Emily in France 🇫🇷 On Arrondissements
On arrondissements.
Paris is laid out like a snail shell, with the first arrondissement at its core and the 20th laying to the northeast. It's why you can be standing between the third and the 11th; it's also the most common way in which people describe where they live.
This is a marked change from Paris' past, when Left Bank and the Right Bank were the indicators par excellence. Through the mid and even late 20th century, the Right was associated with the aristocracy and old money, home to the Louvre palace, the luxurious hôtels particuliers of the Marais, the Champs-Elysées of the 8th. The Left, meanwhile, was home to the bohemians: the literary cafés of Saint-Germain, the hallowed halls of the Sorbonne, the "modern" (circa 1899) Eiffel Tower.
But as our understanding of what Paris was expanded, so, too, did these categorizations morph.
The Left, once the area where Hemingway et al had to decide whether to spend their sous on beer or food, encompasses the rich residential 15th and 14th; the Right, once a bastion of the aristocracy that all but ignored the poorer quartiers to the north, now recognizes and celebrates the quickly gentrifying neighborhoods of Ménilmontant and Belleville, home to the cemetery of Père Lachaise, to the poor streets that raised Edith Piaf.
The monied classes now gravitate to Southern Paris; new money goes north. And everyone else has been displaced to le Grand Paris, the outer limits of the city. There is no real space in modern Paris for the mixity extolled by the great writers of the 19th century canon: for Hugo's gamin or Balzac's vermicelliers or Zola's belly of Paris, which has been located in the suburb of Rungis since the 70s.
I spent years living, working, learning on the Left Bank before moving north. I'd been told that a true Parisian never defects, and part of me has often thought that, actually, I was always a true Right Banker, that it was just waiting to welcome me. But then I spent the past few days wending my way through the 6th, and I realized, instead, that maybe it's just that there are bits of Paris you need at different times: the 1st for art and architecture; the 3rd for cobbles and crannies; Saint-Germain for the literati, Montmartre for a bit of magic. Despite what the easy categorization its arrondissement system seems to imply, maybe, in the spirit of a true flâneur, it's more interesting to see Paris as a whole rather than a sum of its parts.
Cheese of the Week
I've learned in my time in France that cheese doesn't really need anything else to be extraordinary. (The first time I put fruit on a cheese board I was serving to French people, they looked at me like I was nuts. [I also maybe added nuts.]) But I do have a soft spot for cheesy créations that marry cheese with other flavors, and this Cabassou with wild garlic did not disappoint. The base cheese for this specialty is made with sheep's milk, which gives it a pretty intensely barnyardy aroma that, at peak aging, is perfectly balanced with the rich, creamy texture of the cheese. (It does, however, move towards the distinctly animal with just a bit too much time in the fridge.) The wild garlic adds some lovely herbaceousness and is perfectly tempered by the assertive cheese.
What I'm Eating
I am forever looking for great places for a working lunch, but the search may have stopped with the Hood. Friendly and cozy, it boasts phenomenal coffee and excellent Singaporean food. More on the blog.
Discover more of my foodie finds via Instagram @emily_in_france.
Images: Eileen Cho
What I'm Writing
1. Lump it in the category of pink-washing, green-washing, and rainbow-washing: For brewer Thomas Deck of Paris’ Deck & Donohue, terroir-washing is becoming a bit too pervasive in France. Find out more in my in-depth profile for Good Beer Hunting.
2. From the archives: Seeing as the contest for Best Pâté en Croûte has, once again, been taken by a Japanese chef, I thought it only appropriate to resurface my story on the brotherhood reviving the beloved charcuterie staple, for Atlas Obscura.
3. When not devouring my weight in cheese, I'm a bit of a salad snob. Can you blame me? There are so many to choose from! These 17 lettuces each offer a different flavor, texture, and color to your salads. For Mashed.
What I'm Saying
1. Many a traveler to France has encountered those airy, European cheek kisses, but the rules of la bise are actually tougher to navigate than they looks. Is it one kiss or two? Or three? Or four? Do you start to the left or the right? And with Covid surging, is la bise falling out of fashion forever? To answer these questions and more, I'm chatting with Scott Carpenter, a professor and author of French Like Moi: A Midwesterner in Paris on this week's Navigating the French.
2. On Chez Toi, Caroline Conner and I pair your home-cooked recipes with the perfect wine and most complementary cheese. This week's recipe comes from Katie Rose. She's sending a stellar recipe for enchiladas verde, which Caroline and I are pairing with wines and cheeses from outside of our beloved hexagone.
(And if you want your recipe featured in a future episode, shoot me an email! We're always up for a challenge.)
This month, I'm teaming up with Jacqueline Menoret (aka the founder of Paris' Immigrant Book Club) to pair books with tasty treats – the ideal gifts for any literary minded foodie! if you're interested, be sure to follow me on Instagram.
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What I'm Reading
1. This hilarious interview with David Sedaris, which explores quite a few ideas including that of making the best of a bad situation by turning it into art, in the New York Times.
2. This quasi-profile of the comp sci professor who predicted our current Internet vs. personal privacy woes back in the 90s and then promptly disappeared, in the Washington Post.
3. This profile of the divisive but brilliant Lionel Shriver in the New Yorker.
A bientôt !