No. 7 “The Ugly American”
I was an ugly American.
I was trying not to be. I wore dark pink pants, a white shirt with pastel flowers embroidered on the front and brown Danish loafers. Because, after losing 30 pounds, my belts are too long, I’ve taken to buckling them on the side so the tale of the belt doesn’t flap on my hip. Because it’s 1955 and I’m a beatnik.
I sat, on this, my first day in Paris, in the Bistro D’Aumont, the breakfast restaurant in the Crillon, in the inner courtyard of the hotel. The mansard roof was above me with its grey slate, and the windows were shaded by black and white awnings. The sky was clear blue and the air was balmy - it was summer in Paris, in the midst of a heat wave. In the morning, I was not uncomfortable.
They sat me outside at a table in the corner that had a wrap around banquette and a chair with a greenish-grey cushion on the other side. The host asked if I wanted the heater turned on and given that it was 72 or so degrees, I demurred.
The table was made of white marble with grey veins. In the center was a tuft of fine greenery in a white ceramic pot - the type of plant that grows from a Chia pet. A heavy silver fork, knife and spoon were placed on a folded, thick white linen napkin.
Then I waited. Ten minutes had gone by when a waiter came with a menu and I ordered a cup of coffee.
The menu was beautiful, like everything in this hotel. Heavy cream card stock and written in a stately, vaguely belle epoque script.
I considered the menu. For breakfast I like protein. At home, you can usually find me at C Casa in the Oxbow for their juevos rancheros. Not seeing that - though not expecting to - I saw that they had an omelette. At least, the only egg option I saw was an omelette. Not just any omelette, though, this was a “chlorophyll” omelette. I had an uneasy feeling, ordering something that sounds like a chemical infused into my eggs, but wanted the protein so I that’s what I decided on.
Then I saw that they had avocado toast. Avocado toast! I am Californian through and through and have been eating avocado toast since way before the current craze. I settled on that as well.
Another ten minutes went by. Coffee came with lait chaud - hot milk. He also brought butter and bowl of exquisite pastries cushioned by a paper napkin. I told the waiter what I wanted and he left.
There were four pastries and they were glorious: a tetrad of French glutenous perfection that would give any person with Celiac’s disease an autoimmunal fit just by their proximity.
There was a mini baguette, that, when I cracked its light brown crust, revealed a chewy unctuous white meat. There was a pain au chocolat, a dark golden rectangle of puff pastry that is a morning time chocolate delivery device. There was the ever present, and very high stakes, croissant, a clam shell whose infinite layers hint and their encompassing flakey, buttery bliss. And finally, a morning bun, that was a rich brown swirl, on which sprinkled something green. I never found out what it was. Their bowl was made of silver and reflected the white marble table beneath it.
Unfortunately for me, however, I do not eat wheat in the morning. The prospect of filling up on these things before my omelette made me a little sick, so while I did crack the little baguette and smear some of the soft, salted butter, I mostly admired the bowl of pastries like they were a sculpture in a museum. Which, given their beauty, they might as well have been.
I soon finished that cup of coffee and wanted another.
I flagged down a waiter: “Pardon monsieur, un autre cafe, s'il vous plait?” I said.
“Avec plaisir, monsieur,” he said and was off.
And I waited. The waiter to whom I requested the coffee then came out of the restaurant and started folding napkins, without bringing me my coffee. To my American sensibilities, observing this, my head exploded. I sat there, and pouted, like an ugly American.
So I got up and went inside and found a buffet. There, a woman was making crepes and pain perdu. In a hunger induced, strongly caffeinated, semi-obstinate insanity, against my aforementioned ban on wheat in the morning, I ordered a crepe with strawberries. I stood there and waited for her to make it like you would at any breakfast bar in the US. When she saw me there, expectantly, she said, faintly, “I will bring it out to you.” But I wanted it NOW. In a huff, I went back to my table. To wait.
Ten minutes later, the crepes arrived, and still no sign of the omelette. The deliverer of the crepes left so quickly I didn’t have time to ask for another cup of coffee. So, I had to waive down another server to ask for the coffee, that I hadn’t gotten the last time I flagged someone down. “Oui monsieur,” she said, as if she were going to take care of it.
A couple minutes later, I saw the lady whom I asked for the coffee, emerge from the restaurant with a tray of clean glasses and began to set them on tables in the courtyard. I still hadn’t gotten my coffee.
“Am I going insane?” I thought, my blood sugar at an emotionally catastrophic low. “Does anyone in this hotel actually do any work? Or do they just walk around in their très chic uniforms, looking pretty?”
And this is how I became an ugly American. I didn’t say anything, but I felt it. That outrage that so many Americans have when they come here, at the inexplicable, nonchalant disregard these waiters and waitresses have for their patrons. I felt like I was the one inconveniencing them to ask for my coffee. I sat there and fumed in silence. I had been there for 45 minutes.
I thought back to yesterday, when we were in the Winter Garden, passing the time guzzling champagne, waiting for our room to get ready. I asked for some water. A beautiful glass, looking like it was hand blown, was set down before me, with two ice cubes in it. The waitress filled it half way up with Evian.
Contrast that with anywhere in the US, where the request for a glass of water will get you a glass the size of a mason jar, with ice packed to the top, and so much water that it overflows on the table when the waiter sets it down. It’s so cold that moisture condenses on the glass and its slippery when you pick it up.
But no, at the Crillon, its two ice cubes and only enough water to wet a sponge. A dry sponge. Like my mouth.
This is why I am the ugly American. I am used to getting things in large quantities and very quickly. For example, one time in the drive through at Starbucks my Trenta Black Tea Lemonade was free because I waited - gasp! - seven minutes. And, it had so much ice in it there was hardly anything to drink.
I am the ugly American because I am expecting the same thing I expect in America in a country that is not America.
It wasn’t until a week into my stay, where, everywhere I went, I ordered ice water, and got a glass, half full, with two ice cubes, that I realized that I was from a different world. The French don’t gulp things. They sip. They don’t chomp. They chew. The act of ingesting, whether it be liquid or solid, is, in their mind, supposed to be calm, restful, peaceful. You do not rush through something as sacred as a meal. The meal is the whole point. The end in itself.
There is no other more famously indicative example of this than their national time off policy. All full time employees are entitled to five weeks vacation, plus the 21 paid government holidays. Contrast that to any time I have worked for a public corporation, and I have to parse out my two weeks - only ten days - of vacation, like Scrooge paying his laundress.
So the French have more time. That’s the difference. Waiting ten minutes for a cup of coffee is nothing to them because they have all the time in the world, and they can’t comprehend that others do not, and that they should speed things up to accommodate those ugly American jerks who are impatient, like me.
All of this, of course, I now see in retrospect. At the time, staring the crepes with strawberries in the face, when what I really wanted was that omelette; and pondering the gracefulness of the fine bone china of the - empty - coffee cup, blood sugar level at an emotionally catastrophic low, I was having none of it.
And that is when my omelette arrived. And the coffee. And the avocado toast.