What I ate in Paris
From Bistrot Ploc to Delicatessen Place
I arrive to 30 degree heat. It is still light at 10pm and everyone in the apartment building opposite mine has their windows open: I can hear snatches of conversation, the clink of glasses, cutlery. The lemons trees on the balcony are fruiting and seem to glow in the late sunlight.
At Benoît Castel Sorbier, I order breakfast in halting French. The petit dejeuner formula consists of a burnished croissant, half a baguette, your choice of coffee and juice: I panic and order a cappuccino. Outside, there are metal café tables arranged in rows. I watch an old man with a tiny, very old, very scruffy dog in his lap. The man smokes. The dog watches the pigeons. I spread butter and jam on the baguette, make a mess of the croissant as I pull it into buttery shards. If I had to define luxury, it would be this: orange juice and coffee, not having to choose.
The apartment I’m staying in backs on to the Pére Lachaise cemetery. The neighbourhood is mostly quiet, mostly residential: the cafés and bistros nearby are appealingly pedestrian. The one fashionable café boasts lait d’avoine and medialuna, but mostly I go to a record store with a coffee machine and two tiny tables out the front, where people sit and smoke and drink café serré from little Italian espresso cups.
I buy peaches and tomatoes from the supermarket: the morning’s baguette, already a little stale, is repurposed as dinner’s panzella. I sit by the open window with the fan whirring. The peaches are as sweet as anything I’ve ever tasted.
In the Marais, I go to Delicatessen Place. It is small, hospitable, the kind of wine bar you can go to alone, with a book for company, and feel perfectly at ease. This is where
cooks: European small plates with a Bulgarian-inflection. I drink something orange, something chilled and red; people come in with their dogs and take bottles outside to drink on the pavement; the smoke from charred flatbreads pleasantly fills the air. Everything is perfect, I fall half in love with a stranger, I leave tipsy and happy. I have been fed.At L’Esprit - Café vin Brioche, I sit outside and eavesdrop. My waiter to seems to know everyone: this is his neighbourhood, his city. He pours wine, calls out greetings, switching effortlessly between French, Italian and English. A group of youths saunter by, resplendent in gold chains and pristine sneakers. Music booms from a phone, filling the air: this is their city too. I drink red wine, eat soy-marinated eggs served with crisp green leaves and dark, vegetal nori as the sun sets over balconied buildings. Later, I go to a gig where a French band sings American blues. I leave past midnight into the warmth of the stone streets. Paris slides by through the bus window in painterly blurs; hot, blue, shadowed…
Another day. At Bistro Ploc, the menu skews towards the carnivorous, but – burrata, socca, haricots verts, pousse de moutarde. Yes. The beans are blistered, slick with olive oil and crystalline salt. A tangle of peppery greens offset by vinegary ribbons of brightly pickled cabbage. The burrata, soft and rich as pure butter, oozes voluptuously. I order a glass of wine, followed by a tiny tumbler of pastis. It is cloudy and violently fragrant with aniseed: not to my taste, but I drink it anyway.
I walk through Pére Lachaise cemetery, watch the crows as they hop from headstone to headstone. Withered flowers on graves and the earthly quiet of the dead. This is sustenance of another kind: oh beloved communion, oh deep time, oh death.
In case of interest
This newsletter comes to you a good four months late. My apologies! I am currently on leave from my PhD and working in a full-time role, so find myself with less mental capacity to write for pleasure. Come February I will be myself again.
Good things to read
In Renaissance paintings, fruits often carried symbolic meaning—cherries the blood of Christ, pears the symbol of paradise after death, and so on. One Italian scientist is using these depictions to uncover the lost fruits of Italy. – via Smithsonian magazine
“Other kids were bewildered by me. I loved god in a way that would have had me burned at the stake, and glad for it. When my third grade teacher went around the room asking what we wanted to be when we grew up, I said martyr, and she said what? in a try-again voice, so I said writer.” – a stunning essay by Amelia K (no last name, no socials) via Dirt
“People were tossed overboard like refuse. Many died on the voyage and became a permanent part of the sea. So, when we excavate, visit, and monitor these shipwrecks, I don’t think many people realise that we’re standing in a graveyard.” – on the black maritime archaeologists excavating shipwrecks from the transatlantic slave trade via Atmos
One more thing!
Now might be a good time to remind you that I’m on Bluesky. See you there?