I discovered this place on my way back from checking out an Angels vs. Yankees playoff game in Anaheim last week. It was one of those days when my calendar was jam-packed. I had a meeting later in the day. I couldn't rely on the quixotic nature of Orange County to LA freeway traffic. So I took public transportation on the way back. It was a brilliant scheme. And as you'll see from this story, the moral is that there are unexpected benefits to being green.
I walked through the Angel Stadium parking lot for literally three minutes to get to the train station. I took the train to Union Station. I then walked one minute (still inside the train station) to get to the subway, got off after a few stops, walked across the street and took the bus from there. The whole trip took about an hour. And for those who remember the bad old days of public transportation in LA, I can report that this bus was clean and that the riders seemed to be regular working people.
I reached the nadir of the expedition, however, when I got off of the bus. I was thirsty and, as a result, felt travel weary. Although I had tried to ration my teeny bought-at-the-ballpark bottle of water, it didn't last the journey. My misplaced skepticism about the train running on time didn't help me either. I sat in full sun for 15 minutes (at least) at the train station. In retrospect, this was a completely ridiculous strategy, although it was pleasant to sit outside. My thinking was, 'What if the train comes early?' The rational answer would have been 'It will wait until its scheduled departure.' But as I could not afford to miss this train, I erred on the side of irrational thought.
'What to do?' I asked myself, tired and trudging up the hill. Then hope appeared.
As a weary traveler in the Canterbury Tales might have spied an inn, I beheld a cafe next to the CVS drugstore. I'd driven by "Salades de Provence" many times, but had never tried it because the name seemed cheesy. I figured that it was probably run by somebody from New Jersey, who used the mystique of a French name as an excuse to overcharge the public and serve mediocre food. I've noticed that people in Los Angeles sometimes get a little mesmerized by the concept of "European." I'm not really sure why, but I've often noticed that "European" can equal super expensive and snobby without the high quality that one might expect.
But I was tired. And in one of my recent drive-bys, I'd noticed that the specials board was written in a handwriting that looked suspiciously like that of my lower school French teacher. So I thought, 'What the hell. I'll give it a try.'
I tentatively entered a room that seemed sun-filled, although it was the end of the afternoon. I asked if I could do take out. The waiters were handsome and very South of France. Charming. I got to speak French. I ordered an espresso and a pain au chocolat because I needed something sweet (and that's what they had).
The owner happened to be there and had a great sense of humor. I don't know if this interchange will come across on the page, but I thought that it was funny. When I ordered the espresso, the server asked "Single or double?" I said "Single." The owner said "Oh, are you single?" I said "I will have a single but I am not single." The one server said to the other, "He's funny today." "Yeah, I didn't know that he was so humorous." You have to imagine the intonation and the body language. This is what I love about conversing with French guys: it's like musicians coming together to do improvisation. You riff and there's sometimes very gentle flirtation that's meaningless. You do it because it's fun and you want to keep your chops up. It's rejuvenating.
I left feeling freshened-up and zippy. Click here to listen to the Ennio Morricone song that was playing in my head. It sums up my Salades de Provence experience so far. My only regret is that I didn't put on lip gloss before I got off of the bus.
Salades de Provence has wi-fi (pronounced wee-fee in French, by the way). In a recent Wall Street Journal article, I read that the French are really struggling to come up with French versions of Internet terms. The World Wide Web, per the article, "...is translated as 'toile d'araignee mondiale' (literally, a global spider web." Clunky, I think. Click here for the link to this WSJ article.
Stay tuned for my next trip here, when I visit in my guise as Mobile Knowledge Worker.
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