Only in France would you, could you possibly, be served butter with your cheese. Really, I’ve ordered a plate of Basque cheese with black cherry jam, and it’s arrived as promised, but with a sprig of pretty green mâche and a gold foil-wrapped pat of “beurre Echiré”.

Has decadence no bounds?!

How French women don’t get fat is a divine mystery. Perhaps it is because it is so easy to walk everywhere and it’s been proven that one loses more weight standing rather than sitting. And, as it is cheaper to take your coffee standing at the zinc bar than to sit at a table, perhaps there is just a built-in tradition favoring exertion.

This is my second time this week having Basque cheese with black cherry jam and I imagine that it is something of an old standby in the South. The cheese is a sheep’s milk cheese and it’s nice and mild but with a heartiness to it, and the black cherry jam is dark and sweet. It’s a fine replacement for my black cherry lipstick which was lost in the stolen purse incident.

This is not the first time I’ve seen butter and cheese paired together. The most basic Parisian sandwich that you can get at most boulangeries and tabacs and bars is a demi-baguette plied with buttered and lined with cheese (usually chèvre or camembert or emmental) and oftentimes with ham. Sometimes the cheese and butter is enough. Personally, I much prefer butter to mayonaise, but even a half baguette of a sandwich seems like an extreme indulgence!

It’s 1:05 at Le Valois and the lunch hour is in full swing. Noon is the start of the lunch rush, but currently it’s really booming. Le Valois, as I overheard on Tuesday from a man sitting nearby who I gathered was an American journalist from The Daily Beast, is a popular lunch spot for lawyers and bankers who work in the surrounding area and it’s nice to see such an authentic Parisian brasserie firing all salvos with nary a tourist in sight! A similar place, also in the eighth, is Chez Andre, which apparently saw the likes of none other than Lady Gaga during her visit this past autumn.

There is not a complete absence of outside influences, though, as a man to my left just uttered the phrase, “faz boo keeng”, which I believe would have something to do with social networking. It’s funny hearing American phrases uttered in the course of regular French parlance, but I guess that is much like our “rendez-vousing”, etc.

Yesterday I was walking back to the apartment after picking up a couple bottles of water (Evian  - it tastes the best) and something from the pharmacy, and a man on the street asked me in French about the metro. I answered in English for some reason and said that it was “Just this way.”  He was quite happy to hear English and said that he was surprised to receive a response in a language other than French. Apparently he was born in Paris and sort of worn out of Parisians, who, he said, “suck”. I said I found Parisians very nice and quite intellectual, always reading on the Metro, and he said that they were reading trashy magazines, and I protested that I had only ever seen them with books. I guess there is a difference of perspective, but it’s a shame that so many Parisians are down on their own kind because they are really a lovely bunch. He explained that Parisians like to complain a lot, which is probably true, but if there are any Parisians reading this, I hope they realize that there is much to celebrate!

I think Paris is a terrific place to suffer. Not because misery loves company and everyone here is miserable – no, not at all. (And take my use of the word “suffer” with a grain of salt). I mean that, say your home life is a mess and your job is a wreck – well, step outside and you’re in Paris! And it’s the Paris that movies are made about – it really is a dream – it makes it all disappear so that you’re sitting over a plate of duck confit with a caraf of red wine and you’re not thinking about your inner turmoil, but instead philosophizing about theological mysteries and the truly human and divine nature of bread and wine and how they are both products of civilized culture and miraculous, natural processes, and are quite apt as parallels to  the human and divine they are said to represent. Paris has an uncanny way of indulging those with philosophical or eccentric tendencies, though these may still stand out as “bizarre” individuals.

Either way – there’s little that beautiful architecture and fried potatoes can’t cure!