Pancakes in Paris: Living the American Dream in France (Culinary Memoir for Francophiles and Foodies)

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Prologue

Apéritif

The Road to the Crazy Dream

Chapter 1: The French Connection: How I Ended Up in France

Chapter 2: Paris and Rouen: A Movable Feast

Chapter 3: The Crazy Dream

Starter

If You Build It, They Will Come

Chapter 4: The Business Plan and the Best Kind of R & D

Chapter 5: Merci to the Mouse

Chapter 6: Show Me the Money!

Chapter 7: BIA VF (Version Française)

Chapter 8: Show Me (More) Money!

Main Course

Living My Dream

Chapter 9: My Diner with André

Chapter 10: Location Numéro Deux

Chapter 11: Countdown to Opening Day

Chapter 12: Open for Business; Closed for War

Chapter 13: French Fries or Freedom Fries

Chapter 14: French Labor Pains

Dessert

Love Among the Milkshakes

Chapter 15: Life Begins at Quarante (Forty)

Chapter 16: Vive l’Amour

Chapter 17: BIA #2 and Beyond

Chapter 18: Midnight Espresso

Digestif

La Grande Disillusion

Chapter 19: The Peter Principle

Chapter 20: Attack of the Contrôleurs—Part Deux

Chapter 21: Paris Syndrome

Chapter 22: The Big Chill

Chapter 23: It Is a Wonderful Life

Epilogue

Recipes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Notre Dame as viewed from the pont de la Tournelle.

PROLOGUE

I have the best commute in the world. My scenic walk to work begins on the Left Bank of Paris, where the original Breakfast in America (BIA) restaurant is located, and continues on to the Right Bank—home of the second BIA. Along the way, I get to cross the lovely Seine not once, but twice, thanks to one of my favorite places in Paris, an island located smack in the middle of my route—Île Saint-Louis. With its narrow streets full of quaint shops and restaurants, this tiny island paradise always makes me feel as if I’ve been transported back in time—from the hustle and bustle of a modern city to a sleepy, medieval village somewhere in the French countryside.

But by far the best part of my commute is the view of the Notre Dame Cathedral from the first bridge I cross, the pont de la Tournelle. In my humble opinion, Notre Dame looks best from this angle. With its majestic spire reaching toward the heavens—in sharp contrast with its flying buttresses keeping the heavy stone walls from collapsing to the ground—Notre Dame always reminds me of that mysterious interplay between heaven and earth, between the seen and the unseen.

No matter how much of a hurry I’m in or how bad my day has been, I always take a moment to stop and gaze at this architectural wonder. There’s something about staring at a structure from the twelfth century—still standing strong—that puts things into perspective.

I’m reminded, once again, of what it is that I’ve always loved about Paris. And what brought me here in the first place…

How many people have imagined running off to the City of Light, opening their own café, and starting a whole new life in the most beautiful city in the world? Well, I actually did it. Me, a former Hollywood screenwriter who used to read scripts where the main character dreamed of doing what I did—no small feat considering that I had never owned a business before, let alone a restaurant, with their notoriously high failure rates.

And if that weren’t crazy enough, I decided to open my restaurant in a foreign country with a foreign language and in a city that just happens to be the culinary capital of the world—Paris. But my restaurant wasn’t just any restaurant; it was an American diner, the first of its kind in the city. Yet despite all the odds against me, my little dive, my greasy spoon, became a great success, with lines of customers stretching down the block.

Before I knew it, my diner, Breakfast in America, started appearing all over the national and international press, including CNN, the New York Times, BBC, French television, and more. Here’s just a sample of what they were saying about us. NBC’s Today Show raved on its website, "Breakfast in America is the American place in France. Frommer’s called us Paris’s most famous American diner." T: The New York Times Style Magazine said, The early trendsetter was Connecticut-bred Craig Carlson. (Imagine that—me, a trendsetter!) And last but not least, Let’s Go Paris proclaimed, It doesn’t get more American than this.

No, it doesn’t. And neither does my story. After all I’ve been through, I could practically be the poster child for the American Dream—except for one petit detail:

In order to live the American Dream, I had to move to France.

Whenever people hear about Breakfast in America for the first time, they always ask me the same questions: How did you come up with the idea? Had you ever owned a restaurant before? Do you speak French? Is doing business in France complicated? Are most of your customers French or American?

On the political side of things, a lot of people want to know if I’ve experienced any anti-Americanism. Or if I’m a socialist. My favorite questions come from those who harbor dreams of moving to France and opening an establishment of their own. Questions like: Is it hard to find the right ingredients? What’s the most popular item on the menu? Do you have to adapt your food for French tastes? Do you miss the States? And the biggie: Are you going to live in France forever?

The more I pondered these questions, the more I realized that I’d never answered the biggest questions of all: my own. How did I get here? What were the chances? One in a million? A billion? In fact, the more I put the pieces of my crazy life together, the more I realize how far I’ve come—and how much I’ve had to overcome—to be who I am today: a successful restaurateur in France.

Remember, Craig, my first investor, Todd, once said to me when he saw me with dark circles under my eyes, picking French fries off the diner floor like a zombie, you’re living your dream. Tell yourself that whenever you feel like you can’t go on: ‘I’m living my dream… I’m living my dream.’

Over the course of my unconventional restaurant career, there would be many occasions for me to repeat that mantra, especially on that fateful day when, overwhelmed by the stress of doing business in France, I collapsed, unconscious, while jogging along the lovely quais of the Seine.

I was living my dream, all right. And it almost killed me.

Apéritif

The Road to the Crazy Dream

Me at age four and a half. Now used on a promotional label for BIA.

Chapter 1

THE FRENCH CONNECTION: HOW I ENDED UP IN FRANCE

Every man [should have] two countries: his own and France.

—Thomas Jefferson, paraphrasing Henri de Bornier’s La Fille de Roland

If you had met me as a kid and seen where I came from, you would have never in a million years imagined that one day I would end up living in France. I hardly could have imagined it myself. First of all, nothing about me is French. Rien, nada, zilch. I grew up in upstate Connecticut in a poor immigrant family, one side Polish, the other side Finnish. My three older siblings and I were bounced back and forth between grandparents more than a dozen times before I was nine years old.

The reason? Neither of my parents, who had been divorced for as long as I could remember, were capable of being…well, parents. My father wouldn’t let a little thing like parental responsibility get in the way of his drinking and gambling. And my bipolar mom had trouble staying in one place; every few months or so, she would be hauled off to a mental hospital by burly male orderlies. Each time it happened, no one bothered to explain to me why my mom kept leaving like that, but eventually I figured it out: it was my fault whenever I became too demanding—meaning, whenever I craved love or attention—my mom would suddenly disappear to a place called Norwich, a town two hours south of us, that had the biggest asylum in the state.

Because my grandma Mary didn’t drive, our kindly but kooky neighbor, Mrs. Martin, would sometimes take us kids down to Norwich to visit my mom. Racing down Highway 91 in her massive green ’68 Chevy Impala, Mrs. Martin, a Jehovah’s Witness, would tell us fantastical stories about how God and Satan were at war—but not to worry. One day, God will win, she’d say, and the earth will be a paradise again, just like Eden, where we’ll all be able to pet snakes and spiders—and they won’t even bite!

Eew, I’d think. Some paradise. Can I just have my mom back?

When my mom finally did come back, the family was so tired of taking care of us kids they decided it was our turn to be sent away. Again, with no explanation, we were dropped off for an entire year at a children’s home—or the more sexy Dickensian term, an orphanage. I tried to run away with my older brother, Eddie, but my little legs weren’t quick enough. Eddie did escape, but he got hungry fast and was back at the orphanage in time for his gruel.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I always felt loved as a kid—just never wanted. My grandma Lizzy, on the Finnish side of the family, was particularly loving—as long as you didn’t ask for anything or overstay your welcome. I was especially fond of her delicious scrambled eggs, the taste of which I’ve never been able to duplicate, not even at Breakfast in America.

As for my Polish grandma Mary, her favorite breakfast was fish sticks and prune juice—there’s a reason why my diner is not called Breakfast in Poland.

Oh, and here’s another reason:

Grandma Mary’s Recipe for Old World Chicken à la Polonaise

1 chicken (any size you can get your grubby hands on)

Salt (if available)

Boil water. Add chicken. Salt.

Serves a Polish family of 12.

Having emigrated from the United States to France, I often think about my grandma Lizzy, who was a first-generation American herself. She loved telling me stories about how her parents had left Finland with nothing more than big dreams of a better life. In fact, the main thing on their minds was how they were going to spend the fortune that awaited them in the New World.

Everyone in Finland used to say that the sidewalks in America were covered with silver dollars! my grandma Lizzy loved telling me. All you had to do was bend over and scoop up as many as you wanted!

I wish my grandma Lizzy were still alive today. I would give anything to hear her wonderful stories again. And just think of all the stories I could tell her. Stories about how there’s another place where dreams come true, a faraway place, across the sea, in the Old World. A magical place with castles and health care…cafés and free college…demonstrations and endless vacations. Where the sidewalks are covered with silver euros, yours for the taking. All you have to do is bend over and scoop them up—assuming you can find them buried deep beneath a pile of dog shit.

Of course, France wasn’t even on my radar back when I was a kid growing up in small-town Connecticut, and it certainly wasn’t a potential travel destination. But thanks to a twist of fate (or two), all that was about to change.

My first French memory took place in a swirl of suffocating cigarette smoke. It was Sunday morning, and my dad had just picked up my sisters and me from my grandma Mary’s place. Forced to spend quality time with his kids, my dad dragged us along with him to his favorite pub, the Rustic Bar & Grill. Divorced and digging his new lifestyle as a swinging bachelor, Fast Eddie (as the ladies called him) had just painted his rusty, old station wagon a vibrant Van Gogh blue with a bright yellow racing stripe running down the side.

As we drove through town in Fast Eddie’s slick, two-toned chick-mobile, my older twin sisters, Colleen and Cathy, slouched in the backseat, hoping none of their friends would see them. Like most teenage girls at the time, they wore their long, blond hair parted in the middle à la Ali MacGraw in Love Story, their faces locked into adolescent sneers. I sat in the front seat and could barely breathe as my dad chain-smoked his way through another pack of More cigarettes.

Up ahead, my dad spotted two of my sisters’ friends walking along the sidewalk. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Seeing how embarrassed my sisters were only brought out the devil in Fast Eddie. He slowed the station wagon down, pulling up beside my sisters’ friends. Then with a big, shit-eating grin, he started waving and honking his horn. My sisters sank down even lower in their seats, shooting death glares at my dad.

That’s when I heard le français for the very first time.

Not wanting anyone to understand what they were saying, my sisters turned to each other and began conversing in their newly acquired, seventh-grade pidgin French.

"La famille est… Colleen struggled for just the right French word. Then it hit her: Stupide!" (pronounced stoo-peed).

Cathy nodded enthusiastically. "Ah, oui! Très stupide!"

"Oui, oui! Beaucoup stupide!"

"Oui, oui! Très beaucoup stupide!"

"Oui, oui, oui! Stupide, stupide, stupide!"

As if watching a tennis match, my eyes followed my sisters back and forth. With each "oui and stoo-peed," I nodded in wholehearted agreement. Not to brag or anything, but at barely seven years old, I could totally understand what they were saying. And I hadn’t even taken a single French lesson yet. I guess you could say I had a gift for languages right from the start.

Fast Eddie, on the other hand, had no clue. Whatever you dingbats are babbling on about, he said, enough already!

The girls snickered. "Oh là là! Papa pas content!"

Non, Papa was not content at all. In fact, he was furious because he wanted my sisters to take Spanish, so they could tell him what the Puerto Rican neighbors were saying about him.

As the cacophony of "ouis drifted into the air and joined in a dance with the swirling cigarette smoke, my dad turned to me and said with a stern look, Don’t you ever take that useless language, comprende?"

After such an inauspicious start with the French language, it certainly looked like France just wasn’t going to be in my stars. But then, for some reason, events in my life began pushing me toward France again and again, as if I always belonged there—as if there were something more at work than mere coincidence. Whether one believes in destiny or not, my life certainly makes a strong argument for it.

Case in point, by the time I was nine, one by one, my restless family members got out of town—and as fast as possible. The first to leave were my sisters, who quit high school and joined the Air Force. My brother followed suit. The last to go was my mom, who eloped to Florida with her boyfriend, the charmless Monsieur Ducharme (a second-generation French Canadian). Still too young to run away, I suddenly found myself living alone with my dad in the bad part of town—the curiously named Frenchtown.

Seriously. The most formative years of my life occurred in a place called Frenchtown. Adding to the irony, not a single French person lived in Frenchtown, and no one there could tell me where the name had even come from.

Located in the shadows of a massive, abandoned carpet factory, the once-elegant neighborhood had slowly transformed into a crumbling wasteland, teeming with poverty and crime. Although it was no Harlem or East LA, Frenchtown was a tough neighborhood. Of course, one doesn’t usually associate the word French with the word tough, but Frenchtown had it all, including its very own gang. By the time I moved there, stories about badass rumbles with its crosstown rival, the Green Valley gang, had become legendary.

I tried to imagine what the rumbles between these two wimpy-sounding gangs must’ve been like. In my mind, I see the Frenchtown gang, staring at their enemies with Gallic contempt, threatening to mime them to death; on the other side, the Green Valley gang, getting ready to pelt the Frenchtown gang with cans of peas.

Most of the kids I knew back then ended up becoming druggies, high school dropouts, or deadbeat dads by the age of sixteen. But I didn’t go down that route. Why?

One reason most certainly had to do with my dad, Fast Eddie. Living with him forced me to develop strong survival and entrepreneurial skills, all of which helped set the stage for my future business endeavors. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone cheaper than my dad, but the way he taught me to marry ketchup in order to get every last drop out of the bottle definitely came in handy later on.

I also learned a strong work ethic living with Fast Eddie. But not from him, because he had none. Instead, I had to develop one on my own, quickly learning that if I wanted anything at all—including little things like food or clothing—I would have to buy it myself. Hence, at the age of twelve, I landed my very first job as a paperboy. But not satisfied with just one paper route, I had two—one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I also earned money shoveling snow in the winter and selling cans of cola in the summer—to people stuck in their cars during the long gas lines of the seventies. RC Cola, to be exact, because it had a better profit margin.

When my dad saw that I was making some money, he told me it was time for me to start paying him room and board, just like he’d done during the Depression (a lie, as I later found out). And if that weren’t character-building enough, Fast Eddie also made me work for free on his paper route; he was the guy who dropped off the newspapers for us paperboys to deliver, one of the many odd jobs he held throughout his lifetime.

Ah oui, life rolled merrily along like this, and it may have stayed like that forever—if it weren’t for a pair of pimple-faced twelve-year-olds who hated my guts.

What’s it going to be, Craig? my teacher Miss Jessup asked, starting to lose her patience.

As was often the case back then, my mind had drifted off to some faraway place. I was no longer in my sixth-grade classroom, surrounded by kids with better clothes than me—and even better social skills. I was, instead, lost in the world of my favorite book, My Side of the Mountain, which was about a boy who runs away from home and lives in a hollowed-out tree in the woods, along with his best friend, a pet falcon.

Miss Jessup cleared her throat. "Uh-hum."

I looked up from my book to see Miss Jessup standing there holding a clipboard. Craig, have you even heard a single word I’ve said?

Yes, I replied, not having heard a single word she’d said.

It turned out Miss Jessup had been going around the room asking each student which foreign language they wanted to take for their seventh-grade language requirement.

So what’s it going to be, Craig? she repeated. French or Spanish?

Here it was. My life had come to its first major fork in the road. I would no longer be just a pinball, bounced about by forces beyond my control. This time, I would actually play an active role in my own destiny. Or so I thought.

As I considered which language to take, my mind flashed back to the smoky episode with my twin sisters in my dad’s station wagon all those years ago, and in particular, to Fast Eddie’s disdain for the French language.

Spanish! I said, as if I were a game-show contestant about to win a fabulous new prize.

Okeydokey, Miss Jessup said, marking it on her clipboard.

Two of the most popular kids in class, Ann and Dan, who’d been dating since, like, the fifth grade, looked at me with disgust. Oh, nooo! they whined. "Don’t take Spanish! We’re taking Spanish!"

Ouch. I looked at Ann and Dan with Gallic contempt, then turned to Miss Jessup and said, Okay. French then.

Okeydokey. Miss Jessup turned her pencil upside down, erased the word Spanish, and replaced it with that other glorious word.

From that moment on, mon destin was set in motion.

I loved the French language right from the start, especially the way it made me think completely differently from how my family thought. It was as if a switch had been turned on inside my head, lighting up a whole new realm of possibilities. From that point on, my whole world changed.

I practiced my new language every day. On my paper route, I would count—en français—the number of times I pedaled my bike or how many steps it took me to get to the stoops of my customers’ apartments to lay the paper down. I even had imaginary conversations with people on the street.

Garçon, combien pour le journal? (Young man, how much for the newspaper?)

Quinze centimes, monsieur! (Fifteen cents, sir!)

There was one downside, however. Except for my imaginary friends, there was no one in Frenchtown I could speak French with. This concerned me because I had heard that language classes were notorious for not preparing you for the real spoken language once you’re in the actual country. When I asked my French teacher if this rumor was true, she replied, What are you talking about? Why would I ever wanna go to France?

Fortunately for me, I didn’t have that problem. Thanks to my new language, I was starting to develop a strong case of wanderlust, with dreams of getting out of my small town and seeing the world. It didn’t take long before I figured out that the only way out of ma vie misérable in Frenchtown was going to be, well…French.

By the time I was in high school, I was taking advanced-level French classes that would allow me to get free college credit at the University of Connecticut—if I opted to go there and if I got accepted. That’s when I first toyed with the idea of going to college.

My dad had trouble wrapping his brain around the concept of higher education, convinced that I would end up joining the Air Force—just like he and my siblings had before me. He’d been stationed on the tiny island of Guam. Trust me, he’d say. It’s the only way you’ll ever get to see the world.

As for my grandma Mary, when I told her about my college plans, she just laughed and said in her thick Polish accent, Bullshit college! Who’s going to drive bus?

No offense, but it wasn’t going to be me.

With my new goal in mind, I realized that if I were ever going to get into UConn, I would have to buckle down and study hard. And that’s exactly what I did, eventually getting inducted into the National Honor Society. But I felt like a misfit, because most of the other members were rich kids who would never dare step foot in Frenchtown.

Realizing it was time for me to work on my lagging social skills, I joined just about every club that existed—and even some that didn’t. Since my high school didn’t have a newspaper, I started one. It ended up winning a prestigious regional award, which gave me the confidence to run for senior-class president (after a disastrous junior year bid) and—get this—I won by a landslide.

Incroyable! If only Ann and Dan could see me now. (Actually, they could; Ann was now my vice president.)

Ironically, one of the reasons I started excelling at school was because of my dad. Living with him was the longest I’d ever stayed in one place; it gave my life much-needed stability. That is, until halfway through my senior year, when Fast Eddie sat me down in the living room and gave me some game-changing news: he was moving to Massachusetts with his blond-wigged girlfriend.

You’re gonna have to find a new place to live, Fast Eddie said as he sucked on a More cigarette.

Where? I asked in shock.

I don’t know. Why don’t you ask the Bakers?

The Bakers were a big Irish family who lived down the street and always welcomed me into their home as if I were one of their own.

You can’t be serious, I said. The Bakers?

Why the hell not? Fast Eddie said, exhaling a thick plume of smoke. They already got six boys. Probably won’t even notice a seventh.

Fortunately, my grandma Mary was kind enough let me stay with her. At nearly seventy years old and living by herself, the last thing she needed was to take care of one of her grandkids again. But I told her not to worry; I was now completely self-sufficient, which pleased her to no end.

Able to focus on school again, I received some great news: UConn had accepted me! But then, barely two weeks into my college career, I almost had to drop out. The reason: in order to get a tax deduction, my father had claimed me as a dependent living with him and his girlfriend in Massachusetts. As a result, the university switched my status to out of state, which caused the price of my tuition to skyrocket. Even with my student loans and the small journalism scholarship I’d won, there was no