Pte de Vanves and Cafe au Lait
To satisfy my latest obsession – vintage blue and white café au lait bowls, which are not the easiest things to find– I bundled up with the usual five or six layers, put on my Uggs, cap, scarf, and gloves and big old puffy coat, and took the metro south, to Porte de Vanves, where they have a little junky flea market every weekend that’s slightly less pricey than the big one at Clignancourt.
I didn’t look at the temperature before I left, and it’s a good thing that I didn’t (it was 2 degrees Celsius, or 35 in real temperature I later found out). As I walked past the stalls, getting bumped around by the other junkers, who swerved and swayed and ran into me mindlessly like a herd of drunk cattle, I overheard a woman say to another, “Le vent est glacé.” (The wind is icy.) Yeah, I thought to myself. It is.
With the wind pressing against my face, I perused every stall – more than a couple hundred, I’d imagine – and I found only five blue and white bowls. One was 50 euros. Nope. Another was 38. Forget about it. I thought about buying one for 24, but the insides were really funky and stained, and I wasn’t sure it if would clean up.
Towards the end of the market, I found a woman who was only selling café au lait bowls, and she had two; one that I really liked. I asked her how much it was.
“Quinze,” she said.
“Prenez-vous douze?” I countered.
She nodded, and the little bowl was mine, for just 12 euros.
By now, it was 11 a.m., my hands were freezing inside of my shearling gloves, and I was starting to feel a bit peckish, as often happens when I’m shopping.
I popped into a little artisanal boulangerie and grabbed a beautiful quiche (it was pretty because it wasn’t perfect, so I knew that they’d made them by hand that day), and a palmier as big as my head, and walked towards the metro stop.
But first, I realized, I needed to warm up.
So I tucked into a little café and ordered up a café au lait and sat there, and drank my coffee, until my toes were once again warm, and my fingers, too, and as I did so, I ate the entire palmier that I told myself that I’d share with Xavier later.
As I sipped my café, I thought about my good friend back in Dallas, Rebecca Sherman, who loves to tease me about going to Starbuck’s in Paris when there are so many good coffee shops here.
She’s right, and I occasionally do have a coffee the Frenchy way, and in a proper Frenchy café, as opposed to getting in the familiar white cup with the green and black logo. Which, by the way, I’m doing right now, at my neighborhood Starbuck’s, which is absolutely packed with Frenchies.
