A Japanese take on overrated Paris

by Carly Jane Lock

Article published on the 2009-08-21 Latest update 2009-08-21 10:38 TU

Mitsuko Zahar author of "Wa aji onchi" or "Les Parisiens ont des goûts de chiottes"
(Photo: CJ Lock)

Dancer-turned author/food critic, Mitsuko Zahar discusses her mission to dispel Japanese people’s rose-tinted myths about Parisians and life in the French capital. This in a new book that‘s due to be released in France next month. Its title Wa aji onchi, which loosely translates in French as Les Parisiens ont des goûts de chiottes ("Parisians have awful taste"), suggests Parisians are out of touch and Paris' days as a barometer of good taste are numbered.

For an ex-pat who’s been living in Paris for the past four decades, who has adopted French citizenship and booked her own burial space at Paris’ Montparnasse cemetery, Zahar clearly can’t resist indulging in a bit of light-hearted France-bashing.

She feels it’s time to bring Parisians down a peg or two - at least, in Japanese people‘s minds. Head lice-infested classrooms, proverbially rude taxi-drivers or Parisians’ fear or misuse of the umbrella -Zahar’s rhetoric is loud and clear.

Her book, perhaps best described as "picture-postcard Paris turned on its head", teems with examples of why most Parisians don’t live up to their reputation for innate elegance and style and why they are not the food connoisseurs they‘re widely believed to be.

She holds Nicolas Sarkozy and his disinterest in fine food and wine responsible for the latter. In comparison with his fin gourmet predecessors, Jacques Chirac and Francois Mitterand who ate ortolan* for his last supper.

“The majority of Parisians don‘t cook anymore. Go to any supermarket and you’ll see them filling their shopping trolleys with frozen or ready-made food," she says.

"Takeaway is getting more and more popular here. Take dinner parties, for example most people just hire a caterer.”

Zahar came to Paris in 1970 to perform in a revival of the sixties rock musical Hair. Two years later, she put her dancing career on hold to get married and learn French. Dancing gradually gave way to writing, and she began to focus on gastronomy.

Working her bi-cultural connections to her advantage, she joined forces with top restaurant critic Henri Gault to scour the streets of Paris and Tokyo in search of good French and Japanese cuisine. Zahar is now firmly rooted in Paris's Marais, an area which she loves for its mixed bag of residents from all walks of life, ages and sexual leanings - a Parisian phenomenon that she claims never fails to fascinate the Japanese.

When asked what’s kept her in Paris all these years, Zahar says the attraction lies in the beauty of the French capital. In the same breath, she laments Paris’s huge litter problem, exasperated by the local authorities incapacity to clean up the city’s act.

*A tiny yellow-throated songbird, a protected species and unofficially, a French delicacy, which is traditionally eaten bones and all beneath a napkin to appreciate its wondrous aromas.