A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 15 – Dining With Style

 May 4, 2020

Fiona Ferris calls Day 15 “Elevate Your Dining Experience” in her book, 30 More Chic Days. Her idea is that we are chic and elegant individuals and we can enjoy an attractive and elegant dining experience. Her suggestion is to use cloth napkins. She claims that they are low maintenance, friendlier to the environment than paper napkins and look much nicer. We will both enjoy by our lovelier, more refined table and be inspired to be a bit lovelier and more refined with our eating choices and table manners.

I wasn’t quite sold on the claim that the cloth napkins would be low maintenance with my two teen-age children but I decided to give it a try. (I was also motivated by the environmentally friendlier (& budget friendlier) step away from disposable paper products.)

I bought a set of 4 red napkins and a set of 4 spring green napkins (very inexpensively at Linvosges – the day before the lockdown – what great timing!) I’ve been using them at most dinners for the past 7 weeks. I can happily report that it is pretty low maintenance to use cloth napkins! We use one set one day and the other set the next day. I do laundry every day so it’s no trouble to throw the 4 napkins from the night before into the wash. After drying (no ironing), I fold them and set them near the plates for the next dinner.

Here is a photo of our dinner napkins plus an extra pink one from Le Jacquard Francais that I bought from eBay years ago in the US. I like buying these napkins one at a time – each one is unique and they really brighten up the table. This one I brought with me to Paris to use as a pretty bread napkin. Now that I have tried & liked Fiona’s advice, I may look around to see what I find of this type of napkin at the flea markets (whenever lockdown is over.)

My other lesson learned  – use darker napkins with anything tomato-based like spaghetti.

Update on our “Chic Summer-in-Place” Plans: we ordered window boxes from eBay.fr for our five windows that look out on the front. They should arrive sometime this week. We get full sun in the afternoon so we are thinking of using red geraniums like window boxes in the first photo.