September 9, 2015 – Last Friday evening, we invited our
friends Ron and Elisabeth from the 6th arrondissement and Jim and
Maddy from Sanibel (who are staying in the 6th arrondissement) over
to our place for a glass of champagne, then the six of us walked around the
corner to dine at Le Café Du Commerce.
The conversation was lively and we had a good time. The four of them had arrived together in a taxi,
and they left together in an Uber car.
Their Uber experience was a good one, and the cost was less than half
the taxi fare.
The metro would have been even less, but for anyone with mobility
issues, it is nearly impossible. The
metro involves taking lots of stairs and walking some distance.
Jim and Maddy had lived in Iran for a few years in the 1970s
just before the revolution because Jim was employed by a big accounting firm
that sent him there. The experience of
living there was good for them, but the experience of having to leave under the
circumstances at the time was harrowing.
They were interested in what I’d written about “Little
Teheran” here in the 15th , so I let them know that after our
positive experience of dining at Guylas on the rue des Entrepreneurs, I’d made
a Lafourchette.com reservation for Perchiana, on the rue Mademoiselle, last
night. They decided that they’d like to
join us, so they made a Lafourchette.com reservation, too.
Perchiana was very small, so much so that we said “bonsoir” to others who entered. This included a couple of mature men who sat
in a corner nearby, and a young man who sat at a table right next to Tom and
me.
Inevitably, at the end of the dinner, we all were involved
in a conversation. The two mature men –
one middle aged, one older – were originally from Teheran, and the young man’s parents
were from there as well. The young man
mostly listened, interjecting comments only a couple times as he ate his dinner
and charged his cell phone.
The mature men, however, really wanted to talk – especially when
they realized Jim and Maddy had lived in Iran.
We spoke in French and sometimes in English. Most of the exchange was between Jim and the
middle-aged man who, I believe, said he had a family in the U.S. and had
received his Ph.D. in the U.S. Both of
the men had been professors; the older one had been at the university in
Teheran.
At some point well into our conversation, the middle-aged Iranian man was very
complimentary of the Obama administration’s negotiation of the nuclear deal
with Iran. Tom and I said, “Thank you!”
quite emphatically to the man, and then we both turned immediately to Jim and
said, “Sorry Jim.” If we hadn’t done
that, I think the Iranian men would have assumed we all supported President
Obama on this issue, when in reality only half of us did (just like the U.S.
voting population).
The men repeatedly said that there is a lot of pro-American
sentiment in Iran; several times they jokingly referred to Iran as the 53rd
state of the U.S. (I guess 51 and 52
must be Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands?)
The food we were served was good, but the starter courses
were awkwardly served with no rice; both
of them were sauces. On the main plates,
the grilled brochettes were very similar to what we’d had at Guylas. We should have asked for all the dishes to be
brought to the table all together. Jim
said the separate starter-main course arrangement just doesn’t make sense with Persian
food.
At the end of that fascinating dinner, we all said goodbye
to each other, and Tom and I walked with Jim and Maddy to the bus stop
nearby. They had arrived by bus, as well; they’d discovered that the
number 70 bus goes right from the Place Saint Sulpice in the 6th to the street in front of
Perchiana in the 15th. How convenient!
Now that was a bonne
soirrée!
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