Day 60 of 60 | Bonjour, Paris 🇫🇷✨
Part Two: The French Way
So… what did I discover about The French Way?
Let’s treat this like my final exam where we create a meal.
In sixty days, I was tasked with discovering the ingredients that create The French Way.
While Paris is, without question, one of the most impressive cities in the world, it wasn’t the grandeur that taught me what I’m about to share.
It was the people.
Over the last sixty days, I witnessed a simple but powerful truth again and again:
If something is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing right.
That philosophy, more than anything else, defines The French Way.
It was the one ingredient every teacher I encountered shared, whether they knew they were teaching me or not.
And my teachers came from everywhere.
There was Ben, a young man who runs his family’s coffee and pastry shop, Constant. After discovering he served the best coffee in the 7th arrondissement, Lori and I kept coming back until we eventually discovered that Ben was even better than his extremely well made coffee.
One day, Lori asked him what made one coffee better than another.
What followed was a masterclass in caring.
Ben walked us through twenty different ways a barista can make, or completely ruin, a coffee experience. We were blown away by his depth of knowledge and pride in his craft.
No matter how busy the shop became, and it got very busy, Ben always took the time to engage us in real conversation: about school, about local restaurants, about life. He introduced us to his wonderful mother, his girlfriend Tracy, and even his young son.
Has that ever happened to you at Starbucks? 😂
Ben made my day better more times than I can count.
And that’s when it hit me: caring is an underrated superpower. I experienced far more of it here than I ever expected. It is, without question, a primary ingredient in The French Way.
Another ingredient is loyalty.
This was best demonstrated by my classmate, and now dear friend, Romain-Pierre Cacheux (RP). RP reminded me that the best friends are the ones who consistently show up.
I’m a generous man, but generosity often goes unacknowledged. I don’t need applause, just a dash of authentic gratitude, like the perfect amount of salt on a dish.
RP always expressed that gratitude. No matter the size of the gesture, he made sure I knew it mattered. And that made me feel appreciated.
Tenacity is absolutely an ingredient in The French Way.
My classmate Emilie Ellena embodied this every single day. Whether she was executing a complex dish, translating effortlessly between the four or five languages she speaks, recalling recipes from weeks prior with her photographic memory, or scrubbing the floors, she did everything to the very best of her ability. If you asked her why, she would likely reply, “it needs to be done!”
At just 22 years old, if Emilie were a stock instead of my new young friend, I would invest in as many shares as possible.
Remember her name.
Soul is another essential ingredient.
Our teacher, Chef Tony Salomon
demonstrated this daily. Tony is an artist who happens to be a phenomenal teacher at École Ducasse. Watching him plate a dish though was a masterclass in honoring your soul’s desires.
His favorite phrase was simple: “Cook with love.”
It turns out that might be the most important ingredient of all.
Then there was kindness.
Friends Edward Delling-Williams and his wife Zoë, along with Jennifer and François Laugier, opened their homes to us in Normandy and Provence on back-to-back weekends to host American Thanksgiving dinners.
We could not have felt more welcomed in France. Their hospitality was generous, warm, and deeply human.
And finally, one of my most unexpected teachers.
A woman a few years my senior who owns and operates the print shop I visited several times to prepare class materials. I don’t know her name, but she may be the most beloved print shop owner in the world.
Locals constantly stopped in just to say hello or bring her small gifts.
She demonstrated cheerfulness.
Printing documents can’t be the most thrilling job in the world, but you’d never know it in her shop. Every print job was treated like the most important job she had ever done. When she helped me print my menu, she was fully invested. She cared deeply and made me feel incredibly special in the process. She could have charged 100x the price and I would have gladly paid it.
The French Way is not complicated.
It is simply a beautifully cooked life seasoned with cheerfulness, soul, loyalty, tenacity, kindness, and care - executed with intention and pride.
Thank you, Paris, for granting me the opportunity to discover, experience, and truly live The French Way with my incredible wife Lori Lochtefeld.
