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
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