I wrote this piece in the style of the NYTimes food features from their Sunday Magazine– just bear with me.

Parispresso

I was hit on by seven men in my first day of work at Le Café Noir. That first day was a breathless rush of misunderstood beverage names, Parisian skepticism, and flirtation. There were two types of flirtation; mine towards my beautiful Austrian co-worker Stephanie, and theirs towards me, the eager, clueless jeune-homme americain. In a picture taken at the café I stand with hands spread on the bar and grin obliviously into the camera. A few customers are reflected in the mirror behind me, their suggestive eyes full on me.

I was apprenticed to Ivan, the head bartender. He was about twenty-five, gaunt and goateed, dark-eyed with a clean-shaven head. To my awkward adolescent mind his cool was unattainable. His bartending was artistic. When he served espresso, he did it with an effortless flourish, tossing sugar cubes behind his back onto saucers and then dropping the glass mugs next to them without spilling a drop. His lemon garnish was beautiful—a flick of his wrist yielded a delicate, aromatic curl of white-backed yellow. He remembered every customer’s name, eliciting a touched smile from the young men and women he served. He indulged my mediocre French; he spoke to me slowly and explained in fluent English any concept I couldn’t grasp. When he complimented the CD’s I timidly inserted into the café’s stereo, I felt immortal. When I made a “perfect cappuccino,” he started a round of applause in the small, friendly bar. When I poured the “perfect demi” of Stella Artois, he did it again.

At Le Café Noir I was treated as any other employee by my boss, the owner Charles (silent S). He was alternately charming, sullen, encouraging and angry. His gray hair, deep voice, and deeper wrinkles gained my full respect, and his staggering outbursts (très francais) did too. Yet he was a kind man, practicing his faltering English on me, telling me of his trips to Texas and New York City (he seemed to think my home state, Vermont, was a suburb of New York, along with most of New England), and sharing the intimate details of the Café Noir regulars.

My favorite moment of the day occurred at three, after the lunch rush, when Ivan, Charles, and I would eat steak-frites, talk, and watch the immortally beautiful women pass. Charles would always sigh and wish for his youth again, tut-tutting and reminding me that mine was well in front of me. I would sit and listen, only grunting when it seemed appropriate. Ivan seemed to know all of young, beautiful Paris and would periodically call one of them in for a few quick kisses (bisous). Whenever this happened, Charles and I would fall into respectful, awed silence.

Paris seems very far away now, but I have retained one vestige of the trip: a crippling addiction to espresso (and, of course, an appreciation for stunning women). On that first day I had three cups in thirty minutes and proceeded to spill every drink I served for the rest of my shift. I probably consumed four or five cups a day in my time at the café to maintain my energy and fuel my language comprehension. That reliance stayed with me, even in the painful transition back to watery American coffee.

Using my hard-earned barista skills, I’ve done my best to concoct a suitable Parisian substitute. I call it dorm cappuccino.

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Dorm cappuccino is perhaps the most impressive type of college cooking. It starts on top of the stove in a battle-tested Italian espresso maker, the precious payload of fine-ground espresso beans suspended above the roiling water ready to concede all of its complex aroma and flavor to the pressurized, pushy, steaming liquid below. As the little coffee pot foams and rattles on the too-large burner, one must prepare the milk; a simple frother does the trick, its fine screen teasing boring dairy into airy confection. The entire frothing apparatus should then be placed into a microwave and blasted for exactly forty-three seconds. Too little time and the tepid, placid milk both dilutes and cools the now-finished espresso, but too much can excite the volatile gases in the foam and shoot it all onto the microwave’s ceiling.

The next bit should be done as fast as possible. If an audience is present, indulge them with a number of flourishes; if not, indulge yourself. A shot of espresso (or two for the adventurous) should be poured into the wide-mouthed mug atop a spoonful of sugar, and swirled briefly to aid in its dissolution. When the frother is upended the still-liquid milk should slide out from underneath its foamy counterpart, which will soon follow in a small avalanche of excited gasses and liquids. Take a spoon and stir at a brisk clip, and watch as the ingredients mingle and then divide again, the black of the espresso sinking low like that of a finely poured pint of stout.

Imbibe at your leisure. Bon voyage à Paris.