Every city—every place for that matter—has a set of smells that is unique, a mix of savory and stench, often more powerful in evoking memories than the sights and sounds of the locale. American airports smell like fast food. European ones like stale cigarettes. Summer on Coniston Drive (and probably most analogous American suburbs) like freshly cut lawns and backyard barbecues. As for Paris, the smells I most associate are freshly baked bread, the spoiled milk odor of camembert that emanates from every fromagerie as well as many a French refrigerator, dog poop and the occasional human poop, the special saccharine cleaning solution they use in the Metro (sometimes mixed with the aforementioned human poop), the chestnuts roasting on metal sheets big like garbage can lids, and flowers of all varieties. But last night, I took a new route home, and a familiar smell made me do a double take. It didn't take me long to place it. It was the smell of Krispy Kreme. Not of the donuts but of the shop. That smell you get sometimes up to two blocks away from one in New York City that is probably the result of evil genius marketing experts and their chemical engineering comrades. The smell that sets off the Pavlovian Krispy Kreme response in most normal Americans.

I turned down many a side street and alley looking for the source of the aroma, but I was not able to find any conclusive evidence of an underground Krispy Kreme in the heart of the 11th arrondissement.

I went home and ate some frozen chicken curry. But what I wouldn't have given for a lemon-filled, glazed bundle of Krispy joy.