Yes, I was at a different restaurant seven nights in a row, three of which were memorable. One of which was Chateaubriand in the 11th arrondisement, despite the hi-falutin’ name, a simple neighborhood joint, though obviously a dearly beloved one. Sweetbreads, and then shrimp and snails. It is profiled in the Oct./Nov. Saveurs magazine. Not Saveur. Saveurs. Saveurs is an extraordinarily beautiful and useful food magazine. French.
Yes, I had a beautiful and cushy hotel, Pavillon de la Reine, in the 4th, le Marais, my favorite Paris neighborhood. Very Jewish, very gay. Feels just like home. Orthodox Jewish men on the street helping each other wrap tefillin, as decidedly effeminate Gentile men edge past on the narrow sidewalks. Great shopping, terrific Jewish delicatessens, innumerable thing to see, places to eat, blah, blah, blah. I know what I’m doing.
Bistrot Paul Bert (rue Paul Bert, also in the 11th) was a perfect joint for me, too. Foie gras and a cassoulet. Funky, timeless. Gaya is a new, slick fish joint on the rue du Bac that I highly recommend. Oysters are a passion for many of us, I believe. Main course of splendid barbue in a sauce of Pernod and dill. Barbue are often referred to as turbot, which they are not. They are brill, less flavorful than turbot. Restaurant l’Ascot in the 8th was imminently forgettable. Dopey, hideous neighborhood, smug, oblivious clientele, stupid wine list, boring menu. Profiled in Saveurs. Go figure.
Yes, I worked myself to exhaustion. Each was an early morning leading to a peripatetic fifteen-mile hike, up one aisle and down the other at the Parc d’Exposition, two stops on the RER before Charles de Gaulle 2. It was the bi-annual international food show called SIAL which stands for something I don’t care what. I despise acronyms. I have two plates and fourteen screws down where my original tib-fib used to reside in my lower left leg. After about five miles my leg is shot. I can then bolt a half a dozen Alleve/Motrin/Advil and gain a modicum of relief. But it was the blisters on top of the blisters that made it so unpleasant.
And yes, at least eight grand-slam homeruns will be on their way shortly to Port Elizabeth, NJ en route to the Fairway warehouse up at our Harlem store.
Some kosher pasta, bird’s tongues and a couple of other diminutive cuts, and kosher harissa, the thick, chunky, North African chile paste that is married to couscous, but that is drop-dead good with everything. This harissa is better than any I tasted in Tunisia.
Three thick mushroom sauces from Hong Kong. You’ll just have to taste it to believe it.
Toasted pasta called “croes” in four different shapes, tiny shells and tiny squiggles, a tradition of Savoie, as well as Savoyard buckwheat “crozets”, little quarter-inch squares of pasta, and ruffley “taillerins” and chanterelle-shape “trompettes”.
Some spice mixtures from a little company in Provence. A line of Swedish cookies. South African vinegars. Alsatian vinegars. Lemonade from Franche-Comte.
French soups, 100% natural, no preservatives in little three-cup packages – white asparagus and morels, green asparagus and vermouth, a red gazpacho, tomato and mint, carrot and orange, cucumber and mint, zucchini and parmesan. Beet sugar candy rods from Holland. Balsamic dressings, garnishing oils and dipping sauces from a brilliant new company in England. And South Africa continues to amaze me. I can’t wait to show you some of this South African stuff.
But my favorite thing is from Calanquet, an olive oil producer in St.-Remy in Provence. They have invented an olive leaf-shaped crisp they call “petales de tapenade verte” made from tapenade – olives, capers, herbs, garlic, basil, olive oil, Cognac, flour, yeast and egg white. I brought in “scourtins” from nearby a few years ago, pretty much the same thing, named for the Provencal beret which is in turn named for the rope-woven circular mats used in olive presses. I thought they were spectacular, but I couldn’t give the damn things away. They were too expensive, and most of them were broken by the time they made it through the roller derby gantlet of the Fairway shelf-stocking system, a product beating of the first water. Let’s see how we do with “petales”. Quite special. Elegant. If something as peasanty as tapenade might be referred to as elegant.
So there I sat waiting for take-off at the Newark airport. On my way to Paris. Talk about smug. Working on my second stiff Bloody Mary. A dish of warm cashews by my right hand. Holding my hearing aid in my left hand, between my index finger and my thumb. Remember the great Dr. Oliver Sacks book, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”? What a book.
You can call me “The Man Who Mistook His Hearing Aid for a Cashew”.
Molar-crunched my state-of-the-art, twenty-one hundred-dollar, digital hearing aid into about sixteen pieces. Hadn’t even left the ground and I was stone deaf. Had two back-ups, though, each of exponentially decreasing technology, and had I had a third, it would have been one of those grampa’s ear trumpet things.
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