A lovely morning, brilliant yet cool.

We made a splendid breakfast of the peaches and nectarines bought the previous day at Domaine Fontanel in Tautavel.

We were thinking of returning to Tautavel for lunch centered on a paella for two, and we already had a reservation, but as Jean does not like shellfish it was necessary to check that the paella was free of coquillages. With this in mind, after breakfast I strolled to the village center to make a call from the public telephone there. No problem, was the response—gamba, yes, and lagoustine, calmar and soupion, but absolutely no moules. With that reassurance we set off for the Catalan-style: 

Route d’Estagel, Tautavel

We sipped a luscious, deep gold Muscat de Rivesaltes, looked about the large, bright and comfortable glass-walled dining room of which only one table was as yet occupied, and decided that it didn’t really matter that the Muscat was insufficiently chilled. Nor were we perturbed to discover that salade de tomates à l’huile d’olive was made with tomatoes of little distinction, certainly not fully ripened on the vine. Perhaps our tolerance for mediocrity was a reflection of the breezy manner of the chef, a young man who seemed to think of lunch as the occasion for a party rather than a serious exercise in gastronomy. Or perhaps a salade Catalane—anchovies of the Collioure type, served with black olives—had put us in the mood to ignore the deficiencies of the wine service and of the tomatoes.

With the main course we drank an austere Côteau de Roussillon Blanc.

Paella: The chef made a jolly ceremony out of presenting the paella—a great mound of yellow rice with red accents of peppers and crustaceans in a sloping-sided pot like a wok, and scattered over the rice enough saffron-tinged fish and meat to feed a rugby team. Notable were: thin slices of a hard and savory saucisson; supions—plump marine morsels dented on one side and sprouting a bush of tentacles; chunks of rabbit and chicken; and lagoustines and gambas that had given up some flavor to the rice but still rewarded the bother and mess of peeling.

Notwithstanding that assurance of no coquillages, there were after all a few mussels, little ones and exceedingly sweet, in shells the size of a pea pod. Jean pretended not to notice.

We reflected on the similarities of the paella to the other great regional dish of southwestern France, cassoulet. Just as in cassoulet, where the beans absorb the flavors of the sausage, the confit de canard and the mutton, so in paella the rice absorbs the essence of the chicken and fish. Both cassoulet and paella are to be lingered over. And we could see the chef’s carefree attitude was the right one. Eating paella, like eating cassoulet, is not to be taken too seriously. It is a celebration to be approached with the mind-set of the gourmand, not of the gourmet.

Crème Catalane. The caramel-glazed custard was served with a light-red sweet wine (Grenache, the waitress told us) in a glass container with a spout like a tea-kettle. The chef demonstrated how you are supposed to drink from this traditional vessel—tilt your head back, open wide, and pour. We tried this a few times with such discouraging results that we had to give up and ask for glasses. Looking about, we noticed no one else seemed to be having any trouble. At one large table they were pouring away merrily and getting a lot of laughs out of the occasional mishap.

The custard seemed too thin. But after we followed the waitress’ advice to mix in some Grenache, the consistency didn’t matter any more.

We lingered to share notes with the couple who were the sole occupants of the dining room when we arrived. Contrary to our first impression from their lean physiques, the pair were evidently trenchermen of some capacity, for they had subsequently worked their way through a hefty grillade Catalane. The found the rougets--red mullet--quite good, they told us. But the snails, though attractively presented with aïoli stuffed into the shells, turned out to be only so-so. We made suitable sounds of commiseration.

The total at le Petit Gris was F294.

***

In the evening we gravitated to Crêperie le Roche. Luisette’s husband was there, a young man of the sturdy and slightly stooped physique that comes from years of heavy work in the vineyard. Mr Solà brought out a bottle of cidre doux for us and another for him to share with an energetic middle-aged woman—his mother, we realized—who had just arrived and immediately busied herself picking up debris from the little patch of gravel and dusting the tables and chairs.

Later on we had a chat with the elder Mme Solà. She told us that she took care of the Youth Hostel in the village, a job she enjoyed because it gave her a glimpse of life in many different countries around the world. But she herself had never thought of leaving Padern. She had everything she wanted—friends, family, a productive garden patch on the river bank. "Padern is my paradise,"she declared.

We recalled our first impression of the village, the people seated on the wall under the plane trees. Everybody in Padern seemed happy. We asked, why was that?

Madame Solà had a ready answer—the absence of prosperity. Prosperity leads to acquisitiveness, envy etc. We in Padern are happy, she concluded, because "prosperity has passed us by."

We reflected that we were enjoying our stay in Padern despite the inconveniences of a pokey apartment with crumbling walls and a patio paved with cracked concrete. These drawbacks didn’t bother us a bit, perhaps because the place next door was just as humble. For the time being, Padern was our paradise as well.