Remembrance of Things Paris

by Gourmet Magazine Editors

  The timetable was rigorous in order to avoid a pileup of customers all arriving in little cars and pickup trucks. First to go on sale about midnight were the fruits and vegetables. At regular intervals during the night came the poultry, the meat, the fish, and the dairy products. At nine A.M.,a bell was rung to terminate the wholesale trading. This was also the signal for anything left over to be sold to retail customers during the cleanup hour.

  Like Sooners rushing into the opening of the Oklahoma Territory came nuns with orphanages and other institutions to feed, thrifty housewives, the respectable poor, and the clochards. Some etymologists say that the slang word clochard, meaning bum, is derived from the ringing of Les Halles’ bell or cloche.

  Although the Revolution of 1789 and the Rights of Man never completely eradicated a sense of class in France, Les Halles were remarkably free. Apparently nobody, not even the wealthiest dealer in citrus fruits, felt particularly privileged if he had to get up every morning at four.

  Furthermore, everyone who had any work connected with Les Halles wore a coverall or blouse. It had the same leveling influence as the obligatory smock worn by French schoolchildren. Employers and employees alike were dressed in these button-down-the-front work coats. A light gray blouse indicated some aspect of the food trade. Dark gray signified that one was in fish. White was for the butchers. I knew a merchant in Les Halles who kept a Thoroughbred saddle horse at Rambouillet and a yacht on the Riviera. But during the week, in his light gray blouse, he was just plain Jacques to everybody.

  “We are a little republic, a commune libre,” he once said to me. “Nowhere can you find a better human contact between employer and employee than here.”

  Most visitors were familiar with the white uniforms of the butchers. Generally the butchers were young and strapping, and had ferocious appetites. As soon as their work let up a little (about three A.M.),they would troop to the nearest bars and bistros to restore themselves.

  During the twenties and the thirties, an evening at the nightclubs, bars, opera, or theater in the smart quarters of Paris was not considered properly climaxed unless it ended with onion soup, steaks, or seafood in Les Halles. Evening clothes sat next to blood-smeared white aprons, and there was much bantering and laughter between the stalwarts and the swells.

  When in the restaurants of the quartier, even the outsiders found themselves talking to each other like old buddies. Joyous informality among strangers has never been a trait of the French bourgeoisie. But in this atmosphere so redolent of all the products of earth and sea, stiff behavior just disappeared.

  The beating heart of the district, of course, was the markets themselves.

  The ones known to us were erected during the 1850s under Napoleon III. The delicate ironwork construction of the twelve pavilions was of an architectural daring that thrilled and delighted all Europe. The use of such light iron skeletons was positively revolutionary at the time. Remember that Les Halles predated the Eiffel Tower by more than thirty-five years.

  Underneath the pavilions were vast warehouses and storage vaults, never seen by the public. The grillwork gates were locked until four in the afternoon, when they were opened for the Flower Market. The brilliant masses of color, the heaps of blooms beyond the imagination, and the forest of green plants made the few hours of the Flower Market one of the ravishing enchantments of this world.

  The police kept careful watch to make sure that no private customers intruded. But at six-thirty P.M.,for a half hour, the public could buy bunches at deliriously cheap wholesale prices. What an intoxication to walk away with two dozen long-stemmed roses for a fraction of the cost at a florist on the avenue George-V. Parisians planning a party would try to come during that precious half hour and buy enough to flower their apartments extravagantly.

  Whenever I felt stifled by the city, I would stroll over to Les Halles in the daytime. Even though the markets were closed during these hours, the area was a fascinating hive of specialized shops, bistros, restaurants, and throbbing local color. Surrounding the actual marketplace is a teeming quarter filled with accessory trades: jobbers, demi-wholesalers, makers of sausage casings, restaurant suppliers, cheese refiners, preparers of foie gras, and sellers of toques and aprons.

  People who love their kitchens come to the neighborhood for all sorts of special items, most of which are used by professionals. French charcuteries traditionally have stunning receptacles in which to display their wares; crocks and pickle jars and distinctive white rectangular dishes. You can find these at the Verrerie des Halles in the courtyard of 15, rue du Louvre and at A. Simon, 32, rue Étienne-Marcel. At Nortier, at 10, rue Coquillière, the cheeses are so perfectly aged you need never poke an exploratory index finger. Next door is Battendier, celebrated for their whole fresh foie gras, which they send all over Paris, particularly at Christmas.

  At 18, rue Coquillière is Dehillerin, since 1820 a headquarters for chefs seeking pots, pans, knives, molds, terrines, and a thousand other utensils absolutely necessary for classic French cuisine. The firm’s great specialty is copper of a quality hard to find today: heavy copper casseroles, cocottes, and sautéing pans lined with tin, which Dehillerin will reline during the slow months of January and February. Their weight could break a wrist.

  The ancient streets of this area have delicious names like rue de la Lingerie (Street of Underwear), rue de la Poterie (Street of Pottery), rue des Déchargeurs (Street of the Moving Men), rue Mondétour (Street of My Detour), and rue du Plat-d’Étain (Street of the Pewter Plate). The neighborhood is a treasure of exquisite but dilapidated mansions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. You might not notice them because of the warehouses and jobbers installed on many of the ground floors. However, if you raise your eyes, you will discover some of the finest old buildings in Paris. Looming over the whole jumbled ensemble is the glorious Gothic Renaissance church of Saint-Eustache, famous for its organ music.

  What is going to happen now? There is no clear-cut answer. Everything under the roofs of the pavilions—fruits, vegetables, fish, dairy, and poultry—will go to the new, spacious, efficient, hygienic buildings and hangars at Rungis. Meats will be transferred to the already existing meat market at the Porte de la Villette. The flowers, too, are going to Rungis, to the dismay of thousands who had hoped and agitated to keep them in the city as an explosion of beauty in the middle of stone urbanism. Unable to make the trip will be the local color and the special Rabelaisian atmosphere of Les Halles. Like good little wines, it is doubtful that they can travel.

  Exactly what is to be done with the soon-to-be-cleared space, no one yet knows. Will it be transformed into a park, a parking lot, a sports center, a university complex, a cluster of administration buildings, or a real estate development of offices and apartment houses? All the enterprises in the surrounding area of the pavilions can stay on. Nobody intends to move unless evicted because his building has been condemned. For health and safety, some buildings are to be demolished. There is an uneasy malaise throughout the quartier. No one knows if the neighborhood can survive when the heart has been removed.

  Dehillerin is expecting a drop in business. However, they have prepared a simple catalogue to mail out to friends and customers around the world.

  That the Halles district was home to a number of good restaurants is not news. But they are in a particular bind, according to one merchant in Les Halles. They have falsified their tax returns for so many years that the indemnity, if they leave, would be next to nothing. The future is uncertain. Will the bourgeois fun-lovers still come after the robust workers have gone?

  Certain restaurants will not be too much affected because their clientele does not depend upon Les Halles. L’Escargot has been at 38, rue Montorgueil since 1830, when it used to feed the passengers arriving by diligence. The décor is so Merry Widow, you expect someone to break into song at any minute.

  The six macramé curtains are a marvel, and it is estimated that it would cost two thousand dollars to replace one of them. H
owever, they can’t be replaced, because no one is left to crochet linen thread into complicated lace patterns of château life. Every August during the annual closing the curtains are sent to the Jura where they are laundered by careful old ladies and laid to dry on the mountain prairies.

  At L’Escargot, I ate a delicious fillet of sea bass that had been poached in a fumet with white wine. It was serve in a ring of cooked chopped mushrooms and tomatoes. The décor and the food will attract the clientele, no matter what happens in the neighborhood.

  I left the restaurant with an upward look toward the vestibule ceiling, painted to represent a group of cherubs in chefs’ toques cooking up a sauce in heaven. This confection had been bought from the Brittany summer house of Sarah Bernhardt. Sarah, who liked to paint, was supposed to have applied a few of the brushstrokes herself. After her death, L’Escargot acquired the fresco in tender memory of a very spectacular client.

  In contrast to the plushy grandeur of L’Escargot, there is a very ordinary little zinc bar at 13 bis, rue Montmartre. On its walls is a smashing series of ceramic murals, showing Les Halles in its nineteenth-century bloom. One depicts the scramble to buy food after the bell. Another portrays the arrival of the little merchandise train that used to puff-puff directly into the market.

  The little train chugged into oblivion years ago. Now the mammoth trucks soon will be going down another highway. When they get to Rungis, I wonder if they will find a few winking daisies lovingly placed among the string beans for no reason beyond the poetic pleasure.

  December 1968

  LA VIE MODERNE

  Joseph Wechsberg

  Many Parisians were unhappy when their City Council decided to tear down the beautiful old Halles and move the operation to a suburban no-man’s-land at Rungis near Orly Airport. The Halles, built between 1854 and 1866 (actually the market had been there since the twelfth century), was a landmark of Paris, like the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe. Petitions were signed, and the decision went all the way up to President Pompidou, a connoisseur of beautiful things, but Les Halles was moved to Rungis. They say that the last pavilion, still standing, will be dismantled and rebuilt in Vincennes as part of a permanent exposition.

  During the general excitement no one bothered to take a fair look at the Marché d’Intérêt National (MIN) in Rungis. I went there one morning with M. Jean Vialetto, the technical director of the Hôtel Lancaster, who drives out three times a week to buy flowers. The Lancaster spends more money on flowers than it does on electricity. On the way out M. Vialetto told me that the elderly habitués of the Halles had been unhappy about the move and were still trying to get used to Rungis. “The Halles was crowded and uncomfortable but also cozy and convenient. One knew everybody there. One could walk around and make all his purchases within a couple of hours. Rungis is six hundred hectares (almost fifteen hundred acres), and the buyer has to drive around to purchase different things. The operation is more efficient, but somehow it got dehumanized. The spirit has changed. One no longer knows many people there; one feels lost.” He gave a shrug. “I suppose it was inevitable. Rungis reflects the patterns and modes of la vie moderne.”

  We got off the autoroute du sud and stopped at a tollgate. M. Vialetto showed his permanent buyer’s card. (Other people pay five francs. There was no entrance fee in the old Halles.) It was seven in the morning, just the time to see the windup operation at Le Pavillon de la Marée (the fish market). The men begin their work at five in the morning and end about three hours later. To avoid traffic congestion the various departments at Rungis operate at different hours. After the fish market closes the dairy pavilion is open; the fruit and vegetable markets are next, and then the flower market. The whole system has changed. In the old Halles the small producers sold their goods in small stalls; it was the era of the individualist. Now many small producers form cooperatives to share the overhead. Some sold out to the big companies. The new market is almost anonymous. “The technocrats and the police have taken over,” M. Vialetto said.

  The fish market, located in a very large hall, was clean and air-conditioned, spacious and well organized. There were stacks of white plastic containers with fine fish and shellfish resting on crushed ice—turbot, sole, crevettes, langoustes. The containers were lifted and moved by small vehicles. There was the strong, pleasant scent of the incoming tide. The “fishmongers,” mostly large firms, were installed in heated offices behind glass panels. Men in blue or white overalls stood around writing orders. In the not-so-old days the chefs of many good restaurants did their shopping at the Halles, selecting fine fish, primeurs, anything that looked especially good. Rungis is too far away for them to come out. Instead they have commissionaire-négociants who do the buying for them. Gone are the pretty girls who worked as shopgirls or cashiers, adding the feminine touch. Only a few women are left, and they wear white skirts and white boots.

  Iasked M. Vialetto what had happened to the lovely old restaurants where one went for soupe à l’oignon at five in the morning before going to bed. He took me to a large kiosk across from the main entrance to the Marée hall. It was called Le Grand Pavillon and looked like a California roadside restaurant surrounded by parked cars, but inside the atmosphere was still Parisian. On one side was the café and brasserie. Sturdy men wearing blue aprons were having un petit verre de vin blanc at the bar. Others sat at small tables eating. We talked with Mme. Jeanne Baldit, the patronne who has run the place with the help of thirty-five employees since the untimely death of her husband, who was well known around the Halles. She showed us photographs of her former restaurant, Aux Deux Pavillons. “We were surrounded by flower women,” she said wistfully. “Ah, comme c’était joli!” One Saturday night in March 1969 the restaurant closed, and the following Tuesday morning it reopened in Rungis. There are twenty-two such restaurants all over the terrain, compared with one hundred and fifty in the former Halles district. Some have remained, and others have closed up.

  “It was difficult in the beginning, but now we do more business than before. We are open day and night except on Sundays. I have three chefs. One works from six in the morning until four in the afternoon; the next, until two in the morning; and the third, during the early morning hours when the Marée people come in. We already have a steady clientele from the outside: Industrialists and executives arrive from nearby enterprises, and some of our old friends come out for dinner. They say it’s easier to drive out on the superhighway than it was to travel through the congested streets of the old Halles district; the new market is only twenty minutes from the Concorde. They know they’ll get the freshest and best fish from the Marée.”

  There were a dozen fish dishes on the menu. Mme. Baldit said that Champagne was being sold by the glass at the bar. The restaurant side of the building was cheerful with yellow tablecloths, amusing lighting fixtures, and prints and historical pictures of the old Halles. It was eight-fifteen in the morning, and the bosses of the large fish firms sat down for dinner. The waiters brought bottles of Beaujolais and large steaks. Having seen nothing but fish since three in the morning, they preferred to eat meat. Mme. Baldit had awakened at four, and it would be five in the afternoon by the time she got home. She was getting used to the new pattern of life.

  “It’s more civilized,” she said. “The merchants no longer think they own the place. There was a lot of shouting, you know. This crowd is more businesslike, almost polite. I think even the onion-soup clientele will show up sooner or later.”

  We left and drove around. M. Vialetto showed me the fruit and vegetable pavilions and took me to the flower pavilion, large and air-conditioned and very clean. Blue signs said Allée des Tulipes, Allée des Roses, and so on. A surveillant member of the Préfecture de Police (who preferred to remain anonymous) told us that the laws are more strictly enforced nowadays. It is impossible to buy without an invoice. Only wholesale buyers are admitted. Housewives can no longer come out on Saturdays to buy what is left at lower prices. The officer admitted that the place
has no ambiance familiale. “But we have a drivein cinema, a hotel, even a centre de loisir. One cannot do one’s shopping as one did around the old Halles. But everything considered, Rungis isn’t bad. It was necessary. Maybe someday people will even admit it.”

  January 1973

  PURVEYORS

  COLD COMFORT

  Joseph Wechsberg

  Ice cream and sherbet enthusiasts, who account for a large percentage of the Parisian populace, have long thought Monsieur Berthillon un peu difficile. Few know his first name (Raymond); fewer still have seen him. Friends told me I wouldn’t be able to talk to him: He had no time for reporters and such. “Il s’en fiche royalement,” they said; he couldn’t care less. And why should he? M. Berthillon is without doubt the Stradivari of Paris glaciers (ice-cream makers).

  Ice creams and sherbets (water ices) are part of French gastronomy. “When they are well prepared and daintily dished, they are the consummation of all that is delicate and good,” wrote Escoffier, who started out as a pâtissier and often made his own sherbets. Flavored ices were introduced in Paris in the 1660s by Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, “a gentleman from Palermo,” who later served sherbets in his Café Procope, said to be the oldest coffeehouse in the world. But the glory of having invented flavored ices goes to the Chinese, who later taught the art to the Persians and the Arabs.

  Back to M. Berthillon. His ice-cream parlor is a modest café in the Hôtel de Bourgogne, a charmingly run-down building on the rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île, in one of the ancient quartiers of Paris where time seems to stand still. A historical marker on the façade informs the visitor that the house was built in 1642 for Maître Tailleur Jacques Pichon, perhaps an early Cardin.

  Berthillon’s café displays two nondescript flowerpots in the window and a sign informing passersby that it is possible to emporter (take home) ices Wednesday through Sunday and that there is table service after one o’clock. The price is eight francs for a half liter, sixteen francs for a liter. Some guidebooks mention that the place is closed on Mondays, but when we arrived there on a Tuesday morning, a sign said, CLOSED MONDAYS AND TUESDAYS.The building’s entrance, next to the café, has an old-fashioned black-and-gold sign reading, CHAUFFAGE CENTRAL, EAU ET GAZ,which reminded me of my student days when eau did not mean hot water. The door seemed locked. I pushed a button. Nothing happened. I wanted to leave, but fortunately my companion, a lady of charm and persistence, boldly turned the doorknob. The door opened into a dim corridor. Always trust a woman. The paint was peeling off the ceiling. Along one wall were boxes of strawberries, rhubarb, and asparagus and bottles of cream and milk. The scent of the fruit was fresh and fine. A large cardboard box was marked “380 oeufs.”