Ninon and Me at the Grand Comptoir

by Katherine Watt

  Just as I head out it starts to snow. I pop into the shop. “Bonjour! Je voudrais un bon fromage doux pour une soirée ce soir!” I say. The nice man leads me over to a long case full of cheeses. He starts to point to things babbling en français…. And I spy something I’ve had before! A Brillat-Savarin aux truffes! Perfect!

  I read about Monsieur Brillat-Savarin in David Downie’s excellent book, “A Taste of Paris”. Monsieur was a man after my own heart; an self-described epicurean, a cook, a writer and France’s first food critic! So I wasted not another minute and asked for two selections of the truffle infused goodness; a big one for the party and a small one for myself. I paid the man and rushed across the street to the cave à vin for un bon porto, something nice in a bottle to bring with me. Once home, I got back online and studied up a bit on Monsieur B-S, I wanted to be prepared to spout a few clever words of wisdom myself when the cheese board came to the table.

  Charlotte lives across town in the 15ème. According to Google maps, it would be a 36 minute drive. I was told apéro would be served at 7:00 pm. Checking my mental rule book; show up 15 minutes late for French dinner parties, on time for restaurants (although that had proven to be false information) and pretty much be on time for American hosts. I assumed a 5-10 minute wait for Uber so put in my request at 6:15.

  I knocked on her door at 7:02, the first to arrive. “Annoyingly prompt guest!” I said, handing her the cheese and port, when she answered the door.

  “This is perfect!” she responded. We made our way into the salon of the very small apartment, the coffee table set with snacks and cocktail napkins that read “I have Mixed Drinks About Feelings”. “I was going to do cocktails” she said, “but Elliott said he’s bringing two really unique bottles of champagne.” She showed me around the salon and dining area, which took about thirty seconds. We sat for a couple of minutes and she jumped up and said, “if Elliott’s not going to be here NOW, we’re having cocktails!” and we headed into the equally tiny kitchen to shake up a couple of Sidecars.

  We didn’t get far before a knock on the door announced Elliott, fresh from the five story climb and Phil emerging from the miniscule elevator. Phil, a big teddy bear of a guy on crutches, was recovering from a recent hip replacement. Thank God for the miniscule elevator. Elliott’s backpack full of champagne and wines was on the floor in the elevator.

  “I never take elevators,” Elliott remarked, “after getting stuck in one even smaller than this one for three hours.” Oh good. Something new for me to worry about.

  A few minutes later both Elizabeth and Joan come up the stairs and we are treated to la bise all around. Phil picks a comfortable spot on the sofa and I take a chair next to him and we talk about his hip replacement while the others fuss in the little kitchen. Elliott bursts in to tell us about the very rare champagne that he has brought, a single type of grape, completely metal casked, that …. Okay Elliott, I’m not really listening to your wine blathering anymore. Glasses poured all around, Phil sets his gin and tonic on his stomach while he tries the champagne; a couple of sips and he reverts to the gin and tonic.

  For the next hour we talk about the kinds of things that people talk about at dinner parties: Charlotte’s partner is skiing and the family is group texting incessantly, leaving her wondering why she wanted to be in that text group after all, Elliott opens a second bottle of champagne and explains the differences in the grapes and the terroir and why we never would have been able to drink them the other way around, the little spreads in the bowls on the coffee table which Charlotte really isn’t sure what they are because they came in little jars from her partner’s brother but they are not labeled, Phil’s latest horse racing results, Elizabeth’s recent food tour customers. It was all pleasant, the kind of stuff you’d expect at a dinner party.

  Charlotte beckons us to the dining room. The table has been beautifully set with china and the perfect glassware for each of the wines that she brought up from the cave for this “special occasion”. Elliott however, has some wine ideas of his own and inserts two unusual whites and reverses the order of the reds that Charlotte had intended serving. He replaces Charlotte’s soothing background music with his own, Irish music, in honor of Saint Patrick’s day.

  First course is a beautiful radish carpaccio with three kinds of radishes atop a mound of crème fraiche. Elliott pours his first white and gives us the two minute lecture about the wine. The carpaccio is delicious. We talk about the market where Charlotte found the black radishes and Elliott brings the focus back to this unusual little wine.

  Entrée plates are removed and out comes a steaming heavy tagine of cassoulet. It smells divine and tastes even better. We all help ourselves to plates full of chicken legs, pork sausage, beans, onions, carrots and whatever else is in the lovely stew. Elliott opens the first of Charlotte’s two special wines and pours without any discussion. The wine is perfect and I tell Charlotte how much I appreciate her raiding her cave for the occasion. The cassoulet is delicious and we all take second helpings and make fast work of the second bottle of red wine. Nobody is feeling any pain.

  In due course the dishes from the main course are swept away by Elizabeth, Joan and Charlotte, I’m in a corner where it’s pretty much impossible to get out and besides, I’m not really sure where they are all going into that teeny tiny kitchen, not to mention where all the dishes and glasses are being piled up. Out comes the most remarkable cheese board; what Elliott quickly dubs the Four Country Cheese Board! There are seven cheeses and I can’t begin to say what they all were; something pecorino with peppercorns, a couple of hard cheeses that Elliott sliced very thinly, almost like shavings, something from Greece, my Brillat-Savarin (which to my relief, Charlotte drools over) and a couple of other soft rounds of lactose goodness.

  Elliott opens and expounds on a Greek white wine that he just happened to run across that very day. I toss out a Brillat Savarin aphorism: “A meal without cheese is like a woman without an eye” to which Elliott responds with three more of B-S’s famous expressions in French. The Irish music gets louder, and our exhausted hostess falls asleep at the table.

  Nobody seems to think anything of it and we continue to work on the cheese board. Finally I suggest to Elizabeth that we might want to put Charlotte to bed. She asks our snoozing hostess if we can just close the door behind us, will that be ok? Charlotte seems to mumble assent as she is led into her bedroom.

  After another half hour of talking, Elizabeth, Joan and I do a reasonable job of clearing the table and putting the leftover cheese away. We load as many of the dishes as possible into the tiny dishwasher. Then everyone prepares to go. Elliott asks if I would like to share an Uber. Sure, I would love to. Phil and Elliott’s now empty backpacks are loaded into the teeny tiny elevator and the rest of us head down the five long flights of stairs.

  We step out into the snowy night in a part of Paris that I am completely unfamiliar with, Phil and Elizabeth to walk the half block home, Elliott, Joan and I to wait for our Uber. The app says it’s there. but Elliott couldn’t find it. Suddenly things take a surreal turn. Elliott and Joan are hurling F-bombs at each other, blaming each other for something to do with the misplaced Uber and I’m not sure what. He’s calling the number of the driver shouting at him, shouting at Joan, completely blowing a gasket. Finally we figure out it’s there, about 2 doors down with it’s lights blinking and Elliott is hurling insults at the driver! Wait a stinking minute here, we’re supposed to get into this car and be driven through a snowy night across the city. Be civil Elliott! The driver was pissed and we drove for half an hour in complete silence. When they reached their apartment in the 17ème he asked the driver to take me on to the 18ème. I was pretty sure I was going to have to walk at that point! But he bised me goodnight, told me not to give the driver another penny and off they went. As soon as the door closed I apologized (in French!) for Elliott’s behavior and tipped him five euro for the 2 minute (uphill in the snow) dri
ve.

  What a night! I guess I am part of the inner circle now.

  The Lost Generation

  Gertrude Stein called those expats who prowled the cafés and bars in Montparnasse between the wars The Lost Generation. I believe, they still exist, and they are still lost.

  At the dinner party Elliott asked me if I was interested in having dinner with he and Joao the next day. Joao was at loose ends, about to leave for Brazil for a month, and Elliott was going to take him out to dinner and see him off. Sure I responded. After his very poor behaviour on the sidewalk outside of Charlotte’s I wasn’t sure that he’d really be very comfortable seeing me the next day and frankly I wasn’t sure I wanted to hang out with him again. Perhaps the former because I didn’t hear anything the next day.

  But Elliott made a long and seemingly extremely profound post on his Facebook page about “his people” who seemed to include geniuses, lunatics, addicts, drunks and perverts, plus a few other choice descriptions. There was brilliance in the post, and arrogance and vicissitudes that frankly left me baffled. It was “liked” and “loved” by 42 people, some, the very people I’d met at the Elliott curated dinners. Comments followed calling Elliott fucking brilliant, accolades, tears and love poured over the leader of what Elliott refers to as his “tribe”.

  Not my tribe. I like a good party. I can drink but these people can DRINK! I’m not part of the Lost Generation.

  Taking Inventory

  Another jazz dinner, this time a rollicking night with Magalie and Stephanie. Although it was “musical version” (every other week, Daniele organizes a vocal version and he doesn’t show up), this week Daniele is not there because he has a gig at Sunside with Luigi. Uttering that sentence feels very strange for me; “gig”, “Sunside with Luigi”, as if I’m an insider, or a wanna be insider in this world of musicians. Strangely I’ve been getting FB requests from Daniele’s friends all week. Marketing no, doubt.

  Now I sit in a very busy Cépage on Friday morning trying to make heads and tails out of the last couple of days. I braved Cépage at 9 am this Friday morning, not sure what I would do if Caroleen was here. I’ve only been once since the divorce; an evening meeting with Siobhan. Caroleen was not there. It was amazing that one of the waiters who would not even make eye contact with Caroleen was absolutely flirtatious with us, wanting to engage in French chit chat.

  I’ve discovered a new emotion I haven’t experienced in decades; jealousy. Oh sure, I’ve had twinges of envy; towards someone in Business class when I didn’t get an upgrade, when another VP who I felt had a less impactful year than I did got a bigger bonus, that Jojo Moyes or Meg Clayton or Michele Gable seem to effortlessly spit out good book after good book. But in general, I’m very satisfied with my life; more than satisfied. I’ve managed to design it pretty much exactly as I like it. If things need adjusting, I adjust them.

  People tell me I’m lucky. I doubt that they know the hard work that went into getting where I am. Paris was a plan several years in the making. A plan that not everyone would even think of creating. I didn’t want a big house full of expensive furniture, yard, pool, husband. I wanted a career, a relationship with my daughters, friends who mattered to me, and adventures. And I worked hard to develop and maintain them.

  To a person, everyone remarked how wonderful my plan to move to Paris was. Everyone was “jealous”. I would argue that they are envious; like I am about someone else’s upgrade, the bigger bonus or literary success. For the most part, it’s not a path that others aspire to.

  So now I am sitting here and the days are hurtling by. In six weeks I have collected an interesting assortment of friends. I struggle with the use of the word friends. To me it implies a strength of relationship one cannot develop in days or weeks, even six of them. However, there does seem to be something that happens in this expat life that puts relationships on fast forward. It is a bit like going to summer camp as a kid. We are thrown together in a uniquely strange and exciting environment and set of circumstances and we quickly scramble to assert our own role in this new world; the leaders, the followers and the hangers-on.

  Here’s where the camp analogy ends and a certain amount of real world enters. Paris is a city. A big important world-class city. A city with an allure that makes people want to experience her magic. So while the expats come and go, some for decades, others for a much briefer tenure, there are real Parisians in our midst; people to whom Paris is the only home they have ever known. They struggle with jobs, aspire to vacations in the South, or maybe even to Spain or to Morocco or even to New York City. They ride the Metro, navigate through city traffic on motorbikes, walk (and walk and walk and walk! This is why Parisians are not fat.) They spend hours on café terraces drinking, smoking and gossiping with friends.

  They do buy baguettes. The do like to complain; about the weather, traffic, noise, politics. They do say bonjour; to everyone who enters their personal space. They do la bise to their friends coming and going, even if there are ten people sitting in one place, all ten will get the bise, coming and going. They do say “enchanté” when they meet someone new. And it does sound lovely.

  I felt from the beginning it would be important to make friends not only with expats, but with actual Parisians. Herein lies the rub. The Parisians you will meet when you move to Paris are nearly all in some kind of client relationship. Stephanie is my landlord. While we clicked from the very beginning, until the night of endless champagne, and there have been many lunches and dinners in the five years between our first meeting and that night, there was always a tiny formality, a caution on her part. I was a client.

  I have been lucky enough to be treated very well by so many Parisians; the handsome Thierry who continues to insist I’m his favorite client, the charming owner of le Café Qui Parle and his equally charming beau-frere, the owner of Le Café de la Butte, Philippe who always rushes to welcome me with la bise, even the celebrities Mario and Stéphane Jego, who now personally welcome me with la bise when I go to L’Ami Jean. But to all of them, I am a client. Maybe they toss in a cognac or a glass of champagne, but the truth is these are friends I pay to be my friends. Not only do I pay them, but I’m an American who pays them. How do I get past that?

  I think that Magalie was the catalyst that changed the relationship with Stephanie; bold outspoken, hold nothing back Magalie. I still cannot get Stephanie to comment about politics beyond pursed lips, downturned eyes and a tsk tsk that says “it’s terrible”. I can’t get an opinion out of her. Yet she will share the most intimate details of a love affair that went sour. Maybe she doesn’t follow politics and the lip pursing is the easiest way not to disclose that she doesn’t know. (Stephanie completely disagrees that 99% of married French men cheat but she won’t offer a more accurate number.)

  And Philippe, well that’s going nowhere. I’m stuck at la bise, ça va? (lots of ça vas). This could be a function of limited language skills, his and mine. I have watched him sit with other regular patrons, generally at the bar, chatting intimately. But he doesn’t do the same with me. He knows I’m writing. Does he not want to interrupt? Or perhaps does he, like me, realize that it’s impossible to be clever, interesting, witty or even understood in a language that one is not comfortable with? While I thought that Philippe’s English was about on par with my French, I’m discovering that his English is actually very limited. Which brings me back to the topic of jealousy.

  Wednesday night jazz dinner. Like I said, no Daniele this week. There was a substitute drummer. When I arrived, wholesomely greeted with bises and seated at “my table” by Philippe, the night’s performers were already into their first set. The drummer was horrible! This could be a long night! Fortunately the number ended and the drummer stood and bowed to the enthusiastic bravos of his drinking buddies, quickly replaced by the group’s actual drummer.

  Guillaume rushed over to welcome me with a handshake (I guess la bise is reserved for a more informal relation
ship, we haven’t graduated to it yet) and I order a bottle of Côte du Rhône. I’m well into my first glass when Stephanie and Magalie arrive together (friendly greeting from Philippe but no bise).

  Magalie says hello with kisses and a big hug, deposits her coat and rushes upstairs to use les toilettes. Stephanie takes off her coat, hat and scarf and settles in while I pour her a glass of wine. Magalie breezes back down the stairs and takes a seat next to me. She’s effortlessly beautiful, slim in her tight jeans and long sleeved scooped neck t-shirt, an ornate belt with dragon buckle turned to the side of her tiny waist. Both girls have their hair pulled into a messy knot, one that if I tried to get away with I would just look… messy.

  In walks a forty something blonde with a boy, about ten. Both go straight to bar stools where they get Philippe bises. Friends or something more? She’s rubenesque, squeezed into designer jeans of a size I wouldn’t have thought you could get in Paris, and trendy sneakers. Philippe pours her a glass of champagne and one for himself, a coke for the boy. He continues to do his restaurant owner welcoming people, applauding and bravoing the band, making sure we have what we need, overseeing the happy patrons thing, always returning to stand by her, wedged into a small space between her and another mec, someone Philippe introduces her to. They chat and sip champagne.

  The restaurant is jam packed. Stephanie and Magalie decided that we should try to speak only French. That is quickly derailed by the noise and we agree to take a break tonight but going forward I need to speak French. Magalie encourages me to attend classes at the Alliance Française. She tells me about a client who did and with three months was fluent.