Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Fully Hungry And Half Insane In The Latin Quarter


...And while we're on the subject of amazing coincidences...

My brother Brian went to Paris years ago and had dinner at an Indian restaurant named "Chez Gandhi", somewhere in the Latin Quarter. He said the food was good but the rice was $11 extra. I only remember this because I thought the name was hilarious. Pretty much perfect for a French Indian restaurant, but with a built-in paradoxical joke: naming a restaurant after a man who fasted most of his life.

Anyhow, I was in Paris on business years later. A carload of us hungry, overtired engineers was driving the streets on a Saturday night looking for a place to eat. We got lost and drove for what seemed like hours, passing the throngs of people out walking, as well as hundreds of great restaurants. There was no parking anywhere. We must have driven by a half million people out in the streets (I love Paris!). We found a highly-recommended French cafe to eat, but had to park about a mile from it. As we walked the streets we took a few shortcuts and got lost again. We gathered together (which for engineers is like herding cats) on one side of the street to regroup and talk about which way to go. I leaned on the wall of a restaurant, exhausted and starving. I said something like "I am SO sick of this...why don't we just eat here?" and looked for the first time at the sign on the wall: Chez Gandhi.

1 comment:

Dennis said...

Doesn't chez translate to "at"?