Escargot

With 5 kids in the house, the average volume of home-life hovered somewhere around the level of "11" on a dial of 1-10. So by the time I was about 12, I began to back away slowly from the fray and bunker down in my room with the door locked most of the time. In an age before Internet, when we had the generous total of 4 different channels to tune in through our rabbit ear antennas, I'm not really sure what I did in there--besides talk on a phone that was tethered to the wall by a cord, listen to Paula Abdul on cassette, and attempt to record terrible Top 40 songs off the radio with my pink metallic SideStep, which--with its in-house tape deck and capacity for "high-speed dubbing"--was far superior to the traditional method of holding a free-standing tape recorder up to the speaker and hoping no one in the house suddenly decided to run the vacuum. 

None of these activities warranted the compulsory locking of my door, but that was a standard component of my alone-time--most likely because the heavy wooden doors in our house were quirkily un-level and would not remain closed without the space-age addition of the hook-and-eye lock. Even in the "locked" position, enough air passed between the door and the jam for sneaky siblings to poke their sticky fingers through, like poltergeist grasping at you from some dark portal--or for adults-on-a-mission to slide a coat hanger through, like a snarky "nice try" to the inferior attempts of the primitive hook-and-eye, effectively reminding all inhabitants that tolerance for locked doors was a courtesy subject to revocation by the management at any time.

Many Saturday afternoons, while self-sequestered in my room behind that hook-and-eye lock, sorting hair-ties or staring blankly at my walls for no good reason, my dad would come knocking at my door, inadvertently pushing it into the "who's there?" position, so that one of his eye balls was now visible in the open space. When I'd open it, he'd inevitably offer me some bit of mystery food on an outstretched cracker. "Here! Try this!" he'd say expectantly. "It's a delicacy!"

I learned over the years that "delicacy" was usually code for something my mom wouldn't engage in consuming, so rather than enjoy his little afternoon treats in solitude, Daddy would come looking for another sucker to join him in whatever it was: sardines, vienna sausage, cheese you could smell before you ever opened the door--which all turned out to be pretty damn good. The one exception was something that looked like a cross between a browned button mushroom and a tiny earlobe soaked in soy sauce--but turned out to be a snail. "It's escargot!" Daddy exclaimed as I bit in and began the futile process of chewing what felt like a miniature Tonka truck tire. I ultimately gave up and just swallowed it whole, having made no progress with it long after my dad had triumphantly returned to the kitchen for a second serving.

While that particular experiment revealed that the texture of snail was not for me, my dad's repertoire of mystery-food favorites was otherwise delicious, as advertised. In fact, some of the more mainstream things made their way into the rotation on the regular family menu. On Sundays, for instance, we'd indulge in a flaky pastry served with butter and jelly that we were taught to call "kwossoe"-- while the rest of the town served them with Shake'n'Bake chicken and called them "crescent rolls". We also had something my dad concocted himself from thick slices of dinner loaf soaked in what looked and smelled like melted vanilla milkshake. We called that "Pamper-due" as kids, but realized later in life that nonsense was just our Americanized version of what Daddy and Grandma were actually saying--and what every restaurant on Bourbon Street was serving under the name "Pain Perdue". Still, our distorted perception of the correct terminology did nothing to diminish the undeniable delectability of croissants and French toast.

My dad's lack of interest in dessert was a little harder to get down with. His preference for shortbread over sugar cookies and bits of fruit versus swirls of chocolate in his ice cream seemed like a waste of taste buds, while his idea that CHEESE could be substituted for any sort of post-meal sweet-treat constituted an assault on the very core of what dessert is. His reduced craving for sugar was offset by his astonishing capacity to digest things like seafood and rare beef which our mom had led us to believe might induce sepsis on sight. Seafood, other than shrimp, was an indulgence Daddy satisfied on rare dinners out during beach vacations. Beef, meanwhile, was not allowed on our table until it had been sufficiently cremated to a somber and sanitary grey.

In addition to his deviant menu, Daddy also preferred to eat at very particular times, a peculiarity that was often celebrated through our holiday meals. These feasts were usually served during a time window he referred to as "dunch" that fell between 2:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon. "Dunch" and all large meals in the dining room were to be consumed meticulously slow. It was a regular occurrence for his five gluttonous children to look up from their licked empty plates in anticipation of true dessert (meaning, something baked, iced, and cut into gigantic slices) to find Daddy mid-sentence with his fork still hovering over a barely disturbed entree. What and when and how he liked to eat was decidedly Daddy. Little did I know at the time it was also undeniably French.

Versailles, 2000, shot during my study abroad

Nearly a decade later, I took two extended trips to France with a little more than a year in between. The first was to spend a month with my grandmother's brother in a small town called Epernay, a short drive from where my dad was born. The second was to study abroad for a semester in Paris, where I stayed with a host family in their sprawling apartment at the edge of the city. I ate nary a croissant, snail, or piece of French toast during either stay, but being there was like an in-depth examination of my dad's dining room DNA.

My first trip was a study in traditional gastronomy: small breakfasts and dinners flanking long, leisurely lunches. Tangy vinegar-based vegetable salads led to entrees that showcased pork or seafood and copious amounts of bread, followed by cheese and tiny cups of espresso, served with a bite of super dark chocolate. When they served sole for lunch--with the eyes, head, and tail completely intact--I loved the hell out of it, and immediately thought of my dad, happily slurping oysters at the beach (while the entire family watched in horror). And when they served me a piece of steak red enough to appear recently lopped from its living cow-counterpart, I was pleasantly surprised by liking it and suddenly realized why my dad gladly accepted the "pink" end of the London Broil after charring the rest into a cinder for my mom.

During my second trip, the menu at my host family's home was more contemporary, with updated kid-friendly additions like Yoplait and Mediterranean influences like olive oil that overshadowed the butter-culture of my relatives' traditional cuisine. But the cheese and bread were universal. And when they served sardines as the entree for a light weeknight dinner, my dad's claims--that someone other than shipwrecked sailors ate canned fish-- were verified. These were his people. With their lunches that lingered, their food that was never too sweet or over-seasoned, and their abundance of startlingly presented seafood and rare beef. Getting to know them was like acquainting myself with my dad in a whole new way, even though he was clear across the ocean.

I was 21 when I returned from that second trip to France, around the same age my parents were when they met on a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic. My dad was on his way back from studying abroad for a year in Lyon and my mom was returning home to New York after a trip to Ireland with her best friend. They were married 44 years ago last week and their 5 adult children are now scattered along the east and west coasts of the U.S., where we embrace every opportunity to introduce our new loved ones to things we don't realize other people didn't grow up with--like the simple construction of salad dressing from oil, vinegar, and whole grain mustard, or the complex consumption of steamed whole artichokes (which my husband initially attempted like someone being told to eat cooked cactus, but ultimately enjoyed). We're compelled, like our dad before us, to approach others with the edible echoes of our extraordinary history, expectantly outstretching that unfamiliar part of ourselves, saying, "Here! Try this! It's a delicacy." Cracker optional, of course.

The cathedral where my dad was baptized

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