![]() |
View From A Cafe |
Paris smelled of piss and baguettes. Architecturally beautiful, with parks and fountains. The people were cosmopolitan cold... bordering on rude. In other words, It's just like home, only sometimes it smells like baguettes.
The week in Paris had us staying in the Latin Quarter, just up the street from the open air market on rue Mouffetard. The market was un-fucking-believable. All of the classic French stalls were represented; Bakeries/Patisseries, cheesemongers and charcuteries:
![]() |
It's like a sea urchin made out of fat coated duck legs. |
![]() |
The Future Is Now. And It's Very. Very. Cold. |
![]() |
Classic. |
I came to go after the classics. To return to the fundamentals. And in France, I am pretty sure nothing is more fundamental than the baguette. If you go baguette watching, you will see baguettes all over the place, walking their human pets through the narrow, winding streets of Paris. Sometimes they travel in packs, but one thing is for sure... they are everywhere.
Which is awesome, because the baguettes I had in France were outstanding. I could dazzle you with the incredible baguettes I had from Kayser or Le Boulanger de Monge, but even the worst baguette I had in all of France was, no joke, forty-hundred-quintillion times better than the best baguette I had ever had previously. This has the immediate impact of essentially ruining every prior baguette memory of my entire life. It would be like thinking you were having amazing sex only to learn that, in fact, you had been deriving pleasure from dry-humping your grandmother's corpse.
I don't know what's going on in american bakeries, but it ain't baguette baking. I am willing to concede that it is at least part geography, part culture, part technique and part apathy. All I know is that since I have gotten back, every baguette I have had tasted bland. I could almost tolerate the taste deficiency if it wasn't also combined with a never-ending supply of uniquely disappointing crusts.
Fu-uck.
No comments:
Post a Comment