That's The Way The Croissant Crumbles After All
By Peter Brooker, July 2026.
France saw its hottest day ever on average country-wide on June 24th 2026, with temperatures hitting almost 41C in Paris. The death toll clocked in at 2,025 people. The Airbnb just north from the Rue d'Alésia didn't have so much as a folding fan, let alone air conditioning.
I shadowbox in a cold shower for one minute before leaving for an impromptu James Bond location tour. Bond recommended and frequented half a dozen or so bars and restaurants in the short story from A View to a Kill; Cafe a la Paix, Harry's Bar, Fouquet’s, La Rotonde and Terminus Nord to name a few. I balanced a set of cheap-snapped sunglasses to the bridge of my nose, screwed on a misshaped straw hat that I had bought from the market in Reims last week (it had lost its lustre only that morning due to being soaked by a leaking iron which I had in good faith parked it next to the night before) and gamely went, somewhat ill-equipped upon my sun-dripped adventures. The outdoor misting fans were the only redeeming feature in the cafe La Rotonde. The champagne was warm and sour. Made even more sour by the Maître d' informing me that I was actually in the wrong La Rotonde, and that the one featured in the Ian Fleming short story From A View to a Kill is located off Montparnasse.
Anastasia at La Rotonde, Paris
The menu at the Cafe a la Paix was as expected, extortionately priced.
Inside Harry’s bar, a man in a thin white clerical jacket makes me a bloody Mary, 'simple & classic' he says. Its popularity as a hangover remedy was the brainchild of Ferdinand Petiot of Canton, Ohio, the bartender credited with inventing the drink. The year was 1920. The place was Paris and Harry's New York Bar. Bartender Petiot poured a can of tomato juice into an equal portion of vodka - and voilà.
"One of the boys suggested we call it Blood Mary" Petiot explains, "because the drink reminded him of the Bucket of Blood club in Chicago, and he had a girl named Mary." Petiot brought the drink with him in 1934 when he came to New York to be head bartender at the St. Regis Hotel, a post he held for more than 30 years. There Petiot's perfected recipe: "Cover the bottom of the shaker with four large dashes of salt, two dashes of black pepper, two dashes of cayenne pepper and a layer of Worcestershire sauce.
Then add a dash of lemon and some cracked ice, put in two ounces of 100-proof vodka and two ounces of thick tomato juice; shake, strain and pour". Petiot doesn't see any new frontiers for bartenders to conquer. "Everything," he says, "has already been mixed together." - Newsweek, January 2, 1967.
If these boxed-oak panelled walls strewn with buntings of university football teams could talk, they'd probably gloat about seeing the "Lost Generation" of writers, including F Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein as well as the hard-drinking Hemingway trot through the stained glass doors, which still reads still reads "Sank Roo Doe Noo" the phonetic phrasing for visiting Americans to tell their cab drivers how to find it.
Emblem of the International Bar Flies (IBF), Harry's New York Bar, Paris
A guy with fresh purple bruising around his ear and cheek sat on the only stool next to me. He smiled louchely to himself, as if recalling a conquest of some sort. I considered him for a while. Had he been out all night? It's noon so was this his first drink or simply a continuation from the night before. He lowered his grin, his gaze and sat without motion, or utterance. The barman knew his drink, which he served dutifully without question. It's a place for serious drinkers. As Bond says, "if he wanted a solid drink he had it at Harry’s Bar.”
Harry's New York Bar Paris: the birthplace of several classic cocktails
Venturing towards Fouquet's, I chanced upon a cool breeze from the doorways of the La Fayette galleries. It invited me in and I listlessly mooched for 10 minutes or so humming 'Une nuit a Paris' by 10cc - 'That's the way the croissant crumbles, after all.' How on earth does that ambitious yet glorious 8:42 minute mini-opera which opened their 1975 album The Original Soundtrack, not get any airplay at all. Anywhere. I guess Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, which it undoubtedly paved the way for, swallows all.
Fouquet's Paris, synonymous with writers & movie stars
At Fouquet’s, with a pint of wheat ale that the waiter sought to stick a slice of lemon in, (is that a Paris thing?) I unintentionally eavesdropped on a entire table of uber-affluent gays. They were far more interesting than my scrambled inner monologues so I surreptitiously jotted some lines of their dialogue.
'He came up to me and gave me the worst pick up line, "I’m not like your other boyfriends." I was like, so you're not my type then, like all my other boyfriends were?'
'I can’t wait to see you get a house, I wanna see how you decorate it.'
'I wanna buy a house where all my boyfriends will be happy.'
'We make all the money on the drug. It's a free consultation but I make 500 on the drug. I have a meeting with the Clintons next week, and the CEO of Walgreens.'
'We should talk about where we're going for World Pride Month, John, is the Yacht available?'
'You know it's available. All year round.'
'I wanna go to Lake Como.'
'Here's what we should do, sail to Lake Como, hire some Ferraris and drive them through the mountains.'
'Can you drive a stick shift?'
'Honey, please.'
Vintage Ferrari's - shift sticks yes, Apple CarPlay no
Credits
France records 2,025 excess deaths at peak of heatwave as Europe braces for more extreme weather. (BBC News 17/07/26)
A century of Harry's Bar in Paris. (BBC News 17/06/26)
About the author
Peter Brooker is the co-author of From Tailors With Love an Evolution of Menswear Through the Bond Films and is also Editor-in-Chief of From Tailors With Love, a blog, vlog and podcast dedicated to men’s costumes and cinematic style.
Above: Pete with his Wilde & Harte Osterley Safety Razor.
Follow Pete on Instagram: @therewillbebond (over 22k followers)
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