I don't know how many times I've walked past Burro Alley and thought to myself, "One of these days I ought to check out that little French place in there." Well, now I won't have to tax my feeble brain with all that counting, because with some gentle encouragement from a friend I finally wised up and tried it. Here's the thing. The atmosphere at
Café Paris is truly stellar. I'm sure you've noticed all of the umbrella-shaded tables cuddling in the alley between the Lensic and the café. Tourists probably scoff at it: "What, I'm here in the great Southwest and this place is trying to pretend it's Montmartre?" To those people I would say, "Let me tell you about a place called Señor Lucky's…."
But some of us have to live here and eventually we get tired of all-enchiladas-all-the-time. Maybe we want to pretend we're in Paris. Actually, judging from the fashion scene here, some of us want to pretend we're clubbing in Berlin or living in an ashram in India (check out my jingly ankle bells!). And for those of us for whom jetting off to Paris for the weekend is not an option, I think Café Paris does a pretty good job.
It isn't super-fancy. I mean, this isn't the kind of place where you'd get torchons of foie gras nestled in a bed of wilted frisée or anything. It's not stuffy or snotty or particularly expensive. The food is simple and comforting, like…well…I was going to say like the kind of food your grandmère would make, but that's silly and statistically improbable. I didn't have a grandmère, I had a regular old gramma, and she was a great cook but she didn't make crusty whole wheat baguettes, silky chicken crêpes or anything like a seafood croustade.
If you walk inside to get a table, you'll see a bakery case full of outrageously tempting cookies, cakes and tarts. If you're on some sort of super-restrictive diet, then by all means stay away from the bakery case. The sweet scent wafting into the dining room from the ovens in the back will seduce you like Pepé Le Pew pressing wet kisses on your wrist. It's a sweet, yeasty smell that is absolutely intoxicating. But shake it off if you can, because there's more to be had than just sweets. At lunch, there is a long list of satisfying sandwiches, made with house-baked bread. The bread makes all the difference, you know?
After eating about half a loaf of slightly sweet whole wheat bread schmeared with full-fat butter, I tried two dishes, the seafood cassoulet and a chicken crêpe. The seafood cassoulet was chock-full of seafood and bathed in a pleasantly salty, creamy tomato sauce. The chicken crêpes actually did remind me of something my gramma would have made. The crêpes themselves were nearly perfect: silky smooth, slightly eggy, delicious. The mild and creamy chicken filling, dotted with green peas, could just as easily have been sitting inside a pot pie. At first I thought it was dull; then it grew on me.
It is incredibly quiet and relaxing, sitting out in the shady alley and sipping an Orangina or a tall glass of San Pellegrino (which everyone now thinks I'm getting paid to endorse). The afternoon I was there it started to rain a little and the waitress went around asking each table if they'd like to move inside; nobody did. We all just sat there beneath the collective canopy of our umbrellas, enjoying the cool air and the people passing by. You should really try it.
Oh, and by the way, this is totally out of the blue, but you know what I'm addicted to these days? Nabisco's Famous Chocolate Wafers. They are underrated and undereaten. I'm sure you've seen them, though you may not remember because they're stocked in the cookie aisle, but usually way up on the top shelf with all the other boring cookies like animal crackers and ginger snaps. Almost nobody eats Famous Wafers, but old ladies use them to make icebox cake (this oldey-timey thing that involves a tub of Cool Whip) and grind them up for cheesecake crusts. The older I get, the more I like understated cookies like these. If you're one of those freaks who scrapes the partially-hydrogenated filling from Oreos and eats just the cookie parts, check out the Famous Chocolate Wafers. I've killed half a box just while writing this column.
Stay tuned for next week's column, "Oh My God I've Gained Ten Pounds; or How I Learned to Love Lettuce."
Cafe Paris
1 Burro Alley
986-9162
8 am-9 pm Sunday-Thursday;
8 am-10:30 pm Friday and Saturday
Where should I be eating this week? E-mail
and let me know!
