The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City by David Lebovitz Read Free Book Online Page A

back the skin of a banana and jammed it in my craw, gnawing away at it like a savage until I reached the last nubbin, then tossing the peel aside.
Quelle horreur!
    Watch a Parisian eat a banana: the skin is carefully peeled back, the fruit is set down on a plate, then eaten slice by painstaking slice, using the tines of a fork with the aid of a knife. I’ll admit that I still eat bananas like my primordial predecessors, but only in the privacy of my home. Outside of the house, though, I avoid fruit. It’s just too stressful.
    Even more
vexant
than fruit are fillets of white-fleshed fish with those little pinlike bones that are barely discernible—until you get one lodged in your throat. The French always leave them in, because they say they keep the fish moister during cooking. (They also don’t seem to have any personal-injury lawyers lying in wait either, so there’s even less incentive to pick out those little throat-blockers.) I always hate to pluck bones and half-chewed fish out of my mouth, which is the least graceful thing one can do at the table. The French never seem to have any problems and manage to pull it off without jamming their fingers around their gums, like I have to.
    Another challenge is salad. I’ve been warned never, ever to cut lettuce with a knife and fork in France. It just isn’t done. Instead, the leaves are speared onto the tines of
la fourchette
, then folded over with the aid of theknife that you’ve already got a death grip on. It’s not too much to ask when dealing with large leafy greens like romaine and
l’iceberg
—but a tangle of weedy
roquette?
I’ve yet to find a way to enjoy a big mound of those flimsy greens without wayward stems flinging dressing Jackson Pollock-style all over the front of my shirt. So I only eat them at home when no one’s looking, from a big, deep troughlike bowl that I can either bring up to my chin or lean my face into.
    If you’re having trouble mastering the knife and fork, fear not,
mes compatriotes;
a culinary revolution has taken Paris by storm in the last couple of years. It’s not those dreaded square plates with a useless scribble of sauce or porcini powder around the rim. Or those silly
verrines
—salads and desserts packed into little glasses—where the more unlikely the pairing of flavors, the more press they get. Nor is it a three-star chef’s foamy folly or anything that’s been compressed, jellified, aerated, or infused.
    It’s
le sandwich
, which is eaten—amazingly—while walking!
    Some blame the phenomenal success of
le sandwich
on the lack of lunch time allotted during the thirty-five-hour workweek (too much work is the government’s fault), or the high restaurant prices in Paris (which the government gets blamed for, too), or simply the desire for something convenient. I think if I spent less time filling out bureaucratic paperwork, photocopying it in quadruplicate, then waiting interminably in line to submit it, I’d definitely have more time to do things around here, like sit down and eat. So I’ll blame the government as well.
    These days, it’s not at all unusual to see time-pressed Parisians barreling down the sidewalks, chomping off a bite from a demi-baguette that’s been split open and jammed with a few wedges of Camembert or
jambon
, then glued back together with a big, creamy smear of butter. I find lunching while en route nearly impossible, since I’m such a messy eater and whatever I’m wearing gets littered with too many of those invasive little crumbs. So I stick to eating sandwiches in public using a knife and fork, like Parisians still insist on doing with their burgers. “It’s not
possible
to pick this up!” they’ll exclaim. And yet I do it, much to their amazement.
    But I wouldn’t dream of stopping into a branch of the nefarious McDo,which Parisians flock to with surprising fervor. I’ve gone only once since I’ve been in France, breaking my fifteen-year boycott in a weak moment when I was