I
once took in a foreign exchange student for six weeks.
Rather than embracing all things American during his
time with us, he seemed to want to remain firmly rooted
in his little village in the Jura, his home region in the
French Alps. Trying to make him feel more at home, I
went to Whole Foods to hunt down his local cheese, Comté,
which he said was the only cheese worth having, and which
he ate only after cutting into tiny little pieces with his knife
and fork. When I took him to Manhattan to introduce him to
real pizza, he ate very little, then sighed and said that there
was no pizza like the pizza they made back home in France.
I resisted the urge to laugh out loud, for while the French
are known for many gastronomic delights, pizza is not one of
them.
Or so I thought.