[Boondoggle de France] -- Paris Bread Hunt II
After running inside Louvre and visiting the 4 must-sees (3 from guide books: Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace; and 1 from VBB’s list: the Moabite stone), we were hungry (that soon? I wondered why...) And remembering this morning's baguettes, we hurriedly began our desperate hunt of true authentic Parisian artisan breads.A writer on food once said that good breads, like quality men, are hard to find. (VB nods in consent, and VBB strongly disagrees. Never mind, we are from different planets.) This lady food critic looks for a bread with firmness, heaviness, and masculinity, like a man with substantiality and integrity. A world-renowned pastry chef also laments the difficulty of finding in Paris a loaf of bread with lots of seeds and stuff in it. (Could it be because Parisian breads, like Parisians, are so refined?) Fortunately these particularly heavy-laden qualities of bread that were essential to the critic and the chef do not really bother us: it’s great to have a loaf of bread of substance; it’s also nice to get an excellent baguette or pain au levain. With a boulangerie on every corner in Paris, we should be easily satisfied.
It didn't take very long before we realized that we were absolutely positively definitely wrong: NOT all breads are created equal! Certainly we were still very happy with breads of every kind, loaded or fluffy, firm or soft (as long as its not sourdough), but among the French boulangeries we visited, nothing could compare to Eric Kayser's. – We conveniently missed ALL of the five 3-star boulangeries recommended by Palamarés 2005 des boulangeries de Paris, partly because we didn't know about that booklet until now (what kind of lame and lousy research did we do?) But even if we had known, being français-illiterate, we wouldn't have understood a thing anyway.
Our first encounter with Kayser bread was purely accidental. After covering the entire Boulevard Haussmann and a pretty good portion of Avenue de Champ-Elysee, two starved Californians would have devoured a roast pig in its entirety – or a suckling rather, just to be humble. Unfortunately whole pigs were not found on the refined and sophisticated Parisian streets this time of the year (boars, maybe), but a magnificent display of cold cuts and a staggering array of cheeses awaited us at Galeries Lafayette, along with a busy bread stand in the center stage of the post-5pm grocery shopping mania.
"Hurry!" VB tried to pull VBB away from Sadaharu Aoki's delightful and fascinating sweet booth that always worked like a magnet on him, "breads first, desserts later!" What good are cold cuts and cheeses without bread? Unless you are on one of those low-cal no-carb, suicidal diets -- that's a different story.
Again, with broken American Sign Language (believe me, it's very different from the French Sign Language -- which, of course, is much more refined and sophisticated), we got whatever was left on the almost empty shelves. The first bite, and we were in love. Unlike the baguettes we had in the morning, which was already quite impressive, the Kayser breads were intriguingly and astonishingly fantasitc, leaving us in want of more.
So we came back next morning, when the shelves were full of selections and the staff full of patience. We picked a few viennese pastries heavily doped with chocolate chips, one medium-sized bundt-cake looking yeast bread (aka kugelhof), and some authentic plain broiche, to go with the best coffee from the Café Malongo bar.
We also sought out the reputed boulangépicier store, owned by Alain Ducasse and Eric Kayser, on our way to the challenge of 273 stairs up to the top of Arc de Triomphe, for a panoramic view of the City of Light.
Almost at its closing hour, we were fortunate to be granted the very last Brochette Riviera, a skewer of three savory mini-sandwiches: basil bread spread with pesto and sun-dried tomato; tomato bread filled with duck fillet; and olive bread spread with tapenade and filled with goat cheese. Our suprise and amazement were beyond imagination, as we ate these sandwiches slowly, savoring and enjoying their flavors released in every bite.
And we came back to Galeries Lafayette the next morning, only to find it -- CLOSED -- on Sunday. But we did dutifully and faithfully return again, to conclude our Parisian stay, before catching the RER to the Charles de Gaulle airport.
continue...
