PARIS
By Joe Ray
I’m late for my plane.
I’ve been simultaneously packing to leave for summer in the USA, packing up to move apartments and file my taxes for the last few days and, shutting the door behind me, realize I probably won’t be able take the metro and make it on time.
I also can’t find a taxi and have to stop in to pick up my sister’s request of fresh, salty butter. That’s all she ever wants me to bring from France and I can’t blame her. It’s sublime.
But I’m late.
En route for the taxi stand where there are always taxis but never any drivers, I run past Belleville’s Fromagerie Beaufils.
It’s early and Beaufils is one of the only shops on rue de Belleville that’s open, Monsieur Beaufils (?) still arranging cheeses.
“Hi, I’d like some butter for my sister,” I say, leaning my suitcase up against the display case.
He smiles, pulls down some fresh butter from the Ile de Ré and asks where I’m heading.
I explain the Oregon/Seattle/New Hampshire itinerary, noting the family connections along the way. Ready to leap out the door if a taxi rolls by.
“Does your family like cheese?” he asks.
"Bien sur!" I reply, wondering how the hell the guy knows I have “god bless cheese” written on my business card.
He turns around, picks up a two-pound hunk of Comté laced with those good-news crystals of amino acids, holds it up for me to see and says, “for your family.”
I’ve never met the man before and, as far as he knows, I’m never to be seen again, and he sticks what I’d guess to be a 20-euro ($26) hunk of cheese in my hands, charging me three bucks for the butter and waiving the fee to put everything in a vac-pac bag.
We eat it on a vineyard in Oregon. They like the cheese.
Fromagerie Beaufils - MAP
118 rue de Belleville
75020 Paris
+33 (0)1 46 36 61 71
Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the 2009 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and author of the blog Eating The Motherland. Twitter: @joe_diner.
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