Paris Journal 2014 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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The Champ de Mars was full of people, almost all French people, picnicking and hobnobbing yesterday evening. The weather was gorgeous – a big change from the past dozen days. We joined them after dinner. We’d dined simply at the neighborhood pub, the Commerce Café. The food arrives so quickly at the Commerce Café that I think some of it must be pre-packaged. This has become a hot issue in Paris, where some restaurants have claimed to prepare food in the house, but in reality, they were opening packets and using the microwave. In the news (BBC Magazine, for example), I read that there is a new French law stating that if a dish is homemade (fait maison), on the menu this must be designated with the use of this symbol:
So if a restaurant offers six different desserts, but only two of them are made in the house, then only those two items are marked with this symbol on the menu. That serves to highlight the fact that the other four are pre-packaged, or “industrial,” as the French say. In the case of desserts, these might not be industrial, however. They might come from the patisserie down the street. Then I suppose that the restaurant will state that on the menu. There are some strange exceptions in the new law. Frozen, chopped spinach can be used in a dish that is otherwise made in the house from fresh ingredients, and the homemade symbol can be used for this dish. The symbol can also be applied when frozen fish is used. Many foods that are pre-chopped, pre-peeled, or already smoked or ground also can be used in dishes that still qualify for the homemade symbol. However, pre-cut fries do not qualify. Go figure! I wonder how this new law will be enforced? Spies in the kitchen? This is certainly fodder for some new novels. We expect that when we dine in real restaurants, the food is made in the house from fresh ingredients. When we dine at the neighborhood pub, however, where our dinners generally cost half as much as when we dine in a resto, we don’t have the same lofty expectations. At the pub, I think it is okay if some of the items on the menu are not homemade. But please, give us hand-cut fries! Yes, France continues to struggle with life in the modern era. But life goes on. With the gentrification that’s occurred over the past decade and a half, certain kinds of shops have practically disappeared from our area. Take, for example, the vacuum cleaner shops. There used to be one on the boulevard de Grenelle. It actually carried Hoovers. Then it was gone. But there was still one on rue Cler. But then it stopped carrying Hoovers. Everyone here uses Miele vacuum cleaners now, it seems. Everyone, that is, except for us. The vacuum cleaner that lives in this apartment is a Hoover. And now we see that the rue Cler vacuum cleaner shop is vacant. Gone! [I resisted the urge to write “gone with the wind.”] The internet is the answer. Five days ago, I ordered Hoover vacuum cleaner bags from England, via Amazon.com. They just arrived. I’m not complaining. Who wants to run around Paris, spending time and effort looking for a shop that carries peculiar vacuum cleaner bags? We have better things to do. Plans for today include a visit to the Musée du Quai Branly. At least, we’ll visit the garden, which is a favorite place of ours. And perhaps we’ll even go to the museum again. On va voir.
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Thursday, July 17, 2014
The
Champ de Mars in the evening, with lots of people on the grass, alas.
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