Thomas - Brooklyn in love: a memoir of second chances in 13 delicious dishes

In the fall of 2008, fate walked through my office door.

At the time, I was an associate creative director at the New York office of an international ad agency. A thirtysomething career woman with an active social and dating life, I also moonlighted as a food and travel writer. I dined out more often than I ate in and was obsessed with chocolate, pastries, and all things sweet. Life was good. And then in a Hollywood-scripted moment, the in-house recruiter of my agency asked me what I thought of Paris. Our office there was looking for an English-speaking writer to work on one of Frances most iconic luxury marques: Louis Vuitton. Single and thirty-six, afflicted with Francophilia and wanderlust, it took but a moment to decide bien s r !

So began two dreamy years in the City of Light (and Dark Chocolate). I built an award-winning portfolio of work and, even better, I got to eat warm pain aux raisins for breakfast every day. My commute was hopping on one the citys bikes, the Vlibs, and riding through the Place de la Concorde and up the Champs-lyses to a stunning Haussmann building with Eiffel Tower views. On the weekends, I tried cooking classes, toured historic boulangeries, and walked miles and miles until the city was mine. With Frances generous holiday and vacation policies, I traveled to Portugal, Belgium, England, Italy, and the charming villages and ancient cities throughout France. And the biggest triumph of all was realizing my own personal dream: getting a book contract, which would share some of those very adventures I was having in Paris.

But after three successive contract renewals with my agency, I opted out. I decided I was too old to settle permanently in a foreign city. As wonderful as Paris was, I missed my friends and family back in the States. My carefree life of bicycling and pastry binging in Paris probably wouldnt get any better; maybe I should quit before the Parisians maddening ability to make things difficult started bringing me down. I deliberated, vacillated and, in a move as bittersweet as when I packed up for Paris, I rewound five time zones, swapping macarons and croissants for cookies and doughnuts, and returned to my job and life in New York.

It wasnt an easy transition. In fact, I found repatriating harder than moving abroad. It took me longer to settle back into my comfort zone than it did to adjust to moving to Paris in the first place. I could never shake the sense of being stuck between two cities and loves. Besides, how do you top a life filled with French fashion advertising, daily pastry sampling, and dinners and parties among the chicest human specimens on Earth? After the golden glow of Pariss limestone boulevards, the romantic promise of it all, New York appeared gray, dingy, and harsh.

With a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity behind me and major life goal accomplished, I realized that I had not only closed a chapter of my life, but also seemingly finished the entire first act. Pre-Paris, I had been at the height of my swinging, single thirties. Now, after a couple years romping around Europe, I was staring at the abyss of middle age. Pre-Paris, I had been so focused on getting a book published; now it was written, my mission complete. Pre-Paris, I had been cranking away in advertising without any intentional goals or finish lines. Now, I realized, Id be hard-pressed to find any accounts at any ad agencies that were better than Louis Vuitton, and my careers finish line seemed uncomfortably close.

On the cusp of forty, I started doing some major soul-searching. If my first act was over, what was act two supposed to look like? A new career? A move to Brooklyn? Another book? Should I cash in all my chips and go on an open-ended, around-the-world adventure? For the first time in eons, I didnt have the answers or a focus. There were no urgent needs or goals. All the go-go-go ambition and adrenaline that had sustained me for two decades risked being relegated to my past. Plodding along in corporate advertising, I felt myself fading to irrelevance and craving something new.

Once the love of my life, New York wasnt getting my heart racing the way it once hadnot like food still did. Food was more than a personal obsession and the means to a cushy moonlight gig. It helped chronicle my relationship with the city in which I lived. It was how I organized my itinerary when I traveled. It grounded my social life and became the lens through which I saw and made sense of everything. And it was about to become the landmark for everything that happened in my life.