Jenna’s Model Life

Tonight I ate dinner with my college friend the Scientist, who lives in Montmartre.

The ground floor of the Scientist’s building has cherubs sculpted into the plaster. Not that the electricians mind working around them.

The Tibetan place where we ate served the kind of red wine I would have gladly turned into a calimocho, and the Scientist’s chicken curry was neither bad nor good.

But out of pure culinary curiosity, I ordered “steamed ravioli with vegetables and cheese” — and received six fat wontons full of carrots, coriander, mint, a gentle-flavored cheese, and spinach, with a mint-and-tomato dipping sauce. They were delicious! I’m not sure if I’ll be ordering Tibetan bread anytime soon again, though — it looked like a raw cinnamon roll, and tasted smooth and and wet, dismayingly like a kitchen sponge.

Nonetheless, the Scientist and I highly recommend butter tea. Like popcorn in a cup.

This is what happens when one day you decide cleaning the graffiti off your truck just isn’t worth it anymore: Pretty soon you’re the mobile gallery for a whole quartier of charming Basquiats who just want to remind everyone that they are, in fact, sexer than you are, truck-owner-who’s-given-up.

After we’d finished the last of the lhassi, the Scientist and I went over to my stomping grounds to find a certain gelato shop that shapes its products into roses before serving them. And you thought making the Dairy Queen curl was hard! I ordered the smallest cone and the bloom was wider than my fist.

Then we found one of those charming French places — they’re either cafés that serve alcohol, or bars that serve coffee, I can’t decide, and in any case they all do it in well-lit, no-too-loud surroundings that just make them a so much more pleasant option than either a straight and boring café or a dingy and blaring bar. How is it that these brafé cafbar hybrids have never taken off in the U.S.? I would spend all night typing on my laptop ordering beers and teas in succession if I had the option, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

A quick discussion of U.S. foreign policy, energy policy, and Hillary Clinton later, we each went home.