Sometimes clichés are lazy half-truths perpetuated by a handsome-sounding rhyme, and sometimes clichés kick around for so long because that truth just keeps coming around and reminding us with a humble shrug, Nope, still true.
French food, man. French food.
Even the humblest service station serves us tender, spiced ham with a rich Marsala gravy. At the grubby supermarket a few kilometres down the road, the saucisson sec and the fromage du chèvre are enough to make a grown woman keep eating hours after she is sated. And the bread. Oh, the bread. As we sit down to our breakfast each morning, golden crust and airy, tangy, chewy innards fresh from the boulangerie, I think (as best I can) of the final sentence of Jeffrey Steingarten’s essential essay on bread: “And on good days, we eat nothing else.” Jeffrey, I know *exactly* what you mean.