last weekend
Its another weekend and I have to think of what I would like to do. Every Saturday morning when I open my eyes, I see a long list of “to do” list. Then I close my eyes and try to relax down and relax; it’s the weekend for heaven’s sake!
Last weekend was quite successful. On Saturday, I did some cleaning around the house, then I went with my friend to see an exhibition by David Lachapelle, whom I didn’t know beforehand. It was a cold day and we had to make a one hour line to get in. The exhibition is in one of the buildings of Musée de la Monnaie, which itself is a nice place to visit. The exhibition starts with a huge photo-collage from “Heaven to Hell” collection. A photograph inspired by virgin Mary and Jesus, with the twist of talking Cortney Love and a Kurt Cobain look alike as subjects. It is not photo collage as you and I do in our spare time, this is a staged photo shot with lots and lots of details.
You could stay five to ten minutes in front of each piece and find new details. I quite liked his work. There were lots of photographs of nude real size people, lots of references to religions, celebrities and politics. Basically, what we have to deal with everyday!
On Sunday my siblings and I went to an Iranian restaurant that we had never been before. It is called So Rice and it is in Porte de Versailles.The food was quite good with nice presentations, different from the usual traditional decorations. As always we looked carefully at the menu, “Oh there is Albaloopolo, ah… there is Gheime bademjoon. Well next time I will try their Ghorme sabzi”, and then we ordered a chelo kabab e Barg each! Of course these next times never come since we always long for Chelo kabab. Even my half-Irish half-Armenian nephiew always gets a chelo kabab, he is aslo corrupted by us!
On this note I want to grumble a bit. I have this Italian friend who irritates the sh*t out of me whenever it comes to Italian food. Every time we have to chose a restaurant it is a big problem because he can not put his foot in an Italian restaurant outside Italy! Ok, I understand that the food made in ones own country suits the best. Of course, it should be like that. But making it such a big deal is to me a big snobbery and inconsideration to others. If that was the case, none of the Iranians, the Chinese, the Greeks, the Spanish, The Indians, etc., which have as rich if not even richer cuisine than Italians, should not go to their restaurants outside their own country.
Of course, this is the case of one friend, but I have seen this kind of reaction very often from Italians than any other of my friends. Anybody else is delighted to take us to a restaurant serving the food of their country, just to share even if it is far from what it is supposed to taste.
There is also the question of evolution of a plate. Every country changes the ingredients of a foreign dish due to lack of importation or simply because of adaptation to local taste. To me this is not a disaster at all. In the contrary, people whose food is being globalized should be quite happy and proud that in our world filled with diversity, some dishes are so popular that we find variations of them in every country.
Iranian restaurants don’t do well in France. I have not figured out the reason yet. In style, not in taste, they are quite similar to Indian food and yet you don’t see that many non-Iranians filling the tables. Maybe there is a big shortage of publicity. Maybe, the prices are higher than what people expect from a middle eastern restaurant. I don’t know.
Anyways, food and art are good week-end fillers, and even better when you share them with good people.