On the Yahara A-Z

X.

X-marks the spot for authentic French food at La Kitchenette, Willy Street.  What an experience it is to travel no more than a mile and a half to a little French joint that cooks and speaks French. So much

so that the waitress, wonderfully, doesn't hardly speak a word of English. You point at the menu item and try as best you can form the proper syllables for the Croque Madame, for example, Bagnat or Forestiere.  Inside this very small one-room 12 table cafe is a back wall coated by chalkboard paint where the daily menu and hand drawn pictures of various provinces of France are written, so that if the menu is too small to point to, a simple finger in that direction will do.

Dangling lights above are made of rope and hold two old fashioned orange-line lights, bringing to each table a taste of the Mediterranean.  For lunch, a steaming hot bowl of French Onion soup makes for a perfectly warming introduction. As you scoop through the thick crust of cheese to get to the smooth onions, you can hear that the two tables surrounding you are speaking in French, or trying to, as this might be a place where the dabblers in the language might feel comfortable stretching their vocabulary for a captive audience.  The Croque Madame is a true French staple of a sandwich.  The sandwich, being born in Paris as a way for outside vendors to feed workers during shifts in Paris, is

another great foray into the culture without actually being there. The Madame, unlike the famous Monsieur, is ham, mustard, Béchamel sauce, swiss cheese and finally draped by a perfectly sunny side up egg, round and bright white.  This is a sandwich to eat with a knife and fork. Picking it up might mean tipping the egg or it might mean having to bite a three to four inch side wall hard to get

around.  Even though French bistro culture is often thought of as somewhat slow in service and sometimes to complicated by delicate sauces, these little lunches at La Kitchenette were prompt, hot, and simply perfect.