Читать книгу One More Croissant for the Road онлайн

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I feel a great weight lift from my shoulders; the asparagus it is. Relieved, I sit back and indulge in a bit of people watching. There’s a party of pensioners, arguing over who’s going to order what, and a couple next to me signing at each other, which is annoying, because I can’t earwig on their conversation. Opposite is a lone man who looks like he’s on his lunchbreak. I smile tentatively, and then remember I’m covered in mud and oil, and go and discreetly try to mop some from my legs in the loo.

To be honest, he doesn’t look much more impressed on my return, but I don’t care because Madame has brought my crêpe, whose dark golden colour reveals the principal ingredient to be buckwheat. It’s a particularly fine-looking example, a neat triangle, with leggy stalks of asparagus snaking out from underneath a blanket of crisply fried coppa on a mattress of melted Parmesan. There’s even a proper salad, with batons of candy beetroot and discs of purple radish, rather than the usual limp green leaves. God, it’s good – the crêpe itself the best I’ve ever tasted, crisp on both sides, but soft within, its earthy flavour gilded with generous amounts of butter. I think I’d love it even without all the bells and whistles on top, delicious as they are.