A number of comments about restaurant reviews have set me to thinking about some issues which are more or less connected. Interaction between critics and those in the food business is an interesting one. They need one another. But it can be a love-hate relationship.

It’s just an ordinary neighborhood for ordinary Parisians.  The one exception on this busy street is more than a dozen stores proclaiming déstockage and entrée libre—everyone’s welcome—even me.  In I go, passing under the name of an Italian designer, because amazingly I can’t quite make out the price on the label hanging off a scarf I like draped around a mannequin’s neck in the window.  About two steps in from the door I see a man coming toward me.  He is bulky, fair-haired, and blind with rage or something I do not know about and don’t want to.

A meeting of France’s notaries held recently in Paris was so full that many had to attend via video hook-up in the Geode. This was no ordinary convention. The president of the association rallied the troops against the onslaught by its #1 rivals: lawyers. Justice Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie spoke, saying lawyers would have limited authority. An idea was floated that notaires be allowed to open their capital to banks. Is this just an internal fight involving an obscure profession?

Some of our happiest moments in winter have been spent in our little kitchen in France. Our old stone house in an unassuming Charentais town, five hours south of Paris, is on an ancient street so small that it's officially called a ruelle. For 13 years, it has served as an off-season base for travel and a joy in our lives.

Within ten seconds the man is calling, “Pardon, monsieur, attendez, s’il vous plaît.” He trots up to me and says directions might be good after all, please. A Parisian asking a foreigner for directions in Paris? If the sky had opened and rained down frogs, I would not have been more surprised. They are both French and, I’m pretty sure by their accents, locals to boot. The idea of accepting directions from someone who is not Parisian and possibly a foreigner is an unnatural act, surely not God’s will.

Now, for years I’ve been furious, agitated, en colère about people reserving or not at Parisian restaurants. I’ve been convinced that one should always, always reserve. Why?

Everyone knows that through the centuries writers have been drawn to Paris as surely as bees to blossoms. But why Paris? What is the appeal, beyond the obvious? Here’s what a handful of Anglophone writers have had to say on the subject.

Why do I feel a kinship with the French so powerful that my ears stand up like pointy little bat ears when I hear French being uttered here in Chicago? Why do I jump on a bus to try a new restaurant over four miles from my apartment on a frigid winter day just because a transplanted Parisian opened it?

Not carrying a phone in my pocket is part of being in Paris for me, away, time off. If you want to reach me, there’s a phone in the apartment or you can send me an e-mail. I bring my laptop—I’m never that away, that off—but it’s about as portable as you would be if someone stuck a handle on your head. And anyway, I don’t like carrying things, which may explain why I’m never quite prepared to write down lists or offer a spare hanky or call for help.