The Weekly Screed (#688)

A cozy evening in the urban shell
by David Benjamin

“Paris is devine. I mean Dorothy and I got to Paris yesterday, and it really is devine. Because the French are devine.”
                  — Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

PARIS — This city is a little like operating a Mack truck with a manual shift. It requires a fully-grown intelligent adult, a great deal of patience, a lot of practice, a little brute strength and a frisson of plain old attitude. Hotlips and I, who started in Paris 25 years ago, tend to forget the difficulties of newcomers to Paris who can find it confusing, frenetic and possibly even a little bit rude.

Last night, for example, we tried out a new restaurant, just down rue Monge, near the Left Bank’s fragrant, cobbled market street, rue Mouffetard. I was slightly skeptical of this bistro, called Dans des Landes, because a) it serves a French version of tapas, a Spanish gastronomic gimmick that I’ve always found vaguely annoying because the bill-of-fare consists entirely of snacks, and b) it was recommended by food guru Patricia Wells, whose occasional mistakes can cost you a couple hundred bucks before you escape the joint with a queasy tummy and a metallic aftertaste that lasts all night.

However, we decided to risk it and phoned ahead for a reservation — a necessity in Paris, because, if you don’t, there are maitre d’s who will turn, scan a restaurant replete with empty tables and idle, dozing waiters, and say, “Oh, m’sieur, I am so sorry. But we are complet — full. If only you had reserved!”

Having reserved, we were welcome. Our smiling host led us briskly to an outdoor table, right underneath the menu. At Dans des Landes and many bistros in France, the only menu is a blackboard (ardoise). As a pleasant surprise, the scrawl on the ardoise was legible, each item in capital letters. But in French.

There’s no French harder to learn and memorize than food words, most of which don’t appear in French-English lexicons. In French class, you learn the word for “pencil” (crayon) on Day One. Then you might wait ten years before you ever use it. I mean, really, who talks about pencils? But “onglet?” Or “chipiron?” “Andouillette?” “Dourade?” This is stuff common to cartes and ardoises from Normandy to the Cote d’Azur.

The Dans des Landes ardoise was a special challenge. Its long list of small dishes, which I called horse-overs and Hotlips called, diplomatically, “bar food,” was creatively esoteric, including “cous de canard” (duck necks), “coeurs de canard” (duck hearts), “couteaux” (jackknife clams), “poitrine de porc” (pork spare ribs) and “magret des cailles” (quail breasts).

As old bistro hands, Hotlips and I got the drift without too much difficulty, pausing only at “cous de canard,” a delicacy we’d never tasted (nor did we try it last night). However, our restaurant French was sufficient not only to earn a translation from our young waiter — who pointed to his neck — but to elicit from him, with obvious eagerness, his repertoire of high-school English.

Among the many, largely hidden, charms of Parisians is their willingness to speak English, however haltingly, if they first hear a visitor stumbling away at the native tongue. Helpfulness flows from the French — as it does from New Yorkers — if l’etranger makes even a pathetic effort to speak as do les habitants.

The tourist who learns nary a syllable of phrasebook French, not even so much as a “s’il vous plait,” or a mispronounced “merci” has no access to the sympathy and solicitude of Parisians and often — erroneously — comes away echoing D.H. Lawrence: ”I would have loved it — without the French.”

Dans des Landes was crowded, its popularity enhanced by the an annual August hiatus common among Paris eateries. Hence, as soon as our little table was overflowing with wine, water, tapas and bread, we were elbow-to-elbow with new next-table customers. They were French, as were most of the patrons. Despite Patricia Wells, Dans des Landes lies slightly off the heavily beaten tourist trail. Because they were Parisian, we knew that our neighbors would ignore us almost completely — although they peeked at our dishes, especially the duck hearts and quail breasts, the latter of which they also ordered.

We were reciprocally rude to them. I nodded once, appreciatively, when our waiter delivered them something that came in a Size-18 wooden shoe. Our neighbors smiled back. Otherwise, we all withdrew into the urban shell. The capacity to separate from groups of people who are just inches away, talking so that you can hear clearly their every word, eating, drinking, laughing, even singing, perhaps smoking, is basic survival strategy in any city. If you can’t pretend that the twelve roaring businessmen at the next table don’t exist, if you can’t suppress an urge to be neighborly, or to tell them to for God’s sake tone it down, your frustration with the relentless congestion of the city will send you to the asylum, or, worse, the country — about which, the Rev. Sydney Smith once said, “I have no relish for the country. It is a kind of healthy grave.”

There is a subtle cordiality in the urban shell. It allows both you and the nuzzling next-door newlyweds to carve a sliver of private space where there is no space. It involves you, without a hint of acknowledgment, to participate in two different meals while eating only one. It forges an invisible bond of tolerance toward strangers who might — if you broke the silence and became reluctantly social — turn out to be conversational, intrusively bubbly and, finally, insufferable.

At the end, our waiter gave us an on-the-house digestif of young armagnac and raspberry liqueur. Then, in gratitude and fellowshiop, we bade our neighbors, who ignored us generously to the last, a warm, thankful “bonne soirée.”