the international rock star lifestyle

for our last night in paris, we decided to splurge and go out for a big fancy dinner. the end result was a place that specialized in french caviar, which the guidebook claims is much more affordable than russian or iranian (who knew?) caviar, but just as tasty.

for over a week now, we (or more specifically, mostly me) had been carefully going around paris trying not to offend people and to make sure that we followed all the local customs and the proper protocols.

no elbows on the table. eat with the fork in the left hand, knife in the right. when finished eating, knife and fork crossed on the plate, face down. when not yet finished, knife and fork place on each side, tips on plate, ends on table. if whole place setting is there, leave each course’s utensils on plate to be taken away, otherwise carefully remove designated whole meal’s fork and knife for reuse during next course.

so on and so forth. if parisians say there is a bon vivant, then by hell’s bells, we’re going to try and vivons bien accordingly.

unfortunately, it pretty much came to a crashing halt with this meal. however good we were during the rest of our stay in all the other restaurants, we probably made more than enough faux pas during this one meal to make up for them.

this is what happens when you don’t go to finishing school. or when you forget your copy of haute cuisine dining for dummies.

to their credit, the wait staff were incredibly kind about everything we did wrong.

“madame, perhaps you may want to eat the caviar not with the silver fork, but with the caviar spoon, to prevent the metal from ruining the caviar taste?”

who knew? and when you’re eating caviar-topped baked potatoes, do you eat just the caviar first, or the caviar and potato together, and do you eat the skins, or is that just an american hick thing to do?

the restaurant also specialized in “smoked salmon of the tsars,” featuring four different kinds of smoked salmon that were time honored favorites of royalty gone by. of course i had to try it. who doesn’t want to try the favorite foods of the tsars? however, when you realize how much smoked salmon that really is, you think, “maybe that’s why those tsars aren’t around anymore?”

i think i ate maybe two pounds of smoked salmon. and i didn’t even finish it all.

i may never want to eat salmon again.

Posted at March 10, 2005 4:33 PM