My first innocent run into the word French was interestingly through French Fries. Although French fries are not French, the crisp slim potatoes got me thinking about a whole new culture.
I met a French for the first time around eight years ago in 2010. He was a Parisian engineer. We had met at Café Coffee Day. He was a business tourist and a friend of my Dad. While we cheerfully sipped sweet creamy beverages, we randomly chatted about our lives and interests. The aroma of roasted coffee beans filled the air and we talked about Paris, Eiffel Tower. Over that table, I learnt my first French word, Bonjour. Finally, he told me, a noveau belle growing up, that I could have a live show in Paris like Justin Bieber and he and his family will come to hear me. We shook hands and he told me, “you’re beautiful, always remember that.”
His name was Monsieur Xavier. Coincidentally the name of my university turns out to be St Xavier’s College. The best in India for Bachelor of Arts. Academic education here introduced me to me better avenues to explore France, its people and its famed lifestyle.
It was my first year when during a glorious High Tea, at University of Mumbai lawns I encountered a rendezvous with Mr Yves Perrin, the Consul General of France to Bombay. It was a mesmerizing surprise of time to be talking to a brilliantly quick-witted expat. Insights and inspiration flowed in torrents. Madame Marine Ragnet, Attaché De Presse to the French Consulate accompanied the Consul General and was indeed a spectacular mademoiselle of elegance at the unfolding of the novel moment. Even today, remembering those special moments inspires in me distinct confidence in destiny. I believe best things happen and can definitely happen with me.
Through the national fest of Bonjour India 2017 organised by the French Embassy, I had galore of treasured experiences.
Be it meeting the talented opera director Madame Francoise Lasserre, excellent Lute player Mr. Marc Wolff or an emphatic exchange with Aurelie Charon of the Radio Live series, each concurrence casual and unexpected is cherished.
I also met Clement, Simon, Thomas, Baptiste, Charles & Victor. Those are the names of seven strong Frenchmen with whom I had the luck of sharing most lovely friendship over cups chai at the St Xavier’s foyer
That’s how food, drinks, and people connected me to France.
Café, Wine & dine often evokes nostalgia, awakens feelings one didn’t know existed and thus becomes a metaphor for life and living. I write today, to serve you a warm, lovely & effervescent read just like the glass of your favorite champagne.
A French cafe is music to the ears, a promise of the unique moment to come, something truly different. A wind of elegance sweeping through, its seductive fantasy is hard to define. Enchantment embodied in the singular nature of each space. Well, every new space is absolutely an iconic lifestyle.
The cafés in all the major cities of France and especially in Paris are a famous institution. A suave Parisian café is rarely empty, regardless of the time of day, the neighborhood, or the weather. The café is a pleasurable way of sitting unbothered for hours on end with a book, with friends, or just watching all sorts of people coming and going. It’s more about being a place to meet than simply about wine and dine.
Coffee was exclaimed by French historian Jules Michelet in the seventeenth century to be “an elixir of mental clarity” as it gave energy and alertness necessary to help men and women think and work for longer hours with greater precision. In the era that saw the rise of modern industrial and capitalist society, there was little patience and so developed the need for drink that promoted the productivity of consumer-based society. Coffee made people intense, productive and talkative.
Traditionally, idea of coffee is not to be consumed alone. It’s about moments and conversations to share handsome friendships or simply about passing a good time with group of close friends. The discussions navigate over a spectrum of thoughts. In Paris, many a time chances are that along the way, you might bump into someone familiar. So you may as well end up having a juicy talk over a nearby cafe joint. In modern times, coffee can be a transformation towards a reflective state of mind. Each new sip is about enjoying the present while seeking to get in sync with the future. An exquisite French cafe so becomes a balanced blend of conventional and contemporary, imagination and concrete. Local Parisians prefer to visit cafes around thrice a week.
French cafés have been around for centuries and have carried on an essential role in the evolution of the French social life. There was a time when the best thought of France, in the arts and in politics, was to be found round such and such tables in such and such a café. The Frenchman’s café was his club. French culture, and especially French intellectual culture, has always been linked to the café since the political groups meeting and conspiring in the French Revolution, to the high culture of the 19th century, the cultural revival in the 1920s and 30s and the French Resistance in World War II. French claim to have invented the cafetière — also known as the French press.
During French revolution however, Cafes were expensive. It was only during the beginning of 20th century that cafes became super democratized — open to users of all social classes. After around twelve hours of labor, workers would straight head to a near by cafe to refresh themselves.
Today, a Parisian hurries to a neighbourhood café to drink a coffee, often standing or sitting at the bar, to be in good form before work. People can sit inside or outdoors drinking their espresso, munching their tarte, relishing a croissant, and reading Le Monde or other newspaper.
People sit at tables outside the café enjoying the sun and views of Paris. The street life of passers-by, cars and buses; its spectacular monuments, grand avenues and cobble stone pavements. Even in winter visitors sit outdoors, whether it’s raining or snowing, at cafés where there are heaters for warmth and awnings for protection.
Parisian cafés are not just “coffee shops”. Many have a complete kitchen and menu offering meals for any time of the day plus a selection of wines. Among the drinks customarily served are the grande crème (large cup of white coffee), un demi (half a pint), une pression (a glass of draught beer), un pastis (made with aniseed flavour spirit), and un espresso (a small cup of black coffee). The café sometimes doubles as a bureau de tabac, a tobacco shop that sells a wide variety of merchandise, including metro tickets and prepaid phone cards. More important than the coffee they drink is the pâtisserie that goes with it.
From Café de la Paix, Les Deux Magots, Café de Flore, Café de la Rotonde, La Fouquet, La Coupole, Le Deauville to a new wave represented by Café Beaubourg and Drugstore Publicis , native bistros have been constantly reinventing the art of local & international brasserie, with a focus on aesthetic appeal through architectures that create the most beautiful spaces, design and gastronomy. The oldest is the Café Procope.
In Paris, most of the café goers lining streets, whether with one companion or several, face the passersby. The art is to construct an experience where one eye is on the intimacy of the moment while the other is watching, observing, taking in the street, the live activity. It’s very different from simply visiting a luncheonette in other places of the world. In Paris, it’s about the here and now; there may not be another time. It’s different, in a sense, looking to bring into the intimate fold of present, a larger more expansive experience that looks beyond the immediate; that acknowledges place and fleeting time; that gazes with anticipation for the welcomed unknown.
Right now, let’s try to distinguish between what one calls the future and l’avenir. The future is that which tomorrow, later, next century — will be. There’s a future which is calculated, planned & foreseeable. But there is a future, l’avenir (to come) which refers to someone who comes and whose arrival is totally unexpected. For me, the real future is that which is totally unpredictable. So if there is a real future beyond this other known future, it’s l’avenir — the only way to look with anticipation for the unpredictable.
French cafes encourage looking with such total expectation towards the unforeseeable, where the imagination can be given full play. The sophisticated French, through coffee, have learned to welcome unpredictability, a friend. It is a future that, emotionally and intellectually, comes as a surprise. Change is in the offing. In one of the most erudite cultures of the world, the appreciation of unpredictability and change is a habit that’s been taken to an art form in the café. Even sitting across a small square from another café, eyes meet, contact is made, and the unpredictability of that encounter, which suggests possibilities, never fails.
The renowned Parisian café culture embodies the neighborhood’s spirit of carefree living, and its cosmopolitan experience. It is a space where connoisseurs of life feast on the trends of the day, and on ideas that pique the emotions, all the way to the taste buds. The uncanny, is an attempt to look deeper at strange current events, ideas, and vogues.
Wait, it doesn’t stop with coffee, bread, beurre & bistros.
There is so much more to talk about France and its connection with the finer things in life. French fashion, luxury products and fragrances, and most importantly its joie de vivre spirit elegantly reflected through its exquisite wine. French wines and the French way of life, indeed have admirers all over the world, ahaaaah.
Wine in and of itself is a vast world involving many different areas, and it’s difficult for an amateur to navigate this world. Each natural wine is like a person; meaning a unique and non-reproducible individual, and like a human, the wine carries with it a powerful life force. It teaches us to expect less and appreciate more.
In the Holy bible, wine denotes love toward the neighbour and the good of faith, as depicted with respect to the bread and wine in the Holy Supper. Namely, that the bread is the good of celestial love, and that the wine is the good of spiritual love.
In the ancient Near East, with its scarcity of water, wine was a necessity rather than a luxury, so it came to symbolize sustenance and life. Due to its close relationship to the ongoing life of the community, in association with grain and oil, wine is also representative of the covenant blessings the God promised to Israel for obedience, and which He would withhold for disobedience. Prominently, wine represents joy, celebration, and festivity, expressing the abundant blessings of God.
Of course, wine is integral to French culture; almost every region of France from Champagne & Bordeaux to Burgundy is involved in viniculture. The quality of wine produced in France is widely acknowledged to be the best in the world. It’s no wonder then that France is the leading producer of wines in the world, French being its most passionate consumers.
Wine in France is regarded a staple as well as fashionable drink, which complements rich food. Many noblemen and merchants maintained well-stocked cellars, as wine became a regular feature on dining tables. The variety of wine one possessed indicated habits, sophistication & social class.
Savoir Vivre, literally means knowing how to live. In practice it is used to mean ability to live elegantly or even the quality of being at ease in life.
Wine has always been an important part of the French savoir vivre culture involving friendship, tradition, gastronomy, history & geography. The French are never in a hurry while they relish their ritual of drinking wine, which for the most part is shared with their families and friends becoming a time for socialization.
For French, tasting wine can be an art which is taught from generation to generation. To many, drinking wine is pride and mark of identity which is an essential part of what it means to be French.
Wine can be best had with cheese and interestingly in France, there are so many kinds of cheese that we could eat a different cheese every day. Cheese has a dedicated day in Paris, the ‘Cheese Day’, where people can discover the French cheese but also cheese from other countries. Because cheese cannot be far from wine here.
France exists in minds, dreams & fantacy eternally imagined by the passionate men and women alive. A song to play whenever you want to remember what bliss means. You always dream to do something in France.
I imagine myself, becoming a wandering gypsy, traveling the antique French alleys, buying classique souvenirs and finally sitting over a Parisian cafe over a grand sidewalk and watching the world move by while supping a mocha or lounging over a Dom Perignon. For whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse (Heraclitus).
Did I sound like a Francophile? I am. Eventually, you’ll realize that we all are.
À la vôtre!
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