In which I scream for grown-up joe.

This may be the most pathetically inadequate set of photos ever, which is a real pity, as Arles is a sweet, very walkable, very old city. Yes, it can be quite touristy too, but with a bit of effort, you can escape the near-ubiquitous van Gogh postcards and kitschy bull-fighting paraphenalia. But back to the inadequacy of this photo sampling: after about, oh, the fifth shot (and twenty minutes into my visit), I ran out of camera juice. This may not seem earth-shattering--alright it isn't--but I was astonished. Crushed. An hour or so from home, and I didn't even have the foggiest notion of where the spare battery might possibly be. I thought of you, fervently, because it was a beautiful day, and I was in a beautiful, ancient space.
And I. Couldn't. Take. Photos. I did masochistically, compulsively take note of all the photos I would have taken (just so you realize, there were some real prizewinners)...until finally I shook myself out of it and got myself something to eat.

Arles has a lot of restaurants; you can easily lose count. Unfortunately, most appear rather mediocre at best. When you're only there for the day, you don't want to spoil your visit with poor camera planning AND a bad meal. I wandered in circles until I decided upon something charmingly off-kilter: a tiny restaurant that serves Provençal and Japanese food, in the form of salads, sandwiches and sushi. (Have you culinary purists lost all respect for me yet?)

But wait--one of the owners is actually, truly Japanese. And I didn't have any sushi anyway; in fact, we all chose sandwiches. By God, if these weren't the finest sandwiches I've had in a very long time. Simple as all get out, but with the perfect baguette (i.e. ideal ratio of crispy crust to soft, non-doughy interior) and well-chosen, high quality fillings. The baguettes were topped with finely chopped tomatoes sprinkled with fresh-ground cardamom and pepper and a judicious lashing of superb local olive oil (which the shop also sells). Never before has lunch at a randomly chosen restaurant been this degree of satisfying. We argued loudly over whose sandwich was the best. Run, don't walk: go pick your own favorite at Fadoli et Fadola, 46, rue des Arènes.
One of the Roman amphitheaters, nearly 2,000 years old and in beautiful condition, is now used for bull-fighting. The image above is just inside the main entrance. If stones could speak...

In fact, many of them do, with intriguing, scratched-in tags. En bref, Arles a un charme fou (basically, Arles has a crazy amount of charm), not least for the history buff, with its seemingly endless pile of gorgeous old buildings. For those of us overheated and recovering from our own small follies, however, there is this to come home to. Luscious, almost slushy, darkly, deeply caffeinated, with the slightest grownup edge of bitterness and a pronounced liqueur accent that elevate it beyond a regular sorbet and make this concoction damn near irresistible. Not to be shared with munchkins--especially when they beg.

Café hyper-glacé pour les grands (Frozen Coffee for Proper Adults)

Number of servings varies widely.

1 ½ cups fresh-brewed strong coffee, chilled
1 cup coffee liqueur, such as Kahluá
¾ cup condensed milk
¼ cup milk
½ teaspoon vanilla

Combine all the ingredients, pour into your ice cream maker and churn. That’s it.

Cà phê sữa đá--with a French accent.

I adore the smell of a good cup (or bowl) of coffee, and there is enough of that penetrating aroma wafting around the 72,000+ cafés here in France. I am not alone in my passion; it is said that coffee is the second most consumed beverage in the world, after water.

In France, the first ever coffee shop was opened in Marseille in 1671. The following year, an Armenian opened Paris' own first coffee shop. As the scale of French colonial production increased, the prices dropped, and so by the 1750s, the elite, fashionable coffee had overtaken soup as the morning meal of choice. The addiction had spread to the masses.

French coffee tends to be more potent, without being burned like at some international coffee chains...ahem. Due to bean choice, it is considered a touch less fragrant than the Italian brew, considered peerless by so many in the know. The French, unlike the Italians, have historically used robusta or robusta blends, and the robusta bean is far stronger (to the point of a certain bitterness); in the past, they have been known to add chicory. The French also borrowed from the Middle Eastern tradition of rather heavily roasting beans. Therein lies some of the distinctiveness of the French coffee tradition. Not all the tradition is without shadow, as the roaring demand for coffee in France and the rest of Europe was long met by slave labor in faraway, tropical countries. Today, in France as well as in other Western European countries and the United States, quality fair-trade coffee is available, helping to mitigate market fluctuation and speculation in often poor coffee-producing countries, where the work of coffee cultivation continues to be uncertain.

Beyond the satiating traditional bowl of hot milk-laced café au lait (which, in the province, is often conflated with a café crème, which should technically contain hot cream), my all-around favorite way to enjoy coffee in France is the noisette, which is an expresse with a rich touch of cream. It is a nut-brown ambrosia, in a very small cup. Parenthetically, the French expresse is not really the same as a proper Italian expresso: the first, while strong, is made with more water.

The robusta bean was brought to Vietnam by the French in the 1800s and is still cultivated there today, along with arabica and others types of beans. Most fortunately for food-lovers everywhere, the Vietnamese have a culinary gift for elevating simple ingredients to unexpected heights. They did so once again with the humble robusta: they made the Cà phê sữa đá, or iced coffee. The word is pronounced 'ca-fé sue-ah-dah', roughly speaking, and is the drink to linger over with friends on an unseasonably hot Indian summer afternoon.

As you might make out in the photo below, taken in Vietnam last year after a particularly satisfying lunch, the Vietnamese use handy individual metal filters that are placed directly on top of the glass in which the iced coffee will be served. These filters are found at your local Asian/Vietnamese grocery for less than 2 euros, or online. They are essentially French presses in concept, requiring a medium-coarse grind and no paper filter.

A generous couple tablespoons of sweetened condensed milk are dolloped over the ice in the glass, and the filter, filled with coffee and boiling water, is placed over the glass. A couple minutes later, and voilà! You have a decadent drink that doubles as dessert. Of course, using aforementioned ice cubes and condensed milk, you can also make your own tasty iced coffee using a double shot of expresso rather than the traditional filtered coffee...

If you just don't want to make your own and you are lucky enough to find yourself in Paris--if not, say, Hanoi--then you have a plethora of restaurant choices at which to enjoy an iced coffee of your own. Please note that Vietnamese cuisine goes far beyond fast-food style fare. Of the many Vietnamese who immigrated to Paris, some have opened some very good restaurants, ranging from refined/upscale to downhome and delicious. Even Catherine Deneuve has her favorite haunt. (Photo courtesy of filmkrant.nl). I'll be hanging out at some of these restaurants myself in a couple of weeks, a perspiring glass of iced coffee in hand...