Emily in France 🇫🇷 Spring is Springing in Paris
Café, café, café.
Spring is starting to poke out its head in Paris, which means one thing: cafés.
I first started drinking coffee when I was 14 years old, after my dad got himself a very fancy cappuccino machine and became obsessed with making milky Italian coffee. Soon after, I came to France for my first prolonged stay; I asked for coffee upon landing, and discovered first-hand the horrors of airplane coffee.
But it was only a few days later that I began enjoying a long lunch with my host sister's grandparents every Thursday, at the end of which I was served a tiny cup of very dark coffee. I learned to love the flavor; what I loved, at first, was the ceremony of it all.
My coffee drinking quickly developed into a pot-a-day habit while at boarding school, and I've been drinking what the French term jus de chaussette (sock juice) ever since. That said, while my preference is for filter coffee, there's something about springtime and sitting on a terrasse with an espresso that just feels like an essential Parisian experience. (Even if the vast majority of our coffee is pretty dang terrible.) It's that ceremony, that willful lingering that the Parisians do just right.
Hope to see you in the Parisian sunshine soon!
Where I'm Eating
I didn't used to like pizza at all (blasphemy for an Italian New Yorker), but I've grown to love it. Guillaume Grasso is currently making one of my favorites in Paris, according to Neapolitan tradition, that's well worth the trek out to the 15th.
As always, you can find my ever-evolving list of my favorite Paris restaurants here.
Where I'm Going
1. Seeing as I just returned from Japan, I'm even more excited to check out this moving image exhibit at the Atelier des Lumières.
2. I've never actually been to an exhibit at the Grand Palais, but Red, an exhibit of Soviet culture and utopia, sounds like the ideal way to start.
3. My favorite movie theater in Paris, the Filmothèque du Quartier Latin, is currently doing a Stanley Kubrick retrospective, so it's *very* likely I'll end up there one (or a few!) nights this week.
What I'm Writing
1. Instagrammable cheese pull is literally changing the way we eat. I tracked down some cheesy favorites for Far & Wide.
2. If you suffer from allergies but don't love living in an antihistamine fog, you might be interested in this list of herbs that naturally keep seasonal allergies at bay: my latest contribution to Organic Authority.
3. One from the archives! I did a deep dive into five iconic American foods for 10Best.
What I'm Reading
1. This celebration of Independent Bookstore Day in Vox.
2. This exploration of the Compagnons – the experts tasked with, among other things, repairing Notre Dame, in Quartz.
3. This guide to writing efficiently, which appeals to me as a die-hard plotter, in LitHub.
A bientôt !
Emily in France