Monsieur Marcel - Korean-French Women DO Get Fat

Why must people automatically assume that if a woman happens to be Asian, she will be “thin?” Why do they have to think that all Asian women are born with a high metabolism? As if calorie-burn rates were somehow linked to the genetic make-up of the entire Mongoloid race?

Why the superficial stereotype, people, why?!?!

It’s just not true.

Not all Asian women are skinny, svelte things with glossiferously sleek ebony hair that frames a perfect, procelain complexion.

And Mongoloid is just a dirty word.

I’m Asian (only on the outside, I tell you!), and my hair is not ebony gloss. My skin isn’t like a China doll’s. I’m not “skinny.”

For God’s sake, I’m a blogger. My hair glitters with grease because I haven’t washed it in days. My skin isn’t pearlescent porcelain, it’s pasty because the only light it ever sees is not that of day, but of the tender glow on my laptop screen, and skinny? Not only am I blogger, I’m a food blogger. I may look thin-ish, seated, from desk-height up with my muscleless arms, but I have fallen victim to something called Bloggerass 2.0, which was fka EverSpread, because even B.B. (that’s “Before Blogging” for the laypeople) I had a double-wide from sitting on my marketing butt all day long.

Now I sit on my butt all day along and don’t get paid for it.

Asian people can be skinny...if they eat within the diet of their mongoloid ancestors. Korean people can be skinny...if they eat a tiny bowl of bahp (steamed rice) with kimchee, tofu, and a broiled fish for which they have to work so hard to avoid pin bones that they end up eating almost none of it.

However, no one will stay skinny if they linger over a late-afternoon lunch at Monsieur Marcel in the Farmers' Market at 3rd and Fairfax. Monsieur Marcel is a cafe. I am not educated in the strata-spheric definitions of various French restaurant types, but I am willing to risk my intelligence authority on nothing by saying that a café is more casual than, say, a bistro. Morels, inside the three-ringed by faux trolly tracks circus that is shopping chaos known as The Grove, is a bistro and serves food food that requires proletariat forks. On the other plebeian hand, Monsier Marcel is a café and requires nothing more than grubby hands that have been sifting through the racks at Anthropologie.

This Korean-French girl is getting fat, and it’s all in thanks to that big, silly cock. Monsieur Marcel is Frounsh and I am pretty damned sure that French people don't get fat because they eat fat-free plain yogurt, drink Champagne and pawn off their cheese-laden souffles, lobules of fatty liver held tenuously together with nothing more than veins, and enormous buttery croissants to stupid Korean people like me. And we don't even get "Champagne." We get "sparkling wine," kind of like the way the little kids get "sparkling cider."

We didn't do the hair-do of a souffle, nor did we come within three light years of a croissant's waist-encircling orbit - in fact, I don't recall seeing either on Monsieur Marcel's menu, laminated for sanitary security. However, a glorious hill of crisp, salted French fries exposing sultry strips of skin here and there in their tumble all over each other on the side of two sandwiches isn't exactly dry toast and a glass of Perrier, either.

The sandwiches weren't bad, but I am not a good judge. To begin, I am not fond of sandwiches. I like bread. I love all the salty, roasted, melted, delicious things inside, but for some reason I can't seem to enjoy all of those things together in one bite. I prefer pulling a sandwich apart and eating things one by one, the way I would slowly explore my way through tastes of the charcuterie with bread. I snapped up a petite pickle from his Jambon, Beurre, Cornichon, then with the precision of a brain surgeon, opened up my Sandwich au Jambon d'espagne and proceeded to dissect from it the dry, salty Serrano ham, sweet and silky roasted red peppers, and Manchego
cheese. I didn't eat the bread. You know. Carbs.

It wouldn't be a proper fattening afternoon French interlude without dessert, but Tarte Tatin, Mousse au Chocolat, and Creme Brulee on Monsieur Marcel's menu weren't tempting enough, if at all.

After that bread, the sandwiches, and every last French fry on the plate, I put myself on a liquid diet.

Monsieur Marcel
at the Farmers Market at 3rd and Fairfax
6333 West 3rd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90036
323.939.7792
www.mrmarcel.com (market)
www.breadwineandcheese.com (cafe)

Who Else Got Fat at Monsieur Marcel?
~ Yelpers give it 4.5 out of 5 stars
~ Teenage Glutster (Nov 2006)
~ Colleen Cuisine (Jun 2006)
~ Potatomato: Monsier Marcel, Hollywood Farmers' Market (Oct 2004)

** a year ago today, optimus prime made crappy coffee **

tags :: food : and drink : french : restaurants : reviews : los angeles