French Lessons

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by Peter Mayle


  The idea wasn’t appealing. I had never been to a spa before, but, in my ignorance, I was sure I knew what to expect: expensive suffering. I anticipated a diet of roots and berries and bean curd, strange leafy drinks, high colonics, savage bouts of exercise under the supervision of perfectly formed, tireless human robots—in other words, the boot camp system, based on the premise that the treatment can’t be doing you any good unless it is humiliating, foul-tasting, and painful. I foresaw starvation, sweat, guilt, and discomfort in equal doses, and, at the end of it all, a bill to curdle your newly purified blood. A truly hellish prospect, and I was determined to have nothing to do with it.

  But I had reckoned without my wife. She has an admirably open mind about health and nutrition, and she is quite happy to experiment with anything from ginseng root to royal jelly and tofu tips. She liked the idea of a few days in a spa. She thought it would certainly be good for us and might even be enjoyable. “Don’t forget,” she said, “it would be a French spa. And you know what the French are like.”

  Yes indeed—a people hardly noted for holding back when it comes to food and drink, or famous for their love of exercise. On the other hand, they have a deep fondness for luxe et volupté, for coddling themselves inside and out. The Anglo-Saxon idea of the boot camp route to health is alien to them, and it would send them rushing in the opposite direction, probably to dive into a five-course meal. For a spa to succeed in France, it would have to cater to French tastes and appetites, and therefore even I would find it quite acceptable. So ran the argument. Eventually, I was convinced. Now all we had to do was find the spa with the best chef.

  I have no doubt there are good chefs working in spas throughout France, but the godfather of them all is Michel Guérard, one of the first modern celebrity cooks. He became a household name in France more than twenty years ago when he invented cuisine minceur. This was based on the thought—revolutionary in those days, and not all that common even now—that a regime could actually be pleasant. You should be able to eat real food, drink a little wine, refresh your system, and take some pleasure from the normally dreary process of inner cleansing and weight loss.

  The test of Guérard’s delightful theory, obviously, was how this magical diet tasted. Was cuisine minceur really delicious? And was there enough of it, or did you leave the table sucking your napkin, with your stomach growling for steak-frites? The answers to these questions have clearly been favorable, because Guérard and his cuisine have prospered enormously over the years. His establishment at Eugénie les Bains, about a two-hour drive south of Bordeaux, is one of the best-known spas in Europe, and the restaurant is one of only twenty-two in France to have been awarded three Michelin stars.

  I kept that thought in mind as we were driving through the pine forests toward Eugénie, ready to be cosseted and restored to perfect health. I had spent a grueling year with knife, fork, and corkscrew, and to be put on a diet by a three-star chef would be a fitting end to my research. The sun was shining, anticipation was doing wonders for my appetite, and the only small cloud on the horizon was the realization that we were going to be late for lunch. So late, in fact, that lunch was probably out of the question.

  And so it would have been, I believe, in most hotels or restaurants (even in France, where there is an instinctive sympathy for the empty belly). But within minutes of checking in, well past lunchtime, we were sitting on the terrace outside our room, where a table had been smothered in white linen, decorated with fresh flowers, and equipped with all the essentials for a comfortable afternoon: an ice bucket with a bottle of chilled white Bordeaux, generous servings of foie gras, a plate of local cheeses, salad, and a large bowl of raspberries on a bed of chopped strawberries. At a stroke, I felt my misgivings about spas begin to melt away. Perhaps I’d been a little hasty in my rush to judgment. This was certainly no hardship.

  Our program of treatments—la cure—didn’t begin until the following morning, and so, once the foie gras had settled, we had a chance to inspect our surroundings. We were staying in a building tucked away in the hotel grounds, a restored eighteenth-century convent, built in the shape of an E around a charming garden and a tiny fountain. In our room, there were exposed beams, polished flagstones, Oriental rugs, a large canopied bed, and—most unusual in France—a vast bathroom with a powerful shower and a tub easily big enough for two. There were tulips and roses. There were linen sheets as crisp and smooth as new five-hundred-franc notes. There was, just a short stroll away, the kitchen of one of the most eminent cooks in the world. The whole place oozed with luxe et volupté, and I had some difficulty persuading my wife to venture outdoors so that we could take a look at the rest of the spa.

  The main building is a sweeping, elegant affair and contains other guest apartments, the kitchens, and the restaurant. There are none of the obvious signs or smells of a health resort—no insufferably perky instructors with clipboards and stopwatches and paramedical uniforms, no panting guests in workout clothes, none of the antiseptic, self-righteous whiff I had always associated with premises dedicated to physical improvement.

  It wasn’t until we walked across the gardens to la ferme thermale that there was any intimation of spa life, and even this was presented with considerable restraint and style. Outside, the building looked like a classic eighteenth-century wood-framed farmhouse; inside, beams and plaster gave way to marble and tiles and more than three thousand square feet of assorted aids to feeling immortal—or at least feeling a little thinner, cleaner, and more relaxed.

  Young ladies in white were gliding in and out of various treatment rooms with their clients, some of whom looked rather apprehensive in their linen robes, as though they feared that public nudity was just around the corner. Other clients were fortifying themselves between treatments with aromatic teas in front of a huge fireplace in the main salon. Logs crackled discreetly in the hearth. Otherwise, the atmosphere was serene, with not even the muted rumble of a minceur stomach to disturb the calm. The next day, it would be our turn to plunge into the herbal Jacuzzi, the hammm room, the mud bath, and the needle water massage. Meanwhile, we had what remained of the afternoon to explore the village.

  At last count, there were 507 inhabitants of Eugénie les Bains, and I suspect that a high proportion of them work in one way or another to attend to the well-being of visitors in search of internal improvement. This has officially been a healthy spot since 1843, when a license was granted to exploit the waters. And there the village might have remained, little known and hidden away, except for two events that made it famous.

  The first was in 1861, when the senior members of the commune decided that a little royal assistance would do wonders for the reputation of the local liquids. History doesn’t relate exactly how the mayor pulled it off, but he managed to persuade the Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoléon III, to give not only her patronage but her name to the village. Overnight, the water was promoted from an everyday tipple to a noble elixir, suitable for the most aristocratic digestive systems.

  And then, in 1975, Michel Guérard arrived. He had married a local girl, Christine Barthélémy, whose father owned the Etablissement Thermal. There was plenty of room for a kitchen. There was also an opportunity to provide food that complemented the water cure—something light, something healthy—something, in other words, like cuisine minceur.

  Today, Eugénie calls itself France’s premier minceur village. It has also been called “Guérardville,” because the maestro’s influence is everywhere. There is the main hotel, the annex where we were staying, the thermal farm, a second, smaller hotel, another restaurant, a local vineyard. It is a small industry built on a paradox: eat, drink, and lose weight.

  The light was fading as we sat outside the café on Eugénie’s main street. A small and friendly place, it acts as an occasional refuge for those in need of a brief escape from the cure. Three people whom we had seen in the thermal spa had come into the café from the direction of the boulangerie a hundred yards away. They were nursing small
paper bags. They looked around with furtive, sideways glances—the very essence of guilt—before ordering large cups of hot chocolate. With a final check to make sure there were no minceur officials watching, they unwrapped their tarts and almond biscuits and slices of cream cake, took that first rich, melting mouthful, raised their eyes in ecstasy, and sighed. Anyone would think they’d had nothing but nut cutlets for weeks. Would this be us in the days to come?

  Suddenly hungry, we looked at each other and reviewed our options for dinner. In the hotel dining room, there was a choice between cuisine minceur (for the serious seekers after weight loss) or the longer and more robust menu gourmand (for writers doing research). Or there was Guérard’s country restaurant, La Ferme aux Grives, a two-minute stroll from the hotel. We had already looked at the menu posted outside. It listed delights that we were sure would be frowned upon the next day. And then, we easily persuaded ourselves, was soon enough to start on the road to restraint.

  The restaurant, in what was once a farmhouse, had the feeling of an enormous kitchen. At one end of the room, a long butcher’s table was piled with a landscape of fresh vegetables—peppers, leeks, tomatoes, white aubergines, and crinkly deep green cabbages. Behind the vegetable panorama was a ten-foot-wide fireplace, where legs of lamb twisted slowly on a spit, their juices hissing as the drops fell on the fire, giving off the nostalgic scent of wood-roasted meat. We could hear above the ebb and flow of conversation the gentle creak and muffled pop of corks being eased out of bottles.

  It was an ideal setting for our last supper, and the food lived up to the surroundings. We ate grilled leeks wrapped in a tissue of pink Bayonne ham, a perfectly grilled chicken with a crisp skin the color of old gold, and—a final treat before the thin days to come—the pick of the cheese board. Let the following day bring what it might. At least we would meet it with contented stomachs.

  Before going to the thermal farm the next morning, I read through a different kind of menu, one that listed all the treatments offered, from rejuvenating baths to a variety of massages tailored to different body parts. For the most beneficial results, according to the instructions, it was recommended that these activities should be performed entièrement nu, or naked, as nature intended. I thought nothing of it at the time, but it came back to me a little later when we had changed into our linen robes and were waiting in the reception area for battle to commence. Looking around, I noticed a distinct imbalance in the sexes. There was not a single man on the spa staff. They were all young ladies—attractive, slim, and amiable young ladies—and I was to deliver my body into their hands. I instinctively stood up straight and inhaled, hoping to disguise the effects of dinner the night before.

  But there was nothing else to be done except lie back and enjoy whatever the young ladies had in mind, and as it happened, the first two or three treatments were carried out with a regard for modesty that would have made Queen Victoria nod with approval. I was taken to the doors of various rooms, told what to do and what to expect, and left alone with my nudity. The program was so well organized and discreet, so private, that I might have been the only client in the spa.

  I sweated in solitude, enveloped in the steam clouds of the hammm. I lay on a slab of heated marble for an overall herbal rinse—excellent for cellulite, so I was told—before moving on to a miniature swimming pool, where I was pummeled from neck to ankle by jets of thermal water. My cricks disappeared, my joints were eased, and my muscles became elastic. By the time I met my wife in the main salon, halfway through the morning, I was so relaxed, I was having difficulty keeping my eyes open, and I nearly dropped off in the armchair while drinking a warm herbal tisane.

  This mixture, tasting pleasantly of lemons and seemingly quite innocuous, is part of the inner purging process. “Buvez et éliminez” is the spa’s motto, and they’re not joking. In my case, the liquid had an almost instant eliminating effect on the bladder. It was a reaction that I learned to anticipate over the next few days, making sure I never drank any of these tisanes unless there was a bathroom within fifty yards. I even caught myself keeping an eye open on the way to and from our room for convenient clumps of shrubbery in case the great eliminator struck again.

  After our first dose of this rather dramatic pick-me-up, it was time for my wife and me to share the next treatment. We were taken to a room with a sunken bath, big enough for half a dozen people, which was filled with a thick, opaque liquid. It was mud, but thermal mud, mud of great refinement, mud de luxe, somewhere in color between off-white and the palest green. I had always thought of mud baths as barely one step up from the swamp—lumpy, gaseous, and noisome, bubbling with smells of rot. But this was as smooth as oil, inoffensive to the nose, and astonishingly buoyant.

  We found that after a few minutes of experimental wallowing, we could float in a sitting position, knees drawn up, arms spread out for balance, while the mud went to work. And what therapeutic mud it was, according to the young lady in charge—wonderful for rheumatism, excellent for stress, and a godsend for anyone suffering from that popular malady the French describe so delicately as “les problèmes de transit intestinal.” On top of all that, it was an extraordinarily pleasant sensation, as though we had immersed ourselves in warm cream. We could happily have spent the rest of the morning bobbing around in it, half-standing, half-floating, slippery and weightless, giving not a thought to problems of transit intestinal.

  After a shower, we went our separate ways: my wife to the heated marble slab, while I was led off by one of the young ladies in white to a large glass box. And there I stood, entièrement nu, as she had instructed, spread-eagle against the glass wall, with my back to her. I looked over my shoulder with what I hoped was a nonchalant expression and asked the young lady, who was standing outside the box, what was going on. She smiled sweetly and adjusted the nozzle of a hose before aiming it at me through a hole in the glass.

  “This is very good for toning the body and for drainage,” she said. “First, I do your back part. When I tap on the wall, you turn sideways so that I can do your side part.”

  I was still wondering whether my drainage was that obvious a problem, when she let rip. For those of you who have never had a concentrated high-pressure massage, I can tell you that it is just this side of pain—a million liquid needles going up and down your body, from the calves to the base of the skull. In fact, it felt terrific, but I was glad I wasn’t facing the other way.

  After a few bracing minutes, there was a tap on the glass wall. I turned sideways. One hip, half a set of ribs, and a shoulder were made to tingle. Then another tap, so that the other side could be dealt with. I felt as rosy as a freshly cooked ham.

  The jet stopped. I was just about to thank the young lady for a uniquely stimulating experience, when she tapped again. “Now I do your front part,” she said.

  The full monty.

  It is a most curious feeling to stand naked, poised to flinch, facing a young woman you have only just met while she directs lethally powerful jets of water up and down your body. Not unpleasant by any means, but curious, and it poses one or two social questions. Should you attempt to make polite conversation, or would that distract her and put her off her aim, possibly with excruciating results? And what should you do with your hands? Should one assume the at-ease position, with hands clasped behind the back? The casual, full-disclosure pose, with hands on hips? Total surrender, with hands on the head? Or should the hands be on guard duty farther down? It was one of those moments that defies any attempt at sophisticated deportment. I wondered what Cary Grant, the king of savoir faire, would have done in similar circumstances.

  I also wondered how the young lady would reply if she was at a party and someone asked her about her work.

  “Tell me, what do you do for a living?”

  “Oh, I put naked men and women up against a wall and give them hell with a high-pressure hose.”

  By now, I had a full-body blush. Lingering traces of drainage, I was sure, would have been washed away, toget
her with cellulite and any bodily hair and layers of epidermis that weren’t securely anchored. But the sense of well-being was marvelous. My skin felt as though it had been sluiced down with champagne.

  So ended the first morning, and it was remarkable how two and a half hours of treatments—a period during which I had done nothing more physically demanding than take off my clothes—could provoke such a ferocious appetite. As we were walking over to the hotel restaurant, fond memories of the previous night’s dinner returned, only to be suppressed. Now we were in the grip of the cure. Now we were to experience our first encounter with minceur food, described in lyrical style by Guérard as “une cuisine gaie, harmonieuse, et savoureuse.”

  Before we had even reached our table, I was struck by one of the great joys of staying in a top-class hotel: Life has no rough edges. You are surrounded by people who have been trained to please, and, God bless them, they seem to enjoy doing it. As we were escorted through the lobby, we were greeted by smiles, inquiries after our health, and a salvo of bons appétits. We felt welcome. We felt loved. Above all, we felt hungry.

  The fact that we kept to our original high-minded intentions and chose the minceur menu instead of the gourmet’s special is a tribute to my wife’s willpower rather than mine. I have a tendency to waver at the prospect of lobster and truffled tidbits. She is made of stronger stuff. Also, as an accomplished cook herself, she was fascinated to see what Guérard could do with fewer calories than a cheeseburger and french fries.

  Minceur cooking, if you should want to try it yourself, is based on a few simple principles: Use plenty of fruit and vegetables; replace butter and cream with olive and colza oils; replace synthetic sugar with natural fructose; prepare a lighter meal—usually fish—in the evening, for a thinner dinner; and drink wine every day. So much for the rules. Stick to those, and produce meals that look and taste like the very best three-star food. Nothing to it, really. All it takes is a prodigious amount of time and talent.

 

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