I know that people talk about how good French “cuisine” is all the time, but let me tell you: the cuisine is pretty decent, but the whole approach to food is what’s really bangin’. No matter what you’re eating, you can rest assured that love, tenderness, and at least half a stick of butter have gone into it.
The result, for the most part, is street food and po’-boy cuisine that is almost tragically delicious. Imagine your favorite taco truck, and then extend that concept to almost every food: be it sandwiches, poultries, bizarre Belgian sauerkrauts, crepes or the humblest of fondues.
Everything, that is, except, strangely, Chinese food, which has let me down, hard, on several occasions. There is an attitude about food here that just doesn’t exist in the States, and never could.
Allow me to give an example: There is a place in the Saint-Michel district that makes the best Greek sandwiches I have ever tasted.
For those of you who don’t know, a Greek sandwich is a pita bread stuffed with about a pound of mystery meat that has been roasted on a spit and, as far as I can tell, never been refrigerated. This is shaved off of the spit, as it is cooking, with a small, hand-held power saw. Talk about savage. Lettuce, tomato, delicious tzatziki sauce are added to this, along with: and this is the coup de grace: French (freedom) fries.
Let me say that again: French fries and meat inside the same pita. Now, you might say, “But Jasper, there are French fries in the burritos here!” No. No, there are not. Burritos have their place, certainly and especially those with French fries and avocado chunks hidden within, but the Greek sandwich is the King of street foods.
These babies are fantastically, gut-wrenchingly, grease-drippingly good, and one Greek sandwich is basically all you can eat in the course of a day. To boot, they’re quite cheap, about €4.50, which is only like half a million dollars these days. Not bad, considering they weigh about half as much as I do.
As I was saying before I got distracted, the best Greek sandwich I’ve had is in Saint-Michel, at a place called the “Maison de Gyros.” Their meat is only rarely too salty, and always perfectly spiced. The lettuce is fresh and crisp, the tomatoes are juicy, and the tzatziki is as refreshing as one could ever hope. Plus: and this is how you know you’re at a good joint: they rub your pita on the meat-spit and warm it up before they fill it with the strange Mediterranean delicacies.
But it’s the ambience of the place that really makes the experience. Downstairs, there is a small, semi-open-to-the-air sit-down area; this is excellent, as the sandwiches are big, messy and enjoyed more easily when seated. The proprietors constantly dump salt all over the floor to soak up the grease and neither the downstairs or upstairs dining areas (I suggest avoiding the upstairs) appear as though they have ever been cleaned.
The last time I visited, a pigeon joined us for dinner. It flew in, and proceeded to wander unchallenged amongst the diners, picking here and there at kebab tidbits, its single swollen, oversized, disgusting foot in prominent display, until finally it decided it had had enough and vanished in a swirl of feathers.
As my lady-friend and I rose to leave, she pointed out the stray cat that was lounging as nonchalant as Baudelaire’s dandy in the corner. We wandered into the beautiful Paris twilight, the bells of Notre Dame ringing clearly in the crisp air, as the toothless sandwich men waved us goodbye, grunting unintelligibly and wiping their unwashed fingers on their grease-coated aprons. Au revoir, my friends. And next time, cook the pigeon.
