International Incident

“You don’t seem very French,” I tell Claudia, stifling a yawn. “In fact, you don’t seem French at all.”

It’s rude, I know, but I can’t help it. The dinner at Gustaf Anders Back Pocket has been so perfectly sedated that we are all rapidly slipping into akvavit-induced ennui. That’s the problem with four-star restaurants. Like at a funeral, everyone talks in whispers and is on their best behavior.

Claudia, who looks like a petite k.d. lang with the same dark, expressive eyes, thin mouth and boyish haircut, takes a delicate bite of the creamed dill potatoes that the young waitress ladled on her plate from a silver tureen. Holding her fork upside down, in that clever European way, Claudia whispers, in a very British accent, “I’m English, actually.”

Well, there you go. No wonder I’m confused. A friend of mine from New York is hosting a little holiday party at the oh-so-Scandinavian Gustaf’s, known for its Nordic Christmas smorgasbord, and has seated me next to a woman from Paris who speaks like England’s Queen Mother. That explains the look she gave me when, trying to score points, I compared the delicacy of the herring plate we were sharing to what the Brits do to fish and said, “Les anglais sont bien sympas mais leur tambouille est degueulasse,” which is one of only about three French phrases I know and basically translates into “The English are awfully nice but their cooking is disgusting.”

Claudia works for the Hotel Meurice, which sits on the edge of the Tuileries in Paris, and before I began to practice my French on her, she had insisted that I come visit. Since she now sits with her back to me, I suppose that invitation is no longer on the table.

I look at Alice, my friend from New York, and give her my best I’m-sorry smile. She rolls her eyes and frowns. “Well, this dinner certainly is magnificent,” I say, trying to make up for my rudeness. Alice proffers a weak smile.

Actually, the dinner has been a bit of a bust, but I think I’m only partially to blame. Honestly. I mean, yes, there was my comment to Claudia about English food, and certainly if I’d known that the burly man next to Alice who told the waitress to just keep the akvavit coming was a magazine writer from Montreal, I would never have blurted out a wonderful little line a French editor shared with me while watching a group of pie-eyed writers go through a buffet line stuffing shrimp into their blazer pockets: “Tous les journalistes, ca picole drolement.” (All journalists are real boozers).

Well, I thought it was funny when the French editor said it to me. When the Canadian writer headed for the buffet table to stock up on his third plate of herring, I apologized to Alice, who was sitting at the end of the table, and told her I was only speaking for myself, of course.

She put a finger to her lower lip and said, “I think I’ll just come down to your end of the table to keep an eye on you.” When she slipped in to the chair on the other side of me, she whispered, “You’re not helping.”

Alice took a forkful of her sugar-and-salt-cured salmon and stuffed it in my mouth. “Eat more, talk less,” she said.

I love Alice. She has that chic Manhattan look. Dangling gold triangle earrings and short, blond hair parted on the side. These are her friends--Claudia, the Canadian writer, a woman named Martine, who is from London--yet none of us knows each other so in spite of, or perhaps because of, the abundance of wine and akvavit, the conversation has lurched along like a freight train just getting started as we’ve searched for some commonality.

Sooner or later everything seems to come back to the food we are sharing. The many types of pickled Icelandic herring and the dishes Gustaf Anders calls Swedish comfort food: potato cakes, Swedish meatballs, stuffed cabbage rolls. It’s all fantastic.

“What do you think of as English comfort foods?” I ask Martine as I stab a Swedish meatball. “Steak and kidney pie?” Alice sharply bumps my leg with her knee.

“Trifle,” says Martine, who started dinner with a small plate of gravad lax with dill mustard, then returned for the grilled lax, and is now sampling the gravad lax casserole.

“I could live on trifle,” says this woman who, so far tonight, has stuck to the salmon.

I start to say something about a dessert that is basically just jam and stale cake, but Alice pinches my leg beneath the table. “Love trifle,” I lie. “But you’ve got to taste the Princess cake here.”

“Really,” Martine says. “Good?”

“The best.”

When everyone has had enough of the herring and lax and meatballs, several small plates of various desserts are brought to the table. A lemon tart and a heavy Swedish cake soaked in something and, of course, the Swedish Princess cake. When it comes to me I tap Claudia on the shoulder. “Try some,” I say. She glares at me but takes a small bite.

“Oh, my,” she says, passing it on to the Canadian writer. “Now that is true comfort food.”

I tell her I’ll get another one from the buffet table. Claudia insists she wanted only a bite and couldn’t possibly eat any more, but I go anyway. I get two plates of the Princess cake and put one in the middle of the table and the other between Claudia and me.

I wait for her to take the first bite. “So,” she says, cutting the cake with her fork, “when do you think you might come to Paris?”

Lunch Tuesday-Saturday, 11:30 a.m-2 p.m.; dinner Tuesday-Sunday, 5:30-10 p.m. Christmas Smorgasbord served every day for lunch and dinner through Dec. 30.

David Lansing’s column is published on Saturdays in Orange County Calendar. His e-mail address is occalendar@latimes.com.