No, I had people calling me chink in Italian and French (it was obvious what they were saying) at both restaurants and tourist spots like the Louvre. Honestly, I was used to it from my experiences back home in the States. But, as a ~15-year old, it still made me feel sad.
Getting back sort of on topic, I was trying to lend some credence as to why tourists would want to stick with the well-trodden road for restaurants. I haven’t been back to Paris in many years, so I presume that things have changed quite a bit. Just providing my experience.
I agree. Serendipity was sort of the theme of our trip. We took a boat to Greenwich to see the Gipsy Moth and the Cutty Sark, and we ended up strolling into an Aston Martin enthusiasts car show - heaven!
Everyone everywhere has preconceptions that aren’t necessarily prejudice. In the country particularly we are taken as English. “No, we’re American .” “Really? You’re not like Americans.” We are each ambassadors, for better or worse.
Times change. I was only a child in the far less sensitive and less respectful ‘80s but I do remember street slang for Asians, North Africans, Africans, Americans, Germans, etc being quite freely used and considered far less pejorative than they are today. My best friend at school happened to be of Vietnamese origin and I often called him “chinetoque” as a term of affection and familiarity rather than as an insult and he in turn called me “sale blanc”. Today I find it difficult to even write that word chinetoque.
The usual Italian terms for “Chink” focus on skin colour or eye shape and are very difficult to recognize by non-Italian-speakers… maybe you heard the rather polite “Cinese” and mistook it for an insult.
BTW, “asiatique” is not pejorative and not slang.
More BTW. In my set, we don’t use the equivalent of Asian-American, Afro-American, etc to describe French from non-Caucasian ethnicities. If they have been educated in France and speak French perfectly, they are French. No hyphens needed.
Unfortunately, Julia Child traps you into a certain time and style, French cuisine as it was in the 1950s. Food is a huge part of our culture but it has evolved way beyond the “cuisine bourgeoise” that she exposed to Americans.
Some observations. For most of the last 20 years, Parisians tended to avoid trad restaurants because the cuisine was considered tourist fodder, easily counterfeited with assembly-line and frozen products from Metro cash-&-carry (admittedly much better than similar industrial food elsewhere in the world), and chefs turned into just cooks or rather meal defrosters and assemblers, and, most of all, rarely good value. In French, the word “ringard”/ naff/ hopelessly out-of-date was the word most of us used to describe the sort of folklorique and cutesy restos that so appealed to foreigners. The once iconic addresses like Brasserie Lipp, Bofinger, La Coupole, Angelina, Au Pied de Cochon, etc were snapped up by this or that restaurant conglomerate and so polished and re-polished for tourists that their essential juices dried up. Not so long ago, my short list of trad restos that I enjoyed and felt represented the old and very authentic Parisian bistro/ brasserie “ésprit” and “dans son jus” was very short indeed: Le Petit Pascal (now closed) in the 14th, Moissonnier (now closed) in the 5th, Chez Denise (especially at 3am) in Les Halles, and La Rotonde Montparnasse.
However, there has been a revolution in the last few years. There was a wave of openings of new “old” bouillons, brasseries and bistros that offered very good trad cuisine (“fait maison”/ made from scratch) at stunningly good prices. The routière/ roadhouse-style Aux Bons Crus in the 11th, Aux Crus de Bourgogne (my fave) in the 2nd, Les Marches in the 16th. Bouillon Pigalle in Montmartre and its even better sibling Bouillon République (mostly Alsacien brasserie fare) in the upper 3rd, Bouillon Julien (fab Art-Nouveau décor) in the 10th. Petit Bouillon Pharamond in Les Halles. Brasserie Bellanger in the 10th and its sibling Brasserie Dubillot in the 2nd. La Grande Brasserie in the 4th near place Bastille. Bistro Le Paris Seize in the 16th.
Faced with competition from the new “old” restos with fab price/ quality ratios at a time when the eggs from the Golden Goose of tourism were much reduced, the traditional brasseries and bistros that used to make quite a nice profit from tourist traffic reduced prices and improved quality to appeal to locals.
With a few exceptions the new “old” bouillons/ brasseries have not yet become big blips on the very time-lapsed tourist radar. Another mystery.
My acknowledgement of Julia Child may “trap” me in your eyes. But in my opinion, Julia had a major influence in America, encouraging people to cook and enjoy French food. Julia was also taken with California cuisine, so she had modern tastes as well.
There are currently two TV shows about her airing in America. One is a cooking competition, The Julia Child Challenge, where the winner’s prize is a cooking course at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. The second show is a series on HBO Max which depicts Julia’s struggles getting her TV show to air on public television. So, her influence is still wide-reaching into the present day.
French cooking keeps evolving as American cooking does. Nouvelle cuisine lightened up Trad dishes, making a clean break from the past. Modern cuisine has evolved from that. And lately there has been the Bistronomy movement, further evolving and melding French cuisine.
The U.S. has evolved as well, with more and more restaurants focusing on local and ethnic specialties and farm-to-table cooking. But we still have a lot of garbage restaurants that serve crap on a plate. You will also find a pizza place on every block, it’s pretty much our national dish. (My state, Connecticut, has the best )
Because of my love of French Trad — assembly line, frozen, metro-industrial food is my nightmare. I know I am prone to getting it because it’s easy to pass off. That’s why I highly value your opinions and recommendations. As I discovered when I went to L’Oiseau Blanc in 2019, it turns out I love French Modern cuisine too. Quite delicious and beautiful plating! So, it’s not an either or proposition.
Photos from L’Oiseau Blanc. The rolled yellow and green squash with edible flowers was my favorite:
That reminds me of my first trip to Rome. Early 20’s, didn’t speak the language, alone, and refusing anything that was a tour.
I took a public bus and kept getting “groped” until I finally got off who knows where. Next two times I to
took tours ( with a small group of other tourists! ) and it really sped up my learning. My next trips to Italy were more off the beaten path, but I don’t think of being a “tourist” as something shameful.
Of course I had to lookup lemmings to see if what we understand about their behavior is true.
Also, I don’t recall eating boeuf bourguignon ( maybe in Napa) , but I just saw a recipe for chicken bourguignon I might try. In Paris I asked to take my left over frites and he was shocked and confused. "But they won’t taste as good!
Depends. I lived in Queens for 15 years and knew quite a few neighborhoods outside my own pretty well, in addition to lots of Manhattan areas. Brooklyn however - you couldn’t pay me enough to haul ass out there!
Whaaaat! I spent my childhood running between Brooklyn and Queens, young adulthood in the Bronx, granted, with a car. Occasionally trips to Manhattan. Not in a car.
ETA Daughter has bounced between living in Queens and Brooklyn and Brooklyn seems easier.
Not so much because I hate Brooklyn, but because I hate the trek to get there. I lived in Sunnyside - being on the 7 line was extremely convenient to most of Queens and Manhattan, but really not convenient to Brooklyn. Unless somehow the G train can be classified as convenient…
I started keeping ziploc bags in my purse specifically for my leftovers on my trip to Greece and Italy in 2004. Around 2018, I started keeping a small reusable bento box in my purse, as well as a little utensil kit, when I travel. Less hassle than asking a server for a box in a country that doesn’t really do doggie bags!
I taught the venerable John Talbott this trick. Since I am not a big meat eater, husband used to glance over at my plate and ask what had happened to the rather large chunk of protein he had seen seconds before. Smile, distract and deposit said steak into zip lok at the ready. Talbott and I always had lunch in hand.
Maybe it’s just me, but I find it hard to really get great tasting stews at most restaurants.
Don’t get me wrong, they do taste nice, but compared to the stew I can make at home, I rarely feel like a restaurant stew can match a home made stew.
In the case of Boeuf Bourgignon I think the problem is, that the restaurant has to have the stew ready through the service, so they can reheat parts of the stew in 25-30 minutes, so it can be ready for the guest.
At some stage they then will add the beef, since the beef would overcook, if they had the entire stew simmering away on the stovetop.
Boeuf Bourgignon (BB) is also a stew, that taste better on the second day, but then at some point on the third day starts to get over cooked.
Unless the restaurant throws their remaining BB out, the stew will start to diminish in quality.
So one guest at the same restaurant might have gotten a perfect BB, while another guest at some other stage might get a more mediocre BB.
In my opinion the best stews I’ve eaten in my life have been home made and not restaurant made stews.
I’ve visited France many many times and eaten stews at different restaurants all over the country.
The best stews I’ve eaten in my life were still home made by either my late mother or myself.
I’ve never had a beef bourguignon that tastes as good as a good beef gulasch / goulash, or as good as beef rendang.
I am not sure my taste buds are aligned with the people who really love and seek out beef bourguignon, at least on the topic of stewed or braised beef.
I’m sorry you experienced that but not surprised. I wonder if some of the surprise here comes from the ways the French embrace Black Americans but one need only look at how the French treated French and other people of African and Middle Eastern descent. White Parisians might be less openly so, but man, the things I overhear when I’m in the South. Oy! (My sense of the French is that they try to sweep everything behind the curtain of secular and French values without acknowledging how very White and Christian those are. I don’t hate France or the French by any stretch and if I had the money would still be tempted to live in Paris, especially since that would put me closer to my mum, but I am familiar enough, including with the history, to have a lot of , erm, thoughts.)
My cousin’s husband is a French man raised in France. His parents immigrated to France from Madagascar, and he is Black. My cousin and her husband won’t visit Corsica because of the racist attitudes there, and discouraged me from visiting Corsica for that reason. My cousin and her husband current live in Basel, after living in the Bay Area for over a decade. Racism is sadly everywhere, although I think it’s (currently) easier to live in a city with more diversity such as Paris, than a town with less diversity in the sticks.
)
If someone asked, the answer would be: the protein was given to the dog of next table.