Emily in France 🇫🇷 When Street Food Makes You See Red
Scenes from the cutting room floor
I recently penned a diatribe challenging the soulfulness of the rise in street food concepts in Paris for Saveur, and much like my recent story about one Norman lobster fisherman’s commitment to ancestral fishing methods, my research resulted in a lot more meat than made it into the final draft. Thanks to my awesome editor Benjamin, the final story reads smooth like butta… a handful of lines that got cut for space are looking at me longingly from the cutting room floor. So here, in no particular order, are a few of my lost darlings.
Those in the know know that Napoleon has loomed large in my life. (I accidentally came off as an apologist for the empire during my citizenship interview. It’s a long story and I luckily came out of the encounter fully French-ish.) But one early draft of this story leaned a bit harder into my knowledge of the great statesman with the palate of a small child. While the aside was rightly slimmed down to leave space for the real story, here's the original graf evoking Bonaparte's odd dietary and hygiene habits.
The 19th century would prove to be as revolutionary for Paris’ cuisine as it was for its political structure. The first restaurant, invented in 1765, led to an explosion of copycats following the bloodbath that saw most chefs sans employ (and most nobles sans head). It was then that street food began to disappear, motivated in large part, by a preoccupation with hygiene (inspired, perhaps, by the food-ambivalent, cleanliness-obsessed Napoleon Bonaparte, known for regularly forgetting to feed his dinner guests and being obsessed with cologne.)
Kébab has a rich history in Paris, one that many of the sources I spoke to for this story cited before saying some version of – “but that’s another story.” And they were right. While kébab does indeed feature a bit in the final article, there was so much more to say. I’m particularly happy to get to share this nugget from culinary journalist Emmanuel Rubin, whose particularly Gallic brand of curmudgeon makes him endlessly quotable.
Enter the kébab, a hearty Turkish import of the 1980s featuring slow-roasted meat shaved from a spit and piled generously onto matlouh or pita, tortilla or baguette. Topped generously with tomate-salade-oignon, spicy harissa and cooling yogurt sauce, not to mention a heaping helping of fries, kébab usually costs well under 10 euros. (When a beloved kébabier in the Paris suburb of Trappes was recently forced, due to rising costs, to increase his price to nine euros – drink included – it was cause for scandal.)
Nearly every expert I talked to cited kébab as an exception to the preclusion of Parisian street food. With unparalleled socio-cultural relevancy, referenced in songs by French rappers like Booba and La Fouine, kébab is enjoyed, according to Rubin, “across all generations and social classes.”
“The bourgeois from the 16th arrondissement or the guy from Gennevilliers or the guy from, I don’t know, Avallon in the Yonne in Burgundy… they all eat kébab,” he said. “At least it’s sincere. Too bad I don’t think it’s good, but who gives a fuck what I think. If there’s a French street food, that’s it.”
I spoke to so many fantastic experts for this piece, but one person whose commentary, despite being astute as always, didn't make it into the final draft was Lindsey Tramuta, author of The New Paris and The New Parisienne. I particularly appreciated her even-keeled view of the attitude of contemporary Parisians vis à vis their lunch breaks.
But what stood out to me most of all, as I prepared to pen this diatribe, was how many Parisians – drunk or sober, student or worker – eat kébab sitting down. And that’s not all. As I wandered the marché des Puces in Saint-Ouen and meandered the rue Montorgueil, once home to the oyster peddlers of Les Halles, I encountered no shortage of street food offerings… almost none of which were being consumed in the street.
Lindsey Tramuta is the author of The New Paris and The New Parisienne and, perhaps most importantly, a fellow American expat who’s been living here even longer than I have.
“What is one of the first things I notice when I go back to the U.S.?” she said. “I see people walking and chewing on a sandwich and then throwing it out within seconds of eating it.”
Here, by contrast, people were dining at ironically plentiful on-site tables or perched on nearby church steps.
“I think that culturally,” said Tramuta, “it’s very hard for them to get over this idea that somehow, your life is so frenetic that you can’t even stop for 15, 20, 30 minutes to enjoy a meal.”
Cheese of the Week
Cantal is one of France’s oldest cheeses, dating back about three millennia. But the AOC label protecting this cheese has led to a division in its ranks. Cantal and Salers are virtually indistinguishable, at first glance. Both have a hard, slightly crumbly texture. Both are nutty and relatively mild in flavor. Both hail from Cantal, a department in the heart of the Auvergne. But while Cantal can be made with the pasteurized milk of forage-fed cattle of any breed, Salers truly evokes the local terroir, requiring the raw milk of pastured, grass-fed cattle. Those who add the word “tradition” to the name of their cheese also add even more specificity, requiring the use of the rich milk of the local russet Salers cow that give the cheese its name.
The resulting cheese is cheddary in texture but not in flavor; instead of the sharpness and sweetness cheddar fans know and love, Salers offers a grassiness and a milkiness with just the slightest bitter edge.
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
Polidor, which many know thanks to its starring role in Midnight in Paris, is one of the city's oldest true bistros. With a façade that hasn’t changed since the beginning of the 20th century and a gorgeous dining room bedecked with gingham napkins and warm wood, it’s exactly what you’d hope a bistro in Paris would look like… and unlike at most, the food here actually delivers. More on the blog.
Discover more of my foodie finds via Instagram @emily_in_france and on the blog.
What I'm Writing
1. When will Parisians stop trying to make ‘la street food’ happen? A diatribe for Saveur.
2. Want to try fat-washing your cocktails at home? Here's how. For InsideHook.
3. Mistakes everyone makes with homemade hummus. For Mashed.
What I'm Reading
1. I'm not sure why La Voisine du Cinquième captivated me so much, despite not really caring about the central plot. Maybe it was the emotional interiority, which mirrored the way that almost the entirety of the book takes place in one Parisian apartment building. Maybe it was just due to the way it wended amidst the quiet navigation of what it is to encounter a fellow immigrant in Paris. Either way, it touched on a lot of themes I wish it would have explored more deeply, but I ultimately found it enjoyable to read, if not terribly memorable.
2. This exploration of language as perhaps the most essential element of French culture – and assimilation. In the New York Times.
3. This ode to schnitzel. In Vittles.
A bientôt !