Paris seems to be in grip of Mojito Mania. Chalkboards in cafes and bars all over the city advertise "Mojito! Mojito! Mojito!".

Every night at the cafe around the corner the waiter tries to convince me to have a Mojito. I like a Mojito as much as the next person, I do, but it's 4 degrees celcius here. And raining. I don't think you could conceive of weather more diametrically opposed to Mojito weather.

I tried to exlain to the waiter last night that a Mojito is a drink for hot summer days. He looked at me and shrugged sympathetically, making allowances for my foreignness.

I looked around the place and noticed that every third person was drinking a Mojito.

In January. In the rain.

Quite apart from just loving food and wanting more more more, I need to eat at very regular intervals. If I have screwed up my planning and am without food much past 2:00pm I turn into Super Angry Hungry Bitch. SAHB is not likely to communicate reasonably and cannot be reasoned with or cheered up. Nothing but food will banish her. (And you want her banished as quickly as possible. She's a real piece of work.)

Temperatures here in Paris have plummeted again and yesterday was painfully chilly. Early afternoon found James and SAHB, very cold and very hungry, wandering around the Marais on a quest for falafel.

I wanted to go to the famous falafel joint whose name escapes me now, but it was crazy busy and the wait for a table was 40 minutes. I rejected three different kosher delis on unknown grounds. I wrinkled my nose at the notion of going to a slightly less famous falafel joint. I rejected. And rejected. And rejected.

The hungrier I am, the less able I am to make a decision about where to eat. The discomfort and anxiety I feel when I am not fed (and blood sugar levels are dropping ever downward) makes me feel like everything has gone to shit and been ruined beyond repair. In this state I beleive that only the absolute perfect meal can pull the day out of the crapper. But the hungrier I get the less rational I get, and the less able to make solid choices which would result in the acquisition of said perfect meal. So I reject and reject and reject.

And eventually all authority to participate in decision making must be taken away from me. Decisions, right down to what I am going to eat, must be made for me by someone else.

(I generally carry food on my person so as to avoid this situation. It's no fun for anyone invloved.)

So James decided we were going to Le Petit Dakar.

I didn't like it because, I didn't. The room wasn't warm enough. I couldn't read the hand written menu on the chalkboard. There were only 4 choices for lunch. And so on. I didn't like it because my blood sugar levels were disastrously low and I was being a big nasty bitch.

James ordered for us and in no time the most perfect meal, the best meal I have ever eaten in all of France, was put in front of me.

It was exceptionally good. Gambas with a sort of sweet coconut curry sauce, and rice. Simple, but incredible.

SAHB was banished. And I want to go back at least once more before we leave Paris.

Le Petit Dakar is a Senegalese restaurant in the 3rd Arrondissement of Paris
Address: 6, rue Elzévir, 75003, Paris

For shits and giggles today I dropped by the opening day celebrations at the very first Starbucks in France. That's right. Starbucks. In Paris.

And despite the party line being "why would I want to drink the sock juice coffee of the boorish American chain when instead I could...", Parisians were lined up out the fucking door waiting for their first taste of a vente frappucino. Seriously, out the door. Standing on the sidewalk.

In addition to being the third sign of the apocalypse, this is truly a testament to the power of marketing. Paris already has a coffee culture. A wonderful, tasty, coffee culture with a long history. There is no need for Starbucks here. The coffee at the corner cafe is better and cheaper than anything Bucks has to offer.

But, I guess the beauty of marketing is that you create the need, and then you provide the product to fill the need.

I am curious to see what Paris will look like in 5 years. In North American cities public garbage cans are often filled to overflowing with empty take away containers and to-go coffee cups. The portable food culture generates an awful lot of garbage that is disposed of in the public sphere.

Not so in Paris. For the most part, you eat and drink where you purchase your refreshment. There are public garbage cans, but they are absolutely not designed to accommodate the volume of garbage generated by 500,000 people swilling Cafe Mochas on the run.

We didn't stop for coffee at Starbucks. Instead we went down the street to a neighbourhood cafe where J paid 8.40E for a large Coke. Because, you know, damn the man and all that.

I am trying not to allow things to turn into all cheese all the time here, but somethings are just beyond my control.

I had the most amazing (over priced) steak with oooey gooey sauce today. In point of fact, J had the steak with ooey gooey sauce, and I had lamb, but the sauce was so good that I couldn't stop myself from dipping my bread in it when he wasn't looking.

After some culinary investigation, conducted entirely in a foreign language, I think I can say with some authority that Sauce Au St. Marcellin contains:

St. Marcellin cheese
Creme Fraiche
Veal Stock
and Black Pepper.

That's right, cheese AND creme fraiche, served over beef. All the excess you could ever need on a single plate, and oh so good.

Paris is insanely expensive. So expensive that, while you do your best to keep costs sort of reasonable, there comes a point (far beyond any normal definition of reasonable) when you just have to put it out of your mind, or else lose sanity altogether.

It's possible to pay $10.00 for a coffee and $8.00 for a coke if you are not careful. And even when you are very careful you'll likely pay $4.00 for a coffee. (The coke you can buy at the grocery store for $0.75)

But cheese, my beautiful friend, cheese, is not expensive. Cheese is dirt cheap, and plentiful. Cheap. Cheap.

2 euros for a round of cheese I would easily pay $9.00 for at home. Handmade artisanal cheeses at the local cheap ass institutional looking grocery store? 1.50E.

And bread to eat it with is also cheap. And oddly, oranges are also cheap.

Could be worse. Much worse.