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One of the mainstays of any restaurant menu in Paris these days is le café gourmand, a sort of feel-good dessert replacement (basically an espresso accompanied by 4-5 little samples of cakes and desserts), which normally sells for between 6 to 8 Euros.

As Olivier explains on his excellent blog, there are all sorts of obscure Parisian rules regulating when you’re allowed to order a café gourmand. But basically it’s what you order when you want dessert but don’t want to be seen by your dining companions having a dessert. It’s still just as fattening, but strangely un café gourmand is thought of as coffee, not dessert, so this makes it socially acceptable to diet-conscious Parisians.

You can now find the café gourmand in many places in France, but this particular symbol of Parisian civilisation doesn’t seem to have spread to Belgium yet. But this may be about to change…

We were in Brussels today for a business meeting, and we went out for a rather nice lunch at Le Quai (a restaurant in a converted railway station in the southern suburbs).  When it came to time to order dessert, one of our companions absently asked for “Un café gourmand, s’il vous plaît“.  The waitress stared back and asked quizzicly “C’est quoi un café gourmand?“

Having explained to the waitress what was involved, the chef agreed to make us all café gourmands. I had to immortalise the moment – just in case this turns out to be the moment that the café gourmand crosses the border into Belgium. Here’s the photo:

So if you’re in Brussels later this year, and see café gourmand on the menu… well, I’d like to think that me and my colleagues can take some of the credit.

J’ai découvert cette version de Ne Me Quitte Pas à la sauce cubaine il y a quelques semaines, pendant une soirée chez un camarade de classe. C’est vachement bien fait je trouve, et l’accent colombien de Yuri Buenaventura sonne beaucoup mieux à mes oreilles que les gémissements rosbifs de Sting (dont je vous épargne ici, mais qui se trouve sur YouTube si vous vous insistez.)

Ne Me Quitte Pas, sans doute l’oeuvre le plus connu de Jacques Brel, se trouve parmi les rares chansons françaises* qui ont su s’implanter dans l’esprit anglo-saxon (à côté de Je t’aime (moi non plus) de Gainsbourg et Je ne regrette rien de Piaf).

NMQP a été réinterprétée à plusieurs repris, notamment par Nina Simone. Par contre la performance originale de Brel s’appuyait beaucoup sur son goût théatral. Voici une version qui a passé à la télé dans les années 60 (avec les sout-tîtres en anglais):

*Ouias ouias je sais Brel, c’est un Belge comme Tintin.
**Yes yes, I know I wrote this in French. There’s a first time for everything.