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| Croque-Madame Mixte |
PAUL
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The croque-madame is an interesting case. Let’s agree, firstly, for the sake of this blog that it is, in fact, a sandwich. (This is debatable. It’s like the dish was constructed by a toddler who was given the components of a sandwich with no concept of what should go where. The result: bread, then ham, another piece of bread, cheese, topped with a fried egg.) Even so, I’m not convinced it’s a true breakfast item, or whether it happens to appear on American breakfast and brunch menus simply because it involves an egg, and in America eggs are for breakfast, period. Suddenly none of this mattered, though, when the Croque-Madame Mixte from PAUL, the most recent entry in our month-long September Sunrise Sandwich Spree, arrived at my table. First of all, it’s a damn handsome plate of food. Featuring a bright, over-easy egg served on crunchy sourdough bread with ham and melted Swiss, and alongside a pile of crunchy, lightly-dressed greens, it is undoubtedly the spree’s most elegant entry yet. (While it could feasibly be eaten by hand, I wouldn’t recommend it—more reason to question its sandwich credentials.) Secondly, PAUL, a French bakery and cafe in Georgetown, is a damn handsome space. Housed in a renovated 1880s brick building near the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street and featuring a small, sun-bathed second-floor dining room with soaring vaulted ceilings, PAUL is the kind of place you’d want to wake up in every morning. I don’t make it to Georgetown often, and when I do it’s usually to make an expensive trip to the Apple store because the dog has eaten another laptop cord. Objectively, there’s plenty to dislike about the neighborhood—lack of parking, tourists, Georgetown students, etc.—but this “sandwich,” such as it is, was nonetheless worth the trip.
Comments
i am so glad your first croque madame was a hit!