The Geography of Taste

A topic that inevitably comes up in relation to homesickness when I talk to my expat friends is the food. Paris, of course, has a lot going for it (that's why we're all here to learn the culinary arts!) but I miss the familiarity of the foodscape at home. In Seattle (my hometown), the Bay Area (my adopted home for the four years before I came for France), and even New York City (where I spent the summer of 2011), I had an eclectic rotation of trustworthy restaurants, bars and cafés that I knew I liked. And by "eclectic," what I really mean are various kinds of ethnic cuisines.

The expats I know who hail from so-called countries of immigrants - Canada, Australia, and the good ol' USA - ​all say the same thing. Paris is culturally and ethnically diverse, but even when you dine in immigrant-run restaurants it feels...Frenchified. In some instances it's a matter of being used to the Americanized version (especially for Chinese food), but it's definitely disconcerting to see menus written only in French and a foreign language. But I suppose no matter the quality of the food, not knowing what you're eating is always an adventure.

However, there's no denying that certain products and dishes are just engineered differently in France.​ Recently I had pho in the 13th arrondissement, a neighborhood known for its many Asian restaurants, and while the noodle soup itself was fine, I was sorely disappointed that the Sriracha sauce did nothing. Given the amount I added to the broth, if this were at a restaurant at home in the states I would have been in tears by the end. For my friends and me, that's kind of the point - to go in on a cold winter's day, and put just the right amount of kick in the soup to clear your sinuses and make you sweat a little. But in Paris, no matter how much you put in your bowl it remains a stubborn combination of sweet and salty.

​I had a similar experience when a friend from Mexico took me to try out a new Mexican restaurant. The food was authentic enough, by his standards, but the salsa was so bland it seemed to be just for looks. No wonder people bring back bottles of Tapatío sauce after visiting home.

The more I've talked to other chefs and people who have lived here longer than I have, the more I realize that traditional French cuisine is very mild, and so those who enter the restaurant industry here have to work around the local preferential tastes if they want to succeed. The most obvious examples are branches of chains like McDonald's and Starbucks, whose menus are quite different from the ones I'm used to seeing at home.​

When I heard that Chipotle was to open its first location in Paris, I scoffed, thinking, "Typical expansion of American corporatism." But I've been so homesick lately maybe I will try it. (After my next paycheck clears; I've heard it's expensive). I don't really expect the salsa to be spicy, but I hope it is.

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​If you're in the northwest any time soon, here is a compilation of my favorite places to eat in Seattle.

Favorite Films of 2012

I seriously considered posting this at the end of the calendar year, the logical time to do so, but decided to wait in order to see the last wave of Oscar contenders that unfortunately did not hit French theaters until now. (Actually some of them still aren't out but I feel like I've seen all the films that would have made the cut). Otherwise, it would have completely thrown off my 2013 list that will be written, presumably, at such a time when I am no longer living abroad. And what a travesty that would have been.

But more importantly, the Oscars are this weekend so this is my last shot at cultural relevance.​

10. The Raid: Redemption

​Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Set in Jakarta, a group of twenty elite cops fight their way through a mob-infested thirty story building to get to a crime lord over the course of one violent night. This is usually the type of film I would avoid, and yet when my brother and I left the screening we both couldn't stop talking about it.

My general distaste for action movies is a byproduct of the fact that because visual technology and special effects are so advanced now, filmmakers think they can get away with creating explosive spectacles completely devoid of story, character and, well, frankly all the things that compel me to watch films in the first place. Sure, the plot of The Raid is contrived, but it serves the purpose of showcasing some truly amazing fight choreography. The tag line doesn't lie; it's pretty much 100 minutes of straight up action, but each fight exhibits such finesse there's almost a balletic quality to it. In fact if you watched it without sound it probably would look like dancing, albeit with lots of blood.

There is a sequel in the works and I'm pretty stoked to see how it turns out.

9. ​Argo

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

Oh yes, the grand redemption of Ben Affleck. Since it seems poised to take the Best Picture prize at the Academy Awards there isn't really much I can add to the discussion. ​However, I will say this: like his previous films The Town and Gone Baby Gone, I found Argo to be perfectly adequate in every way, and yet when the credits rolled I couldn't help but feel a little empty. Don't get me wrong - I think each of his three features delivers - but somehow I still wish they could have gone further.

8. Rust and Bone

The film I loved so much that I watched it twice at Cannes, forgoing other competition entries. My full review can be found here. The most important thing to keep in mind, if you haven't already seen it, is that even though it's technically a love story it's anti-romance. I'm disappointed that they didn't campaign harder for the actors this awards season, and that Marion Cotillard (great as she is) earned more recognition than co-star Matthias Schoenaerts who, in my opinion, was just as good and maybe even better.​

7. The Hunt

​Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Here is what I wrote for Metro in my Cannes coverage, because I'm having a hard time coming up with a better way to say it now:

"In The Hunt​, a child's false accusation of sexual abuse leads to a decay of social and moral integrity in a small Danish community. Disturbingly and frustratingly realistic, director Thomas Vinterberg forces us to watch as everyone does the wrong thing while firmly believing themselves to be in the right - from the parents who believe their imaginative daughter without proof to her accused teacher, who remains unwilling to demonize his former friends who allowed the rumor to spread like a virus."

It's thrilling and psychological, and Mads Mikkelsen won the well-deserved top acting prize at the festival for his performance.​

6. Chicken with Plums

​Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

My favorite director, Pedro Almodóvar, may not have released a film last year, but this one from graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi and her artistic collaborator Vincent Paronnaud ​struck a lot of the same chords in terms of theme, vision and aesthetic. (Which is to say a story of love, desire and death with a touch of magic realism that manages to be beautiful, tragic and comical).

Also I had the chance to speak with Satrapi one-on-one in San Francisco and she is basically one of the coolest people ever.​

5. Amour

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Since the wake of Emmanuelle Riva's ​Oscar nomination for Best Actress, some rare interviews are surfacing in which she ascribes her performance to Michael Haneke's explicit direction not to play it with sentimentality. When you consider the subject matter - an aging couple wherein Riva's character is slowly dying - ​it would have been all too easy to slip into sappy melodrama. But instead what you get with Amour ​is something more restrained and yet emotionally sharp. Full review here.

4. Moonrise Kingdom

​Courtesy of Kanye Wes Anderson (sorry, couldn't resist)

"I went to sleep afterwards dreaming about it," one journalist confessed to me in regard to why he liked Moonrise Kingdom so much.

Wes Anderson is undeniably good at constructing anachronistic parallel universes in which ​quirky people do kooky things, but this one just felt so right.

3. Life of Pi

​Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

I'm not much of a reader but I do get nervous when I hear about ​some of my most beloved books being adapted for the screen. Diehards will say that book is always better, but in truth it's hard to compare the outcome between the two mediums because there are so many things that you can accomplish in one and not the other, but Ang Lee did a commendable job with a story that many deemed un-adaptable thanks, in large part, to his cinematographer.

A boy and a tiger stuck adrift in the Pacific Ocean? Use 3D and put the audience in there with them. (Actually, for the film's Paris premiere they pretty much did just that).

Much of the novel consists of the protagonist's internal philosophical struggles, which I didn't fully understand when I first read it and probably still don't, but again...some things don't translate well from page to screen. Lee got the gist of it though in showing Pi's shifting religious views. ​

2. Chronicle​

​Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

This indie flick about three highschool friends who suddenly gain mysterious powers might seem like an odd choice, but to me it absolutely nailed two things that are often difficult to execute well: the found footage approach and the superhero story.

By found footage I mean that everything you see is, within the story, filmed by the characters. Most films that try to do this either lapse and have instances where what's being shown isn't diegetically motivated, or else they make it too realistic (i.e. handheld) and it gives you motion-sickness. Chronicle ​is pretty smooth in both regards.

As for the other thing, Hollywood's hatred of original material seeps into franchises by having on-screen superheros that rely more on the public's preconceived understanding from comics and television than anything that was written in the script. The exception - Christopher Nolan's reinvention of Batman/Bruce Wayne. Many of the superheros we see today can easily smash box office records but when it comes to depth and complexity of character they're seriously lacking. So without giving too much away, the best part about Chronicle ​is Dane DeHaan's sinister yet sympathetic performance.

Also it's set in Seattle so I guess I have a soft spot. 

1. Silver Linings Playbook

​Courtesy of The Weinstein Company

Being a romantic comedy may have cheapened the film to some, but for me it was refreshing to see two characters who clearly do not have their shit together. Mental illness and disorders remain highly stigmatized in contemporary society, and plenty of people would rather pretend nothing is wrong than seek help. It was such an issue at my university that we had a special name for it - Duck Syndrome - wherein on the surface everything seems fine but secretly everyone is madly kicking to stay afloat.

It's not just the themes and the tone but the charismatic leads as well. I can't pretend not to be a huge fan of Jennifer Lawrence's candid, no-bullshit off-screen persona, but I recently read that David O. Russell originally intended the leads to go to Vince Vaughn and Zooey Deschanel. ​Vaughn maybe could have pulled his own weight as Pat, but I definitely can't imagine the reigning queen of twee berating Robert De Niro in that climactic monologue about football.

And for a story about mental illness it's very uplifting. While I appreciate films that are challenging and make audiences think, sometimes it's nice just to leave the theater feeling happy without the urge to look for plot holes and dissect particular scenes.​

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And, previously, movies I particularly liked in 2011 and 2010.

What are your favorites?​

A Delicate Temperament

Chocolate is not just for eating. Our chefs speak of it with reverence as a precious resource, a useful garnish, and above all else an invaluable building material. But mastering chocolate is not as simple as melting it down, filling a mold, and waiting for it to set; to really bend the medium to your artistic will and make it hold up as a gravity-defying sculpture you have to go through the tedious process of tempering.

Tempering essentially consists of three stages: melting the solid chocolate, cooling it, and then re-heating it slightly. The exact temperature curve (e.g. 45-50º C -> 26º -> 31-32º for dark) varies slightly between different types of chocolate, but afterward it will have the benefits of: setting quickly, looking shiny, and breaking cleanly. But as you might imagine, constantly monitoring the temperature of the chocolate and working with it quickly enough once it's in the correct range is rather a pain, not to mention that even a couple degrees off can mean the difference between receiving a compliment and criticism at the end of practical.

My (slightly less impressive) box from the chocolate exam.

This morning we had our exam to finish up the chocolate unit of the course, during which we had 2.5 hours to complete and decorate a box. Can't say I was overjoyed by my results, but at least it's over and the box didn't break. (An alumnus once told me that if it did, "You're fucked.") All the little smudges and fingerprints are telling signs of my nervousness, which was exacerbated by chef's foul mood. Seriously, if he weren't a man I would have sworn he was PMSing.

Rungis: The Market That Never Sleeps

Last week we showed up to school at the ungodly hour of 6:15am for a field trip to Rungis Market, the world's largest wholesale food market that covers nearly 600 acres of land just outside Paris near Orly Airport. (Some other figures to give you the idea of the scale: the market's day-to-day activities include some 1300 companies that collectively employ over 12,000 people). Consisting of a vast industrial network of warehouses, Rungis couldn't be more different from the quaint neighborhood open-air markets that you see in French towns and cities.

The warehouses are organized by product type, kind of like a larger, gastronomic version of Ikea. Once we were all decked out in thin white coats and caps provided on the premises (sort of a cross between what you might wear in a laboratory and an operating room), our guides led us through the poultry, beef, fish, produce and flower halls, before concluding the tour at one of several on-site brasseries for brunch.

Despite the fact that we arrived out our first destination around 7am, early by normal people's standards, most of the day's trading had already been completed. The fish, seafood and poultry halls open as early as 2 or 3am, giving the impression that activity at Rungis never really ceases.

Undoubtedly the most memorable sight was the hall where red meat is kept, even for the cuisine students who by Superior level are pretty much desensitized to butchery. I've included a few pictures in the slideshow below (probably don't click through over your morning breakfast or whatever), but the best way I can describe it is how I would imagine a slaughterhouse would look; entire carcasses hang in neat rows by large hooks, the skin peeled off revealing the lifeless brute's powerful muscles, as men with clipboards and white lab coats covered in cow's blood scurry around taking notes. A vegetarian from my class had to leave just a few minutes after entering because it was too overwhelming. 

The rest of the tour was less interesting, either because the section had closed by the time we got there (fish and seafood) or else it consisted of looking at rows and rows of boxes (produce). What made me think, though, was reading the labels of the boxes; apples from Greece, green beans from Kenya, etc. Yes, it was cool and impressive to see such a vast array of food in one place, but at what cost?

When I thought about how much energy it took to get all the products to Rungis, and how much more it would require to transport them to their next destination, it made me feel worse than anything I saw in the meat halls.

Starting with something tame: an awkwardly positioned duck.

A nearby cuisine student told me these are rabbits. In class they have to "cut off their heads and take out their eyes."

Slaughterhouse 5.

When we passed through the fish hall they were in the middle of cleaning up. This is where they filet the products.

How do you like them apples?

Produce.

Flowers. I tried to get inspired for upcoming sugar lessons.

Some of the biggest cheeses I've seen.

3 Types of Crazies You Might Encounter in the 10ème

Each Sunday night I work the dinner shift in the 10th. It's not even in the outermost circle of arrondissements, and yet once we get off work around 11 pm there is no shortage of unsavory individuals around. Here are a few of the most memorable.

1. The Gung-ho Athlete

A couple co-workers and I were heading toward the nearest Metro when a tall athletic man jogging in our direction stopped a few inches in front of us. He proceeded to belt out a couple lines of whatever song was playing on his iPod (it was in English but I didn't recognize it), before continuing on his way. Not that weird, right?

Except that it had been snowing all weekend so the temperature was well below freezing and he was wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and open-toed athletic sandals without socks.

2. The Belligerent Drunkard

Inevitably at the end of every shift, there are a few stragglers who beg us to take their orders before we shut down and start cleaning. I thought this was one such customer, who sidled up with a full pint in hand after the line had dissipated, and asked for an order of fries. I'm fairly certain he was also on something other than alcohol, because after trying and failing to engage us in conversation he disappeared (to unlock his bike, I later learned), returned to toss his beer inside the truck, and began pedaling off on his getaway vehicle.

The beer landed on the hot grill (not in the nearby fryer, thank God), leaving most of us shocked by the resulting steam and acrid smell. My boss, however, immediately took off after him - on foot - and chucked the only weapon she had at the perpetrator: her burger. It hit the guy square in the face.

3. The [Potentially Paranoid Schizophrenic] Conspiracy Theorist

On the same night that we encountered #2, we were chatting near the Metro station when I felt something brush against my bag. Paranoid after being pickpocketed once, I whirled around and found myself face to face with a crazy-eyed black man. (Not tryna be racist here, keep reading).

"I am from Africa," he said in slightly accented English, his attention fixed on me despite the four others standing around me.

"Where are you from? What are you doing here?"

"Uh...I'm a student from the US," I started to say, when he interrupted me with a revelation.

"China is with the al-Qaeda!"

That's when things really started to go off the deep end. He proceeded to tell us he was working with both the FBI and CIA, and at one point even pulled his phone and held it to his ear because he was speaking to one of his "agents."

It was funny at first, but grew tiresome once it became clear he wouldn't leave us alone on his own accord. Also he had the disconcerting habit of getting really close when he spoke to you. It wasn't threatening, per se, but personal space is something I value very highly.

My boss eventually lured him away so I could sneak off into the Metro station by telling him she worked for al-Qaeda.

Extreme Baking at the World Pastry Cup

On our second day at Sirha we entered the stadium of the Espace des Chefs to the sound of chainsaws carving massive blocks of ice into delicate sculptures. It was Sunday morning and the first group of teams - Denmark, Japan, USA, Italy, Colombia, Malaysia, Tunisia, Egypt, South Korea, Mexico and Argentina - were presenting their first dishes to the judges.

Over the course of the two-day competition each three-person team (with one alternate) was required to produce a chocolate dessert, fruit dessert, ice showpiece, chocolate showpiece, and plated dessert, all within the allotted ten hours. The international jury consisted of the president of each country's delegation as well as a couple members of the competition's governing body and a smaller press jury.

I knew from watching the Food Network and the documentary Kings of Pastry that, yeah, once you reach a certain level of culinary prowess it's about finding ways to validate and inflate your prestige - earning that next Michelin star, for instance, or perhaps an MOF title if you're French. To say it's competitive is an understatement; when a sugar sculpture goes crashing to the floor it's been known to cause grown men sob profusely. So perhaps it shouldn't seem so surreal, then, exactly how much watching a pastry competition resembles watching a sporting event.

The Coupe du Monde, as the event is called, had a similar energy and atmosphere to a collegiate gymnastics competition (I would compare it to basketball or something more mainstream but really the pace is more akin to the former). There were also commentators (not very insightful; just like in sports), hilariously dramatic music when teams were introduced, and cheering sections (and extremely vocal ones at that; well at least for Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, France and the UK).

But, unlike in athletics, watching the process was more satisfying than the results. I'm skeptical of institutions that claim to judge art (but I have to admit I love the Oscars because I find Hollywood politics fascinating), which is why we ended up leaving before the jury announced the final results. And in the end I got out of watching the competition exactly what I was hoping for: inspiration.

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I left my zoom lens at home, like a dunce, so here are some "screen caps" of pieces I really liked from the competition.

Team France putting the finishing touches on their sugar and chocolate showpieces. They ended up taking first.

Team UK's plated dessert.

Forgot which team produced this plated dessert, but I loved the concept of the mirror image.

Belgium's gorgeous chocolate dessert. 

Italy's whimsical circus-themed fruit dessert.

Denmark's (?) fruit dessert, inspired by Davy Jones' Locker.

South Korea's chocolate dessert. The fiery bit is painted onto the glaze.

Que Sirha, Sirha

Every two years thousands of restaurant and hospitality professionals from all over the world descend upon Lyon for five crazy days of networking and, for some elite chefs, to compete for their countries in a series of high-profile contests that range from the conventional (the Bocuse d'Or for cuisine and the Coupe du Monde for pastry) to the obscure (cheesemaking, latte art, catering - no really how do you make a contest out of that?). It's a food-lover's paradise that usually comes with a high price for admission, but because LCB had chefs participating in the competitions we, as students, got free passes.

Exhibitors ran the gamut from kitchen and table wares to chic chef uniforms, not to mention the vast array of food and beverages. My boss was even there to debut the newest iteration of the food truck, which will soon hit the streets of Paris.

The best part? Free samples of...everything. Imagine Costco but on an haute cuisine level, where instead of sautéing frozen sausages the chefs prepare elegant mini-plates of pan-fried duck with creamy spiced potatoes, or turn an entire cured ham hock into delicate slices of charcuterie right before your hungry eyes.

On our first day at Sirha, Steph and I entered Hall 1 of the behemoth Eurexpo complex with empty stomachs, and by the time we wound our way through Halls 4 and 5 several hours later were about ready to curl up and take a nap. 

What did we eat? Um, what didn't we. I seem to recall nabbing a bunch of regional specialties like cheeses and meats, and then later ice creams, gelatos, chocolates, and bread. Lots of bread. One generous stall sent us away with an entire loaf of chocolate brioche! 

After nibbling so much one gets thirsty, but fortunately there were plenty of wine and champagne tastings to be found. At one point I even managed to score a free cocktail although I later realized, when the bartender turned a couple of non-corporate bystanders away as I stood there sipping my drink, that these were intended for clients. Oops. #sorrynotsorry

I can't say I learned anything particularly concrete, possibly because we only stayed at demos long enough to get samples, but I got a lot of ideas from the plated desserts and sugar work we saw. Hopefully some of them will transfer into my own creations as I get back into school mode this week.