Chapter Fifteen: Hey, I Think I Like It Here
Chapter Fifteen: Hey, I Think I Like It Here
The beginning of settling in reveals that I may have landed in a good place. Maybe.
License now in hand, after weeks of counsel from one of my best friends back in LA, a flaming car geek, I found my future ride in a used car dealership in Burgundy: a silver, 10-year-old BMW hybrid station wagon. It was automatic, had four wheel drive and was comfortable to sit in, three non-negotiable criteria. It also reeked of yummy mummy back from the nail salon, indulging my deep bougie streak. It made me miss my mother, who has had a string of posh station wagons throughout both of our lives. They were always impeccable and smelled of Chanel No 19. The closest I would get to maintaining her standards with this car would be to have an old bottle of the same perfume rolling around the floor of the back seat to counteract the rank smells that a car will get when it gets washed twice a year. But I am skipping ahead. Even if the thing was new to me, it made me feel rooted to have it.
The car’s ten year old nav system hadn’t been updated since it was first installed, so once I got off the autoroutes from Auxerre—they were lined with huge windmills out in this flat, dry, big-ag corner of the country—and into Le Perche, it sent me onto random backroads until I finally gave up and plugged in my phone.
There wasn’t an ugly corner in this part of the world, it seemed. Everywhere, absolutely everywhere, the backdrops were every shade of green. “It reminds me of Hawaii, almost,” said the same car geek pal when he came out to visit a few months later. “I mean not exactly, but it has that same wall of green effect.” It was still light enough outside for me to see a hedgehog on the side of one of the smaller roads as I passed. Hi, little buddy! The fields were full of peaceful-looking cows. Half of them would end up as steaks but they were living their best lives up until it was time to go to the slaughterhouse. Maybe that’s the most any of us could hope for.
I had already been back and forth to Paris once, to report on the new offshoot of the Hotel Costes for Travel & Leisure. With this trip from Burgundy, I realized I was forming a pattern, which I was desperate to do after having torn up almost every aspect of my life: each time I crossed back into Le Perche, I breathed a very deep sigh of relief. As most of my waking hours were still spent second-guessing my decision, and most of the time I still felt like I had landed in a craft from planet giant city, this was a comforting thing to learn.
The yummy mummy car was a lot cushier than the rental, which made it easier to eat in. This mattered on our third (or was it just the second, but on-again-off-again?) soft lockdown. Before we were ordered back into our holes, I had stumbled onto this funny restaurant on the main square of one of the bigger villages, where the notary who represented the sellers of my house was based. (American readers: French house closings, which take a minimum of three months, are handled by notaires, who are almost lawyers and accompany most important civil transactions.) It only served lunch, and looked like a roadhouse dive, with a clientele of diversely scruffy drunks holding up the bar: some were in their mid 30s, hitting the sauce before going back to work on whatever construction crew had covered their boots in the dust of the day; one was the village’s former mayor, now several years retired and walking with a cane, which probably came in extra handy after many, many glasses of the house boxed wine. He was one of the politest men I have ever randomly chatted with while waiting for a €3 entrée.
With almost no décor, it didn’t have the look of a place where the food was routinely excellent, but it was. Everything was made by the self-taught wife of the owner, whom we’ll call Jean-André. I don’t remember ever eating a bad meal there, whether at the bar, or in the parking lot, behind the steering wheel of my car, out of paper to-go boxes. Green fish curry, boeuf mijoté au cidre (cider-braised pot roast), grilled lamb steak with sweet potato purée, fantastic grandmotherly desserts like chocolate pot de crème or a just loose-enough panna cotta.
Jean-André ran the front of the house. Gregarious to the point of mouthy, he had a long, thin ponytail and a soul patch, was covered with tattoos and wore a large bullet on a silver chain that sat on top of whatever cheeky message t-shirt he happened to be rocking. The third glass was always on the house—a practice foreign to most French establishments, but he had valuable experience catering to loyal, jovial alcoholics. I’d often sit at the bar when I ate there, where he’d regale me with epic tales of how he managed to free himself from the tyranny of the (to me, cushy and amazing) French social security system, and how he just didn’t trust the vaccine. He’d get to the raciest bits of whatever the conversation was by the end of the meal, when he would offer me a complimentary shot of not-great Calvados that I never, ever refused.
That we didn’t see eye to eye on anything wasn’t a huge deal. I generally steered away from politics, terrified that he would reveal himself to be a deep fan of Le Pen, which would mean I’d have to stop going there. So one of our biggest ongoing disagreements was his refusal to serve ketchup with his burger. I mansplained to him that as an American from Los Angeles, I had burger expertise he could only dream of, and he was being inauthentic and overly rigid, but he persisted. His had a big melty slab of Camembert on it, and came rare-cooked.
Lunch is a sacred meal. It is an important brain-wipe from the workday, and when we’re most alert is the best time to appreciate food. I’ve long had the habit of taking myself out to lunch alone as incentive to finish an afternoon of onerous tasks. So in addition to my burger expertise, I am an expert in how gallantly solo dining women are treated in France. We are engaged in conversation and flirted with. Waiters and barkeeps are happy to talk recipes with us. It’s easy to become a regular somewhere under these conditions, and Jean-André’s was the first place I was greeted like an old friend every time I walked in the door. It was a crucial step in starting to feel at home.
Back at the mill house, as we were now in the month of April, it was ramp season, which I discovered when I finally assented to join Samira on a walk around the grounds. She and Claude had a ton of land, some of it forest, most of it field. As she babbled on like the brook that ran through their property, we came to a watery, shady passage to another pasture. She stopped and gestured around us and I saw that the entire surface was covered with the tender emerald colored leaves of ail des ours. (It means “bear garlic” in French.)
Samira told me to pick as much as I wanted, handing me a spare plastic grocery bag she had brought along. I filled it with the stuff. I had no idea how I would end up consuming that much, since I didn’t have my blender to make pesto, but I was so enthralled by the abundance, I threw caution to the wind. Samira picked a bunch herself, and pulled out gloves to harvest the stinging nettles that pop up anywhere and everywhere there is water and dirt. She was making a vat of soup for a garden party to celebrate high spring, and I was invited.
I didn’t ask her about the guest list, I’d know soon enough. But I was desperately curious to start finding out who these people were who either lived in Le Perche full time, or at least weekended faithfully enough to become part of her friend group. I was hoping they wouldn’t all be Jean-André, but a few more like him could be good fun.
Transporting, thank you.
Hi Alex. Slightly worried this could be the dumbest question - how can it be spring there?