"Barefoot in Paris": Why Ina Garten is the perfect culinary guide for the Olympics

When the TODAY Show crew — Hoda Kotb, Craig Melvin, Savannah Guthrie and Al Roker — met Ina Garten in Paris over the weekend, the “Barefoot Contessa” gave them each a knit-straw market basket and a set of simple instructions: “You can buy whatever you want, but it has to be finger food.”

As part of NBC’s presentation of the Paris Olympics, the network elected Garten to serve as the culinary correspondent for the games. Her first assignment was organizing a French picnic in the park for the group, whom she enlisted to help with shopping at the Marché biologique Raspail, the largest open-air organic market in France.

After a few lingering shots of the market’s delicacies, ranging from potato pancakes to airy croissants, and some perfunctory, but heartwarming banter (like when Melvin asked Roker, “Why is the cheese so much better in Paris?” only for Roker to respond, “Because it’s Paris!”), Garten gathered her guests at a small, white table surrounded by lush grass. “There’s a park here you can just hang out in,” she said. “And that’s what the French do, they love their lives. They work so they can have a life. We just work all the time!”

This led Garten to an anecdote about attempting to buy coffee to-go in Paris, a request often met with confusion, if not subtle derision, at local cafes. “They’ll say, ‘Why do you want to have a coffee to-go? Sit, relax,’”Garten explained. Yet, if customers persist, cafe employees will often employ a certain level of malicious compliance, filling a paper cup — with no lid — with espresso right up to the rim, ready to be spilled. Garten says the message is clear: “Next time you’ll sit down.”

It’s a short story, but one that demonstrates a simple truth embodied through Garten’s decades of culinary work: To better understand a country’s food is to better understand a country’s culture, which is an attitude that’s admittedly refreshing as some elements of the Paris Olympics have already suffered getting lost in translation.

Take, for instance, the Opening Ceremony itself. Even beyond global questions of whether the tableau of bedazzled drag performers shown during the event was meant to mock or belaud the Last Supper (Thomas Jolly, the ceremony’s theatrical director, says neither, and that the display was obviously intended to evoke a feast of the Greek gods on Olympus), NBC commentators Peyton Manning and Kelly Clarkson have been criticized for their lack of expertise in interpreting the festivities.

“The gamble by executives — an attempt to draw a broader audience with the inclusion of the Season 1 “American Idol” winner and the Pro Football Hall of Famer — was a fine idea in the boardroom,” wrote Chris Bumbaca, a sports journalist for USA Today, in his analysis of the opening ceremony. “In practice it could not have gone worse.”

Bumbaca went on to describe Manning and Clarkson’s contributions, which were offered alongside those of Olympics host Mike Tirico, as “distracting at best and brutal to listen to at worst.”

“Olympics fans watching at home aren’t tuning in to hear a talk-show host (Clarkson) and football analyst (Manning) discuss things outside of their spheres of influence,” he concluded.

Paris, however, is right within Garten’s sphere of influence. The city is a key part of her personal life, as well as the catalyst for her professional transformation into “The Barefoot Contessa.” In speaking on the podcast “Dishing on Julia,” released in conjunction with HBO’s Julia Child series, Garten describes the first time she and her husband, economist Jeffrey Garten, visited France. They brought a tent, all kinds of camping gear, a tiny camping stove and $5 a day for food. “We couldn’t afford to go to a restaurant,” Garten said with a laugh. “I had to go to the markets and buy food and cook in the tent, and that’s where I learned about French markets.”

There, Garten said, she found peaches that tasted like peach jam, a kaleidoscopic array of cheeses and crispy, handmade French baguettes. All in all, a real departure from a trip to an American supermarket. “That was an era, in 1971 — it was like Wonder Bread,” Garten said. “You couldn't even get a freshly baked loaf of bread.”

After spending four months in France, Garten became “enamored” with French food. Upon the young couple’s return to the United States, she bought both volumes of Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”

“That was really the beginning of my culinary education, my self-education,” Garten said.

In the decades since, Garten has consciously introduced American audiences to the best parts of French cooking, while also dispelling some long-held misconceptions about the cuisine and culture. “Americans think of French food as fancy food, and it’s true that some French food is elaborate and formal,” Garten wrote in her seminal 2004 book, “Barefoot in Paris.”

She continued: “But there are so many kinds of French food.What I love is simple, country French that is easy enough to make every day but special enough to serve for a party. So that’s what this book is all about.”

While many viewers of “Barefoot Contessa,” Garten’s beloved television series that ran for 19 years on the Food Network, associate the host with her now-iconic kitchen in the Hamptons, Garten has also maintained an apartment in Paris for nearly 25 years, something that she actually began wishing for the very first time she and Jeffrey toured the city, camping tent in tow. “When I used to go there just on vacation for a week, I’d always go to the street markets and I wished I had an oven, so I could just take a chicken home and roast it,” Garten said in a 2012 interview with Fodor’s.

Garten’s apartment is, fittingly, right off of Boulevard Raspail, which hosts the same market the TODAY Show crew visited with Garten.

“It’s called Le Marché Biologique. Three times a week I go to the Boulevard Raspail market. It goes from Cherche-Midi to Rue de Rennes. Biologique means organic,” Garten said. “On Sundays, it’s an organic market. There’s a guy who makes potato pancakes. They have all the produce and cheese and everything you can imagine in a market, including an American guy who makes muffins.”

She continued: “It’s great because there’s everything you could possibly want for giving a dinner party within a few blocks, and I love to give dinner parties in Paris.”