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intervening twelve years have led many friends and colleagues to seek the travel advice of the Chamarets. “You have no idea how many people ask my husband and me for advice on what to do when they’re going to France,” Chamaret told me. “I assume that they have read a guidebook or two, and I tell them what my three favorite museums are—the Musée d’Orsay, the Centre Georges Pompidou, and the Orangerie. A lot of people don’t know that at the Pompidou there’s a restaurant with a beautiful terrace on top that has one of the most lovely views of Paris you’ve ever seen—the food’s not great but it’s a great place to go for a drink after you’ve seen the fabulous collection.” But she adds, “No one realizes how much work goes into requests like these, because you have to consider what people hope to get out of their trip, you have to think of what things to recommend for first-time visitors versus those who’re visiting again, you have to know how familiar they are with the language and culture, and you have to create an itinerary—it’s time-consuming and it’s work, which is why the services of a good travel consultant are so valuable!”

LAURA CHAMARET, who is not a writer by profession, won first prize for this piece in a 2006 Food & Wine essay contest entitled Tell Us About Your Most Memorable Thanksgiving. She kindly edited her essay slightly for this book. Her husband, former chef de cuisine at Manhattan’s legendary La Goulue and pastry chef at Orsay, is co-owner, with Adrien Angelvy, of the new restaurant Le Comptoir (251 Grand Street / 718 486 3300 / lecomptoirny.com) in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.

MY FATHER’S BIRTHDAY always fell near or on Thanksgiving. So while I was growing up, it was considered an important holiday for our family. It was a time that, no matter where my parents or siblings were on the globe, we would reunite at one table and break bread. It was an enjoyable time that gave me a fleeting notion of stability that I longed for.

At the end of my twenties, I still had a globe-trotting lifestyle and in 2002, I moved to Paris with Sébastien, my French boyfriend—now husband. He became a chef at an early age and was the executive chef at Perry Bistro (since closed) in New York City when we met in 1999. We moved to the City of Light so I could learn to speak French fluently. His parents were milk farmers in the countryside and didn’t speak a word of English. If this relationship was going to continue, it was high time I could have a conversation with them. When we made the leap, we didn’t have much money, so we found a one-bedroom apartment in a seventh-floor walk-up. We didn’t care because it had a terrace, and who needs an elevator when you have a terrace to dine on and a view of the rooftops of Paris? It was in the nineteenth arrondissement, in the northeast section of the city by the mystical Canal Saint-Martin.

We made fast friends with people Sébastien knew through the New York restaurant scene. Our friend’s brother Louis didn’t live far from our quartier, and his girlfriend, Virginie, became my best friend. Our network grew and when autumn came I missed the simple yet crucial event of carving a turkey with family—and with my father now gone, my childhood tradition had become a memory. But these people over time had become my family—a strong support so far from home. When I told Virginie how much I longed for Thanksgiving, she was fascinated, and she wanted to know what this holiday was all about. Many Parisians had heard of it and wondered about it, she told me. We should plan our “French Thanksgiving,” she said, and as she’s gregarious, she told all our friends. What began as a dinner for eight turned into a banquet for twenty-eight like wildfire. Some of our friends weren’t French but were, like me, expatriates from other parts of the world who were attracted to Paris and all it had to offer. They, too, had wondered about this Thanksgiving phenomenon.

A week before Thanksgiving, Sébastien informed me we needed to order the turkey from the butcher now. I thought this was absurd. Surely