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Paul Dallison writes Declassified, a weekly satirical column.
Spare a thought for Louis Sarkozy, the son of former French president and legal trouble enthusiast Nicolas Sarkozy. He has a tough life.
Sarkozy the younger was this week featured in the Financial Times’ How To Spend It section (which no one will ever convince me is not a spoof) and gave a guide to the delights of Washington. It’s ever-so relatable. Here are some of the best bits (incidentally, Louis’ mom Cécilia Attias tweeted out the story and later deleted the tweet for reasons that are unknown, but presumably involve the word cringe) …
In the FT piece, Sarkozy Junior says that he and his wife Natali Husić “were in Washington without a place to live when we discovered the Fairmont Hotel. We negotiated a price and stayed for seven months, a fascinating experience.”
We picked a night to stay at the Fairmont (a random Monday in May) and the cheapest room was $492 (€458) plus taxes and fees. So a seven-month hotel stay (let’s say 212 days) without a negotiated price would be $104,300 plus taxes and fees.
But hotel life, and using the gym at the prestigious Georgetown University, is hungry work. So it’s off to Boulangerie Christophe. You may have heard of that particular bakery, as its boss once presented French President Emmanuel Macron with a baguette (which is the definition of the British expression ‘coals to Newcastle’ or in French, porter de l’eau à la rivière).
Now, at this point you’re thinking “what does Louis Sarkozy actually do?” He’s an author, of course he is. And good news, he’s written a book about Napoleon (out on May 30).
Alas, Sarkozy said: “I loathed Ridley Scott’s disappointing film, a catastrophe! To take my mind off it, I reserved a table at the Michelin-starred Seven Reasons restaurant.”
The food there sounds lovely (the chef’s tasting menu is $160, and another $140 for food and wine pairing) — mind you, there is a special menu called Surprise but you know what you’re getting, so it’s not a surprise at all.
Young Sarkozy is also a keen cook.
“As an experimental cook and passionate meat eater, I frequently source ingredients —ground bison, elk and deer,” he wrote.
Don’t all bison live on the ground? Please tell me there aren’t flying bison!
It’s not all eating and writing masterpieces. There’s also shopping, even though this “is not one of my passions.”
“Recently I acquired a 19th-century candleholder at Kensington Antique Row,” he said, although Kensington Antique Row itself is a modern brick building.
Staying with the shopping theme: “I also couldn’t resist the ring I recently got Natali at Bulgari DC.” FFS.
And finally, there’s Sarkozy Jr.’s views on architecture.
“I’m often concerned that we construct too many parking lot-style buildings these days,” he says. Fair point.
But then he follows up with this genuinely horrific sentence: “If I could buy one building in DC it would be the Library of Congress; I would close it to the public and install a pool table and whisky bar in place of the research desks.”
