Enjoying Parisian Brunches at Cafe de la Presse in San Francisco (California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
When Florence was young, my husband Laurent and I would take her to the Café de la Presse in San Francisco.
I would tell her that San Francisco is very Parisian for its literary scene like author talks at the City Lights Bookstore, museums, symphony, plays and musicals, and restaurants like Café de la Presse.
The Café de la Presse is jokingly called the “cantine” by French consulate employees. (“Canteen”, meaning “lunchroom” in English). The restaurant is famous for great daily specials that cost about $30 for a 3-course meal to fit the consulate employees’ per diem for food expenses. On the weekend, the prices go up.
There is a huge parking garage by Café de la Presse, because it is located across the street from the main entrance to China Town.
You have to make reservations to eat in the lower level restaurant. The upper level has a coffee bar, pastries, and magazines from the UK, US, France, and Italy. You always arrive early to get some press to read.
We picked out our orders quickly and then looked like the Parisians that the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva describes in her poems as only having eyebrows and foreheads visible behind their newspapers.
I would always buy Corriere della Sera newspaper from Milan, Italy to read. The Italians know all the dirt and publish it first. I have been able to read Italian at a high level for a long time.
I smirked as I read this newspaper, because I knew the copies had been ordered for the Consul General. I guess he would have to go to San Francisco’s North Beach Italian neighborhood for newspapers and pre-press gossip.
My family follows the Mediterranean Diet; it is easy to do in California. I used the plan set out by the Oldways Preservation Trust and checked it out with a doctor before we started following it. We came to Café de la Presse to get a once-a-month meal of fine steak.
The Med Diet Oldways describes is traditional only for the last 500 years, because American foods such as tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and green beans have only been present in the Mediterranean diet since Columbus and subsequent explorers of the New World brought them back to Europe.
Every trip to Café de la Presse would come with a mini-nutrition lecture from mom, “Your main meal of the day should have a protein-carbohydrate-vegetable mix with the vegetable and carbohydrate forming an additional protein, if possible. Calcium comes in the form of milk, cheese, and/or yogurt,” I said.
“What does protein do?” Florence would ask.
“It’s important for your hair. If you want thick hair, you need to eat it,” I said.
“Why is calcium important?” Florence asked.
“Calcium builds strong bones,” I said.
I added, “Orange vegetables like carrots and butternut squash have vitamin A, which is important for vision. Your generation really needs that for all the work you do on computers. Spinach has iron for blood and muscles. Cabbage and mushrooms both help with constipation.”
Laurent asked, “What are protein combinations?” with Gallic concern.
“Vegetarians combine the amino acids in plant items to get what you would in meat. We eat these all the time – stuff like turmeric rice with peas, beans and rice, bean and vegetable soups with quinoa flour mixed in. Sometimes I add chickpea flour, which has a lot of iron in it to soups and powdered milk for calcium as well,” I said.
“I know you make up menus for the week, but do you really have a plan for doing this?” Laurent asked.
“I do.
Monday through Thursday, we eat things like omelets, pasta with Alfredo sauce, soup, and potato dishes and casseroles.
On Fridays, we eat fish and oven-baked potatoes.
On Saturdays, we eat chicken or pork.
On Sunday, we eat shrimp or scallops three times a month. Once a month we eat red meat.
We’re not starving on this diet. We’ve been eating this way for twenty years. (Make that 30 years as of 2017),” I said.
After lunch, we would usually take a walk in China Town and buy Chinese music, postcards, and chopstick holders.
Walking is important to the Med Diet, too, I like to think.
By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
