Letter From Paris

By Harriet Welty-Rochefort

Paris Kiosque - February 2003 - Volume 10, Number 2
Copyright (c) 2003 Harriet Welty-Rochefort - Used with permission.

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A Particular Patch of Paris

I write this as I look out upon a snowy garden. And as I write, I reflect that in Paris, "snow" and "garden" don't have the same connotations they might in places where both are in greater abundance.

Take snow. It isn't that it never snows in Paris. It's just that when it does, it rarely stays on the ground.

This year it did and I marveled at this rare occurrence even more since it is our first year in a ground floor apartment with a private "jardin". (Readers of this column may remember that last summer I moved from the chic upscale suburb of Neuilly in the west of Paris to the working class "real life" 20th arrondissement of Paris in the east).

As my husband observed with pride as he gazed at the snowflakes gently settling down in the yard: "That snow is sticking to OUR grass!"

Why the fascination with snow? If you're from a place where it snows a lot, you won't appreciate what The White Flakes are to Parisians. Since they hardly ever have any, they love it - but they aren't prepared for it. They don't have snowplows. They don't have big wool scarves and warm gloves and thermal underwear. They wouldn't be caught dead wearing ugly fur-lined boots. (Parisian boots are beautiful leather creations that show off the legs to their best advantage - but would never resist a snow storm.)

To each his climate: Parisians are experts on rain and possess all the necessary gear to deal with it (and so should you if you visit Paris - at any time of year). Stylish Parisians own fashionable raincoats, chic boots and imaginative umbrellas. "Ordinary" Parisians have ordinary raincoats, ordinary boots and ordinary umbrellas. But frumpy or fashionable, all Parisians have one thing in common: they listen to the weather forecast and rarely go out the door without their umbrellas.

So, back to snow in the yard. Besides "snow", "yard" is something almost unheard of in Paris. We are lucky enough to have found one and believe me, watching the birds dive down on a food-finding mission and seeing stars at night is as unusual for most Parisians as....snow!

We got the garden because we decided to forsake chic. When I say that we moved from a "chic upscale" neighborhood to a "real life" working class district of Paris, I am not exaggerating. Neuilly, where we lived for 18 years, is the nec plus ultra, the home of movie stars and writers and, I might add, many Americans who are either on assignment in France or living here permanently. Why? Great schools, clean streets, the Bois de Boulogne, upscale shops, and a terrific police force (that didn't help us - we were robbed two days before we moved!).

Our new neighborhood, in contrast, has the highest number of unemployed and the lowest income in all of Paris. It also has the lowest real estate prices which, believe me, was one major reason we decided to purchase an apartment here.

There were other factors though: Neuilly was nice but certainly not lively. Once, in a driving rainstorm, my husband found himself under the large awning of an apartment building with a Sengalese street cleaner who had also sought refuge there. The Senegalese was shocked there were no friendly cafés to repair to. Shaking his head, he said: "What a pity the rich have to live in such a boring place." We quoted him for years.

It wasn't very friendly, either. I lived there for eighteen years and was on polite but cold terms with the salespeople in the shops. After only two weeks in our new neighborhood, I could count on Ali, the owner of the newspaper shop, to set aside papers for me and even to keep packages for us! He only knows two words of English but booms out a loud "Hello, how are you?" everytime I enter his shop. Now THAT was a change from what I was used to!

If you're adventurous enough to come "out" to the 20th, you'll find many passageways with houses hidden away. As I learned, you have to go beyond first impressions. When the real estate agent showed me the place we ended up buying, I almost didn't go in to look at it because I didn't like the very ordinary facade of the building.

I did, though, and was in for a total surprise: an apartment where all the windows face south on a private garden with real grass and real trees! Not a sound, even of the traffic on the nearby Place Gambetta. An apartment like this one in Neuilly or the Latin Quarter would cost three times the price.

We grabbed it! (And found to our relief that while the neighborhood might be low income, it has one of the lowest crime rates in Paris and one of the highest rates of success on the "Bac" (the all-important French school leaving diploma).

I was thinking about all these things on a recent tour around our new neighborhood with a reporter from a U.S. newspaper who had come to interview me. She had read my book, French Fried, and thought it would be fun to go around with me to my neighborhood places, especially because my "neighborhood", as I said, is not exactly one most tourists travel to. She wanted to see where and how I shopped, go to a market, and, if we had time, lunch in a restaurant near my apartment.

I jumped at the opportunity to see Paris through new eyes. We decided to meet at a café near the metro appropriately called "Bar du Metro". (How easy is that?!) Other than the pervasive smoke, which one can hardly get away from in Parisian cafés, it's a fun place to sit and while away the time - one of my favorite activities. I wondered what kinds of questions she was going to ask me, how we were going to start our day. Being a journalist myself, I know there are as many ways to interview people as there are to write the story.

It turned out that she and I use similar techniques: soaking up the atmosphere. The scene was that of a typical café in any part of Paris: people with their umbrellas and raincoats and hats, unfolding newspapers, lighting cigarettes, reading or talking on cell phones or just staring at nothing in particular. And of course drinking various beverages.

I ordered "un grand crème" which inspired the first question.

"What's the difference between a café au lait and a crème?" she asked.

Easy, I replied. They are exactly the same thing - coffee with milk - except that Parisians order a "crème" and foreigners order "café au lait".

After proclaiming this with great conviction, I suddenly started having doubts and decided to ask our waiter. "Yes," he assented, reassuring me. "It's true. The only people who order "café au lait" are foreigners. The French ask for "un crème".

Here's an added tip: there's "un petit crème" and "un grand crème" which as you can imagine are the same thing except one is small and one is large.

While we're on the subject, another tip: whether you're ordering café au lait or un crème, you should know that this is a beverage for breakfast or between meals. The French never (never say never but I'd say 99 per cent) drink a milky beverage after a meal. They drink a small expresso, preferring its sharp distinctive flavor to cap off their repast.

We were ready to pay and I had yet another tip to share. If you can't get the waiter's attention (remember that with the 35 hour work week, some of these people are waiting on 30 tables all by themselves) don't yell "Garçon!". That only happens in old movies. Raise your hand slightly (but not imperiously) with a smile - he'll understand.

After the café, I took the reporter up the rue des Pyrenées, the street I do all my food shopping on. She waited patiently as I stocked up on beets and endives and potatoes and fresh pineapple at the vegetable and fruit shop. At "La Flute Gana" bakery, I introduced her to the "flute Gana", a famous crusty slender baguette invented by Bernard Ganachaud, who Patricia Wells calls "one of the city's legendary bakers". Bernard Ganachaud has retired but his daughters Valerie and Isabelle continue to make and sell the bread on the rue des Pyrenees just around the corner from the rue Menilmontant where the first bakery was located. The lines are long because the bread is so good but like most Parisian lines, it goes fast.

"It seems you don't have a lot of time to make up your mind," the reporter observed. How true! In a Parisian bakery or boulangerie or fruit or vegetable or butcher shop, you have to decide what you want literally while you're standing in line. When it's your turn, the salespeople don't have time for you to think about what you want or to answer your questions. The only exception to this rule is when there's no one in the store (if you are timid and want to try out your French, that would be a good time to come). Otherwise, they have to keep the line moving or impatient customers will head for the door!). When in Paris, do as the Parisians do - think on your feet!

At the cheese store on the rue de Retrait, a street angling off of the rue des Pyrenees, I was in for a surprise. When we asked what cheeses could be taken back to the States, the young "vendeur" told us that any of them could. All he would have to do, he said, would be to run across the street to the butcher store (owned by his boss who for some reason keeps the vacuum packs over there), get a vacuum pack, run back to the store and package it.

"We do it all the time in our store on the Ile St-Louis", he said. "Ile St. Louis?" I said. "You mean, that's your store?"

I was thinking of La Ferme St. Aubin at 76 rue Saint-Louis en I'Ile. If you've been there, you'll know the store. If you haven't, and you're a cheese aficionado, it's time to discover it! It's packed with wonderful looking and tasting cheese you can indeed take home with you (getting past customs is your problem!).

By this time I was fairly bursting with pride - my new neighborhood had yielded in only one morning a gourmet baker and a gourmet cheese producer. Not bad!

Our next stop was Monoprix, the French chain store equivalent of Sears Roebuck, Marshall Fields, and Target rolled into one. It's niche is "city shoppng" and it has everything from gourmet food to school supplies.

My reporter friend was delighted to find a variety of gourmet chocolate, mustard, patés and terrines at a fraction of what they'd be in specialty stores. (We were looking at food but you can also find wonderful baby clothes and, in winter, cashmere sweaters in some of the stores, depending on their stock. You don't have to come to the 20th arrondissement to shop at a Monoprix - they are all over Paris.)

Shopping over, we repaired to a local restaurant which was still crowded with locals at 2 pm. Scanning the menu, the reporter immediately spied a "croquettes de volaille avec pieds de mouton" (chicken croquettes with sheep's foot). I admired her open-mindedness (I eat these kinds of things but understand they're not to everyone's taste!). Alas, she was not to have them. They'd all been ordered, eaten, gone! (This is the kind of neighborhood where people eat organ meats - they're inexpensive and when cooked correctly and served with a well-made sauce, are tasty and authentic).

After lunch, we strolled over to the Père Lachaise cemetery. On that dark stormy day, official black government vehicles and other prestigious cars were parked every which way in front of the entrance for the funeral services of the famous French author-journalist Françoise Giroud who had died from a fall at the age of 86.

Giroud was a heroine to many women, including me. From the age of 14 she started working, first as script writer for Marc Allegret and Jean Renoir. In World War II, she was arrested as a Resistant and imprisoned by the Gestapo. The war over, she started working as a journalist and news editor at the monthly magazine, Elle, and later co-founded L'Express, a weekly newsmagazine magazine inspired by Time, a magazine she greatly admired. Giroud directed L'Express for twenty years, the first and only woman in France to hold such a position. She left L'Express to join the government of Giscard d'Estaing as the first minister of women's affairs and later wrote a biting book about political life called "The Comedy of Power". Her other books included a thinly veiled novel based on a French president and his child born out of wedlock, autobiographical journals and biographies of women such as Marie Curie and Alma Mahler. A meticulous writer, an outspoken feminist who was always elegantly dressed and coiffed, Giroud also possessed a sharp tongue and pen and wrote a weekly column for Le Nouvel Observateur newsmagazine up to the end.

The American reporter and I mingled with the crowd who had come to pay their respects. As usual in any French ceremony, people were doing different things. The cameramen and women were angling to shoot anyone famous (which wasn't hard). Some stood still, listening attentively to the services which were being broadcast on loud speakers. Others conversed, and this being France, smoked.

I was moved because I had followed the career of this great lady. Perhaps my reporter friend was moved as well. After all, we were witnessing a moment of history in the most historical of Paris's cemeteries. Francoise Giroud is now at rest with the rich and/or the famous: Chopin, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde - and all the unknowns who also "inhabit" this most unusual cemetery.

It was time to say good-bye. The reporter shook my hand and thanked me for the good day we'd had. I thanked HER.

She couldn't know it, but our day together had shown me once again just why I am glad we chose to live in this particular patch of Paris.

Harriet Welty Rochefort is the author of French Toast: An American in Paris Celebrates the Maddening Mysteries of the French and French Fried: The Cu linary Capers of an American in Paris. French Toast was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "wise and devastatingly funny". For world-famous chef Alain Ducasse, her second book French Fried "in a lively and hilarious style ... gives an inside look at the world of French cuisine and wine." Both books are published by St. Martin's Press. Harriet is currently working on her third book about the French. For more of Harriet's prose on Paris, and ruminations of France and the French, she and her husband Philip have a website.

If you've had some funny, startling, satisfying, or dismaying food experiences in France you'd like to share, you may contact Harriet directly at harriet.welty@hwelty.com.

Editor's Note: Dear Readers, while our writers are always delighted to hear and to receive comments, both about their columns in the The Paris Kiosque, as well as your experiences in Paris, they are unable to answer any requests for travel information. Thank you for your understanding.