Festival of French Food - Bastille Day Street Fair in NYC

New York summers and street fairs go together like, well, just about anything you can think of to combine. To the uninitiated, these may sound like great fun: food, crafts, vendors, etc. all in a few city blocks. To those who get to live with them, they are experienced with the same measure of ennui and tolerance of the many themed parades that close down Fifth Avenue several times a year. They shut down bus routes, cause detours, change well-laid plans, and cause mounds of frustration.

There is, however, one special fair that takes place each year on a Sunday in mid-July that draws out the folks who most likely don’t usually brave these spectacles. The Alliance Française in New York holds its Bastille Day celebration in Midtown Manhattan, taking over three blocks on 60^th Street. Local proprietors, restaurants and many things French are featured.

I think that, without any proof whatsoever, this fair just might have the most great food per block of any of the ones to which I have been. Skip the kebobs, take a pass on the sausage and onion sandwiches, never mind the griddled corncakes with mozzarella, here are some photos of what you could have been eating today had you been in New York:

Crème Brûlée

Crêpes

Escargot

French Fries - um, not so sure why this stand is here...

Fruit Shakes - these guys are at every street fair!

North African Grill Table - the place with the longest line

 

So, how was I able to choose what to eat, given all these great choices? Well, I had a bit of an advantage in that I’ve been to this festival just about every year I’ve lived in New York. That means that I sort of knew what to expect and how to pace myself.  I have a tried and true strategy for approaching these things:

• Figure out where the food is among all the other things that might be on display
• Set a budget.  I usually do $20.00, which seems to cover most events
• Walk both sides of the food displays; scope out prices and where there are duplicate offerings
• Are there any must-try vendors?  What are they serving?
• Decide what to buy.  Buy it.  Eat it.  This works even better if you are with friends, and you all chip in and share your acquisitions

This is what I ended up getting. I don’t think that I restricted my choices too much:

Crêpe with Shredded Duck
Brioche with Orange Flower-flavored Cream
Tuna Niçoise Sandwich

At the end of my mini-feast, I was left with $4.00. Hmm….what could I get with that? It was too little to buy a single lottery ticket to try to win a trip to France. The sweet crêpes would have put me a bit outside of my budget. Then, I remembered – aha! – Payard.

A New York sweets lovers stand-by, Payard on the Upper East Side is a standard-bearer. Ladies take tea there, children stand with their noses pressed against the glass cases staring at all the sugary goodies, trying to choose what they will have to eat after school. There's even a scene in a certain HBO show where a character is trying to pick what to have from all the pastries she sees. 

I had bought the brioche in the photo above for $4.00. Just look at this picture of all those from which I could select, each for that same sum:

I asked the person selling them about one of the tarts. “All of zees you can get in the store,” he said, “Buut, zis one, zis one, we maade ezpecially foor touday.”

“That sounds great,” I responded.

“I maade eet myself, today, zis mornigk,” he replied, with what seemed to be a little extra, personal flourish.

“I’ll take one to go,” I said. A sweet and a little bit of flirting, not a bad thing on a hot summer’s day! 

Cherry Claufouti

 

Bon Appétit!

*Editor’s Note:  This breaks my heart to type, even now, so many years after Payard has shut down, but the location on the UES closed several years after this post due to greedy landlord over leveraging the property and trying to charge an exorbitant rent for the restaurant space.  I still miss this place!