Jeff Burkhart: A gift I’ll never forget

“Joyeux Noël,” Miss Moller had said. And we as a class repeated it back to her. Learning a language in high school actually meant becoming familiar with a language, in my case. I couldn’t then, nor can I now, speak French. But, in many cases, I can understand it.

And that was thanks to Miss Moller. French class was less about the French language and more about the French people. We had what she called “cultural experiences.” And what that amounted to was parties. Together we made mousse au chocolat and crêpes, we ate bûche de Noël and we watched slides. Every summer, Miss Moller went to Tahiti, and every year we saw slides of her trip. I realize now that she might have been using that as a tax write-off, but it was no less enthralling.

She seemed so worldly and chic, and she made learning fun. Perhaps that’s why I took her French class three out of my four years of high school. We also read French history, watched French films and listened to French pop music. To say I was a Francophile would be an understatement. And ironically, I then didn’t go to France.

Higher education, my job and my family became priorities. Sure, I went to Asia several times but the closest I got to France was looking over the northern border of Vietnam (formerly French Indochina) from the modern Chinese side.

Then, an old friend came into my work one night during the holidays. We had met years before at a fine-dining destination restaurant in Marin. That place was the first real chef-driven restaurant outside of San Francisco. It was the French Laundry before there was the French Laundry. And I didn’t really fit in there. It was on the edge of pretentious and I was anything but.

And so was he. Eventually, we developed a friendship over many unpretentious evenings just hanging out. It was at that restaurant that I first heard the terms “startup,” “tech” and “domain.” And a few of those terms I learned from him. He had a company and, eventually, he offered me a job.

“I appreciate it,” I said. “I really do. But I want to be a writer.”

He took it in stride.

But he added, “If you ever change your mind …”

Flash forward to that much more recent holiday. I had changed restaurants several times, but I still kept one foot firmly planted in them. I did become a writer, but my writing became inextricable from my restaurant career. They say write about what you know, and that is what I know.

“How are you?” I said to my old friend as we exchanged embraces. “It’s been a long time.”

We caught up on all the grand topics: family, work, etc. Then we covered the minutia. It was just like old times.

“We just got back from Paris,” he said. “We took our whole company there.”

“Maybe I should have taken that job,” I joked.

He laughed.

“Maybe you should have.”

I told him about Miss Moller, our cultural experiences and that I had never, in fact, gone to France.

“You should go,” he said. “It’s wonderful.”

I looked around at all the holiday revelers.

“I’m not really in a position to do that right now,” I said.

He looked me square in the eye and said something that I never expected.

“I tell you what,” he said. “I’ll send you there.”

Now people promise all kinds of things in bars. In vino veritas — in wine, there is truth — is a famous saying. But I have found many of the truths uttered are sometimes regretted and not always meant. I chalked it up to the spirit of the season, and we continued our conversation about other things. I fully expected to never hear about it again — until I got a phone call the next day.

“I’m serious,” he said. “I will send you and your wife to Paris for a week. Just tell me when you’d like to go.”

We went back and forth on several topics, not the least of which being the generosity of such an offer, and my inability to accept it.

“If it was anywhere else but France,” I told him, thinking of Miss Moller, mousse au chocolat and crêpes, not necessarily in that order.

Eventually, I accepted. And the next December, I was strolling the Champs-Élysées, sipping mulled wine and eating roasted chestnuts as the snow slowly drifted down. It was like a scene out of a movie, literally a dream come true.

It’s funny, I never really believed in Christmas miracles, until one happened to me.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• Sometimes the path you’re on meanders, and sometimes it leads you right back to where you began.

• Noël in Paris is Christmas on steroids. It really has to be seen to be believed.

• Ironically, my wife — who has a profound fear of flying — did not go with me. She did go with me, the next year, when I went back to Paris. But that’s a different story altogether.

• Miss Moller, wherever you are, I hope you have a Joyeux Noël.

• And to my friend and his family, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com