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Travel Piece  by Ida Nasatir

Letter from Paris  by Ida Nasatir,  June 22, 1951

June 22, 1951—Ida Nasatir, "A Letter from Paris,"  Southwestern Jewish Press, pages 4:  Dear Julia and Mac: Unless you have a first-rate dishwasher, or you like doing dishes by hand by the hour, be glad you are an American hostess rather than a French one. Having dinner at a French home tells why you never see a French dinner set with less than 36 dinner plates.  In France every vegetable is served separately as a separate course, and on a separate plate. No guest's place should ever be left without a plate. If there is going to be a wait between courses, which frequently happens because eating is a serious matter here not one to be galloped, a plate is put before every one, lest an awful moment arrive when it occurs to somebody that a piece of French lace or Chinese embroidery is a poor substitute for food. Therefore, in private homes and in restaurants, plates are put before you to keep your mind quiet, even if they are quite cold and the dish to come is hot; in the latter case they will be changed at the last moment. In houses where there are enough servants this will be done by them, otherwise the host exchanges laden hot plates for empty cold ones. With no extra help in the kitchen to wash up between, it requires at least eighty-four plates to give twelve people five courses at a Paris table. and thee are usually at least six courses! In even quiet households "this business of the plates" exists. The head of the household may have to serve soup to four people; each place will have a plate, and the full one will be handed out by the server's right hand while his left has to be stretched forth to receive the empty one. To pile all four before the server would be quite shocking to French notions; it would mean that three people waited from fifty seconds to two minutes with NO plates before them, and that would be a dreary and inhospitable series of moments.  One cannot learn too soon and accept the axiom that when one is at the table in France, food is the business at hand, and nothing else, except plates matters. If there are three plates where one would do, one knife and one fork suffices for three of our courses between the fish and the cheese. If knives are scarce, napkins are lavish, being usually more like young sheets. American visitors, fresh from their own servant problem, ought to be deeply in sympathy with the housewife of France. They would be if they were not even more deeply horrified by her kitchen. Fresh from white tiles, glass vessels, constant hot water, ice cubes and cabinet cupboards, the American woman looks with wonder, not unmixed with pity upon the dark cubbyhole which plays the part of kitchen in the average middle-class Paris flat. It has brought inconvenience to a high art. There are things about Paris kitchens which can only be explained on the supposition that the devil is afraid of a happy home life, and sees to it that architects shall work against it. But tiny kitchens with double gas-rings and wee ovens seem to produce, like Aladdin's magic, an endless succession of world famous food—all served on separate dishes.  Devotedly, Ida