The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City (9 page)

Whether you know the person or not, be sure to fix your gaze squarely on the merchant and don’t make eye contact with anyone else. Just the vendor. If you glance at the others, like that
salope
you blindsided for the last bunch of radishes she was lurching toward, you may incite another international incident.

Have correct change. If you’re buying a head of lettuce and hand the fellow a fifty-euro note, you’re going to be stuck there for a few uncomfortable minutes while he rifles through his pockets, gathering and unwrinkling assorted bills and fishing for coins. You want to get in and out of there before the people in line have a chance to figure out they’ve been had.

But mostly it’s all about
l’attitude.
Do not for one minute think that you don’t belong in front of those other people. I mean, who do they think they are? Don’t they know that you have more important things to do than wait behind them in line?

So if you come to Paris and you want to wait your turn patiently, that’s your choice. Should you see a man barreling through the market, cutting a wide swath with a wicker basket, jangling a bunch of change in his hand, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Unless you’d prefer to have me nudging you from behind. Just don’t expect me to buy you a drink first.

TRAVERS DE PORC
PORK RIBS
MAKES 6 SERVINGS

Although you’ll often see
travers de porc
(pork ribs) for sale at the markets, if you see them in a restaurant, they’re rarely grilled or barbecued, the way we cook them in America. I don’t think too many restaurants here have barbeque pits, but if anyone knows of one, please let me know!

On my first day at cooking school at Lenôtre years ago, as we all sat down to eat in the cafeteria, another student (from Denmark) commented, “Aren’t you going to put ketchup on everything, like all Americans do?”

I pointed out, sarcastically, that, unlike his country, America is a large and very diverse place, and we don’t all eat the same thing.

Americans do have a reputation for being ketchup lovers, although the French seem to enjoy it, too. And now you can find big plastic bottles in French (and probably Danish) supermarkets with Old Glory waving in the background on the label.

I’m not all that enamored of ketchup myself, but it does give the ribs I roast
in my oven a close-to-down-home taste. Ribs are one of the few foods you’ll see Parisians picking up and eating with their hands. Heck, I caught one licking his fingers when he thought I wasn’t looking!

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C).
   

2. In a large roasting pan, mix the soy sauce, ketchup, garlic, ginger, chile powder, molasses, rum, orange juice, mustard, and pepper.
   

3. Add the ribs and slather the marinade over both sides thoroughly. Cover and bake for 2 hours. While they’re baking, turn the ribs a few times in the marinade.
   

4. Uncover and continue to cook, turning the ribs at 15-minute intervals, for an additional 1 to 1½ hours, until the juices have reduced and thickened and the meat easily pulls away from the bones. The exact time depends on how quickly the liquid reduces and how lean the ribs are.
   

SERVING:
Cut the racks into individual ribs and serve.

STORAGE:
Pork ribs are just as good the next day. Cut them into riblets before reheating them in a covered baking dish, making sure there’s just enough liquid to cover the bottom of the dish.

VARIATIONS:
Feel free to play around with the seasonings. Add a handful of chopped fresh ginger or, a big pinch of ground allspice, or replace the orange juice with rosé or even beer.

SALADE DE CHOUX AUX CACAHUETES
PEANUT SLAW
MAKES 6 SERVINGS

Peanuts are a popular snack with drinks in cafés across Paris, but most of the peanut butter around here is found in the homes of Americans. However, Africans and Indians like it as well, and I buy jars of it up near La Chapelle, the lively Indian quarter behind the Gare du Nord.

Resist the temptation to use delicate Napa or leafy Savoy cabbage, both of which quickly get soggy from the peanut dressing. I use a mix of firm green and red cabbage, which I slice as thin as possible. Tossing the salad together at the last minute is essential to preserve the crunch of the cabbage, although the sauce can be made a few hours in advance and mixed with the cabbage and other ingredients right before serving.

1. In a large bowl, mix the peanut butter, garlic, peanut oil, lemon juice, soy sauce, and water until smooth.
   

2. Toss in the peanuts, radishes, carrot, parsley, and cabbage, mixing until everything’s coated. Taste, then add a bit of salt and another squeeze of lemon juice, if necessary.
   

VARIATIONS:
Substitute toasted almonds or cashews for the peanuts or swap 1 tablespoon of dark sesame oil for 1 tablespoon of the peanut oil, adding a tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds to the salad.

HOT CHOCOLATE TO DIE FOR

If you’re one of those people who come to Paris craving a cup of the famous rich and thick hot chocolate served up around the city, you’re not alone. Many visitors get a lost, misty-eyed look when describing the ultrathick, steamy
chocolat chaud
that glops and blurts as it’s poured into dainty white cups in places like Angelina and Café de Flore, which serve it forth with great pomp and ceremony.

Me? I can barely swallow the sludge.

You need to clamp my mouth closed and massage my neck to get that hyperthick stuff down the hatch—like forcing a dog to swallow a pill. That throat-clogging liquid hits
my tummy with a thud and refuses to budge for the rest of the day. I just don’t get its appeal.

Seriously, if I had a
pistole
of chocolate for everyone who asks me where they can find the “best” hot chocolate in Paris, I’d be able to enrobe the Arc de Triomphe. And I’ve learned to stay away from that kind of question, since a guest once asked what “the best chocolate shop in Paris” was. Because I replied that I couldn’t easily name any one in particular as “the best,” a message was posted on an online bulletin board about what a jerk I was for not giving a definitive answer.

But how can I! It’s like going into a wine shop and asking the clerk, “What’s your best wine?”

Each chocolate shop in Paris is unique, so I’d never recommend one as “the best.” I tend to think of them all as my children, each having various and lovable quirks. Nevertheless, we Americans love our lists and even more, we love superlatives; the higher up something is, the more we like it. When the rest of the world wonders why America never adopted the metric system, it’s because it’s not very exciting for us to say, “Oh my God, the temperature’s about to hit 37 degrees!” when we could gasp, “Oh my God, the temperature’s about to hit 100!” And don’t get me started on that silly “wind-chill factor,” which allows us to use even more superlatives.

How did all this hot chocolate madness get started around here anyway? Most credit Spain’s Anne of Austria, who married France’s Louis XIII, and brought chocolate into France in 1615 in the form of plump, aromatic cacao beans as part of her dowry. Back then, there was no high-tech machinery to pulverize and mold chocolate into smooth tablets, so the cocoa beans were ground, heated, and whirled up into hot chocolate, which was so rare and pricey that it could be sipped only by the fashionable elite.

Since those French royals lived lavishly, to keep them in high style, they sold chocolate to the yearning masses, and soon, almost anyone could get
their hands on the stuff. The Marquis de Sade used hot chocolate to hide poison, Madame de Pompadour drank it to keep up with Louis XV’s hyperactive libido (the recipe is on the Château de Versailles Web site, in case you’re interested), and the randy Madame du Barry made her lovers drink the brew to keep up with her by keeping it up.

Not everyone embraced this magical elixir and although Madame de Sévigné was delighted with chocolate’s “regulatory” effects on her digestive system, she warned that drinking too much could cause adverse reactions: she reported to her daughter that another Parisienne, the Marquise de Coëtlogon, drank so much chocolate that when she gave birth, the child was “as black as the devil.”

Four centuries later, you can find evidence of the past at Debauve & Gallet, a former pharmacy that’s now an aloof (and outrageously expensive) chocolate shop that still dispenses flat disks of
chocolat de santé
—chocolate for health. Studies continue to this day offering proof that eating and drinking chocolate may be healthy, but most of the folks in Paris aren’t downing cups to improve their health. And from what I’ve seen around here, everyone’s libidos seems to be pretty healthy, too.

Nowadays there’s no shortage of places in town to indulge, and just about any café will whip you up a cup of
le chocolat chaud.
However, in most instances, it’s buyer beware: often it’s slipped from a powdery packet into the cup. If you’re not in a place that specializes in chocolate, look for the words
à la ancienne
scribbled on the menu or blackboard, which means the hot chocolate is made the old-fashioned way. Like Darty, though, there’s no guarantee of 100 percent
satisfait
, and I’ve sampled a few “old-fashioned” cups where the only thing
ancienne
about them was how old the mix tasted. One day, I stopped in for a snack at one of my favorite dives in Paris. The feeling inside the place is a close equivalent to a diner, although there’s no long counter or, being France, no bottomless cups of anything. Like
diner waitresses, the uniformed women who work there are efficient, perfunctory, and agreeable. Judging from their muscular calves and forearms, I wouldn’t mess with them, though.

That afternoon, I had one of the most satisfying experiences of my life. It was particularly cold and even though, like most Parisians, I had wrapped and artistically double-knotted my scarf all the way up and around my neck, I couldn’t shake the chill that kept me shivering-cold. So I ordered a
petit chocolat chaud.
After the waitress set the clunky little cup in front of me, I blew away the cloud of steam that rose from the surface, peered at the dark brew inside, and cautiously brought the cup to my lips.

It took a moment for my brain to process what had just happened: everything I ever thought about hot chocolate was suddenly banished, dragged into the trash icon in the corner of my brain, and deleted for good. It was quite simply the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had, and the only one I’ve ever truly, madly fallen in love with.

Each day at Pâtisserie Viennoise, this extraordinary hot chocolate is whipped up fresh in the underground kitchen in a giant pot, then poured into a massive urn and measured out all day long in two sizes:
petit
and
grand.
For me,
petit
is exactly the right amount of this intensely chocolatey drink. Looking around, I’m clearly in the minority, since no one seems to have any problems finishing the larger mugs topped with a completely unreasonable amount of billowy whipped cream teetering dangerously over the edge.

Don’t expect to find anything gilded around here or served on dainty little doilies. The two rooms are dark and a tad shabby with photocopied prints on the walls, and there are sizable chips in the mocha-brown moldings. But the delicious
chocolat chaud
costs just a couple of euros, so you don’t suffer sticker shock when
l’addition
arrives. And if you absolutely have to have a doily underneath your cup, bring your own.

So where is Pâtisserie Viennoise?

To get to it, you’ll need to brave the most hazardous street in Paris: la rue de l’Ecole de Médecine (which, fortunately, means there’s a medical school nearby), in the fifth arrondissement. If it weren’t for the amazing
hot chocolate, I’d avoid this street entirely, since the buses speed down this narrow alley, barely missing the limbs of pedestrians, who cower as they move along on sidewalks so narrow that if you exhale at the wrong time, you can actually feel the bus graze your cheek as it rockets past. As much as I’ve always wanted to enjoy lingering over the lovely Viennese Strudels and pastries on display in the window, when I make it to the front door, I hop inside as soon as I can, propelled forward by the whoosh of the #86 bus behind me as the driver floors it forward, barely grazing one of my other cheeks.

Once you’re safely inside Pâtisserie Viennoise, slip off your coat and wedge yourself into any place you can find. If you come midday, you have to order something to eat. They won’t just let you sip a
chocolat chaud
while harried Parisians wait around on their lunch breaks, eyeing your table while you enjoy your two-buck cup. You’re welcome to stand at the few square centimeters of space they call a counter and have a quick fix if you arrive during mealtime, which is usually where you’ll find me, even if there are tables available. It provides a great overview of the waitresses in action, one of my other favorite forms of entertainment in Paris. But when they come barreling around the corner with their hands full of tottering cups and saucers, stay out of their way; they’ll run you down with as much determination as the #86 bus outside.

If you don’t really want to overdose on whipped cream, do not order a hot chocolate
Viennois.
The rule here is to top each cup with a lofty puff that’s equal in size to, or larger than, the cup itself. Consider yourself fortunate if it hasn’t toppled off and oozed in a billowy blob melting down the sides of the cup and pooling up in the saucer by the time it reaches your table. I’m a purist, and always ask for mine
sans Chantilly.
When I do I always detect a deep wrinkle of disappointment crossing the waitress’s brow.

And being a purist, I like really bitter chocolate. To someone who hasn’t met a chocolate that’s too bitter for him, this hot chocolate is my Waterloo. After a couple of sips, I wuss out and begin unwrapping one of the cubes of sugar perched alongside, and
fais un canard
, as they say; make it like a duck and dunk it in.

One day, while trying to sleuth out their recipe, I asked if they used unsweetened chocolate, and the waitress behind the counter promptly replied,
“Non”
—nor do they add cocoa powder, which I asked about too. She wasn’t giving up the secret, yet did confide that it’s cooked for a while on the stovetop, which she attempted to demonstrate by moving her right arm in a very large circular motion, large enough for me to know I don’t have a pot that big. (Or muscles like hers.) And that was that; she just smiled and went back to work.

When I’ve reached the bottom of my cup, fully sated, I head toward the door without any feeling of overindulgence, but fortified enough to handle the fiercest of Parisian winter weather. With a warm glow, I slip on my jacket, re-macramé my scarf around my neck, drop a few coins in the dish by the register, and leave. As I exit, I’m always careful to make a sharp ninety-degree turn just after I’m out the door so I don’t inadvertently meet my maker. (Or my hot chocolate maker, although I’d sure like to meet him to pick his brain.)

Come to think of it, I don’t think a nice, steaming cup of
chocolat chaud
made just the way I like it would be such a bad last supper. Maybe from here on out, I’ll start to accept the overload of whipped cream they’re always pushing on me: if it’s my time to go, at least I’ll go a very happy man. And then I can say, in all honesty, that I’ve finally found the best hot chocolate in Paris, one that’s truly “to die for.”

LE CHOCOLAT CHAUD
HOT CHOCOLATE
MAKES 4 TO 6 CUPS