152: Paris Dining today with Carina Soto Velasquez and Nora Bouazzouni

You're listening to The New Paris. I'm your host, Renzi Trimuda. In continuing the conversation around the city's culinary scene, the episode you'll hear today comes directly from a panel discussion I was part of at the American Librarian Paris with two very powerful voices and food that I'm proud to know. I was joined by Karina Soto-Valazquez, the co-founder and owner of Quixotic Projects, which runs Candelaria Lumaïsorest and Adaron Essence, and Nora Bozzouni, a French journalist and author who reports on ethical issues in the industry. We go through the changes in the food scene, some of the ongoing challenges for women, and how violence injures in the kitchen across the country. A big thank you to the American Library for allowing me to use the audio and to Rachel's an audio for her thoughtful moderation. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the American Library in Paris. I'm Rachel de Nadio. I'm the curator of cultural programs here and it is a great pleasure to be here this evening with this all-star panel to talk about Paris's culinary scene, city where tradition and innovation meet, where there are some upsides and some downsides. We have a lot of ground to cover. I'm delighted to be joined by these panelists, writer and journalist Lindsay Trimuda, restauranteur and entrepreneur Karina Soto Velasquez and journalist and author Nora Bozzouni. Together, they will discuss the evolution of Paris dining. I want to just ask a little bit Lindsay, first of all, you've been writing about the Paris dining scene and you've written the eater guide to Paris. You have a great global view of what's happening in this global and French city. Where are we in the Paris dining scene? What do you think characterizes it now? What sets it apart? What are the trends? I mean, do you have just kind of a general take on how you would define things at this moment? I do. I mean, back with my first book, The New Paris, I was trying to put the pieces together on how this city was coming into its own as a global city because for a long time, Paris was sort of held to these expectations of being this French-focused place just for tourists. Sort of a playground for visitors and was coming into its own in terms of influences, in terms of formats, realizing that things needed to change, that maybe they had rested on their laurels for a long time. And now I would say we've gone completely, fully into this embrace of foreign flavors, foreign cuisines, chefs who are born, sort of second generation, chefs, foreigners who want to come and set up shop here. There's a welcome audience for this. As long as there's talent and a really strong idea and vision behind it, saying this though, this collides with what we were talking about behind the scenes earlier about concepts and all of these sort of fleeting, very trend-driven, maybe even social media-driven business ideas that don't really have the staying power and are kind of proliferating. So when you look around Paris today, you see a lot of these really beautiful, really smart and thoughtfully put together restaurants, but you also see a lot of these sort of soulless, purely concept-driven establishments that you wonder how they'll ever pay the bills. But for the moment, some of them are. So I think there's, in Paris, there's always been moments of transition and there are turning points where all of the lower quality concepts and projects will vanish, because they just won't be able to sustain, but I think there's something deeper here. And I think that was what we were talking about earlier, which I would, you know, I feel like you need to say what you told us earlier, because it was really smart about why these things are happening in terms of the consumer desire. Well, I mean, there's a lot for me to say in a way, because there's a division in time. When I arrived here, I was 19 and I was working in restaurants and looking for jobs in the city. And they population. It's, I was very different. There was not many concepts really as places or there was no disposable places like I called them. It was really more established venues. A more classic. People will not speak English to you. A very different culture of places. Having a restaurant had a way of functioning, just one way, not multiple. And when I worked in those play, I worked in different style of places. So from like my first job was La Tour d'Argent, please. I mean, I have a lot to say about that. But yeah, that was for like the most strange reason, right? And I ended up working also in dive bars and in late night bars, rock bars, etc. So I worked in a very different style of places. But the way of running was very similar. Today, what has changed is obviously the operators and the way of running places and the culture of social media has changed everything. So how people perceive a restaurant or a bar, they look first online. And if they connect with it online, they go and see it. And they can queue for hours for a product. And they actually don't, don't have any more the perception if it's good, if it's not good, if it's homemade, if it's, you know, you can be serving anything at this point as soon as it looks good on social media. And that is something recent that didn't existed back in my time. And that's very much about the image of places and how they present themselves. Nor are the work that you've done has really been also just about some of the darker things that happened behind the scenes and restaurants. But if you had to look also at Paris today in the dining scene today, in terms of some of the behind the scenes dynamics, where do you, where do you place things? And do you, and if you want to respond also to what the others have said, I'm going to be the party pooper tonight. As I you say it, right? Party crowd party pooper. It's interesting because you said so many things changed and social media changed the whole thing, the whole industry. But what hasn't changed is how people are treated behind the scenes, behind the counters within the kitchen, eat the kitchen, where you can't see them. And I've been told since my books, since May, that I was exaggerating. Maybe I was making things up like, you know, those some testimonies I was supposed to be lies. So I've been accused of fabricating them because people, and it goes for people within the industry and just eaters like you and I. People don't want to acknowledge that. Because going to the restaurant is magic. It's kind of magic, you know, it's it's it's just like the movies in French. We said, "La magie du cinéma." Because it looks like there's no effort, no work put behind it. He just sits in the room with many people who can afford to be seated there and just enjoy in your cry and your laugh, etc. Same goes the restaurant. Someone serves you something on a plate. You do not see the labor behind that. So you don't see how it was made. Who made it? You say that you eat at. You even don't say the name, you say the name of the chef, who sometimes often, the more famous he is or she is. The less he or she is present in the kitchen. So the same, you know, on the red carpet, you say, "Oh, what are you wearing?" And you can be wearing if Saint Laurent, he's dead, as you all know. But you will say, "I'm eating alain du cas. I had alain du cas. I had a pasar. I had. He did not make any of it." That's what you say. So it evolved because I think there's still so many people that do not want to be told the truth. They do not want to acknowledge the labor. They do not want to know that what they're eating has been made with tears, blood, sweat, exploitation, and dehumanization. Told you body pooper here. As long as we're on this point, why don't you tell us a little bit about your new book and about what some of these main mistreatments are? What are some of the most grotesque examples that you came across? And we'll go deep behind the scenes and then we'll come back to some of the sparkles. It's appalling. So I've been walking on that subject since pretty much my first book eight years ago, because it might first book, I told about the story of a woman who was interviewed on French TV, on France 2, an investigation show, a compliment on Get. And she was telling everything she went through. All the violence, violence says she went through. And she was telling that without being, you know, hidden or something, she was in plain sight. So that was really powerful. There's a chapter in my first book about why there are so many male chefs and so little women chefs in France in the school culinary school. It's 50/50, let's say. And then today, in France, we have 19 percent female chefs and 28 percent female cooks that is ridiculous. They disappear. Oh, what do they go? So that's what I was trying to explain in one of the chapters. And when I got interviewed after my first book, people were like, what there's violence in the kitchen? Really? Like, I'm a journalist. People don't know how it works in the rooms, in the newsrooms. So people don't expect people to know what's happening behind the scenes of any any job in workplace. And I too was completely surprised when I learned about that. So people were asking me the same questions. And it seemed like people were genuinely oblivious of that. So I started getting asked for a double-room panels, podcasts, shows, et cetera, et cetera, interviews. So I became identified as someone who wanted to speak out about this. So people started sending me DMs, emails, meeting me or just coming to me at events or something like that. And so eight years in 2020, first lockdown in Paris, everyone was working in the industry, was forced not to work and be idle and maybe just sleep and take care of themselves and heal. And I thought it might be the best time for them if they wanted to speak out to have somewhere they could speak out, somewhere they could tell everything that happened to them ever, sometimes for the first time. So we put up with Camille Moncarnel, we put up a questionnaire online where people all could just tell everything, and we got hundreds of testimonies on, I think, the first two days. And today, it's still online, you can still go there. And we have 3,500 people who told us their experience. And then I started investigating and calling people and spending my days getting, how to say that, receiving all the pain and the powerlessness and the grief and the anger and the shame and the guilt of all these people that were never believed, now never supported by the teachers, by their parents, by their friends, by their colleagues. That was really hard because I'm not a shrink, I'm a journalist, not used to that. You learn by doing that, and it's human beings, so you can't just, you know. And yeah, so the book is out, and now I think it's getting some leverage, impact, influence, I think it's starting to change people's mind about what they thought was happening behind the scenes. And when people are in the industry, they know that someone is listening to them and believing them. Omerta is such a good word for how these kinds of stories are perceived, because if I can give one anecdote, I was sent by Rorize Chateau, which is the collection of hotels and restaurants for their magazine. This was pre-COVID, this was maybe 2017 or 2018, with my photographer friend to go shoot, write a story about this three Michelin star chef in Brittany. And we take the train, we get there, we had told them in advance what my allergies were, I'm allergic to shellfish. And yes, shellfish is important for a chef from Brittany, but he does other things. And conceivably, diners who come from all over the world might have some sort of food intolerance that a restaurant needs to know about. So we get there, and we put our bags down because we were supposed to spend the night. And the director of the hotel calls me and says, "The chef would like to see you in the kitchen. Could you come down?" I'm just not sure. The staff were both standing, the entire kitchen staff were standing on sort of creating an aisle and look panicked. And so I'm walking through with the photographer and the chef has a bright red face and says, "Which one of you is allergic to all this stuff?" And I said, "Well, it's me." And we informed you of this before I arrived. And he became absolutely irate and said, "You are not staying. You're getting back on the train. I'm not feeding you. They can send a real journalist to review this restaurant." And keep in mind, this was not like a hard hitting. I wasn't there to be a food critic. It was there to tell a story about the place and the, you know, and his intentions with food. And no joke, he sent us back to Paris and gave us a little something to eat because we had made the journey, but said, "Don't you dare take a photo of this food. This is not representative of my food." Turns out during COVID, his entire staff had quit on him because he was, had this reputation for violence. Now, with me, it was verbal abuse. And I'm not even going into all the details of the things that he said that were absolutely horrific. And then, but he was physically violent with staff, apparently, what I learned later. So there are these stories, and you hear about stories, even today, of chefs almost always male. But I know that there are women who have behaved badly and who do behave continue to behave badly. And it is much like the me-to-in-sexual abuse in the industry and in other industries. You just don't want to touch it. You don't want to believe it. And so there are a lot of people behind the scenes who allow this to go on and squash it. Well, food and restaurants. It's not just about food and restaurants. It's about culture. It's about an entire culture. In some ways, it's also about French culture. This is French food. This is what you have to do. And it's also about, you know, how France sees itself as a country. And then whether non-French influences how they can be incorporated to that, I'm going to pivot a little bit away from the more violence in the kitchen and ask you, Carina, when you came and started working in the French restaurant scene in Paris and in these bars, did you face a certain amount of resistance in opening up your new places? Or was it kind of, oh, there's a space in the market for this? And you wanted flavors of home to be here? Was it a place that allowed? Tell us more. I worked really hard in hospitality here, insane amount of hours. I mean, I obviously needed money. I mean, I took the jobs because I needed money. I needed to pay my bills and I had to live here. I was a student on a student visa. So obviously that complicates things. And, well, you know, I mean, my little bubble of surviving, right? But I loved it. I loved working in restaurants. The first places I worked were more French and traditional and I hated. It was horrendous. Why? Because of the aggressions. It was, I mean, like, for real. I guess it is a very horrible climate to work. Then I did found my piece in a Colombian restaurant where I worked three and a half years. And the owner of the restaurant, a woman, she's pretty much the one that taught me everything. I mean, she taught me how to place orders. She told me how to run her restaurant. I wasn't just a waitress. I learned I learned service. I learned about things and I was representing Colombia. So that was nice. Even if the clients at that time were not very open to that, it was a little complicated. But it was kind of sheltering for me. And then I wasn't learning anymore and I got bored and I need to, I want to learn. I'm going to do a path here. I need to learn. I want to move. So I started working in other places. And I would say the diversity of type of owners I had and I had to work with, taught me a lot, made me very resilient for sure. The problem that you have working in these environments is that you get used to it. So you in a way accept violence. So you get used to a lot of things. You, in that moment, I was in need. There was a time period in Haravisa. So obviously, I'm like thankful for having a job and have something to pay my bills. So obviously, you get this, this use. And when it was when I was bartending at experimental, at that time, I saw, I won a competition, a culture competition. And there was a little interest on me. And I was very lucky that actually the New York Times did a review on this bar and they took a photo of me shaking the cocktail. And that was like, I think people were coming to see me because I was in this photo, the New York Times. I still have a little bit. And so a couple of things happened in the year, small achievements that, I mean, a journalist came and I said, are you an expert in Rome? And I'm like, yeah, I'm such an expert. I was, I mean, I was and everything I learned very empirically. But yeah, I learned how to be a good liar, but also learn, I mean, learn about like, okay, I need to do an interview about Rome. So I was trying all the wrong possible, learning about it. And then I had an article with my face and Karina giving her opinions on different rooms. And all these things start adding up. And what happened is I decided I need to open my place. The idea of the first venue or the concept of everything that comes comes in a different way. But I just to respond to you, I want to precise it to your question is it wasn't about having something to comfort myself. It was actually bringing something to Paris. I wanted to bring something different to Paris. And with my business partner that I have a judge, one thing that I learned working with him is that their things are not okay. Right. And that was the thing when we were putting ourselves to the whole process of getting a bank loan and understanding French systems like the whole thing because it's not easy. We were like, okay, we're going to open this place and we're going to work in it every day. We need to make this the best we can. And it means that the next generation of the people are going to work with us do not need to suffer the things we have suffered. Right. And that was, but that you need, I mean, you need therapy. You need people to work with you in a different way because I only knew one way of working. George came from New York and came from the US and he had another perspective. So our duo is the thing that really helped to see things differently on all the places we have done basically. Do you feel that the biggest challenges that you faced were cultural, structural, bureaucratic, all of them, all of them in one, I was either too young or not French or too tall or too woman or too everything. Like it's just when I was, yeah, no, all of it was just no, no, no, make no sense. And for example, when I, when we were looking for a space for Candelaria and we we start looking for agents, we tell them what we wanted to do. And there are like French people don't like spicy food. Forget it. That's not going to work right away. And first door shut down. So again, I became a good liar. So I was like, okay, we're going to open a place and the chef, he is from Mexico, but this French cuisine and it's cuisine du monde. That's how we call it. I know. But they love it. I got a bank loan with cuisine du monde in my business, but because there was no, if we were saying the truth, they were shouting at the door. Like they were like, no way, that's not happening. So, yeah, has that changed? No, what do you think? Has that dynamic changed at all? Or is it still kind of, this is France and this is how we do things? You mean racism? This is how we do things. I mean, let's call it a poachacha. This is racism. And this is trying again, spice against other cultures. Non-French culture. Because French white French culture is put a crown on its head, saying we have the best gastronomy in the whole wide world. Challenges. And why the challenge? They don't like it. And they are challenge. It's been 15 years. They've been. They still are. And now they're crying. People don't want to go and eat a frozen steak for 27 euros. Oh, no. What a surprise. So, they don't want to be challenged. And they always, this is what I write about in my book. There's a big part about history and the history of the French gastronomy myth, which is the base for everything else and the gastronusionalism. So, this is kind of that. So, when a banker says French people, what does that mean? Nothing. French people don't like spicy food. I mean, what? How can you say that? There's so many things that's mustard. Right. No, you know, but there's, I mean, a la part la moudarde ça pique. And so many things. But they're saying white people when they say French people and they say white people as in white people, all of the same thing, which is completely, you know, absurd even to say that. But it has changed because, as you said, now there's more, how to say, it is more democratic because of TV, of social media and people of concept, you know, like once enough of these foreign chefs can prove that they have made successful businesses banks are more inclined to and the mobility of young people. Because now, when you cook, you know, what I mean, they're all traveling the world six months in Sweden, six months in South Africa, six months in Bangkok, six months in Australia. So they bring something else, you know, the mitsage of the cultures and they, they're curious and they're not afraid of anything and they want to mix things up. And it's not just, oh, the best food in the world is French and Japanese and that's all. Now, you have so many restaurants with Chinese food that challenge the racist ideas that people have about Chinese food, what it could be. And there are Chinese foods, not just Chinese food. It's just like saying African food, which makes no sense. So in that sense, the mobility of youngsters and the way that they don't care now to just spend like five or 10 years in the same place, it goes for every workplace, journalists, same thing. But we are not, we challenge the idea of working for years at the same place and they want to travel and they can travel and things is in older bistronomie restaurants in Paris. You have so many different nationalities and they go to see each other then when someone leaves goes back to Italia, Italy, they go there and they go to Mexico because they met two Mexican cooks and they became friends. So this generation of cooks, the one who can't afford because not everyone can but the one who can't afford that and they're ready to sleep on your couch for like six, month or three months because you know, rants are just over the roof in Scandinavia. So they just want to learn and they want to have fun too. They get exploited to end humanized and all the violence within that. But they don't have this museified idea of what French cuisine is or with standards or a hierarchy. I think this is the thing. The hierarchy is not there for, you know, for the young people, young cooks, they're like, okay, why would I stick to, I don't know, like a hundred traditional recipes, I know one eats anymore. No one wants to eat anymore every day. You want to eat bourgeois cuisine sometimes and it's okay and it has to, it is cool that it still exists. But I mean, sometimes you just want to twist, you want something modern, you want to be curious. So I think it's the young people that force this kind of mummified idea of what gastronomy is. Oh, French gastronomy is supposed to be a challenge in this idea that white people are like this and that and that. I mean, everyone is drinking matcha. Don't even get started on the matcha. I love the taste, but I mean the first time I tasted matcha, I was working in Ruizantan so there was matcha everywhere. The Japanese neighborhood. So, and I loved, I loved the bitterness and I loved tea. So I loved it and everyone's like, can you drink it? Oh, yeah, it's like eating grass. And now, I want such a mistro coffee. Yeah, and exactly. They don't like matcha. They like milk. Like that's, it's like sugar. You don't like it. They like milk. They like, they like, they like, they like, they little milk thing on top of they. They like the sugary stuff. But this is what they quit. Like, so what you're saying is also part of what has contributed to Paris becoming, I think, the most dynamic and exciting place to eat, among many, many big capitals in the world. And it's because there is more diversity today. Lebanese cooking has never been better. Sort of the reappropriation of what fusion can mean in really beautiful ways. And I think a lot of chefs are starting to just assume and and and bring all of their culture with them. If they're from somewhere else or they grow up with different cooking or being exposed to different cooking. And now that's all coming through in a less tone down way. And I think it's really exciting for all of us who do appreciate Paris for all of its diversity and and and know that it has always been a global city. But it's just for reasons like this have sort of not, it hasn't always behaved as the global city that it really is. I think in the last 15 years for us, Canada is going to be 15 in March. It's crazy to me. But in this, this last 15 years, there's definitely been that switch going on. Like there's way more connection, there's way more diversity to like, I don't, I don't think the same questions that were asked to me with a bank loan 15 years ago are now a thing. And yeah, the challenges we face with Candelaria at the time were not, I don't think they're happening anymore really with right now when people go for like to open a Lebanese or a two opium restaurant. I think that now this is more open-minded because the city has evolved in that way too. And that is extremely positive obviously. There's been now, I would say that more than the last 10 years really, it's been this this new thing for Paris, what I think is positive. What is not positive is that is the other side of it that everything seems very disposable. There's another side of the concept of social media or exactly that people queue for hours for a dinner and then the dinner place after six months, it doesn't exist anymore and you don't understand. And it's just very strange. But that's happening globally though. It's not just happening in Paris. I think pop culture has a lot to do with that openness you described. And Netflix. I mean, K dramas. All these TV shows about food in Asian countries, in African countries, in Latin American countries. I mean, you could see things. You wanted to taste it. It looked good. You didn't know about it. And the story behind the history and the culture was told also not just what a beautiful plate. How many stars do you have? How much of the menu? How many celebrities do you know and have you served? It's just, hey, Barbarcoa. What is Barbarcoa? What is this spice? How do you use that? Oh, I thought it was Italian. No, it's from Congo. And I think it added to that. And even in the fictions, I mean, Korea, the soft power is huge and it's been years. And now the new thing in Paris is Vietnamese coffee shops. There are, I live in the 11th arrondissement. No, you know. I live in the Disneyland of new trends and bullshit concepts stuff. I mean, we don't, I'm not in Le Maret. Le Maret has collagen infused, matcha, whatever, beef sperm, gummies, whatever. And 50-year-olds are. Yeah. And you're like, please, just drink water and eat fresh fruits. So I have something just next to my plate that is called mad. It's called post PR-OST. And it says, "Fucking Madeline." It won't last. No, it won't. So I know it won't cause we have a game with my boyfriend and it's tragic, I know, but it's sometimes so bullshit that I don't care. We say that, okay, how long do you think it's going to stay open? Because I'm not saying it's taking the place of something else, but it is actually and we don't need a Madeline place. I think banks need to get a little stricter on the kinds of concepts or what kind of business plans are being presented to the bankers. But it really is this. I mean, I was saying this too earlier. I really think there's something to be said for the way we consume content and information online is now mirroring in our everyday life. And so, yeah, people want something right now. They want that matcha because they saw it. And then they've tired of it before, you know, the next place even opens. And we're just cycling through these ideas. But it leaves room for all the places that have staying power to be that comfort and to provide that service that so many good places do offer us. And you can be a regular there. And I know Josh feels very strongly about being a regular training. I think this matcha crisis, it's just awful for the Japanese makers of matcha. It's awful. People don't give a damn about what's happening right there. The Kinoa was the same craze. People farmers could not afford to eat their own kinoa because they, anyway, but I think what is good with everything we just discussed is this openness leads to a new palette. And it changes people's perception of stuff, of something that would have never tasted five years ago. I mean, when I say the matcha example, I think it's wrong because when I was working in Ruizantan, it was 15 years ago. And people are like, "Matcha is so awful." And now I see them. They want cookie, matcha, white chocolate cookies. And I'm like, you like the sugar. You don't like the matcha. But it's something that my parents, we are all new folks. Just, you know, just like kids, little kids, they're new fobia, the fear of anything new. You know that if you have kids, if you educate kids, if you are with kids, when they grow up, they don't want to taste anything. They're like, "Ugh, new thing. Give me pasta." So we are all the same. It's new thing. I'm like, "Oh, maybe I will go with, I don't know." But this thing, those, maybe those bullshit trends, all the good ones and the great restaurants that want people to discover and new culture is not just food and new tastes. It opens everything else. I think it, you know, the craze with the hot ones. The show. Hot ones. So white people love when it's spicy now. You know, because they see white people having spice and be like, "Oh, this is spicy." But people are, you know, do you think that there are different dining cultures in Paris, where some places are for tourists and visitors and other places or more for locals and how Karina and Lindsay, do you see those dynamics playing out? Well, yeah, just geographically speaking, the city has zones that are more touristy than others. There's also important to keep in mind that there's a lot of people that are not French that live in the city. So not immigrants, expats, whatever you want to call, they're living in the city and they probably not fluent in French. Obviously, they don't want to go, it's then its budget restriction. It's probably like that, there's some places that are more affordable than others, et cetera. But yeah, geographically speaking, of course, you will find a lot of Russians that are mainly for tourism and they have adapted to a new tourism. So for example, again, when I came here 23 years ago, there was no burgers in Brasseries. No, there were salads, like they were potato salads. There were other things, but there was no burgers. And now you see way more sandwiches, formats and burgers in all of them. So they have lost also an identity of what this Brasserie kind of affordable was. And today you see in those areas, there's less and less people that can go eat because even these places that have food that is halfway frozen, not particularly cooked, it's terrible and overpriced, very specific amount of people can afford it. Like locals can not afford that. So there is that, right? And then neighborhood like the Maya, where we are, that of course has changed a lot in the last year. I have seen so many shops in that kind of area. That's where kind of areas are. It's like a zoo kind of area. I'm very sorry. We are in like the high part of the Maya at the limit of the 11th. And we have seen that neighborhood evolve in the last 15, 13 years. But for example, kind of the area has absolutely everything of clientele. We are, it's a very, it's not just tourists. We do have tourists. We do have locals. We have locals that are French. We have locals are not French. And is, and you see, for me, the places that survive COVID, survive because of the locals, right? When we were, we had to close, we had neighbors of our building and that majority of the year, they're like, I'm so happy you're close. But they were actually supporting us. I'm like, what do you guys need? We miss you. We would love to, you know, eat, etc. So we, in a time we decided to open for takeaway just for, you know, for the locals. So it, I think it really depends on the geographically the areas, but also what you do and your budget. I think budget today is a big conversation in hospitality because it's in 2025. For example, the Takeria is having the best year ever, but it's not because the food is delicious and it's always been delicious. It's because it's right now what people can afford. So you, people can come at Candelaria spend 20 years and they had a beautiful meal and a margarita and they're super happy and they can afford it and they had a great moment. So it's also that, right? And you have to think that tourists come also with a budget. Some of them can, it's a dream to come to Paris. I'm thinking about the tourists that come from Colombia, for example. They saved years to come here and they are like, they have all these expectations and these dreams of what the food is going to be or what wine I'm going to drink and I'm like, forget it. Let me tell you exactly where you can go that much is your budget, right? Because some of them come with a lot of money, some of them don't. So how you manage that as a venue, but yeah, I guess there is something about geography and money. There's a lot more money in Paris. There's a lot more income inequality. I mean, absolutely. That's partially where we sense a lot of tension among local Parisians who are on French salaries. Obviously, you know, don't work for big international companies or weren't sent over here with these big packages that are really tax kind from a tax perspective. You know, so they have a lot more disposable income and when you see a place that gets popular and it's, you know, let's say it's pizza and pizzas are their phenomenal and there may be the best pizzas you've ever had, but they are quite expensive. But expensive because what we've been told is that pizza should cost eight euros or 10 euros or it costs seven euros in Italy. You know, and so I think there's there's inequality in terms of financial power. There's also a disconnection between what things costs and what goes into the pricing of a certain meal, which includes labor, which includes rent and all these other things that the consumer obviously doesn't necessarily think about. They're just thinking about how they can make their money go further when they die now. But all of these things are part of the culture of dining out. And so all of these things often are sensitive or pain points for both restaurant owners and for consumers. I have one more question for all of you before we open it up to questions from the audience, which is social media can really help put something on the map. It can really help draw attention to it. Lindsay, your eater guide is terrific. I was looking at your Instagram and I know I can't go wrong. I also wonder how you navigate the risk of overexposing a place. This is something I thought about what I used to work for the New York Times, and I would have a list of restaurants in Rome. And I'd say to my colleagues, do not write about this in the New York Times, because it would just, you know, and so how do you navigate that risk and Karina? How do you navigate that also as a business owner? Well, if 15 years ago somebody told me that I would have to pay PR and have a social media account and do everything that you need to do nowadays to run a business, I'll be terrified. Like I probably wouldn't, I don't even know. It's insane amount of pressure. Like I was very lucky when we opened our first businesses where we didn't had these things. So we don't rely on those things that much. Now that we open a La Juan de Son since September, it was this massive arguments and conversations like how are we going to manage the exposure of the restaurant? Are we going to have an Instagram account? Yes or no? Are we going to do photos? How are we going to do it? Are we going to engage with people? All these things, it becomes actually a very complicated thing to manage and it's very stressful. I personally think the magic of the city has always been the bushauhai, like the recommendations that people, worth of mouth, that people have always give you, that's how the places I worked have survived for years, they're still around, including the Colombian restaurant that places been there now for more than 20 years. And it's always been this trust of this person that we commented. And I found it as so magic and that's how we did it until March 17th, but then everything changed. And yes, we live in a different world and the clients, the younger clientele is different engaged differently. So it's quite painful. I'm not going to lie. I don't like I'm the worst person to talk about it. Josh is probably better than me. I talk about all the PR things, but we have, we feel like we have to do it. In a way, for La Honaise, we needed to position ourselves in a way because we're foreigners and people, even if you spend so many years here and you speak French, you're still a foreigner. And we bought a French place that is an institution. So we wanted to make sure that people understand that we are not only keeping the institution and respecting, but we wanted the message to be clear and well done. And so the engagement that we have on social media is minimal. And then with the PR, we're choosing really well. What are we doing? So it's a team work. But yes, it's something that takes us a lot of time. And for example, what bothers me is that it doesn't let me focus on what I do. But professionally speaking, that is, run a ration. So yeah, keeping is a huge topic of conversation. And I've often censored myself, actually, when sharing something online or deciding whether such and such institution or establishment really needs to be part of another story. At the same time, I think there's a way to do it and to look at these places as cultural artifacts for Paris. And so whether it's something new that's contributing to social change or cultural shifts, or it's an institution that is still relevant maybe because it's one of only few that are remaining, or because they are an anchor for local residents. I mean, I still think there's a value in finding ways to talk about places, but trying to maybe do so in a better way. For example, Cafe d'Fleur doesn't need any more advertising. And just the other morning I walked by, I had a very early meeting earlier than I'm used to, where I had to be somewhere over there nearby at 8 a.m. And I saw locals on the terrace at Cafe d'Fleur with Paris Bressel and their cigarette in their book or whatever. And I think it remains that kind of a place for locals. They go when they can sort of be away from all the tourists. And there were also tourists in there eating onion soup at 8 in the morning, but I think those places, they will be talked about until the end of time. And whether you like them or not is sort of immaterial, they do serve a purpose. With new places, I hear from some of my French friends like, "Oh, please, we're never going to get in there again." But one thing that happens with a lot of these establishments that are really incredible and where the cooking or the vision really deserves attention is that once it's out there for English language media, of course, those, the people obviously who live here can get in. But travelers who want to book those places do so months and months in advance. So Bistro de Tolnelle, for example, which is phenomenal. The reason it leans heavily anglophone and heavily with a traveler clientele is because they book far in advance. So locals then end up getting sort of the later dining slots where they sit at the counter. So that's maybe a situation where something needs to be done to sort of reserve tables for locals or find a way to balance that out. Some of these places are very small too. But just to say that I think there's always an idea of wanting to support businesses and make sure they do well because they deserve it. And also realizing that they also serve a purpose for the local community. And so how do you find that balance? There is no easy answer. And to be also honest, I mean, there is journalists that are fantastic and do a really good job. And there's others that are just like what they, I mean, why are you doing? And they're more pop culture, really. They come from other, and it's just, sometimes it's just more hurtful than actually a positive thing. But the other journalists, indeed, that we highly appreciate and very thankful because it does create an impact, obviously, business-wise. And it's important because today everybody has it. Like you cannot just open our business in a city like Paris. You just, you need to be supported by the critics and the journalists, etc. So having, that's why I'm saying like in this case, as well, and we're also older and more experienced now, we are really driving with the person we're working for, the PR, etc. Like the places, like who are positioning us and how, and who is right about us and how, and because there's people that we respect, and obviously we are very thankful. There's others that say, I love them, we're tricky. Can we have a big round of applause for these three? And then we can continue. That's the show for today. If you're listening on Spotify, be sure to check out the poll related to this episode by scrolling down in your app. There are more exciting conversations to come this season, so I hope you'll subscribe or share the show with a friend if you've been enjoying what you've heard so far. As always, you can find more from me at lindsaytrimuda.com and at the new Paris Dispatch on Substack. À très bientôt.