Paris, France
A future food critic avoids the obvious on a would-be romantic weekend.

From the April 22, 2002 Issue of New York

The weekend trip to Paris was her idea, I dimly recall. My future wife and I had reached that delicate threshold in our relationship when the carefree days of dating and mutually satisfactory singlehood were being displaced by the looming prospect of something more permanent. It was clear to everyone that we were going to get married, but nobody (namely me) was doing a damn thing about it.

Which, I suppose, is how we found ourselves winging off on the red-eye to Paris for three days in the depths of winter on a cheap off-season ticket. The trip was billed as a holiday lark, a getaway from gray, snowbound Manhattan, although the intent was clear. She had glittering, though still vaguely subconscious, notions of a glamorous proposal on the banks of the Seine, and I had a temporary ring in my pocket (we'd pick one out later), and abject fear in my heart.

By the time we touched down at Orly, certain patterns of neurotic avoidance were firmly established. She took to her bed with some mysterious ailment, while I commenced jamming breakfast croissants down my craw like Jiminy Glick. I considered presenting the ring to her that evening at the well-known Left Bank café Brasserie Balzar, but got sidetracked by a fine platter of steak tartare (she drank chamomile tea). We visited a reputable one-star restaurant the next day for lunch (pike quenelles, mushroom pâté, fillet of salmon) and the great Brasserie Flo for dinner (oysters, choucroute, tripe salad). When we ambled romantically through the Tuileries the next morning, she was still feeling faint, and I was too bilious to talk.

The trip continued in this vein until, mercifully, it was time to go home. We were engaged a week later, in bumbling, though happy fashion, two blocks from where we live today. In a restaurant, of course.
-- ADAM PLATT





Details
Stay at Le Relais Saint-Germain, on the Left Bank (doubles from $208; 33-143-29-12-05); Brasserie Balzar (33-143-54-13-67); Brasserie Flo (33-147-70-13-59).