Emily in France 🇫🇷 On Having – and Being – A Regular
Some places are habit-forming; some just feel like home
Un allongé ? The server with his Dutch boy haircut says with a smile.
Un verre de vin orange? Offers the somm at one of my favorite wine bars.
Un Saint-Marcellin? Asks cheesemonger at the market along the boulevard Lefebvre – someone who has certainly long-since forgotten my face.
Une petite bulle pour commencer? – a frequent proposal from the owner of my favorite restaurant, before letting me know the steak tartare is back on the menu.
It’s far from unique to romanticize having “a usual,” being a “regular,” but call me a basic cliché – I love it all the same. In a city brimming with novelty, it’s heart-warming to have a few touchstones visible to only a select few, and sometimes, only to me.
My haunts, my third spaces, my homes away from home, change perhaps more frequently than they should: with the weather, with my mood, with the neighborhoods I’m spending the most time guiding in. In the past, I’ve lingered at a specific coffee shop on rue Dupetit-Thouars where the café filtre was on-point and my favorite seat had its own charging port; I’ve warmed one particular wooden seat at a wine bar with a resident dog. I've frequented a café near a friend's house where the coffee was cheap and bitter and the tables were just the right height for writing and the lights stayed on until 2am.
These days, my favorites include a small dumpling shop across from Culture Rapide, where I feast on sautéed water spinach and sip very cold, very cheap white wine for courage before getting up on stage to read my prose. I love the window table at a Belleville bar whose citron pressé is served in a glass that looks like cut crystal.
I like the wine shop where my caviste smiles on my approach, asking, quel bon vent t’emmène ? What good wind brings you here?
I’m not just seeing familiarity, in gravitating towards the familiar. In a big city like Paris, I suppose there’s something particularly wonderful – magical, even – about being seen.
Cheese of the Week
My love of cheese surpasses France’s borders – in fact, as I reported for InsideHook, I highly recommend buying American-made craft cheese when you're in the U.S. Cypress Grove is one of my favorite makers Stateside, and Midnight Moon is a standout: a goat’s milk gouda aged for six months or more to give it a lovely caramel flavor and a super creamy, luxurious mouthfeel.
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
Picturesque Montmartre is one of my favorite places to bring visitors to Paris, but while there are loads of delicious pastry shops to discover, restaurant-wise, great options are a bit thin on the ground. But among the tourist traps, Bobby is a bright light shining on the Lamarck side of the butte boasting a menu of house-made pasta and pizza sure to transport you to Italy. (You know, if that’s what you’re into.) More on the blog.
Where I’m Going
1. To my favorite covered market in Paris, where I’ve recently launched a new cheese-tasting experience that, I have it on good authority, is bonkers.
2. To l'Orillon, the 11th-arrondissement wine bar on everyone's lips, to see what all the fuss is about.
3. To the Forest of Fontainebleau, where I plan to jump off a ghost train. (But more on that next week!)
What I'm Writing
1. The Eiffel Tower gets over 6 million visitors a year, and where there are tourists, there are tourist traps—a lot of them. The 7th is home to countless bistros unabashedly microwaving croque monsieur and factory-like crêperies piling industrial grated cheese on galettes that have been sitting around since morning. So let us help you avoid them. For the Infatuation.
2. I was quoted in this story about the ongoing fears regarding the looming crisis for Camembert. (Spoiler alert: It has very little to do with mold.) In the Hindustan Times.
3. From the archives: “Flâner” – to wander aimlessly through a city – is a concept so French that the word has no English equivalent. For the BBC.
What I'm Doing
Great news: We’ve set the dates for our next TERRE/MER retreat! Come hang out in la Ciotat to craft handmade ceramics and eat cheese and drink rosé from October 3 to 6. Book now to snag a spot!
Friends of Emily in France
I’m surrounded by some pretty exceptional entrepreneurs, writers, and tastemakers, and I think you should know about them too! From now on, each week, I’ll be profiling one person I think you should be aware of.
María Laura Ribadeneira is an art book editor based in Paris and the co-host of the Immigrant Book Club, alongside founder Jacqueline Ménoret. They met in Paris thanks to their love of books and have since become the co-creators of Version Originale, an inclusive and intersectional literary magazine in print for multilingual readers in France.
They are currently hard at work on the second issue of the magazine (in which – spoiler alert – yours truly appears.) Preorders and subscriptions are essential to keep the magazine going, so please consider ordering your copy in advance of its June release. (I’ll be sharing more news about the launch and an in-person reading in Paris down the line!)
FAQs
In an attempt to bring you the content you crave, I've solicited your help. What questions can I answer for you? Drop them into the newsletter chat, and I’ll answer as many as I can!
Last week, in response to Tina Lemna’s request, I shared my top 15 vegetarian-friendly restaurants omnivores will love too in my paid newsletter, but two other plant-forward choices I love are perennial fave L’As du Fallafel on rue de Rosiers in the Marais and Za’atar Libanais (49, boulevard Voltaire) in the 11th.
What I'm Reading
1. This beautiful list of words from other languages whose concepts we’d do well to consider – and maybe even adopt. In Nice News.
2. This story about weird and widespread protein obsession, which only supports the nutrition advice I’ve long followed: Stop worrying about protein, and eat more fiber. In Inverse.
3. This newsletter, which features, among other things, a too-close-to-home rendering of learning to drive. (At least I’m not alone in being a tour guide with no sense of direction?) From Hannah Meltzer.
A bientôt !