Emily in France 🇫🇷 It's Been a Good Year
Reflections and resolutions
While I’m a huge fan of goal-setting, it’s been years since I set a traditional New Year’s resolution. Instead, I typically choose a word to guide me in my decision-making for the year to come. In the past, I’ve lingered on words like focus or feel, community or craft. This year, my word is spontaneity – a challenge, to be sure, given how wedded I am to my Google Calendar, but one that I hope will pave the way for more chance encounters, surprises, and creativity.
But resolutions are just one part of the reflection that the advent of a new year seems to warrant. Just days after the year’s longest night, it feels like the perfect time to reflect on successes of 2024.
My work as a travel journalist brought me to countless new places. I wrote about Montolieu, the 800-person French village that’s home to 15 bookshops – and not one ATM. I travelled to the Loire Valley to meet some of the movers and shakers adding new vibrancy to the time-tested local food scene.
In the spring, I trekked through the Vosges mountains to visit the cheese producers offering hikers a meal and a place to rest, and in the fall, I climbed into the Alps to meet the last producers of France’s rarest blue cheese.
I also wrote about adventures closer to home. I dug into how chefs actually earn a Michelin star for the BBC, and I reported on the rise of traditional regional viennoiseries in Parisian boulangeries for France Today.
I also began contributing to the Infatuation, where I shared my opinions on Paris’ best bistros, where to dine in Montmartre, excellent spots that are actually open on Mondays, and Paris’ best croissants… some of which you might have discovered if you joined me on a food tour in 2024. I launched quite a few new routes this year, including an off-the-beaten-track cheese-and-wine extravaganza in my home neighborhood of the 10th, as well as a Tour de France of wine in the central Latin Quarter.
I furthered my love and appreciation for cheese – and not just through my guided tastings for private clients, WICE, and at Bill & Rosa’s Bookshop. I served as a judge at France’s the Concours Général Agricole, where I had the honor of helming the table devoted to non-AOP blue cheese, where we discerned two new gold medals. I reported on the 14 French cheeses experts say you need to try at least once, and I also shared my favorite cheesy spots in Paris for the BBC.
Following the news that the future of Camembert might be at stake, I travelled to the Norman village where the cheese was invented with a team from NBC to uncover the truth behind the fracas, and I also explored the real risks for the future of French cheese for the BBC.
I got the chance to dine at some truly delicious restaurants. I loved the classic French fare at Le Quincy, which feels like a step out of time, and the traditional bistro cooking at Au Moulin à Vent, where I was scolded by fellow diners for taking photos instead of merely tucking in. Les Petits Parisiens’ more bistronomic approach was pitch-perfect, and Lazu’s creativity and attention to detail cemented it as one of my favorite discoveries of the year.
I was bowled over by Le Jules Verne, which is going way harder than it needs to, given its coveted address atop the Eiffel Tower, and I had my palate pleasantly challenged by Géosmine’s avant-garde approach, which, soon after my visit, earned Chef Maxime Bouttier his first Michelin star. I fell hard for the audacious dishes at Trouble, a wine bar with innovative small plates, as well as for the fine dining plays on comfort food flavors at A.Lea. At Sugo, meanwhile, I sampled pasta is just as good as in Rome.
I read a lot in 2024, which should come as no surprise. Of the 32 books I finished this year, favorites included Sarah Moss’ The Fell, Rowan Jacobsen’s American Terroir, Antonia Angress’ Sirens & Muses, Simon Kuper’s Impossible City, Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic, Rachel Cusk’s Transit, Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book, J. Ryan Stradal’s Kitchens of the Great Midwest, T.J. Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, and Emile Chabal’s France.
I also enjoyed countless moments of connection with friends and fellow writers, including at the second iteration of the Nantes Writers’ Workshop and at an open mic hosted by the founders of Version Originale, where I tried on my emceeing hat for the very first time. And I was lucky enough to spend the last few weeks of the year with some of my favorite people in the world: my family.
I can't wait to see what 2025 has in store!
Cheese of the Week
M1ster isn’t a typo – it’s the way producers of a washed-rind Vosgian delicacy are forced to render the name of their ancestral cheese, seeing as it deviates from the AOP charter in being made with the milk of russet Tarine (aka Tarentaise) cattle. However you spell it, don't confuse Munster with American Muenster: This French washed-rind delicacy made by Marie Fest at the Rothenbrunnen ferme-auberge perched on a hilltop above the village of Munster is pungent and stinky, with a salty, crumbly paste and a lovely brothy, umami richness.
To discover more of my favorite cheeses, be sure to follow me on Instagram @emily_in_france, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and tune into the Terroir Podcast, where Caroline Conner and I delve into France's cheese, wine, and more one region at a time.
What I’m Eating
L’Arpaon’s cozy dining room is redolent with warmth and conviviality – the perfect place to enjoy the creative, contemporary fare that expertly marries French technique and international flair. More on the blog.
What I'm Writing
1. Paris is home to no shortage of chocolate shops, but that’s just the beginning for true chocoholics. Chocolate is a mainstay of French breakfasts, from chocolat chaud to pain au chocolat. It’s also a delight come the 4pm goûter, whether in the form of the traditional square of dark chocolate on a slice of crusty baguette or the more modern, internationally-inspired rich chocolate cookie. From bonbons to mousses to ice cream, here are the spots chocoholics absolutely must visit in Paris. For Bonjour Paris.
2. On the first day of 2025, the new Organic Livestock and Poultry Standards will go into effect, changing the definition of what constitutes a cage-free, organic egg. Here’s what that means for us as consumers. For Organic Authority.
3. From the archives: Porcelain or plastic, Harry Potter or copulating couple, fèves come in all shapes and sizes. I interviewed some of the people who collect the trinkets that discern the king at any French Epiphany celebration for Atlas Obscura.
What I'm Saying
The image of the French countryside is quite different from the reality, as Kate Hill, the American expat founder of the Relais de Camont Writers and Artists Residency, well knows. She’s spent the past few decades restoring and living in a 300-year-old French farmhouse, so she’s the perfect person to help distinguish the dream and the reality of French country living as we navigate champêtre on Navigating the French.
FAQs
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What I'm Reading
1. The simple, straightforward style of L’Evénement delivers a complex, engrossing story with frank humanity. Ernaux pulls no punches and offers every scrap of her memory to create an incredibly readable, mind-boggling account of abortion. A book everyone should read, especially right now.
2. This clear-eyed exploration of Notre Dame’s repair needs, which long predate the fire. The story notably touches on the odd no-man’s land of who’s responsible for funding the upkeep of 87 of France’s cathedrals. In French Crossroads.
3. This gorgeous obituary for Nikki Giovanni. In the New York Times.
A bientôt !