Festivaling in French: A Street Fair with Flair

Story by Ryan Fitzgerald / Video by Scott Flowers
Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009

Bastille Day was on July 14th, which is the day Parisians stormed the Bastille prison in defiance of a certain French king. Bastille Day is Frances kind-of-sort-of Independence Day. It isn't much of a to-do in America; we don't celebrate it like we do Cinco De Mayo, Mexico's kind-of-sort-of Independence Day. Partying for Cinco De Mayo is nothing short of mandatory; we celebrate it every year. Why, then, don't we get up for Bastille Day? The people at the Audubon Park Garden District and the French American Business Council of Orlando are trying to change that. This past weekend they threw a belated Bastille Day party in the form of a street festival. A street festival--how very French.

I arrive at event headquarters on the corner of Winter Park Road and Corrine at around 6:30, I get a ticket, which also doubles as a map of the vendors, I'm handed an empty wine glass for sampling, and I'm sent off. This is my first time festivaling in "French." First stop: a table outside an Italian restaurant. I'm pretty sure the French and Italian want little to do with each other when it comes cookery. Italian food is the cooking of grandmothers--it's rustic and wonderfully sloppy. The French are a bit more rigid--they are actually a lot more rigid. French cooking is a privileged set of techniques that masters wearing very tall white hats follow unflinchingly. This first table isn't even Italian. It's definitely not French. It's a guy with a Belgian waffle maker. Yup, I'm at a French street festival, directly outside a participating Italian ristorante, being served a Belgian waffle: je ne sais quoi! They so easily could have poured the batter onto a flat griddle and called it a crepe. But they didn't. Moving on. It's clear that the event coordinators are taking liberties with the theme.

A note on logistics: Cartographically speaking, I'm a bit frustrated, because the map I've been given is lacking any recognizable detail: shops are represented as numbers, some of which overlap. I'd just assume toss the map away and explore the uncharted but I'm forced to present this geographically vexing document to every booth, wine stand, and cheese cart I venture to. Bummer. You want a niblet-sized bit of Belgian waffle: you've got to present your map.

The first sign of anything recognizably French comes at the next stop, a table serving quiche. And I guess since we are at a French festival we must call this egg dish a quiche but it obviously has been flipped, which would more accurately make it an omelet: the omelet is flipped, the quiche is started in a pan and finished, unflipped, in the oven. Next is a wine stand pouring French wine and champagne. I choose the champagne. It's a bit warm, but it has bubbles so I'm happy. The weather is dreary and a showery mist seems to just hang overtop.

The bulk of the event is hosted in/outside of the local stores down the shopping strip that runs perpendicular to Winter Park Road. Shops that have zero to do with France are not only sponsors but are on the list of stops. Orlando Outfitters, for example, is an outdoors clothing and tackle store that has a table set up with a wheel of Brie. Brie is certainly French. It is usually upwards of seventy percent fat, a percentage that makes Brie a churn away from butter. Like butter, Brie melts. I lost count of how many melted wheels of grocery store Brie I passed up on. In the Frame Masters Gallery, a picture frame store, I'm served New York-style cheesecake, which I munch on while the owner talks to some non-festivalers about their framing needs.

I did try some fabulous chocolate creations. Inside of Bikes, Beans & Bordeaux I was served a chocolate mousse that was creamy, rich, and obviously homemade. I also sampled a chocolate truffle. I tried a dark chocolate truffle coated in chopped potato chips. "It's all about the sweet and the salty," says the chocolatier from ChocolateProvacateur.net.

At Park Ave CDs I try a Belzebuth Blonde Ale, a French beer with 15% alcohol making it potently on par, ounceage-wise, with a glass of wine, which is what is being given out as sample size.

This event was thought up by Kat Quast, one of the movers and shakers at the Audobon Park Garden District. "The next event is Zombietoberfest," she says. "We are getting [Rogue] Dead Guy Ale to be a sponsor; it should be fun." Zombietoberfest is being held "in the brains of the garden district" on Friday September 25 from 6:30 to 10 p.m.

Ms. Quast called upon Patrick Kahn for some French cred. Mr. Kahn is a sharply dressed authentic Frenchman; I'm pretty sure the only one of his kind here. He is wearing dark fitted jeans and a tailored white shirt accented with dark buttons that pop in contrast. He has a shaved head and a French accent. Born in Paris, Patrick moved to LA and now resides in Florida. He is determined to bring a bit of French panache to Orlando. "I hand-picked the music for the festival myself, all French classics...the movies being shown are all French classics, the wine is all French."

Kahn tells me to visit the French kissing booth: "a gorgeous girl taps in the window, she blows you a kiss." The booth was unmanned, regrettably, when I visited. Kahn is a charmer. He waxes nostalgically with me over his time growing up in Paris. He is excited to bring some French culture to Orlando, which, in his mind, would clearly be an upgrade. Kahn says he favors Bordeaux over Burgundy when it comes to wines. Then he pauses, leans in, and speaks right into my ear, "but I've also been enjoying drinking wines from California too" says Kahn with a bit of a twinkle. "Follow me," he says. "I want you to see something." He takes me inside Stardust Video & Coffee to show me a movie. "This is White Mane [Crin Blanc in French]--this is a classic; I watched this as a boy growing up in Paris."

And though I can't understand a word of what is being said in the film, the way Patrick stares at the screen with droopy eyes, I'd have to imagine it is rather quite beautiful.

The last stop is an art show inside the Bold Hype Gallery. The show is called "Deep Blue," an installation by Doug Rhodehamel that features spooky deep-sea fish in a sort of open-air aquaria. Inside the gallery is a dark room. In that hazy phase where eyes adjust to the extreme darkness, ocular steering is shut down and outstretched hands temporarily do the navigation. Patrons are turned into people-sized Roombas, bouncing like bumper cars off walls and objects in redirection. I get a handful of face from a fellow disorient. Several moments later the blindness wears off and I can see the schools of floating-like menacing fish. The fish, of course, are not floating, best guess: they are hanging from wire, if the artist has any sense of irony they'd be strung up on fishing line. It's noticeable that most of the fish are positioned at the eye level of an average adult human. The fish watch with green eyes that are real close together giving that I'm-looking-right-at-you kind of feeling. The room is filled with soft rhythmic music that gives the affect of the bloop-bloopings of breathing fish. There are large goose fish, medium Melanocetus johnsonii fish, littler Anomalops kaptoptron, and even littler guppies which are inter-dangled amongst plankton.

What dangling fish have to do with France beats me, but I guess that misses the point. To be at a French street festival is to be surrounded by great food, wine, music, and art. To festival in French is to adopt the calm pace of the 30-hour work week, the long lunches, the leisurely stroll along a street lined with tents and carts, as you sip on wine, and slowly become wobbly on a dreary evening.