by Amy Thomas
More Sweet Spots on the Map
Only in New York can you find small restaurants devoted to sweets. When the dessert bar trend took off, I was excited. The rest of the city, apparently not so much. Most shuttered within a year of opening. But two notably remain: Chika Tillman’s original dessert bar, ChikaLicious, in the East Village, is still going strong and has spawned a take-away bakery across the street. (More great cupcakes! And brioche bread pudding! Miam!) And the Japanese dessert bar, Kyotofu, in Hell’s Kitchen, goes heavy and delicious on the soy.
I’m admittedly more of a sweets snacker than a dessert person, but the final course in Parisian restaurants is always a thrill. I first tried baba au rhum at Bistrot Paul Bert in the 11e, where they actually plunk a bottle of rum on the table so you can douse your dessert with more spirits (I was with Michael, and we, of course, doused our cake beaucoup). The caramel soufflé at l’Atelier de Joël Robuchon at the head of the Champs-Élysées is light, lovely, and utterly transporting. And at Chez Janou in the Marais and Chez l’Ami Jean in the 7e, giant mixing bowls of chocolate mousse and rice pudding are brought to the table, tempting you to take just a little more…just a little more…okay, just a little more…
I had become like a broken record, playing the same questions over and over in my mind. Fate or control? New York or Paris? Breakfast or dessert?
Let me explain. For over a year, I had been straddling two worlds: Paris and New York. I now saw life in stark dualities, everything an either-or option. Did I want to be an expat or a local? American or French? Did I want to run with my advertising career, now so fulfilling, or funnel more energy to magazine writing, as I had thought I would do while living abroad? I also debated whether I should live more like a proper Parisian and create sacred weekends devoted to relaxation and pleasure, or keep at it like a good New Yorker and knock things off my to-do list. Why was I in Paris? What was the real reason I was there? Or was there no reason at all—maybe it was just dumb, wonderful luck. Was Paris my fate? Since I couldn’t crack the question, I thought it was something a couple girlfriends and a pitcher of beer could help me with.
They say you have to live in a new city at least a year before you feel like you belong. Sure enough, that spring, I could consider myself more of an in-the-know local than a lonely outsider. When someone stopped me in the street to ask for directions (Vraiment? I look like a Parisienne?), I not only understood what they were saying, but I also knew my way around well enough to know where they needed to go. And I could tell them en français. (If I was completely nonsensical in my response, they were always kind enough to thank me before getting on their way.) My cheesemonger (yes, I had a “cheesemonger” and I loved saying that) recognized me to the point that he’d migrate toward the brebis, a beautifully mild and creamy sheep’s milk cheese from the Basque region, knowing I’d only occasionally stray from my usual order to opt for une tranche de Comté instead. The pâtisserie spreadsheet I had arrived in Paris with had not only grown prodigiously, but had also been tackled impressively. And the real sign that I was now a local? I had an expanding circle of friends whom I adored.
Jo and I had grown closer over the months working at Ogilvy. Although we worked on separate accounts, in different buildings, we still managed lunch weekly and would bond over shared office politics and gossip. Along the way, I had met Sarah at a little soirée of Rachel’s, whom I had met while whipping the eggs, butter, sugar, and cream together for a plum clafoutis at a cooking class. Sarah was a young up-and-coming writer from New York. Rachel hailed from London and was a self-described “food creative” who wrote cookbooks and threw themed dinner parties—Jackie O! Communist Germany! The ’80s!—when she wasn’t working at Bob’s Juice Bar, a small cantine opened by a fellow New Yorker near Canal Saint-Martin that served bagels and smoothies. Needless to say, I was delighted to connect with kindred spirits who loved food, fashion, art, and la belle vie en Paris as much as I did. There were scads of us expats in the city, and in hindsight, it was inevitable that we’d fall into the small and overlapping communities that we did.
Still, when I’d first moved to Paris, I wanted nothing more than to be on the French-local side of my self-inflicted divide. I didn’t want to become part of an expat gang who ate cheeseburgers and watched football games at Irish pubs at odd hours of the night. Instead, I envisioned hours spent around the kitchen table of someone’s garret apartment, where there would be abundant wine and cheese and baguettes splayed on the table. I’d regale my new French friends with my expat antics, told in an oh-so-charming American accent. The men would wink at me, and the women would want to spend Saturdays shopping with me at Le Bon Marché. I could even see myself joining them in the occasional cigarette.
Needless to say, my little Franco-fantasies never transpired. And after a year of clicking with nary a Frenchie the same way I did the Anglophones, I was firmly in the expat camp. On one hand, it felt like failure, that I had moved to a foreign city and never managed to assimilate. If only I had worked harder at my vocabulary exercises or learned to flirt like a Frenchwoman. But practically, I was grateful and relieved to be part of a group. That I could speak my mind and be understood, literally and emotionally. And that I had girlfriends to go out with on a Saturday night!
We were actually on our second pitcher of beer when I opened up the fate debate to Jo and Sarah. We were at The Bottle Shop, a rowdy bar in the eleventh arrondissement that was filled with…Anglophones. We loved it because everyone stood around the bar, instead of cloistering themselves at individual café tables. It was actually possible to meet people at a bar like The Bottle Shop. Besides, most Parisian bartenders wore pastel-colored v-necks and had waists smaller than mine. Here, they were buff, tattooed dudes.
“Do you believe in fate?” I asked innocently, eyeing the bartender’s bicep. Even though tatts aren’t my thing, I can appreciate a nice, strong arm.
Jo looked thoughtfully through her oversized Ray-Ban frames. She and Cedric had sped so quickly through the traditional relationship stages that it was totally normal for her to spend Saturday nights with the girls again instead of at home, in cozy coupledom. “Well, I used to believe in fate,” she started carefully. “Until I realized that if you believe in fate, then you’re sort of relinquishing control over your own life.” She started speaking faster, really rolling with it. “If everything happens for a reason, then it’s like you really have nothing to do with where you are in your life—as if all your choices, actions, and decisions have nothing to do with your success.” As a Class A control freak, I had to cede the point to her (Fate, 0; Control, 1). “And,” she added for final emphasis, “I’d like to think that I am where I am because of me.”
“Yeah, I think fate is sorta bullshit.” At just twenty-five years old, Sarah had a razor-sharp tongue. If ever you wanted a healthy debate or a contrarian opinion, she was your girl. “I mean, what about really crappy things that happen to people? Like a guy who gets hit by a bus and leaves a family behind? Or you lose your job and health insurance when the economy goes south? You’re telling me that’s fate? That’s supposed to happen? Or kids born in the Congo to see their parents slaughtered—really? That’s supposed to happen according to some divine orchestration?” (Touché! Fate, 0; Control, 2.)
“I know, I know. It makes no sense and can be maddening, but isn’t that also the point? That we don’t know, and that we don’t have control? But that things just happen because they’re supposed to? You don’t always have the reasons or answers.”
“Meh…” I noticed Sarah’s eyes also straying to the bartender’s bicep. “It’s bullshit.”
“Yeah, how do you account for the fact that I was born and raised in Australia, and today, here I am, living in Paris? It’s not some higher power. It’s because I wanted to leave. It was totally my doing, man.” Jo licked her lips and pushed her glasses back up on her nose. “And like Sarah said, how do you justify all the tragedies and death, then? I just can’t believe those things are meant to
be.”
They were both getting riled up now, and I knew on some level they were right. (Fate, 0; Control, 3.) There are devastating tragedies, inexplicable events, and freaks of nature that simply can’t be rationalized. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that Paris was my fate, and I was hungry for validation. I pressed on. “But aside from life’s tragedies, what about those instant connections we feel with certain people and places? And what about the idea of being in the right place at the right time? Maybe it is all part of some greater cosmic plan that we’re not necessarily aware of, but we should just trust.” Those things had always bugged me—the way it seemed you knew someone even though you had only just met them. Or you felt a deep connection to a place you’d never even been before, like you’d been there in a dream or something. It had to be fate, right? (Oui! Fate, 1; Control, 3.)
As Jo and Sarah now delved deeper into the debate, I was flashing back on my relationship with the City of Light and Dark Chocolate, now in its seventeenth year. I fell in love with Paris (and the Nutella street crepes…mon dieu!) during my college semester abroad. But as smitten as I was, I was young and dutifully returned home at the end of my semester. A few years later, when I lived with Max in San Francisco, I wanted to cash in my 401(k) so he and I could move over together and be romantic bohemians who spent our days writing and making out in public gardens. But he just laughed good-naturedly at the idea. So I carried on year after year with life in the States, forever obsessed with that magical city on the other side of the ocean. I read books by Janet Flanner and Gertrude Stein, watched Eric Rohmer and Jean Renoir movies, and I spent countless hours listening to Michel Thomas on cassette.
Then the tipping point came in 2008, with my Tour du Chocolat. Living like a local for a week, Vélib’ing all over town, visiting chocolatiers—that was the life! When I returned to New York after that, I was chatting with an old colleague who was taking a leave of absence to live in the Marais for three months—a bold and exciting idea that had never even crossed my mind. But one morning not long after, I had a revelation at Balthazar, my favorite restaurant in Soho that’s, unsurprisingly, the perfect replication of a French bistro, right down to the billowy, buttery croissants. I was breakfasting with one of my old creative directors and midconversation—midsentence—something suddenly, inexplicably turned over in my head. I thought that oui, I too should take a leave of absence to spend time in Paris. I decided I was going to do it the following spring. And then, just a few weeks later, Allyson walked through my office door (Fate, 2; Control, 3).
But if Paris was my fate, what was I supposed to be getting out of it? I had come over with romantic visions of meeting a tarte tatin prince and getting a big, fat book contract to write about sweets. I was going to be Paris’s pastry doyenne. But a year later, I was still single and had no publishing deal (that, happily, was to come later). The fantasy life had long been tempered by reality, and I knew that living in a magical city came with a price. I was looking for some sort of grand epiphany that would explain everything. Like what if I had gone to Madrid instead of Paris for my semester abroad? What if I had never taken my Tour du Chocolat? What if I hadn’t been in my office that day Allyson came looking, and she asked someone else about the job? And…what if something monumental was in fact waiting for me—I just needed to stay in Paris another few months to discover it? What if…?
A year ago, I’d felt I had nothing to do with my Parisian stint happening—Allyson had walked into my office, not the other way around. But maybe it had been me. Maybe it was something like guided fate. Maybe it was possible to want something so much, for so long, without even consciously realizing it, that finally fate had to listen and cooperate. Maybe I was in control of my own fate, steering myself, if only subconsciously, toward the life I was meant to live? Maybe Jo and Sarah and I were all right. (Fate, 2.5; Control, 2.5?)
With that thought, I decided to drop the agonizing debate and just enjoy the moment of being at a rowdy bar on a Saturday night. You’re a better dreamer than philosopher, I told myself. Let the answers remain mysterious. The DJ was spinning Motown. The smell of beer was both cloying and delicious. There were cute boys in the room. Things were beginning to get good.
“How about that bartender’s body?” I asked, to the appreciative nods and sighs of my friends.
But of course my mind wouldn’t rest so easily. I had a decision to make. I was an American in Paris—an American in love with Paris—and yet I still couldn’t decide where my heart, my life, belonged. I was torn between loving Paris and missing New York. It seemed the grass was always greener and the sweets sweeter on the other side of the Atlantic.
Partly what had gotten me through the months since my last visit home was the knowledge that my time in Paris was limited. My second CDD—contrat à durée déterminée—expired at the end of June, just a few months down the road, and I had been planning on returning home then. I drew comfort from this (au revoir, lonely nights!) and was even more motivated to make the most of every day in Paris, knowing it wasn’t forever.
But suddenly, I wasn’t so sure. Was I really done with Paris? (One’s never done with Paris…a little voice inside my head chastised.) Would my life be better back in New York? (Debatable, in and of itself…) Did I have to make a choice? (Yes, otherwise drive yourself utterly insane.) If coming to Paris had been fate, guided or otherwise, I realized at least I was in total control of what happened next. I could choose to sign another short-term contract, or maybe even go full-time in Paris and remain indefinitely. My choice.
My heart had been telling me one thing for months: to return to my family and friends back home. But summer, my favorite season, was on the horizon. Did I really want to leave and miss the 10:00 p.m. sunsets that provided several extra hours for Vélib’ riding and drinking rosé along the canal? To deny myself a few more months of morning pastries, wonderfully billowy and blissfully warm from the oven? And what about work? Writing for Louis Vuitton, in Paris, was about as good as it was going to get. Did I really want to walk away? No. And yes. Yes and no. I simply couldn’t decide. So I started creating checklists, debating which of these two decadent cities was the right choice:
Pleasure or Success?
Long, leisurely dinners. Dozing in the sun along the Seine. Sitting with friends and watching the world go by. In Paris, you dream, you pontificate, you light another cigarette. You’re supposed to just be.
In New York, you can’t just be. But you can be anything or anyone you want.
Beauty or Energy?
Of course I had always known how dazzling Paris is. But to actually live there and walk the streets—with the massive plane trees and ancient cobblestones, the rose-tinted street lamps, the green bookstalls, and golden limestone façades—well, the French know a little something about seduction.
But in New York, you’re swept away by everything and everyone around you: pedestrians, taxis, buses, street vendors, blinking neon signs, little dogs, big dogs, and, oh, the freaks everywhere! To walk the streets of New York is to know what it means to feel alive.
Plat du Jour or Trend of the Moment?
Thick, white spears of asparagus. Plump, juicy duck breasts. Eggs with neon orange yolks. The salted butter. With some of the purest ingredients and most celebrated recipes and cooking techniques in the world, there’s little better than dining in Paris. You linger forever, indulge in course after course, bite after bite, while keeping pace with lovely regional wines and being charmed by the wait staff (if they’re not bristling at having to work).
But in New York, you get a scene served alongside dinner. You get madcap creations and unique techniques, ever-surprising menus and colorful creations. The only problem is, you’re also guilted into ordering more alcohol, more food, more, more, more to jack up the bill. (“That’s it? You know, the plates are pretty small here…”) Then you’re pressured to eat quickly so they can cram in as much business as possible that night. And don’t forget to tip your actor/artist/model/carpenter/hip
ster waiter 20 percent. Or else.
Chinon or Sidecar?
Ah, French wine. I had developed the habit of drinking a glass—Chinon, Bordeaux, Côtes du Rhône, peu import—nearly every night. And whenever I traveled home to New York, I was reminded of how lucky I was to do so. In Manhattan, the average glass of wine starts at an outrageous $12 compared to 3 or 4 in Paris. And that’s for a glass of mediocrity.
But, oh, how I missed a good cocktail. I was lucky to live near Experimental in Paris, where the drinks were as delicious as they were creative. But if I had a centime for every lousy sidecar I had, I’d be a very rich girl indeed.
Macaron or Cupcake?
Needless to say, I had sampled some of the best sweets in both New York and Paris. At one time, I thought there was nothing better than Momofuku’s cornflake, marshmallow, chocolate chip cookie. Until I bit into Pierre Hermé’s exquisite chocolate and salted caramel Plenitude Individuel. I thought I’d miss the blueberry-studded muffins from Thé Adoré. But then I fell for Du Pain et Des Idées’s flaky croissants and escargots. From cupcakes to cocoa, my head spun from the comparisons, and my internal debate raged on:
Bagels or baguettes?
Peanut butter or Speculoos?
Taxis or Vélib’s?
Manolos or Repettos?
Oversized sunglasses or oversized scarves?
Diners or cafés?
Downtown or Left Bank?
Empire State or Eiffel Tower?
Bergdorf or Colette?
Carrie Bradshaw or Charlotte Gainsbourg?
New York or Paris?
Should I stay, or should I go?
From every angle it was a draw—and I was exhausted. The mental acrobatics, zinging back and forth, yes or no, stay or go, were getting me nowhere. Maybe I’d just have to let fate decide, after all.