A la Bastille!

In honor of Bastille Day . . .

Find a nice sidewalk café with green table and chairs, where you can sit over a demitasse of strong black coffee for hours on end and savor Hemingway's impressions of his time in Paris, still alluring after all these years.

A couple of bites from A Moveable Feast (which I must reread soon):

The pommes a l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly. When the pommes de l'huile were gone I ordered another serving and a cervelas. This was a sausage like a heavy, wide frankfurter split in two and covered with a special mustard sauce.

We both touched wood on the cafe table and the waiter came to see what it was we wanted. But what we wanted not he, nor anyone else, nor knocking on wood nor marble, as this cafe table-top was, could ever bring us. But we did not know that night and we were very happy.

image: Croissants chauds sortis du four, Christophe Marcheux