Right now, I am sitting at my desk and I am eating popcorn. It is raining, and I am eating popcorn – perfect, crispy caramel corn, in fact – as fast as I can, because I’m afraid that if I don’t eat it soon, it will go soggy in this very damp, very cold, Parisian air. So, really, when you think of it that way, I am not being piggy. Rather, I am only trying not to waste this wonderful popcorn that I just received in the mail yesterday from my two new best friends, Tara and Katherine, the pop gals behind the hugely successful and soon-to-be famous Papa Dean’s Popcorn in San Antonio — a whole 3 ½ gallon tin of corn, in fact, and besides caramel, there’s a whole ton of BBQ popcorn, and jalapeno nacho cheese, too! (Can you imagine my glee?!)
Perhaps this is a good time to mention the popcorn problem here in France; the problem being that they, the gastronomes of the world that they are here, don’t have a clue about popcorn, which as anyone knows, is key to any truly enjoyable movie experience. Most of the little teensy movie theatres here don’t have popcorn at all (and I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you that the boxes of Milk Duds are noticeably absent, too), but the big ones, the movie chains, have popcorn, but it’s often already in boxes, and stacked on a shelf (!!!), behind the rows of helpy-selfy candy worms and bears and bananas and all of that other chewy stuff that they love here.
It’s anyone’s guess how long those boxes of popcorn have been sitting on those shelves. I’ve never seen anyone eating any of it, and only one time was I brave enough to try popcorn, a la Francaise, when I was about to see “Dreamgirls,” which seemed to demand popcorn, as any movie does, really.
“Sucre ou sale?” said the guy behind the counter, who was, at this particular movie house, standing in front of a mountain of what appeared to be popcorn that was popped in the last decade. The lobby, as I recall, even smelled faintly of popcorn, giving me hope that I had perhaps been too quick to judge, as I often am.
Sugary or salty, I wondered. Hmmm. I’ll stick with what I know — good old salty, with fake butter flavor, I hoped.
Well. What can I tell you other than the popcorn near the counter was only a ruse, a fake, a lure? It was cold. It was soft. But yes, it was salty – until I accidentally came across a piece or two that was sprinkled with sugar. Even worse, I had no Dr. Pepper to wash it all down with.
I felt so naïve, so silly, for getting my hopes up like that.
So for now, I will just order my popcorn from San Antonio from the gals that do it right – and wear Dr. Pepper lip gloss (!), too.
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Yes… popcorn in Paris. I love the cafes that serve it with your evening cocktail… 10 or 12 popped kernels–surely from one of those boxes–on a saucer too small for a demi tasse! C’mon!