There’s a bakery/café in Santa Clara, a couple of
miles from my place. It’s called Paris Baguette,
but it’s actually a Korean-owned chain with outlets on both coasts. Since Santa
Clara is the Northern California equivalent of Koreatown in LA, it makes sense
that you’d find this where it is.
There are other PB stores in Palo Alto and
Cupertino; both of them are more upscale and attitudinal than the one in Santa
Clara, which is in a somewhat downmarket shopping center that also has a cheesy
furniture store, a Korean market, a shoe repair shop, a hair salon and the
like. The shoe guy is how I happened on the center in the first place.
The café part is a little run-down looking, but they’ve
got good wi-fi, and power outlets to plug your laptop into. And their croissant-based
pastries are lovely—flakey and tasty; you can’t eat them without making a
complete mess with all the little crumbs.
Plus—they make the best latte of any place in the
Silicon Valley. It’s my treat for the days I hit the gym; it’s silky, luscious
and it sometimes comes with latte art:
The pastry offerings fascinate me. I tried the “Strewed
Pea” twist a couple of times. For the life of me I cannot discern what “Strewed
Pea” might be, but it’s kind of good. I’ve not tried the Tuna Pastry, but it
seems pretty popular with the other customers.
(It’s interesting that they put it out next to the
cream cheese pastry. You’d think the latter would pick up some of the taste of
the former. But maybe not.)
Recently they’ve added a Tiramisu pastry, just at
the weekend—a kind of croissant rolled around mascarpone filling & dowsed
in cocoa powder. It’s completely decadent. I have to tap off a couple of
tablespoonsful of cocoa and powdered sugar before I can eat it. Even so, I’m
sure I walk around with cocoa smears on my face for half the day.
I enjoy spending a couple of hours at PB of a
morning, writing, checking target companies and so on. I could do that at a
couple hundred cafés in the valley; but the added attraction of PB is that I’m
often the only Meeguk saram there. I love watching the Korean housewives who get
together there for a nibble and some gossip. It reminds me of my time living in
Seoul, although I never experienced anything like this when I was there.
(I can’t pick up much of the discussions any more,
which is what comes of learning a language in a “conversation” class, not a
proper language class. But there you are.)
It may be partly because I’m decidedly not Korean,
and therefore stand out, but I’ve achieved “regular” status by virtue of me
being there once a week. If counter people are free, the moment they clock me
walking through the door someone starts making a latte. I was there a couple of
weeks ago—the last time I had to take my car in to get the antenna replaced—and
mentioned it to the blonde at the counter. This past Saturday she inquired
after the car. I’ve definitely arrived.
So for Gratitude Monday today, I’m grateful that I
have Paris Baguette, where I can savor a latte, get croissant flakes all over
me and my keyboard, sit with a friend for a couple of hours talking, and
people-watch to my heart’s content. I hope you’re lucky enough to have a
similar place to get away from it all.
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