La gastronomie

Beneath the tourist spots and historical sites that most obviously define Paris, there lies another humble but important entity: food — more specifically, meals, which play an important role in giving the stone and concrete a real life of its own. When we stopped in little cafes for breakfast or lunch, my friend and I noticed that meals were an event in Paris, much more so than they are here. Our waiters did not hover over us as soon as we finished our plates, and groups of people who were sitting down when we came — seemingly at the end of their meal — would still be there after we had ordered, eaten, checked our maps, and gotten ready to continue. They were simply enjoying each other’s company along with their second dessert course. When we saw schoolchildren and businessmen eating on park benches anytime from noon to mid-afternoon on a given weekday, my friend would jokingly say that they all must be on their “lunch three hours.”

We live in a society where speed and cost savings can be valued over quality as long as the quality meets some sort of bare minimum. Here at Princeton, that minimum is still a fairly high standard, but it can be tempting to skim class readings and skip steps in calculation in the interest of doing more faster. As my friend and I ate delicious handmade pates de fruit and gawked at how many different statues covered the walls of Notre Dame, we half-joked about how lazy people have become even amid our seeming productivity. It was awe-inspiring to see buildings from hundreds of years ago standing tall and strong, while modern structures built with the aid of force-analysis software and machines have collapsed due to oversight. This oversight is simply because many people today lack the dedication of the people who built those old structures, and thus they cut corners. When I consider the time people devoted to building these works of art, it seems silly not to stop for a short conversation or to scarf down a meal with a textbook in my lap because I feel as if I need to rush to get more and more done, and it puts my work at Princeton into perspective.

Through my lens as an Eating Concerns Advisor — and as an amateur gourmande — it was also refreshing to order from menus that didn’t have the nutrition facts displayed more prominently than the dishes or to eat at restaurants that didn’t have “No Trans Fat!” plastered all over their windows. I ate crepes, croissants and baguettes that tasted like real butter and sugar, their flavor not soured by the fear of food that society can sometimes impose on us. In our culture of treating food as something to be controlled, people might call that lack of attention to the content of their dishes careless, but it is quite the contrary. People there seemed to know that what they ate was real and good, and that allowed them to enjoy it for what it was. That’s not to say that Paris is a magic place devoid of social pressures concerning body image and food. But the French attitude toward eating seemed to give people permission to dine with the knowledge that it is their right to enjoy food, instead of encouraging them to obsess over whether or not a dish contains the latest villainized ingredient.

In most bookstores, you’ll find a large selection of books on how to eat like the French. Many of those books are geared toward women, and they often feed on their insecurities. They push the image of the French woman as a devastatingly cosmopolitan waif, teetering around on six-inch Louboutins, having power that the books link to her thinness. While in Paris, I saw for myself that the city was actually made up of real men, women and children, in different shapes and sizes, albeit generally better dressed than I’m used to seeing. Also, I realized that the food philosophy that people so desperately want to understand is actually fairly simple, and it can’t really be captured by a diet book in disguise, clouded by a motivation that is actually just negative self-image. Eating at all those little bistros and patisseries taught me a little more about how to be un bon vivant, even amid piles of schoolwork, and what it means to be mindful and grateful in different areas of my everyday life, not just at the table.

Sophia LeMaire is a mechanical engineering major from Longmeadow, Mass. She can be reached at slemaire@princeton.edu.