Jaunted Embedded Travel Guide: Cheese is a Parisian Dirty Pleasure
6/28/2007 at 11:08 AM
Tags: Paris Tours, Embedded Travel Guides, Cheese, Monica Guy (all tags)
We're not talking the dirty pleasures of cheese on toast in the middle of the night, or even cheesy-crust pizzas.
It's a rare thing if there's a carbohydrate in sight. Not even biscuits. What do you think this is, a children's tea party? You might be allowed to attach a breadcrumb if you're lucky, but that's as far as it goes. You might even catch sight of a grape, but you're not supposed to actually eat it. I once went to a restaurant in Paris where the grapes were plastic.
The pleasures of a good piece of cheese might be dirty, but at least they're enjoyed pure.
Dirty pleasures
It's almost an official tenet of Parisian culture that pasteurised, packaged cheese is like masturbation wearing a pair of rubber gloves. It's health and safety gone mad. It takes an intrinsically pleasurable experience and chemically extracts all the fun out of it. Processed cheese (unless it's La Vache Qui Rit and you're five years old) is akin to paedophilia. Ready-sliced is simply not discussed. That's not to say people don't buy it. They just don't admit to it.
Cheesy politicians
While we're talking dirty, you should know that cheese and French politics go together like brie and grapes. "How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?" despaired General Charles de Gaulle fondly. It's a poor excuse for being a bad politician, but it says a lot about French national identity. Can you imagine the same in the US? "Oh, I'm not going to vote for him - he eats Monterey Jack." Or, "we must be a great nation - we make 16 different varieties of pizza cheese."
The Clean Way
If you're a bit prissy, you can find plenty of places in Paris to eat cheese the clean way. Fromagerie 31 is a trendy cheese bar where you can order plates of five, seven or nine cheeses arranged from mildest to strongest. There is an unconfirmed rumour that the Prince of Wales in England does the same with his boiled eggs in the morning, so it must be a good idea.
Or you can make up your own cheese plate at Pain, Vin, Fromage.
Fill your guts and harden your arteries by trying one of their raclettes, fondues or oozy melting poelons. It's more likely to break you than make you, but you'll have a good time along the way.
Flashing your privates
If you don't like to flash your privates in public, you can buy cheese from the many ponging fromageries or market stalls about the city, and smuggle it home to do your dirty business in private. I won't go through all the 246 varieties (actually Charles de Gaulle underestimated - there are around 500). Obsessive fromagers such as Marie-Anne Cantin, on the other hand, will be only too happy to.
Group Sex
But if you do the above in Paris, I reckon you're missing the point. Sharing an oozy, stinking mould-encrusted round of Camembert with your best friends and a good bottle of red is a dirty pleasure akin to group sex.
You see, cheese-eating in Paris isn't usually about eating cheese. Just like group sex doesn't have much to do with impregnation. It's about the whole world that surrounds cheese - knowing about it, buying it, discussing it, enjoying it with friends and family. When I bring out the cheese baking tray (chopping board's too small) at my posh dinner parties, everyone loosens up, pours another glass, starts talking about cheese. But only a few slivers of the smelly stuff go missing.
Perhaps it's because we're all too busy doing something else. No photos for that one, I'm afraid, you'll have to use your imagination.
Monica Guy lives in Paris, writes for Time Out, and keeps a low profile, like any true femme fatale. In fact, most people don't even realize she's a femme fatale. She's been told to upload her avatar, but she's not sure who or what that is, or why she might want one. Unless he's in a pilot's suit, that is. That would be quite another matter.
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