French pastry, Italian food and Al-Jazeera

Well the verdict is in, and the news is we are staying in Paris for Susan’s internship.

The interviews were held on Tuesday and Susan got her first choice, Pascal Pinaud’s small artisan patisserie, located at 70 rue Monge, just a 10-minute walk from our apartment. Susan had heard about Pascal through the school grapevine; that he used to teach at LCB, was very kind to the students and has a wonderful sense of humor. We walked over to the shop a couple of weeks back and sampled some of their wares. His breads are exquisite (particularly his artisan “tradition” baguette), his chocolates scrumptious, and his desserts really great to look at and even better to eat! (photo: Pascal Pinaud's patisserie in Paris.)

Today (Sunday) we went back for a second helping and had his croissant “amandes”. These are found throughout Paris and one can usually gauge the quality of a pastry shop (in my opinion) on how well they do their “amandes. The idea is simple: day-old croissants, split them down the middle, add a healthy dose almond crème (paste) in the middle and re-bake, and finish off with powdered sugar. Absolutely out of this world! And Pascal’s are the best I’ve had so far.

So here we stay for another three months at least. After that who knows?

But speaking of food (and in this city, by law one has to speak about food constantly) we caught up with Beth Green last evening (Saturday), and ate “Italian” food. Beth, who is from NYC, was in the intermediate class with Susan at LCB this past fall and she will be doing the superior level during the regular session beginning in January. Beth is as keen on food as we are – I mean why would she be at LCB, right? In fact she turned us on to a great noodle “bar” the night of the intermediate level graduation ceremony.

So we arranged to meet up at L’Enoteca, in the 4th arrondisement (25 rue Charles V, 75004, in the “Marais” neighborhood). We had read about this place in a magazine article Margie Cheff gave us this last September and when we saw that it was reputed to be one of the finest Italian restaurants in the city we had to go. And the great news is that it is only a 10-minute walk and 1 Metro stop from our place! How cool is that!

Susan and I got there a few minutes early and though we might explore the adjacent little funky street, Rue Saint Paul. In fact, right across the street from the restaurant is a place called “Thanksgiving”, which touts itself as a bit of Louisiana Bayou in Paris, and as we squinted through the window into the darkened room we could see all kinds of American food products lining the shelves (for example, Campbell’s soup, a well-known Louisiana product). Later that evening Beth said that she had even heard you could order Thanksgiving turkeys from them! (Thus the name perhaps?)

We strolled back to the restaurant, walked in and heard that lovely music, so sweet to our ears, “Italian”! That’s right and we plunged right back into it with ease (if not grace) and quickly realized how much we long to hear and speak that clear, distinct, every-syllable-is-pronounced language!

Since Beth hadn’t arrived yet Susie and I sat at the bar, ordered a couple of Proseccos, calmly eyed the place and listed to the wait staff hurrying by usinto and out of the kitchen: Lombardia, Piemonte, Emilia-Romagna, Liguria were represented so we were told. Ah yes, we had come home.

After Beth arrived we went upstairs where we were seated and commenced a wonderful evening of good food (OK outstanding food!), good wine and great conversation. Beth is funny, quite delightful and she and Susan bantered stories about LCB back and forth. Of course we also talked about the future, all of our futures.

A couple of hours later, after we paid the bill and walked out into the bracing night air the three us stood on the Boulevard Henri IV with the Bastille at one end and the Seine at the other, chatting about this and that thing, laughing and just enjoying being alive and in Paris.

Al-Jazeera?

OK, the other day while I was searching for the new 24-hour French TV news channel (it’s actually two channels, one English and one French of course), I came across the new English-language Al-Jazeera channel. I must say this is one slick production. It looks just like any of the other major players in this field and the readers and reporters are from all over the world. (The ads are at least for the moment largely centered on Dubai companies, of course.) In addition to playing the proverbial “devil’s advocate” by providing a different angle from those found in traditional news channels (CNN and BBC for example) on stories out of the Middle East, they also provide stories that might not get covered in the west; like the story about the fake malaria drugs in Southeast Asia which pose a significant health problem in the region.

It’s one of the perks of living abroad – that of seeing the world, our world, through different eyes. It naturally gives one pause and helps to make us a bit more humble about who we are and what we are about.

Wish you were here,

Steve