Paris

What happens when you realize that you've fallen in love.. with a city? There are, admittedly, massive amounts of discontent and frustration that follow--starting when you are no longer in that city--but a mildly rational understanding that that city will somehow determine your future. What is worse is when an amateur food critic--this one right here--realizes that she fell in love with a city that is itself a nexus between food and love. These types of thoughts lead said amateur food critic to realize that whether or not she has her own personal nexus between food and love, she'll always have Paris. And that gives her hope and a lot of pretty pictures.

So what inspired these profound tragic yet inexorably fatalistic observations? A whirlwind of esgargots, gruyère, pastries, conversations with half of Paris, vins, and forays into the Parisian night.

I am reluctantly embracing my new time zone (my watch still is on Paris time and I've as of yet refused to remove my "Plan de Paris" from my purse), but it might behoove me to show rather than describe our nine-day Parisian adventure. Events that are not documented were when poor Dotti's mouth was spat in (while yawning, a man on the metro managed to spit in it), when we attempted to determine the sexuality of two men at a nearby table (we later learned they were Americans from DC... how outrageously unsurprising), and when we spent two evenings in the weirdest bar of our collective memory: a bar full of starers, vaudeville-esque performers, joke-tellers, fight-provokers, and an appropriate venue to learn that French men don't fear very public displays of affection.

We ate, but my friends thankfully indulged my love for my old apartment on Rue de Savoie:


My love of the Parisian skyline, despite many-kilometer-fast winds and mild vertigo:













My love of exorbitantly expensive drinks (at the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz) with roses in them and heavy hors d'oeuvres that functioned as dinner on New Year's Eve. We even saw Ina Garten--the Barefoot Contessa--who lives sometimes in Paris. We were all intrigued to learn, after we read her biography the next day, that she worked for the Office of Management and Budget in DC and left for something more soul-stirring. I, of course, began uncharitably hating her more.



















I had duck--twice--first at Christian Constant's restaurant Café Constant (a meal about which I found before and after pictures to be very illustrative), and then a second time at A La Petite Chaise, a quiet neighborhood favorite and the oldest restaurant in Paris that we visited twice.



















We had fancy cocktails with American names that complemented our new Frenchy scarves and bright nails:













We even had one scandalous day where all we did is eat French onion soup for breakfast and Gerard Mulot macarons for dinner.



















Then, we went to Disneyland Paris and fell in love with being an eight-year-old obsessed with princesses again. That's Dotti in a teacup and me in front of Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant (Sleeping Beauty's Castle).



















That night, I had butter and garlic stuffed snails at Chez Georges, my favorite bistro with simultaneously snooty and hospitably warm service and where I learned (very indulgently) that rare is "saignant" or bloody. Très bien.



















Dotti and I also went to the Breizh Cafe, a favorite gallette/crêpe place of mine in the Marais, where raw-milk cheese and ham are lovingly folded into a crisp buckwheat savory gallette and the best crêpes come with salted butter caramel.


















Thankfully, though, Paris is a moveable feast.