Connecting the dots

Time to try to catch you all up on life here on the Left Bank...

The night I finalized my apartment, I decided to take myself to dinner in my new neighborhood, and sat down at a bistro a few blocks away. Soon a mother-son pair sat next to me, and when the son got up to take a cell phone call, his mother engaged me in conversation. Apparently her son had just graduated from college, and she was taking him to Paris for a few days as a celebration. And where were they from? Cahors!

What a coincidence! Cahors is my parents' favorite wine region, in the southwest of France. It's their sentimental favorite because when they lived in Tokyo (stay with me here, the story is an intercontinental one), their favorite "nice dinner out" restaurant was a tiny little neighborhood jewel called Cahors. The proprietor/chef, Kaoru Yamamoto, grew to know us and invite us to friends-and-family dinners; Mom and Dad brought gifts for him from their trips back to the States. It was at Cahors that we learned the Japanese word "skoshi" -- a little bit. My sister and I were teenagers, and when Yamamoto-san showed us the desserts available, we were clearly torn, and having a hard time deciding on just one. Everything looked so good. Yamamoto-san explained to us that we could order "skoshi" of as many as we wanted ... and won our hearts. For the five years my family lived there, Yamamoto-san treated us as family. And when we returned on vacation a few years later, the one stop we knew we had to make was Cahors. (We even braved a typhoon to do so. Yamamoto-san couldn't believe his eyes!)

Yamamoto-san has since moved to London, to open a Japanese restaurant called So, and I fully intend to cross the Channel while I'm here if for no other reason than to visit him there.

I digress. But meeting people from Cahors, at a little bistro in St. Germain, and having a lovely remainder of my evening chatting with them, just seemed to connect all the dots -- my time in Paris, my time in Tokyo ... what a lucky coincidence that we sat next to each other. I told my new friend that my parents hoped to visit Cahors someday, and she gave me her name and contact information. And I walked away from the restaurant amused at how small the world can sometimes be.