The Chicest Ways To Celebrate Bastille Day In NYC

A croissant pulled apart and dipped in café crème. A Suze and champagne en plein air. In that order. As soon as my feet hit Paris pavement, seeking these simple pleasures is a pursuit both primary and critical. Sleepy yet sated, I shuffle my limited French to a buzzy fromagerie in St. Paul for diminutive loaves of goat cheese crowned with herb fronds, a pungent button of unpasturized Epoisses, a thick disk of Occitane, its regional symbol of the cross rendered in black ash that stains like Cheeto dust. Given it’s mid-July, fraises des bois the size of peas and cerises the size of plums will find their way in this basket bound for a blanket along the Île Saint-Louis. A French friend will arrive with a bottle of rose or bubbly or bubbly rose. Another with oysters pre-shucked and truffle sandwiches from La Grande Epiceire. This is why we don’t nap after the transatlatic flight. This is why we take the flight to begin with. To reunite on a gingham square with such delicacies where pleasures are met twofold amongst friends. 

Of course COVID-19 doesn’t care how much you long to double-bise your copines or revel in such gastronomic bacchanal around Bastille Day. Mercifully, travel hungry New Yorkers with particularly Francophilian penchants are a resourceful lot. If anyone will find a way to quatorze in quarantine, it will be us. Round up a few antibody-positive or COVID-free friends - it's time to don a crisp boater and a toile-printed mask and bring the Seine to the stoop with a vintage French playlist and a few apéritifs and hors-d'œuvres.

[Photo courtesy @georgettelillianmp]