Francis in France!

The room is certainly beautiful — warmly lit, gorgeous old metals and woods, plush and intimate. But the menu opens curiously. Printed goofily like an old-time newspaper, it features stories describing featured drinks, including “The Best Bloody Mary in the World,” yours for only $85. And if you’re into wealth-porn enough to flip it over, you’ll find novelty cocktails with prices clocking in at the four figures. There’s also a note: “This menu available for purchase.” I’d heard incredible things about a genius bartender here named Colin, a walking encyclopedia of cocktail history and creativity, so I was confused about the gimmickery that lay before me. But then it occurred to me: The Bar Hemingway is what would happen if the Hard Rock Café managed to knock up an heiress in a library.

And so, despite the handsomely dressed servers and the high-end hush, I was only half surprised to hear a brash voice from the bar: “I love Europe! You can get laid in Europe. And China. In China, you don’t even have to wait ’til you get to your hotel. You can get laid in the airport in China.”

I turned to see where that nugget of cosmopolitan wisdom came from. A large, 40-ish bald man with a spherical torso was wrapping his lips around potato chips and making conversation with an attractive, country-club-thin woman and her slightly bemused husband. “It’s too hard to get laid in America,” he continued. “People are too uptight. Why do I spend the weekend in Paris? Because I can. Why does a dog lick his own balls? Because he can. Why would I stay at home in Orange County, where the women want to have sex two times to have two kids and miss Ronald Reagan?”

The woman laughed an expensive, tipsy laugh and visibly enjoyed it when the man continued, “Of course, you’re a beautiful blonde. You wouldn’t know anything about it being hard to get laid.”

The woman said something about Gary Coleman, and the bald man asked the room for a moment of silence for Gary Coleman. I sipped my very pricey apple juice and started to think that I’d done the right thing by coming here.

“What do you mean ‘don’t be an asholay’?” I heard the woman ask a few minutes later. “What’s an asholay?”

The bald man wrote in a legal pad and held up a word: “Assh o le”.

“Oooh! Asholay!” the woman blurted, pleased and drunk. “Asholay! I love that. You taught me something! I’ll remember that the rest of my life!”

I began to wonder if she would even remember the rest of tonight by tomorrow morning. At some point, the bald man turned and started talking to me and my friend Brandon, asking us why we’re in France. We mentioned something about eating, and the woman exclaimed, “I love to eat! Food is my hobby!” and proceeded to name some of the more luxe restaurants in the Western world. “And you know,” she said, “Paris is great for food,” before launching into a story about getting bad fish at a restaurant called Voltaire and being kicked out when she complained about it. “I said, ‘I can smell this fish! It’s been dead for hours!’ I would know. I’ve been to …” and out came more restaurants I’ve only read about.

“Well, where would you recommend I go for dinner tomorrow?” I finally asked.

She thought for a second. “Oh, go to Voltaire!” she said, her voice lingering deliriously on the last syllable.

“Um, isn’t that where you complained about the fish?”

Her husband laughed, relieved. “I’m glad someone’s paying attention!” he said.

The woman stepped away to the restroom. Before she left, though, she said the words “the French Laundry,” and soon the entire bar was in a debate about whether that particular world-class California restaurant had slipped since its sister Per Se opened in New York.

Brandon and I got the check and lightened our bank accounts. As we got up to leave, I heard one more musing from the bald man: “Your wife’s been gone a long time. You want to know what I think? I think she’s taking a shit.”

“I can’t believe you’re single, Michael,” her husband replied.

Walking back home, past couture shirt makers and watch stores where one modest specimen would pay my rent for a year, I wondered what Ernest Hemingway would think of his Parisian legacy. And Brandon said, “Well, my drink was kind of bad. But if I paid that much for a theater ticket the show wouldn’t have been nearly as good.”

But the French cheese I just had tonight, fromage fort, tried — I swear — to kill me. And not that boring old, “I’ll just sit here and let you eat me so I can poison you” kind of killing. I mean it got up off its plate and waved a knife in my face.

I have to say first that, of course, it’s just stupidly easy to get your hands on socks-knocking-off-good cheese in France. On my very first day here, my friend Julia and I went down the street and randomly came home with a wedge of Brie from Melun so good, so soft and so sticky and so rich and woodsy and creamy that I caught her talking to it the next day. “Hey, Brie,” she purred after getting home from work. “I’ve been thinking about you, baby. You been thinking about me?” (No, really. That happened.)

But tonight’s board, served at the Café des Federations, was a round of speed dating with a brace of scary ladies. I guess the bleu that tasted like a cross between a spicy banana and a goat’s hoof should have been a warning sign. And next to it was a cheese rolled in grape stems, seeds and skins left over from pressing wine: covered in stuff someone couldn’t bear to throw away. But between the two was fromage fort, a cheese made from stuff someone really, really couldn’t bear to throw away.

Fromage fort translates as “strong cheese,” and is a bit of a Frankenstein — a potted mash of old bits and pieces, the Parliament-funky rinds of leftover cheeses, and left to molder together for a bit. There’s usually some kind of booze in there for extra kick (and extra protection from bacteria). Whether it’s a food or a dare is largely up to interpretation. You can only imagine what earns the title of “strong cheese” in the homeland of stinky cheese.

My friends, real cheese lovers, warned me against it. But I’m a soldier! I pressed on, digging up a pale grayish chunk with my knife. I gave it a cautious nibble.

“It’s not bad,” I said with casual bravery. “It’s kind of fruity. Kinda sweet.” I thought about having a second bite.

But then my face turned grim. I know this, because my friends suddenly asked, “What’s happening? Are you OK?” My mouth suddenly became a battlefield. The cheese went from fruity and sweet to sour and bitter. It started to tickle my nose, and with my second bite still readied in my hand, it started throwing off that high-toned stomach-acid flavor I believe they call bile. And then it got hot — spicy, peppery hot, and it started to actually numb my tongue. Which would have been merciful, only it didn’t also then numb my nose, my memory, or my brain.

I needed this to end. I grabbed my cup of fizzy water and washed it down … only one of the wonderful things about fizzy water is that sometimes the bubbles can reinvigorate a flavor already passed. And, in this case, it brought the flavor of fromage fort right back, and my stomach started to churn. I marshaled my strength to breathe deeply and settle my belly, fearing the existential crisis I would go through if something that tastes like getting sick actually made me get sick. That would be too meta. My head would explode.

I eventually powered through, and when I regained my senses, I looked to find that second bite of fromage fort still in my hand. I actually thought about eating it, in that “This smells awful: Take a whiff!” kind of way. I almost couldn’t believe how extreme it was. I thought better of it, wanting instead to remember my life with pleasure.

But I gave a good look at that cheese, recalling what it truly is, a controlled rot, a partnership between milk and man and microbes. Most of the time, it really works out for the best for everyone involved. But the inmates really took over the asylum on this one. This cheese had the flavor of a prison riot. And aren’t we lucky that we don’t actually need food so badly that we have to keep it around like this?

Robert et Louise is the kind of straight-up restaurant you feel you can trust. A pot of good, strong mustard on the table counts as sauce. A jar of chunky salt, too, if you’re fancy. It’s not no-frills as much it’s like, “Frills? What are frills?” Despite the fact that you’ll hear English spoken at every other table, it’s a place that suggests authority and authenticity (whatever that means to you). The meat, grilled in an open fireplace, is served on wood cutting boards, cratered with the millions of cuts made on it before yours. The room is all smoke-stained rafters and wood — dark and beautiful and permanently slightly sticky from the decades of vaporized meat juices floating through the air. A savvy, nostalgia-peddling restaurateur could have a field day with this décor, but, instead, the room is lit too brightly and the fireplace is fueled with what looks like wood boards the cooks happened to pick up on the way to work. The owner sits at the end of her bar, content to say hello to tourists in warm but businesslike manner; just another day serving grilled meat. It feels like there is a good chance that this restaurant is older than your country, especially if you sit in the dining room in the cellar, which may in fact be older than humanity. The solidity of all this inspires trust.

And trust is important when you go to a place and order a steak saignant, which is how they recommend it, and which is a really beautiful-sounding word that means “bloody.” I’m not talking about “rare.” I’m talking about black-and-blue, just barely seared on the outside and essentially raw inside; the meat is actually still cool in the center, and if you’ve never had steak this way, it’s an … experience.

I eat raw fish without even thinking about it. I eat raw meat, in the form of tartar, without too much pause, mainly because it’s all chopped up and mixed in with other tasty stuff. But there is something about cutting into a big steak and having it look like it could still be in a butcher’s case that is a little bit disconcerting. It’s vampire-red. The fat cools off quickly to an unpleasant waxiness that you’ll want to cut around. And it’s actually not very juicy, but on the plus side, that’s because the heat hasn’t had a chance to tighten up the muscle fibers and make them expel their juices.

Maybe that’s why the flavor of Robert et Louise’s bloody cote de boeuf (extra-thick ribeye) was phenomenal, totally different than any beef I’ve ever had. It was very lean, having hardly any marbling, the whisper-thin ribbons of tender, melting fat streaking through the muscle that I’ve always looked for as a sign of quality. And so it didn’t have the rich unctuousness that I used to think was the hallmark of great steak. But this meat was incredibly lovely anyway, full of clean, complex mineral flavors and a literal sweetness. Flavors so different they struck me, and I was compelled to savor each bite slowly, teasing them out. (And, because the thing didn’t start out very hot to begin with, there wasn’t much of a hurry to eat it all before it got cold.)

It’s an accepted wisdom that marbling is what makes for tender meat, and yet, while lean, this steak had a silky texture. Saying meat “melts in your mouth” is a cliché that was literally forbidden from being printed in Gourmet magazine, but for once in its miserable life, that phrase actually fit. Cutting it into small bites, it didn’t feel like I was chewing on it so much as making it dissolve into a rush of flavor so intriguing it captivated me from start to finish.

I have to admit that I didn’t ask about the breed of cattle the steak came from, or where it was raised, or play any of the favorite ask-the-cook games of the fancy food lover. I kind of wish I had, so that I would know whether I’d have to get special French beef to ever have such magnificent meat again, or if I could get most of the way there by cooking my next steak bloody rare. But as we left, I walked over toward the grill and saw the cook cutting steaks from a massive haunch, dotting it with salt the size of peppercorns as it sat at the butchering table waiting for the fire. And I was content to leave with that in my mind, that scene playing itself over and over again for the rest of forever.

Robert et Louise
64 rue Veille du Temple – 75003 Paris
+33 1 42 78 55 89
Open Thursday-Sunday for lunch and Tuesday-Sunday for dinner
Get the Cote de boeuf for two (40 Euros); its extra-thick cut gives you much more rare meat than the thinner entrecote steak. The fresh sausage appetizer is also fantastic.

One day another neighbor called out: “Bonjour, Dr. Mirepoix! I am roasting a chicken and would like something to lay at the bottom of the pan to catch the juices and perfume the bird. Would you bring Mademoiselle Potato Head over?”

“Mais oui!” the good doctor said, putting on his tanning goggles and laying out with his tuber lady friend, smiling and shaking hands with the happy neighbor on the way out, not minding that his lady friend decided to stay for a while. “I’ll call you tomorrow!” she said to him. Only halfway home did Dr. Mirepoix remember he has no phone.

One day a third neighbor called out: “Bonjour, Dr. Mirepoix! I am either poor or a vegetarian and have no bones to boil in water. Will you come help me at least have a vegetable stock?”

“Mais oui!” the good doctor said. “But first, I must ask you for a favor in return. You must rub me down with a little bit of oil and warm me up in the pot!”

“What about Mademoiselle Potato Head?” the third neighbor asked.

Dr. Mirepoix gave a Gallic shrug. “You don’t want her in your stock,” he said flatly.

And so the third neighbor did as told until Dr. Mirepoix looked nicely sweaty, then poured in about twice as much water as needed to cover him for a humble but versatile vegetable stock. After about half an hour to an hour, Dr. Mirepoix dried off and shook the third neighbor’s hand.

And then one day a fourth neighbor called out: “Bonjour, Dr. Mirepoix! I tasted our neighbor’s vegetable stock, and it gave me an idea. Do you think you would mind coming over to flavor the rice I am making?”

“Mais oui!” the good doctor said, before going again, a little more emphatically than expected, into his need to first be rubbed down and warmed up with oils. The fourth neighbor agreed and started Dr. Mirepoix in the pot when the phone rang. “We have extra tickets to the new SATC movie!” the voice on the other end squealed.

The fourth neighbor promptly forgot about the pot.

After a while, Dr. Mirepoix looked up and started to wonder. He sweated profusely and started to get nervous. He sweated even more, and by now was starting to get weak. “I’m dehydrating!” he said. Silence. “Someone … some water, please! Someone help me!” he cried, never feeling more lonely. He could feel his tears dry up. He whispered, “I … forgive you, Pomme,” and he fainted.

The fourth neighbor came home from the theater, and no sooner than opening the door, ran to the kitchen and cried, “Oh no! What have I done?” Looking at the brown, sticky mass Dr. Mirepoix had become, the fourth neighbor sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, until, suddenly, there came a sound of electric guitar, the deepest, darkest, evilest heavy metal riff ever heard.

“Dr. Mirepoix! You’re alive!” the fourth neighbor exclaimed.

“Waaaaaaahhh! Forget Dr. Mirepooooooiiiiiix!!!!!! I am PINÇAGE!” the creature cried. “I can do anything he can do, but he could never make old men yell and young girls scream!” he cackled. The fourth neighbor was terrified and stabbed Pinçage with a spoon and, without thinking about it, licked it. The flavor was incredible — darkly complex, unidentifiable but caramel-seductive and deeply concentrated. The fourth neighbor, under a spell, fainted. Then Pinçage leapt out of the pot, strolled out the door, kicked over a boy on a tricycle, made out with your girlfriend, stole a car, and shot a man down just to watch him die.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mirepoix (meer-pwah) is one of the most fundamental French aromatic combinations, used to give background flavor to stock, sauces, braises and soups, and even to stuff or perfume roasts.

It adds sweetness and aroma from the onion, sugar and earthiness from the carrot, and a floating kind of herbal intrigue from the celery. It’s an especially great way to add freshness and complexity to canned broths or stocks, giving those often otherwise lifeless liquids a bit of character.

The two main things you need to think about when using it are how small to cut it and when to add it. (Proportions are kind of give-and-take-y and to taste, but I’ll give you some suggested guides below.)

While mirepoix adds a clean, fresh, vegetal complexity to your food, a lovely background, its evil twin pinçage is much more assertive. Pinçage (pen-sazsh, or something like that) is all about darkness — you slowly cook mirepoix (with the addition of tomato paste for more sweetness, balancing tartness, and oomph) to concentrate, soften and caramelize the sugars for an incredibly complex brown flavor.

Traditionally, pinçage is used instead of mirepoix in brown stocks (where the bones are roasted before simmering), but I find it to be a superb thing to keep on hand for whenever I want to make something with huge, deep flavor. It’s great for stirring into sauces of almost any sort, into stews and braises, or even, say, stirring it into a pasta or a grain salad to amp up the flavor. (Friends of mine make a salad of farro — you can use rice, quinoa, orzo, whatever – with pinçage, feta cheese, parsley, garlic, olive oil and vinegar. They had it at their wedding and liked it so much they figured out how to make it for their restaurant.) And best of all, you can make pinçage and keep it in the freezer for whenever you need it. It’s like having pure evil in your pocket. In a good way.

Pinçage

 Corrected: The original version of this story misstated that one uses 1/8 the amount of bones as mirepoix in a stock. The proportions have been corrected and reversed.

The Eric Kayser baguette is one of the first things I ate in France, and it was the kind of experience that makes you think that you done did do something right. The first thing was the crust — both crisp and crunchy, a thick-cut potato chip crunchy, a bass-drum kind of crunchy. I actually laughed out loud, thinking about the fact that I’ve had bread before that I called a “baguette” that was so floppy you can bend it 90 degrees without ripping into the dense, smooshy, Wonder Bread-tasting insides.

I noticed the flavor next, the flavor of a great bakery. Not that new-baked bread smell, mind you — not the caramelly, toasty smell of dough in ovens, but a deeper, further-in smell. The smell of the bake shop where dough lives breathing its clean, weird yeasty smell of wheat and microbes and magic. And buried even deeper inside that baguette was a flavor of oysters. I’m serious. Oysters, the melon-like ring of oysters. You’re going to think I’m crazy. Maybe I am going crazy. I may, technically, have had better bread than this. But this is the happiest bread of my life.

And so I kept eating, just munching on bread until the deep bell-ringing crunch gives way to a thinner, more yielding crust and an inside crumb that is so chewy it springs back up when you pinch it with your fingers. You can see its lightness, the large, irregular holes in the dough — evidence of a long, natural rise. The meat of the bread looks a bit like caverns and catacombs, the walls showing a bit of glossy shine from the protein net — developed through careful kneading — that ties it all together and gives it its satisfying chew.

Julia put some eggs in water, and soon I was eating the most primitive of breakfast sandwiches, muttering to myself that there is just no way a piece of bread and a cut-up hard-boiled egg can taste this good. No way. And I kept thinking how I never want this breakfast to end.

The next day, the friends I’m traveling with arrived, and on the way over stop by the Eric Kayser bakery to grab a baguette of their own. They both used to live here, and know it well. They rang the bell, we hugged, and my eyes opened wide when I saw the bread in its paper bag sleeve.

They took bites. Their smiles tightened a bit, and one finally said, “I don’t think it’s as good as it used to be.”

My heart broke. I asked for a bite of their bread, and, sure enough, it was not as good as the one I had yesterday, which in turn was a little better than the one I had the day before. I didn’t hide my disappointment. I might not be done looking for the best baguette in Paris, even though on a good — and probably even on a normal day — Eric Kayser makes the best baguette I’ve ever imagined.

But I thought about it some more, and discovered something about what it means for me to be in this country looking for culinary benchmarks: It shouldn’t be about finding “The Best.” It’s about finding something that makes you happy and makes you ask, “How can it get even better than this?” It’s about finding the bites that show off characteristics I never thought existed in that food, or ones I never thought could be so much themselves. And once that door is open, I can start to wonder if it can be even more that way.

And, really, that’s not even about being in France, it’s not about making a food pilgrimage. It’s an experience anyone can have anywhere. Like literature, like film, like anything worth caring about, the artist only does one half of the equation; it’s up to the audience to care about it enough to do the rest, accepting the idea that tasting is worth concentrating on and thinking about. From there, it’s just a matter of eating things, discovering what you like about them, and keeping that in mind the next time you eat that thing. After all, you don’t find memories, you make them.

Like this, for example: Yesterday, remembering that a common snack for French schoolchildren is a little sandwich of bread and chocolate, I stuffed a piece of Eric Kayser chocolate tart into one of his baguettes. And it tasted like God speaking.

Eric Kayser: Multiple locations; http://maisonkayser.fr