Last week I had the good fortune to find myself in Paris, and the even better fortune to stumble upon the Bedford Ave. Brooklyn Diner, in Paris. I had just made a fairly long trek from my hotel to Marie Cantin, a for-serious cheese shop, and successfully bought all the raw milk goat cheese in the world. Just next door, I noticed this place. My husband Tom, who spent many years working at Diner and Marlow and Sons, and I picked our jaws up off the Parisian sidewalk and went to check out the menu.
That’s right, the Chuck Norris burger. There was a framed poster of Mr. Norris inside as well. We didn’t end up eating at Diner Paris, since we weren’t hungry when we encountered it and were toting like five pounds of cheese, and it was too far away from where we were staying to go back. I did however, ask Andrew Tarlow, the owner of our very own Diner on Broadway and Berry, actually in Brooklyn, if he was aware of the Parisian sister restaurant.
“I had never heard of it until I saw your instagram photo,” Tarlow wrote me back in an email. “I wonder if the owners in Paris even know we exist. Parisians can be like that sometimes.”
And what of the menu? “We should run the Chuck Norris burger,” Tarlow wrote.
“I probably would need Tom to help me conceive of what that should be.”
Mon amies, I neglected to tell you that I opened a diner in Paris. Bon chance. Marc firth.