Read Online The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City by David Lebovitz - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: David Lebovitz
Tags: Travel, Essays & Travelogues
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towels don’t scrape off a couple of layers of skin. (Unlike my neighbor down the hall, who evidently doesn’t consider showering all that important.)
In response, scare tactics were employed by bottler Cristaline in ads showing a toilet bowl with a big red
X
across it accompanied by the words
Je ne bois pas l’eau que j’utilise
(“I don’t drink water that I use”), a campaign intended as a response to our green-spirited Mayor Bertrand Delanoë’s attempts to wean us off plastic.
To encourage consumption of
l’eau du robinet
, thirty thousand fashionable glass carafes were given away at a highly orchestrated publicity event at the Hôtel de Ville, the city hall. Styled by some hot-shot French designer and emblazoned with the logo in blocky blue letters,
EAU DE PARIS
, the carafes garnered a lot of publicity because of their sleek design and the massive giveaway. I’ve yet to see one anywhere—except on eBay.fr.
Paris has always had a pretty close relationship with water, which runs through it and around it. Paris, or Lutetia, as it was originally called, actually began as an island surrounded by the Seine, which explains why the symbol of Paris is a boat. As the city grew larger, Paris spiraled outward and the water continued to shape the city: the name of the trendy Marais refers to its history as a mucky swamp, and there’s still a puddle of water in the basement of the Opéra Gamier, although nothing nowadays resembling the deep lake depicted in the popular musical.
With water all around and beneath us, you’d think it would be easy to get a glass of the stuff. But it can take a daunting amount of effort to get a sip. Unlike their American counterparts, who live under some decree that one
must
drink eight 8-ounce glasses per day, you’ll never see a Parisian gulping down a tumbler full or chugging a bottle of water. Water for drinking is parsimoniously rationed in tiny shotlike glasses in restaurants and cafés, meant to be consumed in carefully controlled, measured doses. Ifyou’re invited to a private home for dinner, water usually won’t be offered until the very end of the meal, if at all.
I attended a dinner party where the hostess kept the bottle of water sequestered under the table, guarded by her feet during the entire meal. Midway through dinner, completely dessicated, I could hold out no longer and summoned up the last bit of moisture in my mouth to form the words to ask for a sip. With some reluctance, she reached down to extract the bottle and poured a tiny trickle into my glass. Right after my ration was doled out, she screwed the top back on and stowed away the bottle.
There’s a French aesthetic about drinking glasses, whether for wine or water: they’re small and they’re never filled more than halfway. It’s not that everyone is being so parsimonious with wine, it’s just that smaller glasses look nicer on the table. Big glasses are considered
pas jolis
(not beautiful), a term the French use to justify any cultural quirk that can’t easily be explained. And I agree. After all, what’s the point of being in Paris if you’re going to be
pas joli?
And you don’t want to ruin things for the rest of us by drinking water, do you?
It can be tricky to order water in France, since there’s a panopoly of options. Simply saying, “I’d like water,” in a café or restaurant is like going into Starbucks and saying, “I’d like coffee,” or going to a multiplex cinema and telling the cashier, “I’d like a ticket to see a movie.” An online search revealed there are 214 brands of bottled water available in France, versus 179 in America, which has five times the population of France.
Before ordering, you need to decide whether you want a bottle, or
eau du robinet
from the tap. If bottled is your choice, do you want still or sparkling? San Pellegrino or Perrier? Châteldon or Salvetat? Badoit or Evian? If Badoit, do you want
verte
or hyper-bubbly
rouge?
There’s also Volvic,
In response, scare tactics were employed by bottler Cristaline in ads showing a toilet bowl with a big red
X
across it accompanied by the words
Je ne bois pas l’eau que j’utilise
(“I don’t drink water that I use”), a campaign intended as a response to our green-spirited Mayor Bertrand Delanoë’s attempts to wean us off plastic.
To encourage consumption of
l’eau du robinet
, thirty thousand fashionable glass carafes were given away at a highly orchestrated publicity event at the Hôtel de Ville, the city hall. Styled by some hot-shot French designer and emblazoned with the logo in blocky blue letters,
EAU DE PARIS
, the carafes garnered a lot of publicity because of their sleek design and the massive giveaway. I’ve yet to see one anywhere—except on eBay.fr.
Paris has always had a pretty close relationship with water, which runs through it and around it. Paris, or Lutetia, as it was originally called, actually began as an island surrounded by the Seine, which explains why the symbol of Paris is a boat. As the city grew larger, Paris spiraled outward and the water continued to shape the city: the name of the trendy Marais refers to its history as a mucky swamp, and there’s still a puddle of water in the basement of the Opéra Gamier, although nothing nowadays resembling the deep lake depicted in the popular musical.
With water all around and beneath us, you’d think it would be easy to get a glass of the stuff. But it can take a daunting amount of effort to get a sip. Unlike their American counterparts, who live under some decree that one
must
drink eight 8-ounce glasses per day, you’ll never see a Parisian gulping down a tumbler full or chugging a bottle of water. Water for drinking is parsimoniously rationed in tiny shotlike glasses in restaurants and cafés, meant to be consumed in carefully controlled, measured doses. Ifyou’re invited to a private home for dinner, water usually won’t be offered until the very end of the meal, if at all.
I attended a dinner party where the hostess kept the bottle of water sequestered under the table, guarded by her feet during the entire meal. Midway through dinner, completely dessicated, I could hold out no longer and summoned up the last bit of moisture in my mouth to form the words to ask for a sip. With some reluctance, she reached down to extract the bottle and poured a tiny trickle into my glass. Right after my ration was doled out, she screwed the top back on and stowed away the bottle.
There’s a French aesthetic about drinking glasses, whether for wine or water: they’re small and they’re never filled more than halfway. It’s not that everyone is being so parsimonious with wine, it’s just that smaller glasses look nicer on the table. Big glasses are considered
pas jolis
(not beautiful), a term the French use to justify any cultural quirk that can’t easily be explained. And I agree. After all, what’s the point of being in Paris if you’re going to be
pas joli?
And you don’t want to ruin things for the rest of us by drinking water, do you?
It can be tricky to order water in France, since there’s a panopoly of options. Simply saying, “I’d like water,” in a café or restaurant is like going into Starbucks and saying, “I’d like coffee,” or going to a multiplex cinema and telling the cashier, “I’d like a ticket to see a movie.” An online search revealed there are 214 brands of bottled water available in France, versus 179 in America, which has five times the population of France.
Before ordering, you need to decide whether you want a bottle, or
eau du robinet
from the tap. If bottled is your choice, do you want still or sparkling? San Pellegrino or Perrier? Châteldon or Salvetat? Badoit or Evian? If Badoit, do you want
verte
or hyper-bubbly
rouge?
There’s also Volvic,
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