By Patricia Tennison
It started this July when Joe came back from one of his wanderings here in Paris with a black baguette under his arm. Black. A black baguette.
A black baguette, and a smile
It wasn’t a mistake. It was a perfectly fine baguette, perhaps made more perfect by an extra, health food ingredient: activated carbon. It’s not the charcoal from your grill! Activated carbon is made from natural materials such as peat, wood, bamboo, and even coconut shells, heated until they become porous. This makes the carbon able to absorb other materials, which can sometimes be helpful. (It can also absorb some useful medications, so check first with your doctor.)
Activated carbon has a long history of being used to help digestion, to detoxify, even handle hangovers and some poisons. It’s also used in natural water filtration systems.
The Utopie Boulangerie, 20 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011, is not the first to add a bit of carbon to its baguettes. That started a few years ago in boulangeries in Normandy. But it’s the first we have come across near our Marais neighborhood.
The crust was fine. The texture, maybe a bit more dense than the boulangerie’s regular baguette. And the taste?
It’s hard to ignore the color when tasting a black baguette. I expected a trace of carbon–a tinge of Tums–and that’s what I detected. The taste is good, not at all medicinal. Just … black.
Like a new vocabulary word, another black baguette popped up, this time at the Chez Manon boulangerie, 25 rue de Bretagne, 75003. There, behind the counter and waiting for the lunch crowd, was a pile of sandwiches made with good cheese on a half of a black baguette.
There’s a classic saying in the world of journalism: Three’s a trend. And so far we had (1) a black baguette, and (2) black baguette sandwiches. Then Joe wandered again. He found a black pizza.
Black pizza
Dark Vadhor pizza at Dai Dai, Paris 75011.
I was excited about this discovery. It was all happening pretty fast, and we hurried out that night back to Dai Dai, 25 rue Oberkampf, 75011. It’s a relatively new restaurant with a lot of built-in character: a center, curved bar (with those nice hooks to hang purses; I love those); lots of high-top chairs, many with tapestry-like cushions; a huge Italian pizza oven; a very friendly, Italian-accented staff wearing playful “Pizza Hut” T-shirts. And a black pizza on the menu.
I didn’t even finish reading the rest of the menu. I ordered the Dark Vadhor, “saveur iodée, goûtez au côté obscur de la pizza (Roughly translated: A little salty, try the dark side of pizza)” and, for comparison, Joe ordered a regular pizza with spicy sausage. Then I read the menu more carefully.
The black in the Dai Dai pizza comes from l’encre de seiche, or squid ink, not carbon. Squid ink was a trend in the US in the 1980s when I was writing about food for the Chicago Tribune. The chefs would c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y remove the ink sacs from squid and use the natural black color to highlight pastas, especially. I haven’t seen squid ink on menus in years, until now.
The taste? The Dark Vadhor pizza comes with a good, thick tomato sauce, chunks of mozzarella, and a scattered topping of fresh anchovies. Ever try to ignore the taste of anchovy while searching for a tinge of squid ink? I isolated some crusts and we compared the two pizzas. Pretty hard to tell the crusts apart, except that one was grayish black.
I love anchovies. I love Dai Dai. But our black trend theory was fading. That is, until, Joe threw open the door of our apartment and handed me black toothpaste.
Black toothpaste? If you dare.
Black toothpaste
“You try it.” “No, you try it.”
We regressed into playground talk, laughing over this latest discovery.
“The pharmacy had a pile of them on a table, right in front of the cash register,” Joe said. I can guess why. They also warned that the paste would blacken his toothbrush and they tried to sell him a new one. He politely declined. And we stared at the paste.
Superwhite dentifrice is made with charbon actif. Indeed, well after water and sorbitol and aroma and cellulose gum, comes charcoal powder. But we are way behind the curve on this trend. The Colgate website endorses the cleaning ability of charcoal. Amazon will sell you plenty of Hello brand charcoal toothpaste. And you can turn to YouTube to watch a few homemade videos as people turn their mouths black.
Our Superwhite dentifrice is still in its box.
There’s yellow ahead
Yellow was hot at Galeries Lafayette’s spring 2020 fashion show.
I can’t leave you on a down note, a grey sky, a black future. Spring will come again next year, so I dragged Joe to an afternoon fashion show at Galeries Lafayette to see what’s on the horizon for spring 2020.
I am pleased to assure you that the new color is yellow. I watched The Devil Wears Prada, so I know that these seasonal colors are not chosen on a whim. While we are eating black baguettes and black pasta, then cleaning away the taste with black toothpaste, we yearn for a change, for a lighter, brighter mood.
Galeries Lafayette has ordered lots of yellow, and you can pay about 14 euros for the 3 p.m. Friday fashion show on the 4th floor of the department store, 40 Boulevard Haussmann, 75009, to watch the future stroll by. The models are professional, the music is appropriately loud, and the crowd is filled with American teens and their mothers. (To reserve, click here: haussmann.galerieslafayette.com/en/events/original-fashion-shows )
The designs, all sold at Galeries Lafayette, bien sûr, are practical and wearable. I posted one here.
But below that, a glimpse of a model in our neighborhood during this summer’s Paris haute couture week. Only half practical–and half black.
Haute couture models and staff gather in the Marais.
APRIL IN PARIS NEXT YEAR!
Painting by R. de Premau.
The usual summer sessions of Paris Cafe Writing will be in April next year! Come to Paris, write in cafes, and walk in the early yellow of spring. We have a lot of fun.
Both of the one-week sessions are already half full, so do sign up soon. Here are your choices:
April 5-11, 2020
April 19-25, 2020
The sessions for returning writers remain in November:
Nov. 8-14, 2020 (Already filled)
Nov. 22-28, 2020
To register, go to www.ParisCafeWriting.com and click on Register.
To email or to unsubscribe: info@ParisCafeWriting.com
Copyright 2019 Paris Café Writing-All Rights Reserved