#41 DO La Tradition
You wait in line at a your neighborhood boulangerie and watch all the customers ahead of you walk out with warm, crusty, elegant, floury, delicious baguettes. When it comes to your turn, you request in your best French ‘une baguette’, the lady behind the counter goes and grabs something that is categorically different from what everyone else got—you are handed an ugly, stale, golden bayonette. This baguette is eerily similar to the shameful ‘baguettes’ sold at your hometown Vons…wtf!?! Don’t be alarmed, this is perfectly normal, you have just fallen victim to Paris’ most illustrious con—The Great Baguette Lie. Quite simply, a baguette is not actually a baguette in Paris, that would be just too obvious, now wouldn’t it? Parisians invented a code word for real baguettes in order to prevent tourist from buying up all their tasty bread. Instead of the calling their good bread ‘baguettes’ like the rest of the universe, Parisians call their baguettes ‘la tradition’ or ‘tradi’ for short (nicknames for bread, I mean, really). The baguette they give you if you are foolish enough to order ‘une baguette’ is something created for the sole purpose of filling breadbaskets in shitty tourist trap restos like Indiana Café. When you next venture to the boulangerie be sure to confidently order une tradition, you may receive a suspicious glare, but pay no mind because you will finally be handed the slice of heaven you’ve been searching for.
