Hurray for traveling, but also: hurray for airports with sweet, stable and FREE (!) Internet connections. I have a brief interlude here in Kansas City on my way back from a reading, so I thought I’d tell you about a trip I took last month. After attending a desi wedding in Georgia (the American one!) I took the Delta nonstop to Paris (the French one!) for another wedding. And in France, I did a little desi-spotting, in the part of Paris known as La Chapelle.
So, in this blissful hiatus from the security line (as Kumar says, “random search, huh?”), I bring to you tales of gastronomie and naan fromage!
I can’t pretend that I had an exhaustive look at La Chapelle—time did not permit—but you know me, I managed to eat. And take pictures. Neither can I pretend to be Preston Merchant, but I did try to get some of the signs that captured the French-Indien-Srilankhan (!) vibes.
La Chapelle is the name of the train station nearest to this area. It’s somewhat connected to Gare du Nord, the hub for northbound travel out of Paris. The busy neighborhood is crammed full of stores: sari shops, restaurants, bookstores, translation services… Most businesses I saw were Tamil-speaking, with Tamil signs, and walking down the street, I heard snatches of Tamil with a distinctly Sri Lankan lilt. There’s a sizable Sri Lankan Tamil population in France. (Wikipedia says 100,000, most in Paris, and refers to the area as a “Little Jaffna.)
I heard more Sri Lankan Tamil when we ate in neighborhood restaurants. (We also ate at one Indian restaurant that was not in the La Chapelle area.) What did I eat? Well, the clear winner for novelty was my taste of naan fromage. My bite revealed it to be the gooey equivalent of Indien-French grilled cheese. (I suffer from that common subcontinental curse of mild lactose intolerance, so I limited myself to a bite, which was, frankly, sad.)
When I asked what kind of cheese it was, the person who had ordered it wrinkled her nose, grinned, and said, “Industriale?” But, she added, she still loves it. (She orders two naan fromage and chicken tikka every time.) Perhaps elsewhere the naan fromage is made with Roquefort or Camembert, but it would seem that in many places, it’s made with the French version of Velveeta. (Has anyone eaten it in the United States? I hear rumors of naan fromage on the West Coast but have never seen it in the U.S. myself. Neither do I remember seeing it in Singapore or Malaysia. Does anyone have a recipe?
Here is a video of someone making it, on YouTube.
I also sampled plenty of dosai. At one restaurant, I saw a distinction between Ceylon thosai—which looked like the plate-sized ones made by my mother—and regular or Indian thosai, or dosa, the mammoth ones I am used to seeing in restaurants in New York. I don’t remember ever seeing this in the U.S. either—at least, not at a place that also serves the Indian style. (Also sad. Ceylon thosai are good.) We also ate thaalis, paper dosai, biryani, lassis (rose and mango), vadai, banana blossom curry…
At this last I must note (again, with envy) the superior availability of the fruits and vegetables exotiques in other countries. Alphonso mangoes, mangosteens… Yum.
Below, a few pictures from the area. Preston… sorry, dude, I’m learning.
On the street.
SRILANKHAN!
ET SRI LANKAISES!
Some posters were still up from the anniversary of Black July. (See previous post about that here.)
More Black July posters. Can folks read the less obvious ones? I can’t—I think we were hurrying somewhere when I took them and they’re pretty small for my poor vision.
Fromage!
A translation service.
Specials of the day. At the bottom, in Tamil, they say they also have shrimp curry. Yum.
