Oops, I don’t know where that headline came from. I meant to say the ‘city’ of my dreams, of course. There is nothing much else to say about kitchens this week except to note the fact that the centrepiece of Maltese kitchens featuring on Maltese television is always the fruit bowl – with plastic-lookalike fruit that you’ll know will go uneaten.
Maltese kitchens in teleseries or adverts or New Year’s messages are otherwise bare: no sign of any other food, no sign of cooking, no sign that people actually live there.
Probably everything is in the freezer, ready to be thawed in the stainless steel microwave which, when you think about it, says a lot about our relationship with food.
This is one of the reasons why I want to talk about the city of Paris. Because food is part of the Parisian lifestyle. I love the cafes with the round, heavy metal tables on the pavement, with the chairs perfectly placed at the right angle for people watching, with heaters and lap blankets so you’re cosy while observing the world go by as you drink wine.
Paris is the ideal city for flâneurs. You only need to do the tourist track of the Eiffel Tower and Louvre and Notre Dame and Sacré-Cœur once in your life: once it’s over, you just wander round the wide avenues and the cobbled Marais streets, taking in the curly wrought iron, the window flower boxes, the grey-orange rooftops, the symmetry and open spaces. You only stop every now and then for a pain au chocolat or a croque monsieur or a candlelit dinner in a cafe or restaurant which has retained its 18th century art nouveau décor and where naught has been sacrificed for aluminum.
The thing about Paris is that it gets to even the most shy and reserved of us all and thaws us and moulds us into its own joie de vivre.
It’s the place where you’re bound to see old couples, elegantly dressed, walking past: one relying on a stick and the other holding a classic handbag and… holding hands. It’s the place where you can spot a mail van with the slogan: ‘Smile, there might be a love letter for you in this van’. It is no wonder then that Paris makes you want to wrap your arms around the person travelling with you, go on your tiptoes and give a lingering kiss.
I love the cafes with the round, heavy metal tables on the pavement
Why is the city so different from any other European one? What gives it its je ne sais quoi, its elegance and its oh-la-la vibe?
It’s probably because of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is fascinating to see how this little 19th century man scaled up the ranks, studied terrain, plotted and won one-day battles at a time when there was no GPS, no satellite connections, no cameras but simply men on horses. Bonaparte’s moment came one fine day, in his early career, when he decided to go against the flow and wear the French pointy army hat, sideways, like a teapot.
It could have gone terribly wrong – he could have been the butt of jibes, pointed at and laughed at and labelled an idiot. But no, not Napoleon. He carried it off in style: a brilliant example of a successful image-building exercise if ever there was one.
And the Parisians inherited that ability to carry things off, without a care in the world, as long as it conforms to the laws of aesthetical beauty.
Did we ever have any leader in Malta who could impart to us the confidence and the glory that have become traits in the DNA of Parisians? No. You can’t of course compare a hat to a belt with a huge buckle of a horse. There’s style and there’s style.
But at least wouldn’t it be grand if our very own Valletta, still young when compared to the French city, had to grow into a Paris? If only the V-18 Foundation manages to do just that in the couple of years left for Valletta to become the European city of culture. But I do not have much hope: after I saw the V18’s shoddy New Year’s eve celebrations at St George’s square, with dance music and fake plastic lights, fumbling DJs and off-tune singers, I despaired.
So that is why I have decided that if I ever won the European lottery – I’d retire in a tiny little attic on the Rive Gauche in Paris, with the spirals of the Notre Dame on one side and the bohemian quarters on the other.
All I’d need for my tiny kitchen would be a fruit bowl on the table... to remind me of Malta.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti