Richmond charmed me, but my sense of historical discovery and curiosity soon took a darker turn when, on the outskirts of town, a billboard showing lorazepam smiles to promote the happy church-going lives of “ex-gays” reminded me that the fear of God and denial of sex also define parts of the South.

I stopped into a gas station just over the North Carolina border in Fayetteville, the first American town named after the Marquis de Lafayette, and couldn’t take a oui without reading on a comdom distributor that “abstinence before marriage and a monogamous relationship during marriage” served as better protection than a tube of latex, nevertheless “available here for your privacy and convenience.”

In France, you’re actually more likely to get laid, not to mention elected, by practicing abstinence from God and a monogamous relationship with the local wine.

Nevertheless, south of D.C. and before you hit Florida you travel through states with identities comparable to certain regional identities in France—Burgundy or Champagne or Brittany, for example—meaning that whatever pleasures and opportunities they may provide for the visitor you’d feel quite the outsider if tried to settle down there.

I wasn’t looking to settle down though but simply to spend two days in and around Cary, North Carolina, visiting an old friend from high school and enlisting him on a tour of French bakeries or restaurants in the Raleigh-Cary-Durham area.

We had a lot of catching up to do, which I won’t bore you with here, so I’ll cut to the chase.

First we went to the old North Carolina Statehouse in Raleigh, where sculptures on the outside mourn for the Confederacy (below left) and a sculpture of George Washington on the inside (below right) serves as a cautionary tale for those who would have their democratically elected leaders sculpted by Italians.

We went hunting for French pastries and found what I have come to consider the best croissant between Newark, NJ, and Naples, FL.

It was in the town of Cary, between Raleigh and Durham, at La Farm Bakery, a busy brick, wood, and tile bakery-café with an open kitchen where even on a busy morning the service was friendly as all get-out. If it takes a bit if fear of God to get good service then maybe the French should start going to church more often.

The croissant was deliciously fresh and buttery, and it had a close rival in the flaky pain au chocolat. The breads looked look picture-perfect.

Of course one can’t judge bread simply by its appearance so I asked the woman in line behind me which one’s she’d tried and if they were good. Turns out she was Sandra A. Gutierrez, a local food writer, and she had tried them all. Her knowledgeable enthusiasm for La Farm’s bread convinced me that this picture was worth a thousand bites.

Too good to be homegrown (no offense to residents of the Raleigh-Cary-Durham area), there had to be some serious baking education behind La Farm Bakery. Indeed there is; I learned from the bakery’s website, that the man behind the quality (and success) of the place is Lionel Vatinet.

His know-how doesn’t come from the Frenchness of his name, though I suspect that helps, but from the fact that he learned and developed his skills by touring for seven years with the guild of craftsmen and artisans called Les Compagnons du Devoir, at the end of which he earn the prestigious title Master Baker.

An outsider might never feel at home in North Carolina, but he’ll always have find comfort at La Farm.

La Farm Bakery, 4248 Cary Parkway, Cary, NC. 919-657-0657.

North Carolina State Capitol, Raleigh. Photo GLK

One reason that a road trip in Europe is such a wondrous experience is that over relatively short distances one encounter different regions, cultures, histories, accents/languages, and cuisines.

Over equal distances, those differences are naturally less remarkable in the U.S. due to a briefer, more uniform history, a common language, and the ease with which citizens move and immigrants arrive.

Furthermore, we tend to approach American regions from the air rather than from the ground, leading us to think of major cities as hubs rather than an old center of regional civilization.

Given the opportunity, I like to apply on-the-ground European-style travel to my touring in the U.S., and so in December I took a week-long road trip from New Jersey to Florida, with stops at Philadelphia, Richmond, Raleigh, Charleston, Savannah, and Orlando before arriving in south Florida.

I logged about 1400 miles. In terms of distance that’s like going from Amsterdam to Lisbon, with overnights in Brussels, Paris, Bordeaux, Biarritz, Salamanca, and Porto. Imagine! (In terms of the cost of gas and tolls, you wouldn’t even get through France.)

New Jersey to Florida may sound less exotic than Amsterdam to Lisbon, but a road trip is a road trip, especially when going it alone. And I had mission—in addition to seeing people along the way (an old friend, a younger brother) and visiting places I’d never been (Raleigh, Charleston, Savannah), I wanted to find French bakeries along the way and try their pastries.

Virginia State Capitol, Richmond. Photo GLK

This was my second road trip for the year. In April I’d taken a largely alternate route on a week-long drive north from Florida—Naples, Tampa, Atlanta, Columbia, Myrtle Beach, Richmond, Fredericksburg, Arlington, Baltimore—and also tracked down several bakeries along the way.

Over the next month or two I’ll be posting a series about notable French and French-inspired bakeries that I came upon on either my north-south road trip or my south-north road trip. I’ve already written about Philadelphia on this blog so those investigations won’t be repeated in the upcoming series. You can read about Franco-Philadelphia here.

Readers who would like to provide their impressions of any French and French-inspired bakeries along the above mentioned route can send them as a “Comment” to this blog or by e-mail to francerevisited@aol.com.

- GLK