Michele Roohani

I had the best coffee in Los Angeles  last week at Caffé Luxxe. Following  a tip from the director of Coffee Quality Institute—aka the Cupper Gods—I experienced the joy of having a real espresso outside europe: “espresso should have a rich honey-like texture topped off with a velvety, dark red-brown “crema.” This is the sign of una bella tazza di espresso: a beautiful cup of espresso.”

Here is my first cappuccino:

I was so sick and tired of (at best mediocre and at worst just plain bad) coffee served in the chain stores. The horror in the eyes of my european friends  after receiving a bit of bitter coffee in the bottom of a big paper cup has always amused me! It looks like they are serving you what’s left from the previous customer…

I went back this morning for an early cup and standing at the counter, Italian bar style, I read a horrifying article about Putin and Georgia (call me a masochist) and remembered all the problems I was trying to forget… The great coffee brought back the vanished smile to my face!

They have a great Synesso machine and Yaniv, the talented barista creates these fabulous cups with panache! To see how, watch this short clip and if you have a better attention span (read more than 30 seconds) watch this one on the craft of making coffee art.

So is coffee good for us? An excellent article on the subject by Jane Brody in New York Times has some answers.

Finding a European style café that serves great espresso in Los Angeles can almost make one forget the world’s problems.  Now If you really want to be scared just look at this map from Le Monde Diplomatique.

How is that for a nightmare in the making? Not only we are not at the End of History  but people like Fukumaya should start paying attention to the latest conflict involving Russia!  You take Kosovo, we take Georgia and Moldova!! Be scared people, be very scared…

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interests.”  Winston Churchill

These are sobering times - now you know why I needed to find a good cup of joe.

“You eat your values - don’t let them be fast, cheap and easy” says Alice Waters, the revolutionary chef and cookbook author. Maybe it’s my age but I’ve started to think seriously about what I eat; junk food has never been a sin of mine but Waters and Dr. Oz have pushed me to eat better.

I’ve been too lazy to go to Farmer’s markets up to a few months ago but I am hoping that my health is worth a little more money and a little inconvenience. Cooking becomes a pleasure again when you use fresh ingredients like in this simple Thai chicken and mint dish.

Alice Waters has started the “Slow Food” program that teaches children to make the right decision about how and what they eat.

This doesn’t mean of course that great food shouldn’t be appreciated just because it’s not green enough. I was at a friend of mine’s today for a fabulous sunday brunch that ended with these great cakes made by her talented sister, Mona; The chocolate mousse and the baby kiwi cakes were divine.

I took a tour of the kitchen and w o w…

Just look at these pastry molds:

it’s true that a beautiful kitchen like this one makes you want to cook but I have had very delicious food coming out of small/dark/chaotic kitchens in my life (just dare to go to almost any parisian café’s kitchen)…

Today’ s food crisis makes us forget that good food like flowers should be affordable to everyone. As Jeffrey Sacks says “you can’t tell people who are dying of hunger in Africa to tighten their belts, as if they had belts”!

I would like to finish the post with these pictures instead of some starving kids in Africa which is approaching a meltdown with the crazy Mugabe and the criminal Janjawids.

How did she go from chocolate mousse to Darfur? I bet that you didn’t see it coming…

Ok people, brace yourselves - this is going to be an image heavy post! I will take you through a couple of days in Paris - the way I like it: hitting the streets early in the morning to catch the blue hour of this great city; Montparnasse is a very busy neighborhood at 8:30 am.

This was my first time witnessing the changing of the ads:

I walked to a favorite café that reminds me of my twenties, La Rotonde.

I don’t like them anymore (remember the whipped cream out of a can?) but nostalgia and Balzac take me to them every year.

the cafés are changing in Paris - here is the old generation Select and the trendy Lotus.

Of course anything that remotely reminds me of Los Angeles while I am in Europe is not welcome so this kind of restaurant/café just makes me wince but the worst offender is Starbucks and its paper cups.

I bought a pariscope from this news stand,

and had a coffee while looking for the hottest exhibition in Paris.

I decided to see Giacometti in Centre Pompidou . “It was never my intention to paint only with gray. But in the course of my work I have eliminated one color after another, and what has remained is gray, gray, gray! ”

What a great show it was - complete with the artist being filmed while painting and sculpting.

His drawings (included some fabulous small notebooks), paintings and sculptures made a large window into the soul of this great creature…

Even though I am not a big fan of the Centre Pompidou, I have to admit that the view is breathtaking…

I visited the Maillol museum a couple of days before this and liked its architecture as much as the collections:

Maillol is very different in his style from Rodin - they were good friends.

The picture bellow shows the plaster versions of the bronze sculptures above.

On a more colorful note, living in Los Angeles, I am deprived of pretty store windows - abundant in New York, Paris and London.

I am ending this post with two images of my loyal laptop that’s getting very old but gets the job done.

Café crème or Petite Arvine, a good post I hope.

I am not a chocolate person - I am not an ice cream person - I am not even a french fries person but I have no resistance when it comes to good pastry with tons of real cream. It’s not the sugar I am after, it’s the fat!

Ah…real whipped cream; the sexier name would be Chantilly…Making it the right way is an art in its way to extinction - even in Europe; I made a scene a couple of years back in la Rotonde, when they served me a café liegeois with cream coming out of a can! I left the café more heartbroken than angry…

Well boys and girls, this post was supposed to be about “fiber to the curb/kerb”, a telecommunication system based on fiber-optic cables, but i found this subject sweeter on a Monday.

Being a wimp with a high cholesterol count and in the absence of real Chantilly, I treat myself to a “hearty” nonfat cafe con leche. “Stressed spelled backwards is desserts. Coincidence? I think not. “

They say that alcohol lubricates the conversation; i would say that coffee or tea do that job way better (you start sober and stay that way). I am coming from a tea (called chai and almost never mixed with milk) drinking country where even babies are given sweet tea beside their mother’s milk, but i can’t be ambivalent towards coffee in all its glorious variations, taken preferably in a Viennese coffeehouse or a French café.

Today’s blogs/internet forums are becoming like the coffeehouses of previous centuries where people got together and exchanged ideas, read, wrote and generally got inspired; to be alone yet surrounded by like minded people. My beloved Stephen Zweig or Gustave Klimt have been ardent patrons of coffeehouses. The slow “coffeehouse death” of 1950’s has been reversed rapidly, of all entities, by Seattle’s Starbucks & other American coffee companies who went on a rampage with their idiotic “grande/venti/tall” shouts! I take mine “chez Peet” (the guru of everyone in gourmet coffee revolution). Too much noise for a small coffee… What’s missing is the true conversation; how can you have one when you are busy slurping your pumpkin spice frappuccino (770 calories)? Ok, so I am not proud of my decaf soy latte neither (they say decaf is the devil’s blend!)

I am very happy that this poster of mine got published. It should hit the sites like allposters.com, art.com, etc…by the end of September.

I feel kind of stressed out about this whole carbon footprint calculations. Just took a quiz with them and i am not proud of the result! I am not much of a carnivore but now i have to worry about that “once in a while” steak. A Carbon Footprint is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide. Reading the Deep Economy, has been revelatory to say the least. I also suggest Bill Mckibben’s article in the NY review of books.

I just listened to the Slate podcast called global swarming and i have to admit that i agree with the idea. On a more cheerful note Alice Waters should cook for all of us…

Brasserie Lipp in Paris remains very popular in spite of overpriced mediocre food being served under its roof; the history that goes with it, makes it a favorite among the average tourists, the jet set crowd and the Parisians themselves.

“It is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entr�es.”
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

“It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate � you know someone’s fingers have been all over it.” Julia Child

i just saw the remake of the very interesting german movie, Mostly Martha; the american version is called No reservations. suffices to say that i didn’t run to the nearest restaurant to eat like i did after i saw Babette’s feast or the Big night or Like water for chocolate. if you decide to see any of these films, make sure that either you have a reservation at a good restaurant or that you have great food at home to have; you will suffer otherwise. anybody interested in french culinary history shouldn’t miss Vatel.

if you have ever looked for a medieval recipe as my friend jean claude has done you would know that cookbooks are not new to human history. he introduced me to Fran�ois Pierre (de) La Varenne.

M.K.Fisher’s “the art of eating” stays my favorite book about food; reading it would help to understand, savor, appreciate and enjoy good food. blasted Mc Donald’s…

Colours of Life
“Cherry red tomatoes cascade
From the hanging baskets,
Bunches of feathery leaves show
The hiding places of orange carrots,
Yellow courgettes lurk beneath
Dinner-plate sized foliage,
Runner beans clamber into the apple tree,
The green pods dangling just out of reach,
Blueberries � do they count � swell
To ripeness beside blue-flowered borage,
Brambles skulk in the hedge, the berries
Plump with indigo coloured juice,
In the glasshouse, violet blossoms
Change slowly to purple aubergines.

I am growing a rainbow in my garden,
And I can eat it.”Pauline Morgan

Hondarribia is a jewel of a region in the spanish basque country; i stayed in Parador to be close to Charles Quint, one of my favorite Habsburgs.

i was astonished by the tenacity of these people in regards to their language, Euskara. i am weary/wary of nationalistic sentiments - the idea that you can do better acting independently rather than collectively and that the people who spoke the same language or shared a common ethnicity should fight to build their own nation?states scares the hell out of me. Nazis and Fascists were ultra-nationalists - ETA hardly has anything to do with these two (even though it has plenty to do with other bloody mess) but i am frightened by talks of racial purity and xenophobia. i don’t want to see people, each having their own ethnic flag planted in their backyards; santa monica, california would be a very colorful city…

on the lighter side of the spectrum, spain is the country of tapas and tintos,

and sometimes carajios (an espresso with an added shot of alcohol) while watching your favorite matador at the neighborhood bar.

i like walking in the quartier du Marais even with tourists around! this little bookstore has a funny name.

i love la place des Vosges and this restaurant, Ma Bourgogne, where you can eat the best steak tartar in paris; Th�r�se, the hostess prepares the steak herself if she remembers you.