Remembrance of Things Paris

by Gourmet Magazine Editors

  We proceeded cautiously down the hall. At the end was a spiral staircase and a glass door leading into a pantry and kitchen. A man wearing a white shirt and cook’s trousers stood with his back to us, ordering more milk and cream on the telephone. When he finished, I opened the door and asked him where I might find M. Berthillon.

  “I am Berthillon,” he said. “How did you get in? What do you want?” He glared at me and at my charming companion, who had wisely remained in the shadows. I explained the purpose of my visit. M. Berthillon, a heavyset, ruddy-faced man with a mustache and bright eyes, said gruffly that he was très occupé and had no time for idle conversation. Fruits had to be peeled and pressed, and he was already behind schedule. The girl who was supposed to help wash up had gone home and hadn’t returned yet. “C’est un désastre,” he said darkly and was about to close the door when I quickly slipped my foot in the entrance in my best door-to-door-salesman style and asked Berthillon about himself. No, he had never been a cuisinier, never a pâtissier, always a glacier. He’d been right here for nineteen years. First, he’d been all alone in his kitchen, but now his son-in-law was helping.

  At that point, a slim young man, Berthillon’s son-in-law, Monsieur Bernard Chauvin, came down the stairs. He shook hands with us, and then M. Berthillon had to shake hands with us too. He was still holding the door, but the ice (unflavored) was slowly melting between us. Thirty minutes and much information later, we were permitted brief access to the small kitchen, with its large, modern ice-cream freezer, refrigerators, and tables. The floor was sticky with syrup, and the girl wasn’t back yet. “Une catastrophe,” said the son-in-law.

  M. Berthillon turned out to be that refreshing, rare specimen, an uninhibited individualist disdainful of any compromise. He said he didn’t know what flavors he would make tomorrow; that depended on supplies. Twice a week the two men drive out to the new Halles at Rungis and buy what is good—and, alas, often expensive. In late spring he had found some fine fraises des bois and had had to charge twenty-five francs for a liter of strawberry ice, which he hated to do, but at the regular price he would have lost money. The summer’s melons were expensive, too, “but good.”

  On Bastille Day, when it can get humid and hot in Paris and everybody wants ice cream or sherbet, M. Berthillon closes his shop and goes away with his wife, daughter, and son-in-law for two months. The maison reopens on September 14, when the warm weather is almost over. Within a few hours word mysteriously reaches customers, from the nearby concierge to the Baronne de Rothschild in her hôtel particulier, and everybody arrives and lines up.

  “Je m’en fiche,” M. Berthillon said with feeling. “I am not interested in people who come here during a heat wave. I like them to come when it’s snowing and zero outside. Then they come to enjoy my fine ices and not just to cool themselves.”

  One can’t expect a Stradivari to tell his secrets, and M. Berthillon is no exception. “Anybody can make ice creams and sorbets,” he said. “Ice cream is, in principle, fruit or chocolate or something else with egg yolks, sugar, and cream. Sherbet is fruit juice or liqueur with sugar dissolved in water. We have good water on the Île. It comes all the way from Fontainebleau, but we boil it just to be sure there is no taste of chlorine. No coloring, no powders, nothing artificial, either. Two thirds of our sales are water ices, which are refreshing and good for the digestion and haven’t many calories. Personally, I don’t mind calories.

  We like to eat well during our vacation. I am from Burgundy and forty-nine.” He nodded and smiled as though that explained everything—and it did. We talked about good restaurants for a while, and then M. Berthillon said, almost regretfully, that he really had to go back to work, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to serve twenty-five different flavors on Wednesday. “Come back tomorrow at ten when the shop opens,” he said. We shook hands and left. No one can convince us that M. Berthillon is difficult.

  We returned the next morning. By ten-thirty, a line had already formed in front of the small café. The proprietor of the bookstore next door said that sometimes there is a real bagarre, a scuffle, among the impatient customers. Inside, Madame Berthillon and her daughter, Madame Chauvin, were trying to run the madhouse, answering the phone, checking lists, taking ices out of the freezers, and scribbling orders, which they entered in an old-fashioned ledger. The whole operation was amateurish but curiously efficient. In the afternoon a young girl would come in to help serve the tables, but the maison was strictly a family enterprise: no waitresses in starched uniforms, no computers, just wonderful ices.

  A sign on the wall says that cornets (cones) must not be consumed on the premises; little and big boys, take notice! Another sign informs customers of the morning’s ice-cream flavors: vanille, café, chocolat, caramel, noix de coco, Agenaise (prune with Armagnac), Créole (with rum and raisins), Grand Marnier, plombières (with glacéed fruits), noisette, and banane. There is also a list of the available sherbets: fraise, framboise, cerise, mûre (blackberry), myrtille (huckleberry), cassis, pêche, reine-claude (greengage), mirabelle (yellow plum), poire, abricot, citron, mandarine, orange, pamplemousse (grapefruit), pruneau (with Armagnac), thé, ananas, and two superspecials, fraise des bois and melon. A coupe of sherbet is only three francs. They also serve coffee, tea, café viennoise, mineral waters, fruit juices, quinine water, and beer, according to a sign, though I wouldn’t advise anyone to go to Berthillon for a bottle of beer. Goodness knows what might happen.

  The line of customers is a demonstration of the blessings of democracy. Elderly ladies and very chic young women, all wait their turn to ask meekly for a liter of ice. Strawberry and vanilla are the best sellers. Most women know what they want, but some men do not. The day of our visit three bachelors said they had a party for ten that night and asked what they should take. Mme. Berthillon counseled them, and they thanked her. The ices are packed in square white boxes lined with foam rubber, and they keep for at least two hours outside the freezer. The boxes are two francs extra, which is refunded when the customers return them. But they will probably be needed when the customers come for more sherbet; once people have tasted M. Berthillon’s ices, they always come back.

  When Madame had a free moment, I asked her why her husband and she hadn’t expanded the business. She smiled. “You talked to my husband yesterday, didn’t you? Well, you noticed that he is a perfectionist. He wants to do everything himself. He admitted Bernard into his sanctum only a few years ago. But we plan to open up the second floor and enlarge the kitchen—just a little. We don’t want a factory. We just want to make the best ices in Paris.” More power to the House of Berthillon! “Everybody has to come collect his ices here. We do not deliver.”

  “Even to Madame Pompidou or the Rothschilds?” I asked.

  “I don’t care about the names of our customers. Everybody gets the same product.” She shouted toward the kitchen in the rear, “Will there be rhubarb in the afternoon?” and a man’s voice shouted back, “Yes!”

  October 1973

  THE PRESIDENT OF PASTRY

  Joseph Wechsberg

  The tale of Monsieur Gaston Albert Celestin Lenôtre, born in 1920 on a small farm in Normandy, is a fine rags-to-riches story. He began as a petit pâtissier normand in Pont-Audemer, near Deauville. Word soon got around that Lenôtre made wonderful tartes, brioches, mille-feuilles, petits fours, and génoises. Thus encouraged, Gaston and his wife, Colette, moved to Paris in 1959 and opened une petite pâtisserie at 44, rue d’Auteuil.

  M. Lenôtre is no longer a petit pâtissier. Among his colleagues he is known as “le Président des Pâtissiers-Traiteurs de Paris.” Among those Parisians who can afford Lenôtre, he is much admired as one of the finest traiteurs (caterers) in a city with a distinguished catering tradition. Today the firm Lenôtre calls itself “Pâtissier, Glacier, Chocolatier, Traiteur.” Pâtisserie, M. Lenôtre’s first love, still accounts for 40 percent of the firm’s activities. The small pâtisserie has become a large enterprise with three hundred employees, several fa
ctories (called laboratoires) where the various delicacies are developed, tested, and prepared, and its own training school, the École Lenôtre. So great is the fame of Lenôtre that its founder has been accepted by a group of the younger great French chefs as the only pâtissier-traiteur member. Among the other eleven members of the group are the Haeberlins (Illhaeusern), the Troisgros (Roanne), René Lasserre (Paris), Louis Outhier (La Napoule), and Paul Bocuse (Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or), the head of the group. All of them are aware that la grande cuisine must not stand still if it isn’t to become stale. They revere their elders, but they agree that the chefs of today must go along with the new times.

  The once-small pastry shop on the rue d’Auteuil remains the germ cell, focus, and showplace of the firm. The cold pâtés, terrines, meats, and salads are exhibited in the middle of the vitrine. On the left is the pâtisserie, on the right are the chocolates, and in between are the ice creams and sherbets. The catering department offers such rare items as gratin dauphinois (scalloped potatoes) and crêpes aux épinards (spinach-filled crêpes), which can be bought and taken home and must only be warmed up. The gratin dauphinois is a tricky thing, but, if heated carefully, it may taste as though it were freshly prepared. All items, from the two hundred different plats cuisinés to the special icecream creations, are so prepared that they will withstand the journey from the factory to the six Lenôtre shops (five in the Paris region and one in Deauville) or to the customer’s place—a house, an embassy, the private dining room of a large corporation.

  The various departments produce 165 different kinds of pâtisserie, including 36 petits fours both secs and glacés, 31 different sherbets, parfaits, and ice creams, as well as 24 entremets glacés; 110 kinds of chocolate candies, pâtes de fruits, and caramels; and hundreds of plats cuisinés, pâtés, terrines, hams, and sausages, not to mention 42 condiments and sauces.

  “In fact,” says Alain Lenôtre, a son of the founder, “you can order almost anything, and it will be delivered to your house and will taste as though you’d made it yourself. It may even taste a little better because our first-rate chefs use only first-rate ingredients. We cannot afford anything that’s second-class. Our stores offer a different plat du jour every day of the year. We are very strict; we must be. Practically everything not sold tonight will either be eaten by our employees—we have to feed three hundred people day after day—or be given to charitable institutions. But it will not be sold tomorrow. We have to make certain compromises because a few of our articles, ice creams and sherbets, for instance, are not eaten the same day. I was at Paul Bocuse yesterday. Had a wonderful lunch, finished with a wonderful ice cream. He uses only 125 grams of sugar per liter because his ice cream is eaten the same day. Ours must be kept a few days; we use 300 grams of sugar. Otherwise there is no difference between something made at home by a very good cook and something we make and deliver to you.”

  Alain Lenôtre is young, dynamic, and tough, not the sort of Frenchman some people would expect from novels and the Sunday papers. Lenôtre is no longer a firm of artisans making good pastry; it is a computerized, highly organized business—getting the best ingredients at the right moment, turning them into fine goods, and selling them in the best possible condition. Lenôtre père no longer takes part in the commercial affairs, leaving them to Alain.

  “My father spends all his time at the laboratory, designing and testing new recipes,” says Alain, “but his heart still belongs to pâtisserie.” Which is clear to customers when they see the wonderful pastry made by Lenôtre’s pâtissiers. Along with the pâtisserie, his ice creams and chocolates are imaginative, elegant, well prepared, and beautifully presented. By the time this is read, Lenôtre will have opened a store in Manhattan, selling pastry, ice creams, and chocolates. The catering will come later; no pâtés, no refined terrines yet.

  “We’re going to have problems,” says Alain. “Butter, for instance. My father thinks that the best Normandy butter is the finest on earth. But we’ll manage. Lenôtre is a family affair; there are ten of us in the firm. My wife is in charge of our store at Parly 2. Annie will be in New York. And there are Marcel and Patrick and Colette and Josette and …” Even Papa’s grandmother is involved, in a manner of speaking. On the labels of Lenôtre’s excellent confiture it says, “Préparée selon l’ancienne recette de ma grand-mère Éléonore Lenôtre.”

  January 1974

  PARIS’S HAUTE CHOCOLATERIE

  Naomi Barry

  In extremis, when nothing else is at hand, there is always the baking chocolate. Such is my credo, but I didn’t expect to find fellow weaklings among the All Gauls: slim, sleek, deceptive types who look as if they were nourished on a string bean. Micheline Haardt, the neat-asa-pin stylist, whispered that designer Sonia Rykiel is also an unbridled fanatic of chocolate.

  Generally speaking, chocolate in the French capital is seductive, refined, recherché, noble, and expensive. And, as I came to discover, the best part of this town is at the rarefied top. Haute couture. Haute chocolaterie.

  The Paris passion for haute chocolaterie is shameless in contrast to my wholesome background of divinity fudge and frosted cupcakes, where those who binged did so in private and were advised to keep it that way. Parisians, on the other hand, extol a bash of indulgence as a péché mignon (an adorable little sin). Just one more proof of Gallic greatness.

  For the past few hundred years the population of Paris has been treating chocolate as a suave, voluptuous, and amusing commodity. Back in the eighteenth century a witty confectioner upped his business by numbering, literally, his chocolate truffles from one to ninety. The rich bought big bagfuls for conducting family lotteries in their gilded salons. Win or lose, everybody received a consolation prize.

  One of the most publicized meals of the 1970s was a lunch at the Élysée Palace prepared by three-star chef Paul Bocuse and a few of his “pan pals” for the then President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. The opening bang was an extravagant black truffle soup, all its heady perfume held captive under a dome of puff pastry. Chosen as the climax for the sophisticated menu was a chocolate cake dubbed “Le Président.” It too was a domed masterpiece, smothered under a froufrou of chocolate rufflettes. The cake—created by Maurice Bernachon, the famed Lyons chocolatier, and still a favorite in his repertory—resembles a saucy dancer dressed as a cancan incarnation of the Black Swan.

  Bernachon, a specialist in the finesse that lifts frivolity to an art, occasionally decorates a cake with chocolate leaves. To obtain them he paints melted chocolate over a fresh leaf to capture the veined imprint. Once the chocolate hardens, the leaf is thrown away.

  In Paris the contemporary taste is for a chocolate that is dark, unsweetened, and intense. Lovers of the Chocolate Kiss won’t like it. They are not yet ready for the True Bite.

  Christian Constant’s small shop and tearoom, at 26, rue du Bac in the stylish Seventh Arrondissement, specializes in his own artisanal production. Constant is revered as the Chocolate Prince. He is affable and attractive, qualities that help quiet the tantrums of exigent clients on a day when supplies fall short of demand.

  When professional cooks in Paris make pastries and candies, most of them buy blocks of chocolate from Valrhona, an exacting little factory in Tain-l’Hermitage in the Drôme département in southeastern France. Constant is such a fanatic that he has Valrhona send him the cocoa beans themselves. In the laboratory behind his shop he blends cocoas from Venezuela, Indonesia, and Trinidad to fabricate his own bars. Part of the result is sold to the public in hundred-gram weights.

  Constant’s goal is a chocolate stripped of sugar yet still palatable. He crashed through the sugar barrier with Bitter Plus, with only 20 percent sugar. A cult of devotees sprang up immediately. Constant ventured even further to achieve a “Pure Pâte Sans Sucre.” For straight-out eating, this is beyond me, but I may come to it yet.

  Recently, a doctor at the Hôpital Bichat, engaged in some research on chocolate, discovered that in its unadulterated state chocolate is ca
pable of producing a gentle high. She announced her felicitous findings on a television program with Constant. The immediate reaction was a rash of customers at the rue du Bac shop, asking furtively from behind the back of one hand for some “Pâte Pure.”

  “To get the high,” says Constant, laughing, “would require more chocolate than anybody could stomach.”

  Constant serves a sorbet au chocolat amer that is a marvel. He wanted no sugar but found that the “Pâte Pure” didn’t work. In the end pure cocoa did. Into it he incorporates raisins that have been soaked in Scotch, the whiskey cutting any possible cloyingness from the chocolate’s intensity. It is a darkly delicious sherbet with a texture as smooth and rich as ice cream.

  Constant is full of praise for America’s food and wine but feels the country has not yet grown up to chocolate: “America looks upon it as a bonbon. France has always regarded it as a jewel.”

  “Vive la différence,” I sighed as I set off to further my investigations.