In search of the best Chinese food... on Earth
A year ago, the author and his wife-to-be, May-May, set off on what may have been the longest food run ever made -- a circle-the-globe excursion in search of the world's best Chinese restaurant. In this installment, they carry their peripatetic palates to Paris.
By JOHN KRICH
Ah, Paris in the fall. The chill air is made cozy with the characteristic scent of just-baked baguettes, roasted chestnuts, 40 franc poulets, on the spit, crappy crepes au grand Marnier that are mostly marmalade and the biggest edible canard of all, canard laque au Pekin! This time I'm content to stick to Wenzhou noodle houses and feel no remorse at being unable to fork out for a splurge at La Tour d'Argent. Instead of four stars, give me seven courses. How dare May-May and I enter the bastion of haute cuisine in service of its only possible culinary challenger?
We've paid little heed to the recent news of Metro station bombings as part of a campaign of Algerian fundamentalist terror. If all the garbage cans have been sealed for reasons of security, soldiers patrol the subway in large groups, and police sirens wail their characteristic wha-wha with increased frequency, this makes us feel all the more like we've entered some old French movie. In a town where high standards and higher-grade meats have produced far better Arab restaurants than in the Levant, much more sumptuous Vietnamese spreads than you'll find anywhere near Dienbienphu, we've got to believe that there must be some couturiere quality Chinese food among the city's supposed 3,000 restaurants Asiatiques et étrangeres. At the very least, we should be able to find some common ground between the two cultures of the world which take most seriously what goes in their mouths. And also what comes out!
At the very least, we should be able to find some common ground between the two cultures of the world which take most seriously what goes in their mouths.We're already aware that the Sino-Franco community in the French capital, some 300,000 strong, boasts a decidedly higher class of refugee. On our last visit, we'd gotten lost in the trendy Marais district before finding an opening at the Gallerie Bellefroid, a showcase for avant-garde Chinese artists run by the confident, stylish painter Li Shuang, famous less for her art than her imprisonment in China for the scandalous crime of falling in love with, and finally marrying, a French diplomat.
Despite stringent immigration restrictions which were limiting the burgeoning Chinatowns of Porte d'Ivry and Belleville largely to relatives of the already established pipeline from the coastal city of Wenzhou, former Socialist President Francois Mitterand had made his country a haven for escapees from Tiananmen Square debacle. At a dinner party, we had met the young painter Wang Meng Long, who told us the frightening tale of having been smuggled out of China by joining a Taiwanese tour group, catching a midnight boat to Taiwan from a Fujian beach. But Wang admitted that most of the June 4th protestors were after free love as much as free speech. "In the square," he joked, "the blood of the martyrs mingled with the blood of the deflowered virgins."
This time, our guardian angel would be one of May-May's cousins. A shy and soft-spoken man who laughs mostly by crinkling his nose, Wu Gang was the first son of a famed Peking Opera star, and he was carrying on the family tradition as a freelance photographer specializing in performance photos of visiting Chinese singing troupes.
Next page: Who's murdering the great chefs of Beijing?
