‘Brunch’ gets Lost in Translation …
Here in France, we have a thing called the grasse matinée ; a lazy morning, sleeping in, lazing about, and doing nothing. Except eating, of course. (We’re French — not alien…) It’s about keeping it simple — grazing on croissants and jam, and an espresso or three. Oui, wherever you are, you have it too. It’s just that ours is ~more chic~ somehow, and involves croissants, comme d’habitude…
Beware of False Friends
Epic, multi-course morning meals are simply un-French…But that hasn’t stopped Le Brunch and its bacon‑y tendrils from spreading like kudzu in Paris (like the matcha latte (oui…) or McDonald’s (non, merci…). It could be argued that France opened the door to it when L’Académie française decided to include the world ‘selfie’ in their dictionary.
So we must contend that, merely a few steps away from two of the Old Gates to the city, a foreign invader has slipped past the barricades: 1000-calorie morning (-ish) meals.
But non ! All zis ‘pancakes’ is not French. Not so much anyway.
In Paris, some think that brunch is obscene. Weekend mornings — not for the Parisians (ouf — look at our flat stomachs non non non) but for tourists and Anglo expats — usually goes as follows: splash your face with water, cover your eyes with a pair of sunglasses and head out with les copines for pancakes, coffee, some kind of luxuriously fatty pork accompaniment, (and maybe a refill of the aforementioned) to shake off the revelry of the night before.
The French jumped into the game, with a Version Française de brunch — tables piled high of pound cake (a too-trendy thing here, in my opinion), all-you-can-eat-croissants, freshly squeezed orange juice…I suppose to justify charging you over 20€ for.…unlimited slices of cake…?
Nah.
We don’t go down like that. I believe this is a massive cultural misunderstanding. Ok, we Frenches took the whole ‘lol wut how much are you eating to shake off that hangover?’ and applied it to our own, native, pastry-centric, breakfast habits.
But how many croissants and slices of cake can one possibly ingest? Sorry, mes chéries, but some things just don’t translate…
So, FOREIGNERS must proceed with CAUTION…
If you are like me, (and no of course you aren’t because how many heavy-drinking, deeply indebted, English-language, magazine-writers in Paris can there be?) you don’t think of ‘unlimited iced lemon and/or chocolate marble pound cake and lots of cappuccinos’ when you wanna scratch that brunch itch.
Like me, you want pancakes. And bacon. And maple syrup.
Or some goddamn WAFFLES.
We suffer in common that we can never be healed of this. So let’s embrace it. Take hold of those fat stacks of pancakes without shame, and also without being led astray to Le French Brunch, which, while instagrammable as hell, is ~still a table full of pound cakes and orange juice for like, 20 euros ~
Bye, Philippe!
So choose carefully, in fact consult our brutally curated list of worth-it brunches, where honest-to-goodness, shameless, Anglo daytime overeating is neither in fashion, nor out, but overwhelms the French attempts to play the game and/or resist/overcharge for such bacchanalia. Sort of like that submarine fiasco a few months back.
So bear in mind, in France, there are 3 kinds of Brunch:
–Le Brunch Version Français (tables of all you can eat cakes and pastries with coffee and orange juice in abundance.
–Le Brunch Anglo (what you, dear reader, most likely hope for — pancakes, eggs, and all the bacon. The trendy, international version that doesn’t differ much from Brooklyn to Brisbane to the 10th Arrondissement.
–Le Hotel Brunch — an animal not normally found roaming outside the rarefied environs of posh hotels. This is the over-100€ version found in certain arrondissements — think fabric napkins, heaving roasts with hot guys carving away to your delight, seafood tables, and general, delicious excess.
The History of Brunch: From Jesus Christ to Cafés Richard to Avocado Toast
I realise that some context regarding the exponential growth of ‘Le brunch’ is necessary, so I’ve mined the archives and historical databases for precise dates on the evolution of breakfast like a proper pancake sherpa. I believe that he who does not understand our avocado toast-less past condemns himself to an avocado toast-less future. I’m pretty sure that quote comes from the Holy Bible.
259 B.C.: Before Capuccino
Single-celled organisms, believed by anthropologists and chefs alike to have been Adam and Eve, drag themselves out of the muck in search of a decent café au lait. They found some, giving them the get-up-and-go needed to sprout limbs, eventually evolving into Jesus Christ himself. But alas, until 59 B.C. — when the Romans arrived on Gallic lands with espresso from Caffe Sant Eustacchio in Rome — Paris was merely a sandy fishing village with neither good expresso nor croissants.
59 B.C. — 1247 A.D.
Like the majority of French history, not much happens of any interest and there is little that remains anyways, so…
1248
King Louis IX, future Saint Louis (of Missouri fame) set out to do some totally not woke stuff during the Crusades (#NotAllFrenchKings), returning with the Crown of Thorns allegedly worn by Jesus Christ and other holy mulch, and starts building Sainte-Chapelle, which has the tallest stained-glass windows in the world.
This isn’t related to brunch but I’m mentioning it because, otherwise, it’ll seem as if there really is no French history to speak of. I’m applying for citizenship next year so I’ll tell them I write about French history. Pourquoi pas?
1892 — 2013
Cafés Richard buys the distribution rights of all coffee in France, which doesn’t expire until 2014 (also known as the Paris café renaissance when then-President François Hollande broke up the coffee monopoly by running Richard over on a scooter with actress Julia Gayet riding behind down the Champs-Élysées).
Italian, Australian and Turkish expats in Paris rejoice after a century of trying to understand how the pastries could be the best in the world, but it’s hard to tell the difference between Mr. Propre and expresso from a French tabac.
2013
The French government launches a special visa program allowing Australians under the age of 25 to come work in France. Fleeing a chlamydia outbreak that, “babe, I—like—totally caught at the zoo, eh. It must’ve been those damn koalas I was pettin’ honey,” (have you seen the news?) Aussie immigrants arrived by planeload with just the flat whites on their backs.
2019
As the crowds swell to epic proportions, and the wait for pancakes exceeds the one-hour mark on weekends and weekdays alike, daring reinforcements to save the little stretch of Rue Lucien Sampaix and Rue du Château d’Eau, Parisians (and foreigners willing to trek outside the Rick Steves’ guidebook routes) in need of comfort food before noon can just plug metro Jacques Bonsergent into Google maps et voilà!
How does one reconcile that it’s so not chic to let out three notches from my belt?
The heart wants what the heart wants, like a ‘dessert’ of maple syrup-topped pancakes after the savoury bacon-festooned round. Humans are social creatures, so the brunch détente makes perfect anthropological sense. You get the savoury pancakes, I’ll get the sweet and we’ll share. Everybody wins, nobody dies.
Sorry, French cake-slingers, but it’s noon and I’m still wearing last-night’s mascara. See you on Monday at the boulangerie for something wiser and less…foreign.
Enough talk — Here are our picks for Le Brunch in Paris…
Indecorous Culturevore and Polychrome Chow Virtuosa Kat Walker likes nice things.
She once went to a job interview for that was supposed to be for sales but was actually for prostitution (the high-class version, she hopes lol) at a fancy hotel in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower (article coming soon) and, another time interviewed for a position as a phone psychic.
She passed both with flying colors. However she declined the human trafficking position but stuck around longer than she should have to be able to write about it. (Are you not entertained?)
As for the telephone psychic gig, she only lasted one day, even though the pay was excellent. Wooooooo…..She sees you subscribing to our weekly PARIS RIGHT NOW dispatch . There is also a man in your future.
Now she is settled in as your Editor-in-Mischief here, leading the charge to not take Paris so damn seriously…let’s frolic a bit, non?
She writes fast and without prudence so if you enjoy this type of thing, editors aren’t free so here is le Patreon
When she’s not writing about croissants, love, culture, and lovable, sexy croissants, she is a gonzo performance artist whipping up a (usually) political ruckus. Her rabble rousing has provoked the attention of various public forums, like the time she appeared in the movie The Yes Men Fix the World as Russian journalist Laika Gagarina or was featured in RollCall’s Heard on the Hill for her mockery of the U.S. senate. Other efforts have landed her in the Le Nouvel Observateur, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Reader.
In other places and other lives, the actual live guy who played Ross on Friends came to see her show at a NYC gallery.
She has never had a weirder lunch than that one when an FBI informant offered to kill her business partner for her.
She declined (phew) and that’s why she’s here, freely- and un-jailed-ly writing about croissants and perverts and the Eiffel Tower (in that order, usually) for PARIS > DEFINED MAGAZINE.
Her perfectly impossible dinner in Paris would be at Pierre Sang on Gambey (the waiter chooses the wine) with Genesis P. Orridge, Napoleon Bonaparte (he picks up the tab and the waiter knows this in advance when picking wines), Christopher Hitchens, Anais Nin, and Ketamine in attendance. Drinks after at le17 but back in time, like 2017.
Her favorite French word is ‘bruit’ but only when a hot girl says it slowly.
In a bid for your attention and approval she writes things here and manages this unruly tribe of Parisians endeavoring to bring you what Parising is really about.
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