle of nowhere. While we were poking around, I noticed, gulp…an old mortar (below), which caught my eye, and I thought might look nice in our garden. But then I noticed the table under it…

It’s made of heavy aluminum with sturdy metal legs, and I liked the industrial materials and the form. The owner said it was from an old orange processing facility, which made it extra appealing to me. He also had some interesting old French cookbooks and cooking tools and was surprised I knew what all of them were.

No one knew what that was, above…except me. I said it was a spoon rest. So he gave it to me, a gift to go along with the table. (If it’s for something different, let me know in the comments. UPDATE: A few people mentioned it was a scoop for dry goods, but a reader tracked it down using Google Lens and found out that it’s a tool used in mining, for blowing on, to separate dirt and sand from gold. Thanks Linda!)

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We ended up buying the table, which fit on top of the car. I wanted the chairs with yellow wooden slats as well, but we didn’t have anywhere to put them.

And for those still wondering what we do with everything, we are using our table almost daily. Well, we were using it, past tense, since it’s chilly and rainy now in Paris and too cold to eat outside. Flea market season is over as well. But come spring, we’re looking forward to using our table every day…and seeing what we find when we’re out and about next year.

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*You can find gîtes and chambres d’hôtes on websites such as Gites de France (the official website), and there are Airbnbs and VRBOs, as well as LeBonCoin, under “Locations de vacances” (holiday rentals), which is where some of the best deals are since the proprietors don’t have to pay any fees.

Of course, do your research to avoid scams and negative experiences, although I’ve only heard about them happening through the most well-known short-term rental platform. If you use them, if someone wants to take the conversation to What’s App, that’s often a sign that there may be trouble in the future. You don’t want to go off-platform.

Although it’s not an official holiday - we have plenty of those in France -, during the first weekend of the month of October, the Journée des Fous de Chartreuse takes place, a day when lovers of the beguiling green and yellow liqueur (informally called Le Club des Fous de Chartreuse, The Club of People Crazy for Chartreuse) gather at Caves Bossetti in the Marais to celebrate and drink our favorite spirit: Chartreuse.

I wrote about the mythical French liqueur in my book Drinking French, which some of us love (and some don’t), but if you’re in the former category, this is the places to meet others who share the same passion.

In my book, I provided some history of the liqueur and its close to thousand-year history in France, but for those who are just joining us, the herbal liqueur is made by Carthusian monks in the French alps, in the town of Voiron. Part of the mystique of the liqueur is that it’s a top-secret blend of 130 herbs and spices that only two monks know the recipe for. They don’t travel together (in case there’s an accident) and only now are they sharing the secret with a third monk, in possible preparation of one of the two monks retiring.

Get Drinking French

Over the centuries, the monks have faced a lot of difficulties since they first gathered in the year 1084, including fires, rockslides, problems with jealous neighbors, the French government demanding they hand over the recipe, and eventually being kicked out of France. They’ve had their ups and downs over the years and one of my very favorite food books, The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth, details the food in that region which was served at an auberge (hotel and restaurant) that was run by two women. It’s an amazing story told by a well-regarded food writer (who happened to the blind, which was never mentioned in the book) about the meals he had at the inn, and how they procured ingredients from the neighboring farmers, fisherman, butchers, and spirit-makers.

The book also includes some background and history of the monks, and the Chartreuse region. When I wrote Drinking French and was fact-checking it, since I used that book as a reference, a few experts raised an eyebrow at some of the stories about the monks presented in his book, but it’s still a great read and has been very influential to me.

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The book was originally published in 1973 and in a subsequent edition, the author, Roy Andries de Groot, clapped back at people who accused him of making things up after they went to the auberge and found out it wasn’t anything at all like what he described in the book. He defended the book, saying everything in it was true, but the auberge had changed hands, hence the discrepancy between what was written in the book and the visitors experience.

(The current auberge that’s there now makes no reference to the book on their website and when I visited Chartreuse while researching my book, I was surprised no one there had heard of his book.)

I’d marked today in my calendar for the annual meet-up, so put on my socks early this afternoon, and headed over to the shop on the busy rue des Archives. The Marais on a weekend is not a place for those who are looking for a bit of peace and quiet, but I managed to navigate the crowded streets of pedestrians who were spilling off the narrow sidewalks, to find a parking space for my bike, which someone had left their handcuffs at. So if you’re missing a pair, no judgements, but they’re at the corner of the Rue des Archives and the Rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie.

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Someone once said that being a writer is like having homework for the rest of your life. Remember how great it felt when you left school and realized that you’d never have to do homework again? It was similar to that feeling when you realized that you’d never have to take any kind of test again or be judged…until you move to a foreign country and have to apply for a visa, take language tests, and be judged.

When you’re in the vortex of writing a cookbook, you tend to block everything out in your life (sorry, Romain!) for the couple of years it takes to get it all together. You do learn who your friends are, which are the ones who understand when you have to cancel dinner with them because you’ve got a sinkful of pots and pans to wash after a day of recipe testing, or when you leave a dinner party at 10:30pm (not the usual 1am in Paris) because you were up at 6am testing tart doughs, or seeing how the custards you made the night before set, whether cornstarch or flour was a better thickener.

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You also have to gather ingredients, and it’s amazing how fast you can go through 3 dozen eggs, 6 pounds of butter, and 4 kilos (9 pounds) of chocolate. I’m used to waiting outside the supermarket at 8:30am for the motorized roll-up door to open, and I often just wear sweatpants and my Birkenstock super-grip kitchen clogs since I have a deep dislike of getting dressed first thing in the morning.

However, last week, a very nice young woman stopped me and said, “Are you David Lebovitz!?” With my unshaven face, flour in my eyebrows, work clogs, and tattered t-shirt (which I wear so my nice shirts don’t get messy), I said, “Um…yes,” and apologized for my appearance, and quickly headed to the Marché U supermarket where, as is often the case, they were just starting to restock from the day before, so half the things I needed weren’t on the shelves yet, and would probably/hopefully be by that afternoon, prompting me to have to go back again. I start early in the day since I often have to go to multiple food shops and markets to find everything that I’m looking for.

I finally went “professional” and got a card to shop at Metro, a large store where only people who have professional status in France can shop (sorry, égalité doesn’t apply…), so I can buy certain things in bulk, like butter, chocolate, and sugar. They’re open from 6am to 2am and, even better, the other shoppers aren’t as combative and confrontational as non-professional Parisians are when shopping:

I resisted shopping there for a long time as the term “Cuisine Metro” is applied to cafés and restaurants that buy pre-prepared food from there. But not to worry, I steer my five foot (1.5m)-long shopping caddy clear of the shrink-wrapped frozen quiches, spray-on tart glazes, and crème anglaise sold in plastic jugs, and stick with the butter, cream, and even Chartreuse, which I found there for €30 ($32) a bottle, and was sorry/not sorry that I bought them both.

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When you’re done writing your book, after you turn in your manuscript, the publisher sends it off to a copyeditor to check and query you about anything (and everything) in the manuscript that’s not clear or might be missing, or to clean up your faulty grammar. (Bakers tend to focus on food, not whether one should use “that” or “which.”) There may be questions such as, “When you say ‘chill,’ what does that mean?” (which seems obvious to me) or “When do you add the vanilla?” which you may have missed and is extremely helpful. When your manuscript has 111,653 words, keeping track of each and every one of them is a challenge.

And then, there are the numbers. I started adding metrics to my recipes over twenty years ago when most authors and publishers weren’t doing it, which is helpful for readers but requires a lot more brainpower to write in two systems of measurement. Consequently, it takes me a really, really long time and is slow-going (is there a limit to how many Junior Mints one should eat in a day?) making sure they all align. There have only been two times in the last ten years that I’ve cried: One was after my last visa renewal meeting, and the other was doing copy edits last week, but I’m almost there. We’re doing the photos this month here in Paris, and I’m excited for the team to come, where we’ll turn my kitchen, and the city of Paris, into our photo studio. I can’t wait.

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I don’t know about you, but my dance card always seems to be full. One good thing about living in France is that you learn to say Non. I used to hate saying it and even watched The Year of Saying Yes, a TED Talk by Shonda Rhimes on the advice of a friend who, along with her husband, took her three kids around the world on a sailboat because they wanted to. But as my friend postulated in her book Joie: A Parisian’s Guide to Celebrating the Good Life, that in France, non is self-care and means that you’re prioritizing what’s important to you. The other side is that baking and writing are about giving — that’s what bakers do and what comes naturally to us.

Two books I’ve been reading are How to Do Nothing and Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, which summarized for me (because I got to page 33 and still hadn’t learned anything) as: Prioritize three things in your life, and focus your attention on them. It’s interesting to think about, but not sure I can whittle it down to three. But it’s an intriguing idea.

We took a nice vacation during the first half of September to the south of France. I wrote about where and what we ate here and here:

…and I’m working on a post about finding flea markets in France, with some photos of some of my summer finds, found while combing through places like this!

Yikes… That was quite a treasure hunt. We spent a lot of time hunting down treasures — fortunately Romain and I have similar interests (when I start my top-three list, I hope I can keep “Romain” and “antiquing” on it, but it’ll be tough picking out what will be the third) — we did take time to go to the beach when mistral-like winds and sandstorms died down, and ate oysters, read books, and drank rosé.

When we arrived back home in Paris, mid-September, we found that our fig tree yielded only one, lone fig this year. Thankfully, where we stayed in Provence, there was an amazing — and amazingly prolific — fig tree that was so heavy with figs that they’d drop to the ground in front of us, soft as half-filled water balloons, heavy with sticky syrup, and I picked as many as I could. I am sure I ate at least two dozen a day.

In the end, we lugged three cases’ worth of figs away from Provence, along with flea market finds, and a lot of Not Frères pottery, which I justified on the pretext that I’d be using them for the photos in my book.

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When I got home, I put on my tattered t-shirt and made a few dozen jars of fig jam with my bounty, which we’ve been enjoying every morning, and I suspect we’ll be enjoying until next year at this time, when I hope our fig tree springs back into action.

There have been so many restaurants opening in Paris, and a number of visitors, that I’m doing my best to try new ones and revisit favorites. When a visiting friend made plans for dinner in Paris on a Sunday night at the hard-to-get-into Bistrot des Tournelles (that’s definitely not serving “Cuisine Metro”), after we had cocktails at Honey Moon, we arrived for our 9pm reservation only to find that he’d reserved for the following weekend and that the little bistrot was booked solid.

So we ended up at nearby Grande Brasserie, which is open on Sundays (when a lot of restaurants are closed in Paris) and serves very good renditions of traditional French food.

They took over the space from Bofinger, just across the street (which is skippable), and we started with their prize-winning œufs mayonnaise served with celery remoulade, along with fresh oysters and their excellent pâté en croûte. Since there were five of us, we shared a roast shoulder of lamb, which is served with salad and potato gratin, and a slab of aged côte de bœuf, which came with excellent fries. French people like meat really, really rare (called bleu), and even what is considered rare elsewhere, in France can be closer to bleu than people are used to. So we settled on saignant, which is medium-rare, and it was perfect.

Dessert was a shared plate of profiteroles, drowned in lots of chocolate sauce, and we ended with glasses of yellow Chartreuse while closing the place down close to midnight.

Favorite Paris Restaurants

So that’s what I’ve been eating, drinking, buying, and thinking. The weather has been unseasonably chilly here; this week is going to go down to 5ºC (41ºF). There are the usual fall strikes in France coming up, including a major one scheduled for today, October 1. Election season is around the corner, and voting is a right that not everyone has. So if you have it — use it! (Toll-free numbers for voters who live outside the U.S., who have questions about how to vote from abroad, are here.) I’ve got more friends on the way and look forward to seeing them, trying some new restaurants and visiting some favorites, and finishing up my book, which is due back to the publisher next week, so I’m heading back to work on that…pronto!

-David

Links I’m Liking

Is Italian cuisine…American? ()

The most famous café in Paris sets up for a reboot. (NYT/unlocked)

Live in France and want to block those annoying telemarketing calls? Bloctel may help. (République Française)

What makes — or breaks — a cookbook? ()

My French doctor laughed when I asked her for a prescription for a week (or two) in a spa, but I guess it’s possible. (New Yorker, possible paywall)

Iconic French glassware company, Duralex, files for bankruptcy…again. (Le Monde)

…and Tupperware, too. (Reuters)

Automne (restaurant) in Paris

The rentrée happens in Paris in September when everyone comes back from vacation. Not only is it back to school and back to work, but it’s also the month when restaurants, shops, and galleries have open houses and press events. I was excited to be invited to Automne restaurant. I bike past it all the time and think that I should go there, but by the time I get home, another thought has taken that space in my mind. So it was nice that someone fixed a date for me to try it.

I, along with a few other food writers, had a 7-course lunch that turned out to be one of the best meals I’ve had in Paris in a while. We had a few amuse-bouches at the bar with glasses of sparkling crémant d’Alsace (Champagne is out, crémant is in), and some of the courses we enjoyed were Salsify with summer truffles and celery root (above, center), line-caught tuna paired with crisp sweetbread and mushrooms, which sounded odd, but worked, a tartlet of foie gras on pain d’épice (spice bread) crust, an outstanding dessert of red plums, mirabelles, soy milk, and dill, and a second dessert (above, right) of black figs, feta, sesame, and red wine, which may sound a little strange. But in the right hands, feta and dill can work in desserts, as they did here.

Restaurant Automne

I normally avoid wine pairings which involves a different glass of wine with every course. I find it hard to appreciate seven different wines, one served right after another. It’s too much for me — I’d rather try, and linger, with two or three interesting wines, but the Alsatian wine pairings were brilliant nonetheless.

People are skeptical of Alsatian wines, thinking they’re sweet. Yet the greatest wines in the world are sweet, from Château Y’quem (often considered the best wine in the world), to muscat de Beaumes-des-Venise, Maury, late-harvest Riesling, ice wines, and port. And they’re not just for dessert, sweet wines (vins doux, in French) go well with first courses, such as terrines or melons with prosciutto. Be sure to serve them well-chilled.

Although this was a press meal, whenever I give a shout-out to a restaurant, I always consider if it’s worth it for you to go, or for me to go back…which I will. Dinner here is €110 for 5 courses and €145 for 7 courses at night, and €75 for lunch. The meal was better than most meals I’ve had in 3-star restaurants in Paris, where the menus run over €400 per person. So while it’s not cheap, I don’t consider it excessively priced. (Prices in France include tax and tip.) You can eat for less in Paris, but it’s certainly a nice experience if you’re interested in a fine dining experience along with some very good wines. Just be sure to leave the tattered t-shirt and Birkenstock clogs at home.

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Picking up where I left off in Part 1:

After a few days in Provence, we headed to our final destination, the Languedoc-Roussillon, where we stayed for almost two weeks. That part of France isn’t as well-known as Provence, but a winemaker told me it’s the largest winemaking region in the world, so I knew we wouldn’t have any trouble finding wine, nor did we have trouble finding things to eat.

La Cambuse du Saunier

Having grown up in New England, I’m used to eating seafood by the sea, which isn’t all that common in other parts of France. Seaside regions like Brittany and Normandy are lovely but too chilly to eat outside most of the year. In some places, there are upscale restaurants facing the water, but I really like simple when it comes to seafood. And a favorite place to enjoy seafood by the sea is La Cambuse du Saunier in Gruissan.

The restaurant is attached to a salt-harvesting facility, so you can see the salt marshes from the benches of the restaurant, where paludiers scoop up sea salt into big piles and rake up the more delicate fleur de sel.

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There’s nothing fancy here, and they’ve wisely designed the tables with a center sections that moves to create two seating area, so you’ll be sharing the table with other diners, but not sitting right next to them. Years ago, we stayed at a B&B in Brittany where the owner had a book of business cards from local restaurants she recommended. I found a seafood restaurant where the food was simple and you dined at communal tables.

When we returned, I told the owner about how good it was and suggested she add it to her recommendations, but she told me that she used to include it, but guests didn’t like eating there because people don’t like to share tables with other diners. So La Cambuse du Saunier found a good solution. And interestingly…we’ve often had interesting conversations with tablemates here, across the center divide. (Wouldn’t it be nice if politicians could do the same?)

Having lived in San Francisco for many years, I’m used to meaty Dungeness crabs. The tourteau (crab) we ordered that was served with aïoli was fine but a lot of work, with minor rewards, to pull the little bits of meat out. French people have a lot more patience for doing things like that. But I did love the oysters we had that were freshly plucked from the water and shucked.

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For those who want to do it up, they do very nice seafood platters heaped with oysters, shrimp, sea whelks, mussels, and crab, served with the traditional bread and salted butter. And if you don’t want to do a full bottle of wine, the vin blanc from the La Vendémiaire cooperative by the 50cl carafe is a more manageable size.

Generally speaking, French people also prefer whole fish rather than filets, which don’t get boned with the same precision as they do in the States. On the other hand, fish (and meat) generally tastes better when cooked closer to the bones. And the salt-baked dorade was really delicate, and delicious, which Romain skillfully boned for me.

You might not believe me, but the real star here is the rice. Rice may not sound all that exciting, but their rice is excellent, a blend from a local rizière, rice grower, that’s a mix of various rices. Like most good food, it’s served without a lot of adornment, just on its own. And it’s memorable. (Romain was wondering why I was ordering rice instead of French fries until he took a forkful of the rice and realized I’d made the right decision.)

The restaurant uses as many locally produced products as possible, such as the sheep’s milk ice cream from Audeline. we shared scoops of dark chocolate and coffee ice cream, but there’s also a Tiramisel made with their fleur de sel and a Pan perdu (French toast) served with caramel ice cream, accented with the same salt.

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[Notes: Reservations are essential here, which you can make online, although they have a few seats at the bar for walk-ins, but don’t count on them being available. Also in Gruissan is Chez Lio, a fun restaurant serving locally caught seafood. For generous appetites, their Parillade platters of seafood are fun to share. Reservations here are essential, which they don’t take online; you’ll need to call during opening hours.]

Restaurant des Ollieux

In terms of food, the best meal we had on our trip was at the Ollieux Romanis winery, which an antique store owner who used to own a restaurant told us about. We ended up spending a lot more than we planned there, including buying this table from an old orange farm for our backyard…

…which we drove around strapped to the roof of our car for almost a week. Luckily, no one swiped it, but we did park it outside a thrift store and caused a bit of a commotion as people thought maybe we picked it up at another thrift store (at a thrift store price).

We thought we were eating at La Touketa restaurant, which has a spectacular view of the winery and Corbières, but after driving up to the top of the hill and finding it closed (it was a bit chilly out), we found the restaurant down below, attached to the winery.

I’m super picky about where I’ll eat steak tartare, and I felt pretty confident this was the place to order it, and I was right. It was one of the best versions I’ve had.

Usually in France, steak tartare is a main course, and it’s always a huge portion. While I like steak tartare, a little goes a long way for me. So the portions, and the seasonings, were just right. On the menu, it’s available in two sizes, and I thought we were ordering the smaller one, to share, but I think they gave us the larger one.

My main course was a line-caught tuna tataki, which I always thought meant raw, but I found out that tataki can also be seared, as was this one. It was a little more seared than it needed to be since the tuna was sparkling fresh, with a black and white sesame crust, but it was excellent nonetheless, served with a roasted eggplant filled with pristine vegetables.

We split a fig tart for dessert (shown further above) that was perfectly prepared as well. The figs were ripe and sweet, and the tart dough was thin but delivered some buttery flavor. There were a few dots of fig sauce on the plate, but being a winery, it would have been interesting to have a reduced red wine sauce spoon on, or around it, since red wine tends to get spicy when cooked, and it would have enlivened the dessert, but we enjoyed the tart all the same.

L’Escale Village

We like to hit routiers, when we’re not picnicking, while traveling by car. I had a truly terrible sandwich at a highway rest stop on the way home, and it’s pretty hard to ruin a sandwich, but they managed to do it. So we like to bring our own food, which also does double-duty as a refrigerator clear-out before leaving for a few weeks.

The largest routier in France is L’Escale Village, where we’ve eaten before, and we planned to stop there on our way home.

The previous time we went, we arrived late in the evening pretty stressed as we’d been driving with the “empty tank” light on for a while and couldn’t find an open gas station. When we pulled into the town of Châteauroux, we were desperate for gas…and for something to eat. All the gas stations and restaurants were closed, so we parked the car at a hotel and saw the bright lights at L’Escale Village still burning bright, a short distance away, so we headed over there.

(Fun fact: In Châteauroux-Délios there is an airport that was an American military base between 1951 and 1967 and home to some 8000 troops. It’s just across the street from the restaurant.)

That night, we were relieved to find a place that would feed us and were seated in their standard brasserie, which is minimal in style, and with several truck drivers dining alone, it had a true truck stop atmosphere. Only the small part of the brasserie was open that late in the evening, which was near the bar and the semi-open, stainless-steel kitchen, and we enjoyed the atmosphere there, as well as the classic French truck stop–style fare.

This time, the expansive back dining room of the brasserie was open, and they said we had to sit there since the smaller dining room was full. To make a long story short, neither of us liked the large dining room, which was drab and uninteresting, so we decided to try the dining room of the main restaurant, which ended up being not as much fun and was trying a little too hard to be something it’s not. We were both a little cranky at that point, and the whole “I don’t know…where do you want to sit?” back-and-forth had grated on me—and Romain.

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He decided he just wanted a main course, no wine, no first course, and no dessert. Without getting into it, when you eat at a place that has a €30 three-course pre-fixe menu, that’s usually a better deal than ordering a €25 main course, especially if the same main course is available in the €30 option. That math isn’t always evident to others, so to end the stalemate and break the ice, I made the call that we were both ordering the three-course menu.

After we started speaking to each other again, we did enjoy the starters to our €30.30 three-course meals, which did carry a €2,50 supplement—two oysters, three shrimp, and three bulots (sea whelks), which came with salted butter, mayonnaise, a spiced mayonnaise, mignonette sauce—and was worth it, except for the stale rye bread.

I don’t expect a lot from routiers, which are always fun and have “down and dirty” French classics, rather than textbook perfect ones. Their lower price point, and clientele looking for heartier food over highly styled food, means not everything will be perfect.

They brought out some appetizers on soggy bread (above left), and I had a ballotine of chicken (a roulade of sorts) with so-so tomato sauce and excellent roast potatoes. It was fine, but I was admiring the steak-frites a neighboring table was eating.

Dessert was a Floating Island, which is one of my favorite French desserts in France consisting of a poached or baked meringue floating in crème anglaise with caramel sauce and toasted nuts.

The meringue was rather bland, and when I wondered where the caramel was, I noticed in the belly button–like center, there was a little pool of it waiting to come out. In place of toasted almonds, there were little soggy biscuits that were as soft as spoon-size Shredded Wheat that had been soaking in the bottom of the bowl of milk a little (or way?) too long. Needless to say, they weren’t an improvement over toasted nuts, and something burnt-looking stuck in the top didn’t add to the appeal.

While L’Escale remains a fun place to go, next time we’ll stick to the more casual brasserie. (Brasserie in France refers to an informal restaurant that is often open all day. The one at L’Escale Village is open until 11:30pm.) That’s where we’ll be next time, and I’ll also stick to more traditional fare, like steak-frites.

[Note: There’s now a website that lists all the routiers in France here. While an app would be helpful, the website has a search feature and a map on its homepage of where they all are. You can also buy a Guide de Relais Routiers in book form.]

Once home, we started unpacking everything, including the figs that we picked in Provence and brought home.

They were easily the best figs I’ve ever had, and I couldn’t leave behind the 3 flats of them we had picked. And it would have been sad to see them go to waste, which was where many of them were destined to go; because they attracted yellow jackets—in addition to me, the owners weren’t keen to have all the ripe figs around.

I didn’t feel like spending a few days of my vacation in the kitchen making jam (I can do that at home!), so I cooked them to a puree so they’d take up less room, and packed them in the freezer where we were staying, until we left.

I did end up making a few jars of jam while on vacation, because I just couldn’t resist…

…but the first thing I did the following morning (and afternoon, and early-evening) of our return was to turn the rest of the figs into jam. And after a day of intensive jam-making, we now have nearly thirty jars of fig jam, and I’m sending a very large one to the owners of the tree so in case we go back, they’ll let us haul away their excess.

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We took our vacation this summer in September, which was a good thing as the Paris Olympics turned out to be a lot of fun, and the dire predictions about the city being overcrowded and disorganized didn’t come to pass. Although, a number of small businesses were severely impacted by the loss of business due to people staying away from Paris this summer over those concerns, and others. But the bigger picture is that people all over the world saw the best of Paris, and even the grumpiest of Parisians who fled the city had quite a bit of FOMO, and the subsequent Paralympic events were well-attended, and those athletes were able to share the limelight.

We had to miss those as we left town at the end of August, and I tried to spend as little time online as possible during our two weeks away to focus on relaxing in Provence and the Languedoc-Roussillon. While traveling by train is enjoyable, and you avoid the 8-hour drive (I can’t legally drive in France because I haven’t had the courage to try to get a French driver’s license, which a friend described as “the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” which was even harder than getting French nationality, it’s just a lot easier driving. So Romain has to do all the driving.

The upside to driving is that the highways are in great shape, due to steep tolls to ride on them. For people in the States complaining about high gas prices, gas in France is about three times higher, roughly $8/gallon(!) But it’s nice to have a car with ample storage space for stopping at all the flea markets in the French countryside, which I plan to do a separate post about soon, including how to find them.

Paris Flea Markets

Unfortunately, it’s easy to eat not-great food en route in France. When I moved to France, a French friend told me: “Daveed, in France, we go out to be with our friends, not for the food.” And a friend who lives in the Languedoc-Roussillon said to me last year, after we had a so-so meal at a highly lauded (by the locals) restaurant: “People in this region don’t make a lot of money, but they also know how to cook. So when they go out, they go for the experience, not necessarily for the food.”

There was the famous dip in dining fifteen years ago, written about in books like Au Revoir to All That, as well as in newspapers and magazines. While people blamed the journalists for writing about it, it prompted restaurants in France to start using the term, and displaying the symbol, Fait Maison at places that make their food from scratch.

It seems to have fallen by the wayside, but if you look carefully for restaurants in the countryside, you can find some gems. My strategy when looking at restaurants online is to look at the pictures, rather than comments. They can tell you a lot.

Our first night on the road, we had a terrible (a word I don’t use lightly…) Grand Aïoli platter of previously frozen fish, industrial mayonnaise, a soggy, sad heap of overcooked vegetables, and shrimp that was so overcooked that it couldn’t be peeled, which I didn’t know was possible.

The restaurant had all sorts of five-star reviews, accompanied by beautiful pictures of food that looked nothing like the food we were served. Oh, and the first-course ceviche smelled a bit off. After that, I did more research before we went anywhere, as we headed farther south, to our destination.

One skill I do have is finding things at flea markets. I found this generous tian, below, that was dirty but so beautiful I couldn’t resist it, as well as a few others.

I also found a unicorn—the French equivalent of Stretch-Tite (oddly, at an antique shop), which had a similar cutter to its American counterpart. I go through one roll every three to four years, and I even trim the pieces down to fit over containers so as not to waste any. (Those who are concerned about plastic wrap and waste should stop using toilet paper, which is massively wasteful, and get a washlet or sprayer instead.)

I didn’t buy the used roll of film but will look for it next time I’m running low; someone brought me four rolls a few years ago, and I’m still on the first one, so that’ll likely be in 2037. But I was happy when we landed in Provence and found a wonderful Grand Aïoli, which made me forget about the forgettable one, and more…

Chapeau de Paille

We found our real Grand Aïoli here, made with garlic mayonnaise fait maison. The server was racing around when I got there, while Romain tried parking the car in the very popular village of St. Rémy de Provence. We arrived late due to traffic, which we called to let them know about, and all the lovely tables outside were full. I asked if one might be available shortly. She said non, adding that if we’d arrived by our 7:30 reservation time, we could have eaten outside. I was directed inside, where I was seated, and gazed out the window at people enjoying their early evening dinner on the terrace.

When Romain arrived, I apologized about not getting a table outside, and he immediately started working on getting a table outside, as one was about to be libérée (liberated). I didn’t get any pictures, other than of the homemade aïoli, above, made with the excellent olive oil from the nearby Moulin Castelas, but if you’re in the area and looking for classic Provençal food, including soupe au pistou, this is your place. Just be sure to reserve…and show up on time. (Or with Romain.)

La Cuisine au Planet

Recommended by a friend in the region who we were staying with, this wasn’t on my radar when I was looking for places to dine. Located in the small town of Fontvieille, this is true cuisine du marché, market-based cooking. We weren’t particularly hungry that day for lunch, so we ordered what sounded light on the menu: cold cucumber soup with feta mousse and dill pesto, which was nice on the warm day (yes, on the terrace), and Romain went with Épaule de taureau (braised bull), above right, which is a specialty of the region (which ended up not being light, but he liked it), and I went with the Grilled pork with smoked paprika, a delicious zucchini crumble, and smoked eggplant ketchup underneath, a condiment that was originally not made with tomatoes but a preserved paste made with fish, vegetables, fruits, or nuts.

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We split a dessert of Prunes confites, which ended up being a plum crumble topped with oatmeal and coconut sugar.

The word prune in French refers to fresh plums, rather than dried ones, as it does in English. And we had no shortage of fresh fruit while we were in Provence. We found an amazing fig tree that was loaded with so many figs, they were falling off the branches in syrupy puddles, with their naturally sweet-sticky sap leaking out them.

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More on those later, but we also dined really well in Arles…

Chardon

Chardon in Arles changes its chef every few months, welcoming visiting chefs like Preston Miller, who is originally from New York and who’s worked at some of the best restaurants there as well as in Paris and Marseilles.

There are no choices here, although they’ll make adjustments to the menu for any food allergies or aversions. Our €55 four-course dinner (which would have been $180 in San Francisco or New York, where, admittedly, the gas is cheaper) was outstanding.

The first course was a plate of seared amberjack with a fermented chili vinaigrette, raspberries, and toasted yeast. It was so good, we were looking forward to everything that was going to follow. We then had ricotta-filled agnoletti with caponata and crisp Parmesan tuiles. Following that was roasted maigre, a firm-fleshed whitefish with sorrel sauce, habanero-tomato sauce, fried shiso, and local chanterelles. Dessert was black fig sorbet with grape caramel, fig leaf oil, and wisps of brik pastry.

It was really an excellent meal and not too heavy, which was appreciated. We left really satisfied, but this is another place to reserve. There are a lot of tourists in Arles, and restaurants fill up, and they were turning a lot of people away since they’re small and don’t have a lot of seats. (And, as always, if you can’t make a reservation at any restaurant, be sure to cancel.)

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Table de Meunier

Also near the town we were staying in, one night we had dinner with some local friends at Table de Meunier, which has been around for nearly 35 years and is somewhat of a local legend.

We had a chicken terrine with pickled eggplant, above left, that was fine as well as rosé, which is pretty much obligatory to drink when in the south of France in the summer, and they often serve it with a little bucket of ice to drop a few cubes in. For my main course, I had a ceviche surrounded by cucumbers, where the fish was closer to cooked than raw. (After my prior experience, I was almost relieved this version was cooked.)

My main course was Haché de sanglier (wild boar) with Sichuan pepper, above. It was very…local, and didn’t match the food at Chardon or La Cuisine au Planet, but we were in very good company and also had a fun time with the server, who sat in the bric-a-brac filled garden with us while taking our order and bantered back and forth with us during dinner.

Another meal we had, at an address not worth mentioning—not because it was good or bad, but because it was in the middle of a nondescript office park while we were driving from Provence to the Languedoc-Roussillon—was this Daube niçoise at a restaurant that said on the blackboard outside: “Cuisine Fait Maison - 98.9% Lol!”

I’m guessing the 1.1% part was the pasta. The restaurant was filled with office workers, and the staff was very friendly. The rest of the menu was burgers and pizza, and for anyone who doesn’t believe that the French are some of the largest consumers of pizza in the world, every town, village, and city we passed or visited had a pizza shop seemingly on every corner. In places where there isn’t a shop, there’s a pizza machine, like this:

We didn’t have any machine-made pizzas, but we did have an excellent burger at…

La Maison de L’Écurie

Located on the banks of the Canal du Midi, this seasonal grillade (grill restaurant) is one of our favorite places to eat in the area. It also has one of my favorite dining tables anywhere.

This simple restaurant has seats on the ground and a wine list full of affordable local wines. The one we had wasn’t expensive (€25) and went just as well with the burger as it did with the generously-sized, and excellent, duck breast served with squash puree.

The staff is always friendly here, and we really like the laid-back vibe of eating on the banks of the canal, and it’s nice to eat things cooked over the fire, which we don’t get in Paris.

Bistro La Nautique

‘Twas early September, after tourist season ended, when we went to Bistro La Nautique for lunch on the outskirts of Narbonne. The servers weren’t really up for a lot of chit-chat. Romain accidentally jostled one when he pulled out his chair, and he got a frosty look for doing that. (I’m used to it.) But I think we got handed off to another server, who found Romain amusing. (Whew!)

We come here every year, and I’ve noticed there are more and more upscale types (and fancier cars in the parking lot) every time. But still, there are other fun diners. We had a good talk with the neighboring table about which antique stores to hit in the area, and we had a laugh running into them after lunch roaming through the aisles at the local Emmaüs thrift shop.

The food here is reliably fresh, delicious, and fait maison. We began with a little dish of tortillas de morue (salt cod) as well as an Escalibade of vegetables and smoked sardines. Their chicken croquettes are always excellent, as is their pâté de campagne.

I had the Dos de vraie morue (true cod) gratinéed with aïoli. I had it last year and remembered how good it was, and uncomplicated, which is how I prefer my seafood. I keep thinking that I want to try it at home. I don’t know if they put the aïoli on after cooking, or before? And if they do it before, what keeps it from breaking? I guess I’ll have to go back next year and ask…

Les Trois Petits Cochons

If you want to dine with the locals, you can’t do better than at Les Trois Petits Cochons. Open only for lunch, it’s priced for the locals as well with the daily two-course menu clocking in at a mere €19, and if I’m not mistaken, my glass of rosé was €1.50.

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Romain wasn’t very hungry, so he skipped the first course, and I had the Warm goat cheese salad with honey on toasts, which was quite good, although I didn’t get a picture because I know the drill: He says he’s not hungry and doesn’t want a first course, then ends up eating half—or more—of mine, so I was defending my territory.

We both had the Émincé of yakitori-style beef, which you’re probably not thinking people eat in French villages, but they do. And after eating French food for a few weeks, this California boy needs some Asian flavors. It was fine and hit the spot, and I appreciated that the vegetables were fresh and bright because I was also craving some vegetables, too.

Buvette de Cabezac

This “dine with the locals” spot is next to where they press L’Oulibo olive oil, a local specialty, and I picked up a few jars of their fresh Lucques olives, which are divine.

Again, my dining companion said he didn’t want a first course, but I couldn’t resist the œufs mayonnaise, a café classic, here served with tuna, which I already resigned myself to sharing, based on #experience.

Continuing in the Japanese(ish) vein, we both had the yakitori-style chicken, which was actually served yakitori-style, i.e., on a skewer. (If anyone wants to unravel why countries translate foods without any links to the real deal, they could start with French tacos, a flour tortilla enveloping heaps of cheese, French fries, meat, ketchup, cream or mayonnaise…and a whole lot of other things you never would see in an actual taco, after they figure out the whole fried-chicken Caesar Salad thing.)

Romain didn’t love his chicken yakitori, saying it was dry, but he’s not a fan of boneless chicken breasts in general, unless I make them at home, which I do by marinating them in lots of herbs, chopped garlic, salt and pepper, and olive oil. We skipped dessert as we were anxious to get to La Brocabize, a favorite antique store that’s just 5 minutes away.

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(Stay tuned for part 2…)

It goes without saying that I think about food…a lot. (According to Romain, it’s too much.) But I can’t help it: It’s what’s on my mind all the time. A chef friend of mine in Paris recently went on le régime — a diet — and said the hardest part was not eating what she wanted to eat. “I love to eat!” she admitted, with a little sadness but also with a smile.

I feel the same way. I was having lunch with another friend in August and said that I gave up the idea of ever having abs (well, visible ones — they’re under there, somewhere) because I wanted to eat French fries. I’d met a model in New York once who was in his twenties, who had a lean, muscular body, but confided in me: “I’d kill to have a French fry.” It made me sad that someone that young couldn’t even have one single French fry. I’m pretty sure at his age, I was wolfing them down by the handful, whereas now, I reach into the pile and grab only the crispy ones and leave the lesser-cooked ones behind. I’m not wasting the calories on those limp losers.

One of the reasons I moved to France was for the food culture. There’s a strong food culture in San Francisco as well, so it was basically a horizontal move. No one told me about winter in Paris, though — I thought every season was spring. And no one told me there were twenty-one verb tenses in French. Who knew I’d have to learn a foreign language to live in another country? I thought I’d just have to say “Bonjour, Madame” before I went into a shop, and everything else would be a breeze.

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What helped me to blend in was that I was interested in food, which is a popular subject in France. When I met bakers, chocolatiers, and pastry chefs, they didn’t think much of me with my rudimentary French. But when I started talking about the technical aspects of our/their profession, they got that I wasn’t just some dope who couldn’t differentiate between the ranges of past-tense French verb conjugations — there’s one for a past action that happened before another past action, and even one when the past tense was about something “historic.” Thankfully, I knew how chocolate was tempered, the qualities of different crus of chocolate, and even more importantly, what it was like to work 10- to 12-hour days in a professional kitchen.

France is a country that rewards you the longer you stay. Unlike the U.S., where it’s easy to meet people and the default of waiters and salespeople is, “Can I help you?,” in Paris, you have to earn it, and longevity (and learning the language) pays off.

There’s the brutal process of getting and renewing your visa, which I told someone who recently had success in renewing his that it’s intentional, so that when you finally get it, you forget everything else and just feel thankful. I had to renew mine every year, a process that takes at least six months, which made staying here a challenge.

The longer I stayed, the more I integrated. There’s a popular belief that the French don’t like Americans, which isn’t true, and you don’t have to lose what makes you American to live in France. I had several French friends and co-workers in California who’d lived there for decades and still made mistakes in English and kept their strong French accents, but who had acclimated to the American way, and sometimes it’s not easy going back.

A French friend who moved back to France told me she was shocked at how impolite the cashiers at the supermarchés were. “They just shove your groceries at you!” she told me. She’d also forgotten about the overload of paperwork; when she signed up for a family plan with a mobile phone provider, not only did all her kids have to come into the shop, in person, but she had to present birth certificates for each of them to prove they were her actual children.

Another main cultural difference is that during the summer, almost everyone goes on vacation, called les vacances, which literally translates to vacations (plural). It’s one long vacation and more of a concept than a series of vacations. It started in 1936, when hourly workers didn’t get any paid time off. Fed up with how they were treated, they went on strike and won the right to get paid vacations.

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Alas, indépendent, or self-employed, people never went on strike for that benefit, so we stuck close to home this summer. I have plenty of work on my desk and a bunch of recipes to test (which was more fun than the paperwork), before we head out this month for our vacances.

It’s when you take a “hard stop,” something I learned when I was on book tour in Los Angeles a while back and had a professional escort with me. No, she wasn’t that kind of escort, but was someone who specialized in accompanying authors on book tours. I had three big events in one day, and she made sure that when it was noon, I was out of there precisely at noon, yanking me away even if I was talking to someone in mid-sentence.

She also had great stories about other authors. When she was escorting one legendary writer, the hotel called and said to come pick her up right away. When she arrived, the author was wearing a mink coat, with nothing on underneath, walking down the middle of the street after a few too many martinis. Another was arrested for shoplifting and had to be bailed out before their event that evening. Ever since then, I’ve made it a point to get a receipt when I buy anything in a shop (France has trained me well…#paperwork) when I’m on book tour, and I make sure that I’m only seen in public with book escorts, not any other kind.

It’s been a fun summer in a lot of ways; I had an amazing time at the Olympics, and when the city empties out in late August, it’s a nice time to be here. And now, it’s time for my annual break, to refresh and rejuvenate.

I’m off until later in September, stepping away from the computer, and email, getting some beach time, enjoying some sunshine, and definitely having some good food while I’m away, including a few French fries.

-David

Banana Granola

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I found myself with a few extra bananas on hand last month, so I did what everyone does when they have a problem: I took it to social media. I posted that I didn’t know what to do with them, making a point to say that I didn’t have any more space in my freezer, and since I’m testing recipes for cookbooks right now, I didn’t have time to bake anything with them, such as banana bread.

Many helpfully suggested that I freeze them…or bake something with them, such as banana bread😊.

But I learned that people have very, very strong opinions about ripe bananas, and the post generated over 575 comments, unlike the post right before it, which got 24 comments.

Not only did it not need to be stored in the freezer, but the suggestion to make banana granola appealed to me since we were running low on granola. I usually make this recipe for granola, but the commenter Polly suggested an Insta recipe by Claire Thomson of 5 o’clock apron and the author of Veggie Family Cookbook. Being an Insta recipe, hers was a casual affair, and she called for handfuls of ingredients. Early in my days of sharing recipes online, back in 2008, I wrote a post: What is a handful? because people asked me what that meant.

So I toggled Claire’s recipe a bit, adding a bit of precision, but it’s a pretty flexible recipe, and if you find yourself with a few ripe bananas, and no freezer space, nor the desire to make banana bread, give it a try.

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Preheat the oven to 300ºF (150ºC) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a big bowl, mix together:

500g (5 1/2 cups) old-fashioned rolled oats

80g (3/4 cup) nuts (walnuts, almonds, or pecans), coarsely chopped

65g (1/2 cup) pumpkin seeds

65g (1/2 cup) sunflower seeds

40g (1/2 cup) unsweetened dried shredded coconut

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt

Heat in a medium saucepan:

100g (1/2 cup) packed light brown sugar

90ml (6 tablespoons) neutral-tasting vegetable oil

80g (1/4 cup) date or carob molasses; you could use agave nectar, honey, or maple, rice, or Golden syrup instead

Once warm, remove from heat and add:

Two medium-sized ripe bananas, cut into large pieces. Puree with an immersion blender or in a food processor, blender, or mini chopper.

Use your hands to gather clumps of the mixture and distribute everything—the clumps and non-clumps—on the prepared baking sheet. Bake until deep golden brown, about 30 minutes, stirring the granola once or twice during baking so it cooks evenly. Cool completely, then store in an airtight container.

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Links I’m Liking

What’s happening to all the portable AC units athletes bought, who were staying in the Olympic Village in Paris? (The Verge)

A deep dive into the history of the croque monsieur. (via )

How to make cultured butter at home. (via )

7 myths about cooking and baking with sugar. (Washington Post/article unlocked)

Paris nightclub tries to charge Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles $26,000 for a bottle of Champagne. (People)

The historic mid-century modern home where Emily in Paris (Lily Collins) actually lives. (Vogue)

Things I Like

When I was starting my career working in restaurants, you needed to have a German knife, or knives, if you wanted to be taken seriously. Nowadays, from what I’m told, everyone wants to have Japanese knives that cost hundreds of dollars each.

At home, I’ve generally used German knives, although I’ve added a few French ones to the mix. Sometimes I open the dishwasher after the cycle to find a paring knife crammed into the silverware basket, or a chef’s knife gets placed in the sink in the jumble of pots and pans. I used to joke that the best way to keep your knives sharp was to not let anyone else use them, but that’s pretty hard when you’re sharing a home, and a kitchen.

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So a couple of years ago, I was at Surfas in Los Angeles, roaming the aisles, and spotted these Dexter knives. They were my Proust madeleine, and I remembered my early days working in restaurants, when all the prep cooks used white-handled Dexter knives; they were cheap, and no matter what happened to them — I’ve seen them literally dumped into a plastic dishwasher rack with a bunch of silverware and run through the hot dishwasher — they remained unfazed by the experience. The company calls them: White handle. Gold standard.

I’ve had this one, above, for a couple of years, and it remains the sharpest (and cheapest) knife in my kitchen. I bought a 3-pack and am still on my first one, which is doing well, and I’m even taking it on vacation with me.

The knives are made in America, and I haven’t seen them outside of the States (the only set I’ve seen was a 3-pack on Amazon.fr for a whopping €165, which is a big nope), but you can get them at Surfas, the Dexter website, and Amazon US (where I see they also sell them in colors, as well as at Surfas). You can also pick them up at your local restaurant supply shop.

Paris has changed quite a bit, even over this summer (!), when new places opened or changed hands, and I tried a few places in other arrondissements, notably the 19th and 20th, which are taking over the mantle from the 10th, then the 11th, where young chefs were opening places. It’s been exciting to see the changes that continue to swirl in the Paris dining scene, and here are a few places I’ve been to recently.

Soces

I met a friend at Soces, owned by the former chef, Marius de Ponfilly, of Clamato (the seafood restaurant owned by the Septime team), and just after we sat down, my friend announced that he isn’t a big seafood fan. He’s a pretty good eater and dines out a lot in Paris, so I was surprised he agreed to eat here, where three-quarters of the menu focuses on seafood. But if you don’t love seafood, you can certainly find something on the menu, although he was game for trying certain things.

We started with oyster shooters and mini-margaritas, above, which were fine, but it would have been nice to have some sort of juice or sauce in the oysters to tie them to the mini cocktails. (On the other hand, oysters are pretty sacred in France, and a majority of people can’t imagine putting anything on them, except lemon.)

We moved on to œufs mimosa with buttermilk and trout roe, a riff on the French bistro classic of hard-cooked eggs served with mayonnaise, which were delicious. And instead of the usual three halves you get when you order œufs mayo in France, it was nice that they give you four.

We also shared white tuna with smoked tomatoes, served on little puddles of tomato jelly and nasturtium leaves. (For those who dislike the foam that’s frequently used in Paris restaurants, rest assured, there was nary a bubble of the frothy stuff in sight at Soces.)

We also had a tartare of aged beef à la Provençal, topped with green (underripe) almonds and roasted peppers, whose flavor I found a bit too strong and threatened to overwhelm the beef. As soon as I pushed the pepper to one side, separating the two, my appreciation of the dish improved. It was an inventive twist on ratatouille, and my only suggestion would be to feature the eggplant over the peppers rather than putting them in such a prominent position.

We had the steamed cod, which the kitchen kindly (and without asking) split onto two plates, with a “minestrone” of beans, topped with a mint, fava bean, and garlic condiment served on top, which was quite tasty.

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Dessert was roasted vanilla apricots with hazelnut praline and orange blossom cream, which tasted better than it photographed.

And even though I’d woken up at 6am that morning to wait for the oven repair person to come, who said he’d come between 7am and 3pm, before I nodded off, I wanted to taste La Gauloise, a French herbal liqueur in the same vein as Chartreuse, made in Burgundy. My friend had a snifter of Armagnac Morning Dew, V.S.O.P. The wine list leans toward non-manipulated/natural wines, with some exceptional wines from the Jura. We went with aligoté from Fanny Sabra that was full-bodied with a nice minerality that went well with the seafood.

Soces
32, rue de la Villette (19th)

Dandelion

Before I went to London earlier this summer, a few people warned me about sky-high restaurant prices. I’m used to New York and San Francisco prices, so I didn’t find them excessive (especially considering the high quality of the food we had), but prices at some restaurants in Paris have climbed to those levels too. And I’m not talking about Michelin-starred places, but restaurants in modest neighborhoods.

Twenty years ago you could get a 3-course meal in Paris for €30-35 in a bistronomique restaurant. Nowadays, that’s close to the price of a main course at a restaurant like Dandelion, which overlooks a sweet little square in the 20th arrondissement. Most restaurants don’t make a lot of money, and it’s hard to fault places for higher prices, especially since the cost of labor and ingredients have risen substantially.

Dandelion was recommended to me by the owner of one of the best-known restaurants in Paris, so I reserved a few weeks in advance. I know from reader reactions, whenever I post a photo from a Paris restaurant with foam, it gets quite a few negative comments. Romain isn’t fond of it either. While the rest of the world seems to have left it behind, it’s frequently used by chefs in Paris. It showed up in both our first courses, atop Romain’s raw veal tonnato with sunflowers and piment, spiced peppers.

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I’ve been a fan of Taralli for years, a circular Italian cracker that’s sometimes flavored with fennel seeds, black pepper, or spicy dried chiles. I love them, and while I’m of the mind that you don’t have to make everything you eat from scratch, if you’ve got an itch to make something, then it’s time to scratch it.

I was intrigued when I got a copy of Dolci! American Baking with an Italian Accent by Renato Poliafito. Bakers are a close-knit group, and I met Renato years ago when he was the co-owner of Baked bakery in Brooklyn. Baked was known for its classic American desserts, and when he and his business partner sold the business, it gave Renato a chance to open his own bakery, Ciao, Gloria, and to explore Italian and Italian-American desserts.

Renato’s father was born in Sicily and immigrated to the United States, arriving by boat in New York, with his wife and children joining him once he had settled. Renato was the youngest child, born in New York, but he spent many summers in Italy with his family. In the introduction to his book, Renato says, “Although New York is my home, there’s a small piece of me that knows I’m from somewhere else.”

His idea of opening a bakery to explore his Italian and Italian-American roots paid off brilliantly, and the bakery is always busy. The reason? The excellent pastries, which range from egg sandwiches in the morning with crispy prosciutto, provolone, and Calabrese aïoli, to all-day treats like Tricolor Bars (a riff on Rainbow cookies), crostatas, limoncello-pistachio tarts, and amaretto-caramel brownies. In Dolci!, Renato offers up even more, including torrone (almond nougat), panforte, a coffee-walnut liqueur shakerato (a cold, shaken drink), and “perfect grissini,” slender Italian breadsticks.

Get Dolci! by Renato Poliafito

I’d gotten a preview of the book for a quote, which I enthusiastically gave when I read through it, and was happy to finally have the book in my kitchen, and I got going on the Cheddar Taralli recipe, his inspiration coming from extra-cheesy Cheez-It crackers.

Cheeses from the U.K. are kind of known around here, but like wine, there’s so much cheese made in France, that there aren’t a lot of imports*. But you can buy cheddar in the supermarché. I thought “characterful” might be one of the, um, borrowed English words and phrases in French that don’t quite hit the same mark in English, such as a “smoking,” (which is a tuxedo), “très people” (which means trendy and a bit sensationalist), and a new one I just learned, a Bob, a hat with a wider brim, which I learned about because the Olympic volunteers were issued them, and they became a hot fashion item during the games.

But I looked it up, and “characterful” is a word, which means “having a lot of character” (duh!**), which makes sense. It also makes sense that when cooking with wine, as you do when making the Taralli dough, use cheap wine. I used rosé that I bought at Le Baron Rouge, where you can bring your own bottle or consigne (leave a deposit) for one of theirs, and costs €4,50 per liter.

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Being respectful of other cultures’ cuisines is tricky business. I’ve seen quite a few Caesar Salads in France with tomatoes and fried chicken, and there was a recipe for chili in a book on Spanish cuisine that I saw here too.

I adhere to the Gaston Lenôtre idea that you’re welcome to change anything, if you make it better. And adding cheddar to these crackers made them different and, in some ways, better. Kind of like how I love the thin pizzas sold from the fornos (bread bakeries) in Rome with sliced potatoes, olive oil, and rosemary, but I also really like pepperoni pizza in the States. Both make the world a better place.

These crackers contain a lot of cheddar. To be honest, after I made the dough, when I pulled the first batch out of the oven, I wanted to say, “Hey, Renato…where’d all that cheddar go?” They didn’t look very cheesy, but when I took a bite, I ate my words.

These cheesy crackers were a revelation.

Get Dolci!

Cheddar Taralli

Adapted from Dolci! by Renato Poliafito

The recipe calls for a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. I haven’t tried making these without a mixer, but you could make it by hand, mixing the dough in a medium bowl, then kneading it on the countertop for 5 minutes or so until smooth.

These do take some time to roll and shape, but the rolling and shaping is very easy…and fun! If you have someone helping you, it’ll go twice as fast. Although the book said to roll all the crackers out first, and then parboil them, I did mine in batches. Making these is pretty simple, but there are a few steps. I added some additional tips in the instructions, to help you along the way.

500g (3 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour

350g (12 ounces) sharp cheddar (if cheddar isn’t available, you can use aged gouda or semi-aged mimolette)

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

1 teaspoon paprika, smoked or sweet

120ml (1/2 cup) extra-virgin olive oil

160ml (2/3 cup) dry white wine or rosé

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, mix together the flour, cheddar, salt, and paprika. Heat the olive oil in a small saucepan until it’s hot and shimmering. Add a little of the hot oil to the ingredients in the mixer bowl, stir at low speed, then add a little more oil, stirring, until all the oil is added. While the mixer is running, gradually pour in the wine, stopping the mixer midway to scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure that everything is getting mixed in.

Turn the mixer to medium and knead the dough until the dough is very smooth and supple, about 5 minutes.

[Tip: If your dough is looking dry and not coming together midway during mixing, add another tablespoon of wine.]

Wrap the dough tightly in plastic wrap, or your favorite eco-friendly alternative, and let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. While the dough is resting, line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Line another one with paper towels. Clear off some counter space to roll the Taralli out.

Preheat the oven to 375ºF (190ºC).

Fill a wide saucepan halfway with water and add some salt to it, as if you were salting water for pasta. Bring it to a boil. Unwrap the dough and pinch off a piece of dough about the size of a small walnut and roll the dough on an unfloured countertop until it’s about 4 inches (10cm) long. Loop it around your finger in a circle, or whatever feels easiest for you to make a circle, and pinch the end closed a little bit. With your fingers inside the circle, pull it open just a little more, then set the Taralli (or Tarallo?) on the counter and go on to the next one.

When you’ve got about 15 Taralli, drop them into the pan of water. When they float to the top, after 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, with a slotted spoon or flat mesh strainer, remove the Taralli and put them on the paper towel–lined baking sheet in a single layer to drain. Sprinkle with flaky sea salt, then go on and do the same, rolling, shaping, and parboiling the next batch of 15.

When the Taralli on the baking sheet from the first batch are cool enough to handle, place them on one of the parchment-lined baking sheets about 1/2-inch (1,25cm) apart.

[Tips: If you leave the Taralli on the paper towels too long, they’ll stick a bit. I was able to easily remove any pieces of paper, but I found that taking them off the paper towel–lined baking sheet as soon as they were cool enough to handle and putting them on the parchment-lined baking sheet ensured they didn’t stick.

I changed the salted water midway through parboiling the Taralli as it was quite cloudy and a little viscous from the flour.]

When you’ve got enough Taralli on a baking sheet, start baking them, rotating the baking sheet in the oven midway through baking for 30 to 35 minutes, until golden brown and they feel relatively firm when you squeeze one. Remove from the oven, let cool for 5 minutes, then transfer the Taralli to a cooling rack.

[Tip: The original instructions said to bake for 30 to 40 minutes, “until light golden brown and crisp.” Mine looked like they were done around the 25-minute mark, but they really do need to be baked at least to the 30- to 35-minute mark to be done.]

Bake the rest of the Taralli the same way. Let cool completely before serving.

Storage: Taralli will keep in an airtight container for up to one week.

[Tip: Mine softened a bit by the following day likely because we are having a humid spell here, and my airtight container wasn’t as airtight as I thought, although they were still delicious. I did ask Renato about that and he said they weren’t meant to be as hard and dry as store-bought taralli, but wanted them to taste as cheezy as possible. He suggested putting them back in the oven the following day for a bit if they lose their crispness.]

Cheddar Taralli

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*While French people may not know about American artisan cheeses, at the U.S. Embassy July 4th fête in Paris, an event that includes many foreign diplomats, the French guests were clustered around the table of cheeses from Jasper Hill Farm from Vermont, wolfing them down and asking for more.

**I have a long-running joke with French friends about the word fortitude, which I used once, and they told me that it wasn’t a word in French. I was surprised because certitude (certainty), plénitude (fullness), and rectitude (straightness) are. So why not fortitude, for strongly?

I didn’t bother looking it up at the time—I never in my wildest dreams figured that I’d wind up living somewhere where the subject of grammar and verb conjugations (and, inevitably, taxes) would be frequent dinner party discussions—but I read a poem in French that contained the word fortitude, which I now use as proof that it is a word, and I use it freely around them now…and when I use it, I emphasize it on purpose.

I was very excited when I had the most delicious palet breton, an oversized butter cookie, this summer in Brittany, one of the many desserts and pastries that I enjoyed while I was there. But one in particular intrigued me. It was made with buckwheat flour, and was one of the best I’ve ever had.

I wrote about it in the previous post (linked above) and l…

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