Where The Heart Is...

          Living in Hawaii, people laugh when I say I’m planning a vacation to spend several weeks elsewhere.  After all, Hawaii for many is their dream vacation spot.  But when it’s also the place you call home with all the daily grind of housework, garden maintenance and even trash pick-up days, it loses a lot of its luster.  So for several weeks of the year I try to venture further afield; somewhere different I can enjoy new people, amazing food and a different culture.

          That’s not to say my mouth is watering for insects lightly poached in toilet water nor do I particularly want to visit a tribe of people with suspicious looking bones in their noses.  But a nice civilized place with museums, art galleries, a new language to try out after weeks of Rosetta Stone type cramming…this to me is bliss.

          And so it was last year that my granddaughter and I were in Paris.  We’d had days of seeing all the touristy stuff and were looking forward to a quiet dinner in a pretty local restaurant.  I have this penchant for patronizing little corner shops and hole-in-the wall eateries, mainly to encourage the owners.  After all, it can’t be easy to start a business and then watch it go down the drain due to lack of customers.  So, since every little bit helps, there I am handing over my measly euros.

          But, perhaps I should have been a little more selective about our choice of restaurant that day.  At the height of the dinner hour there were only two tables occupied and we were at one of them.  The rest of the room yawned empty around us.  And it appeared that our maitre d’ was also the waiter, the cook and the busboy.  But hey, why quibble…French food is known for its greatness!

          I can’t remember exactly what I ordered as an appetizer, but I do recall it was okay, if a little sparse.  So I was really looking forward to my main meal…in this case a dish made up of beef strips and noodles.  It looked yummy.  Unfortunately it didn’t taste as it looked.  The first bite was a chunk of gristle, the second a lump of something fatty and the third was obviously the cook’s belt cut into bite size chunks.  The dish was truly awful.

          But what to do?  I didn’t want the owner/cook to feel discouraged about his culinary efforts, yet I was nearly gagging at the thought of eating any more of the cut up cowhide.  So, with a sleight of hand that would make Houdini proud, I dumped the pieces of meat into my table napkin and pushed the entire mess into my handbag, much to the amused horror of my granddaughter who was quite enjoying her main course selection…obviously not beef and noodles!   

          It was suggested to me later that I should have complained and perhaps ordered another dish.  The problem with that is, since I’m not used to French food, perhaps the dish was meant to be as it was.  Perhaps beef with noodles in Paris is meant to be eaten only with teeth as sharp as a buzz saw.  And I certainly didn’t want to be accused of being an ignorant American!

          We left the restaurant with my bag bulging with a purple napkin stuffed with meat strips and a few noodles, which I dumped into a trash bin a block or so further up the street.

          I wonder if one of the many homeless people in Paris, found it later that night?  Dinner – yum.  Not only steak and noodles, but napkins as well!  How very French!