Le pain perdu

I remember as a kid, sometimes having breakfast for dinner. Mom would make French toast with a loaf of Home Pride white bread, or scramble up some eggs. Those nights, dinner was fun! Hey now, festive! Syrup on the dinner table?! Cuh-razy! No frozen veggies? Aww-right!

Now, as a single girl, I’m wont to have dessert for dinner: a Nutella crepe, warm Tollhouse cookies, a big slice of pear and frangipane tarte from the boulangerie, or… oh, you know me, I’m happy with anything sweet.

So I was very happy last week realizing that, here in France, they’re down with putting breakfast on the dessert menu: le pain perdu. French toast.

My boss was in town from New York, and we had dinner on Friday night and at Au 35. The restaurant—which had been on my list for a couple months—was darling but, sadly, not as good as I was hoping. Not that it mattered. We gorged. After aperos, we had appetizers, entrees, wine, bread and then the dessert menus came out.

I have become a huge tarte tatin fan since coming here and if I see it on the menu, I sort of have to get it. Witold was really gunning for the warm chocolate cake after seeing a neighboring diner eat hers. But our waitress told us the pain perdu was the best thing on the menu. So we ordered it—a third dessert, “just to look at,” Witold said. It was—ridiculous. Imagine: warm French bread, saturated in milk, butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla. And then topped with caramel ice cream. It was just out of this world. I neglected my tarte tatin so it wouldn’t go to waste. It was probably the best decision of the weekend.