Dinner in Montmartre
Melissa and I are standing on the landing of a Montmartre apartment building, holding a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of German wine. We're apprehensive. First, we're not sure which of the four doors we should knock at. Second, we don't quite know how the evening will go. The person behind one of these doors is someone we admire greatly but have never met, even though we feel like we know her. Will our friendship leap from the electronic realm to the physical? We hope so.
A handsome young man comes up the stairs and solves the problem of the doors. "It's that one," he says, pointing, before we even ask. "I'm Max." He fishes out his keys and opens the door.
Louis Menand ponders a writer's voice in the introduction to this year's Best American Essays (I should note, curiously, that I work for a subsidiary of that book's publisher). It's a thought-provoking essay in its own right, and I was struck by his observation that a writer's written voice often doesn't correlate to the writer's real-world personality. We've probably all seen an eloquent writer give a drab reading of his or her own work. I think blogs, good ones anyway, are different. I've met a number of food bloggers by now, and I often note that a blog is a surprisingly accurate virtual projection of the person who runs it. "Everyone seemed just like their blogs," said Melissa the first time some Bay Area food bloggers met. Perhaps our little websites are so intimate that they can't help but be flattened versions of ourselves.
So everything you know about Chocolate & Zucchini holds true for Clotilde, the person waiting behind the door of the Montmartre apartment building. Except that Clotilde possesses rounder, fuller realizations of the qualities you find in her writing. She is charming, funny, and of course super-cute. Maxence, who is often mentioned on her blog, complements her well.
Clotilde modestly describes her meal (see here and here for some of the items), but it becomes clear upon talking to her and reading through her posts that she has expended quite a bit of effort for our "casual" dinner. We're honored she put so much time into it, and of course the food is delicious. Could it be anything but? Wine flows freely and so does conversation. We talk about food and writing and blogs of course, but also about video games, our lives, our jobs, our Macs, and the normal things people talk about when getting to know each other better. We talk long enough that we miss the Metro and take a taxi back to our little hotel.
Melissa and I talk giddily about the dinner on the taxi ride and the next day. We both adored Clotilde for her writing, but now we adore her and Maxence because we've met them. (For their part, they were probably happy we stopped jabbering and let them go to sleep). If you are ever going to be in the Bay Area, chère Clotilde, do let us know. We'd love to see you again.
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