The Hazards of Eating Croissants

Why is it so hard to eat a croissant without causing extreme devastation? I walk away from my little round table, set under the awning of a Brasserie, and I see between the wicker weave of my chair and scattered around the chair, on the table and under the table, a thousand flakes of buttery croissant! It looks like I’ve carved a life-size eiffel tower and these are my wood shavings! I’m completely embarrassed but I simply do not know how not to flake everywhere! And yet I love these croissants. The bits that you actually manage to get in your mouth are soft and buttery. They plump your cheeks, gloss your lips and dissolve on your tongue. They are the taste of France and of butter and of lingering over breakfast.

But these crescents of beauty are laced with evil and their layers get stuck to your fingers and flake onto your trousers and, in trying to brush those flakes off your trousers, all that happens is the flaky bits that were on your fingers are now also added to your trousers and so they are double the flaky, buttery mess! And one napkin just isn’t enough. You end up in a cycle of wiping your hands on the napkin and then from the napkin back onto your hands and then down your trousers and your fingers are now so greasy that you can’t get a purchase on the bathroom door to go and wash them! And when you leave a tip for the waitress, on the little plastic tray, it includes twelve generous croissant flakes. I imagine those flakes ending up in the cash register amongst the five cent pieces and eventually back onto the fingers of the waitress and then onto her trousers. But no, she obviously has some kind of croissant flake repelling secret because her trousers look perfect. They are black and smooth, like they’ve never seen a croissant in their life.  

I need to rise above this. There must be a method for mastering these moon-shaped monsters. To cut or not to cut? That is the first question. To rip or not rip? Jam or no jam? Well, the waitress this morning doesn’t give me a knife, so I deduce that ‘to rip’ is the way, and I think the general rule for jam is: Jam for a stale croissant - No jam for a fresh one.  And definitely no butter at any stage.  I try the dunking-in-coffee method but that transforms the contents of my coffee cup to resemble the stagnant-with-floaties edges of the river Seine. 

The waitress, politely ignoring my flaky mess, (like one does for a friend with dandruff) asks me where I come from. I would love to answer her coherently, but at that moment I have a flake of croissant stuck to the roof of my mouth, just behind my front teeth, so I respond “Authstralia” in my best Ita Buttrose voice. Clearly sympathetic to the many hazards of foreigners eating croissants, she leaves it at that.  

All those damn crumbs attract the sparrows and pigeons and albatrosses or whatever bloody birds are hovering around for a free brunch. So by the time you try to flick the flock out of there, you end up with croissant and bird poo and feathers all over you and on the table, in your coffee and in a general five metre radius (I think I see a flake in the ear of the person at the next table). Exasperated I shove the last piece of croissant in my mouth and lean my elbows on the table. I’m defeated...and now I have croissant on my elbows!

But no, I’m determined to master the art of croissant quaffing. I will persevere despite the perils of pastry and I will return tomorrow to practice. 

And then a gift from the heavens is sent to me (no, not more albatross poo). Two tables down, there is a woman eating a croissant with style and grace and no flakes. No flakes! Her trousers are as black and smooth as the waitress’s and she has one unused napkin. This woman knows something. She must be a local (or she may just be a foreign expert or someone with absolute croissant confidence). She isn’t using the cutting or the ripping or the dipping method. She is holding her buttery beast firmly, like it is a tip-top, robust, no-chance-of-a-flake vegemite sandwich, and she is opening her mouth as wide as the entrance to Abbesses Metro Station and she is taking large, no nonsense bites. The whole croissant is gone in four chomps. 

I will return tomorrow. I know exactly what to do. (But I won’t wear trousers...just in case)