Remembrance of Things Paris

by Gourmet Magazine Editors

  July 1979

  BISTROS

  Naomi Barry

  One way of identifying a real Parisian is by the quality of his bistro list. A good list is considered part of his cultural baggage along with a knowledge of period furniture, modern art, and the fashion positions of Courrèges and Chanel.

  Word of a new bistro with potential flashes around the city by means of some undefined underground. Since location means nothing, the place may be in any outlying arrondissement and down any unprepossessing street. Yet, if the cooking is right, within a few months that mysterious group known as “everybody” or “le Tout-Paris” has the address marked in its little bistro book.

  Doctors and young Paris journalists have high gourmet ratings and are among the first to discover a new place. The presence of both groups is easy to spot since they tend to go out with very pretty young women.

  Don’t be misled into thinking that an absence of décor is accompanied by low prices. In some top-rated Paris bistros you pay royally for the privilege of having no red roses on the table, no thick carpet on the floor, and no bowing headwaiter. Contemporary chic says that if you have money, spend the maximum to heighten the effect of the minimum; so when you want to sup on fresh foie gras and pheasant you may choose a little restaurant with sawdust on the linoleum.

  The list of treasure bistros is part of the craze for “playing it down.” The acme of local fashion is a $750 haute couture dress stripped of everything but line. To ensure that rich-poor look, one design dictator forbids his clients to wear any jewelry with his dresses—not even a wristwatch. In prestige, a chauffeur-driven Austin Cooper is miles ahead of a space-consuming American car. The coveted apartment is a top-floor studio walk-up. It probably cost the owner a fortune to convert it from a series of six miserable maids’ rooms into a spacious two-room suite.

  In this current atmosphere of less is more, there is a staggering choice of recommendable bistros. The following are among my favorites, because I am fond of the people who run them. They are not in the ultra-fashionable category like Chez Allard, where a week’s advance reservation is a necessity. Nor are they particularly expensive.

  In each case the bistro is a family affair with the husband doing the cooking and the wife running the dining room. All of these couples are relatively young. They are warm, friendly, and charming. In their simple but pleasant establishments even a first-day tourist feels himself a part of the city.

  AU PETIT COQ

  This endearing bistro exists under the sign of the colorful Gallic cock. The rooster is everywhere: on the walls, the shelves, the counters. He appears in paintings, in drawings, and on faience plates. Customers bring figurines of roosters made of wood, straw, and painted terracotta from Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Mexico as presents for Monsieur and Madame Pommier. The client-patron relationship here is one of real affection. I have never brought any resident of Paris to the Petit Coq who did not become a regular customer.

  The specialties of slender, modest Francis Pommier include fond d’artichaut langouste, turbot à l’oseille, gratin de langouste, noisette d’agneau à l’estragon, steak au poivre, coq au vin, caneton aux pèches, and andouillette au Beaujolais.

  I can never resist the turbot with sorrel. The turbot is one of the finest fish found in European waters. The great gastronomic writer Ali-Bab declared that “if the sole has been justly called queen of the seas, the turbot deserves to be their king.”

  Monsieur Pommier exalts his turbot with a sauce fashioned from fresh cream, Sancerre wine, and generous amounts of chopped sorrel. (The addicts of sorrel can never get enough of this pleasantly tart herb; it appears only on a few Paris menus.) Monsieur Pommier is so exacting about his turbot that he claims he will accept only those which have been caught at the end of a fishing line. He has a complicated theory to the effect that the delicacy of the flesh is impaired when the turbot is caught in nets.

  I also like his baby lamb chops, presented on a giant pancake of shredded potatoes, and, for dessert, the pear tart in a pillow of puff paste, served warm.

  Another dessert specialty, the pavé du Petit Coq, is made of the simplest ingredients—two thirds of a pound of semisweet chocolate, four eggs, and a third of a pound each of sugar and butter—but the result is delicious. Monsieur Pommier says that after the chocolate is melted it is removed from the heat and the butter is added in small bits and mixed in well with a wooden spoon. The yolks are whisked into the sugar in a bowl, and the beating is continued in the upper part of a double boiler until the mixture forms a ribbon, at which point it is thoroughly mixed into the chocolate. The egg whites, beaten en neige, are folded into the mixture before it is poured into a mold to be refrigerated overnight. At serving time, the pavé is unmolded and covered with crème anglaise.

  LA CHOPE D’ORSAY

  This is the neighborhood restaurant par excellence. It benefits from being in a fine Left Bank neighborhood full of antiques shops, art galleries, and publishing houses. It is only a five-minute walk from my house, and I come here often. So does Virgil Thomson, the composer, whose Paris apartment is around the corner. A number of the residents of the quarter eat here regularly.

  You get an occasional glance at Roger Pical via the pass-through to his inadequate kitchen. He is a good-looking young man with black hair, black mustache, and warm, smiling brown eyes. In addition to eleven main dishes always on his fixed menu, Roger prepares four or five different specialties for each day. Out of the tiny kitchen come sumptuous dishes such as a blanquette de veau à l’ancienne, a fillet of beef in a brioche crust with a sauce périgourdine, and a monumental sole meunière. In season he presents pheasant, partridge, quail, and other game birds.

  If you are fortunate, you may chance upon a day when Roger has decided upon his superb tarte aux tomates, a sort of tomato quiche. For each tart he lines a pie plate with classic puff paste, punctures it with a few holes, covers it with wax paper weighted with beans, and bakes it for fifteen minutes. He dips four large tomatoes in boiling water to loosen their skins, peels them, halves them crosswise, and gently squeezes out the seeds. Then he sprinkles them with salt and pepper and lays them, cut sides down, in the shell. He mixes well three eggs, a pint of crème fraîche, and a scant four ounces of grated Gruyère, pours the mixture over the tomatoes, and bakes the tart in a gentle oven for fifteen or twenty minutes.

  Don’t wait for Roger to make his outstanding soufflé of chicken livers—he prepares it only upon special order. It is one of the neatest attractions of any bistro in town. Half of its glory lies in the accompanying brown sauce enriched with green olives, mushrooms, and quenelles of veal.

  CHEZ MICHELLE ET BRUNO

  Even if Bruno did not cook so well, I probably would be attached to this little place just to hear Michelle coo in her Toulouse accent. Michelle, who has the round prettiness that Renoir loved, addresses all her customers with affectionate little pet names: ma fille, mes gosses, mon petit.

  Michelle and her husband, Bruno, worked around Paris for several years as waitress and cook, respectively, until they had saved enough sous to open their own bistro. Michelle decorated it with the gaiety of a harvest booth at a French country fair. Clusters of garlic and red pimiento hang from the rafters. The room divider is a lattice of dried ears of corn.

  The accent of Toulouse appears again in such regional dishes as the cassoulet (a well-cooked ragout of goose, shoulder of lamb, sausages of Toulouse, white beans, and cubes of bacon), the confit of goose, and the confit of duck. (The confit is a traditional method of conserving fowl by marinating it in salt and then cooking it, well spiced, in its own fat. It is eaten later, either warm or cold.)

  A startling contrast to this heavy fare is a light opening dish such as the salade de Gruyère. It is a lovely toss of thin sticks of Gruyère, pitted green olives, white heart of escarole, minced shallots, freshly ground black pepper, and a vinaigrette. The salad is a Michelle contribution.

  The cocktail de fruits de mer is a pla
tter of assorted seafood—scallops, stuffed mussels, clams, and crayfish tails—and frogs’ legs. Despite the name, all the elements are cooked. Bruno presented it one night to win an Englishman over to seafood.

  Another Bruno specialty is a tournedos served in a tartelette of puff paste lined with slices of cooked apple. His délice du Gascon is made by covering a four-ounce veal scallop, beaten flat, with a slice of Gruyère, a slice of ham, and a second slice of Gruyère. The délice is dipped in beaten egg, rolled in bread crumbs, and sautéed lightly on each side before being cooked in a covered pan over a slow fire.

  Michell’s joy is to prepare crêpes suzette, which she does with a theatrical flourish. “I find it very agreeable to watch the customers in ecstasy before the blue flame,” she told me one day.

  The featured wines of the house are a rosé de Perpignan and a Cahors.

  AUBERGE DE L’ARGOAT

  Marcel Goarguer has a remarkable wine cellar, albeit a little like a patchwork quilt. There are three bottles of this, four bottles of that. A rarissime is hidden at the back of the cupboard. On Sundays Marcel forages the countryside, calling on little cafés in the provinces, hoping to find some buried treasure. It is not an orthodox manner of building up a cave, but Marcel has had his own bistro for less than a year and he is short on money. Through his initiative, however, he can offer the connoisseurs among his clients some real experiences.

  He has a Pichon-Lalande ’26 (three bottles), a Château Latour ’33 (also three bottles), a Château Margaux ’37 (six bottles), a Château Margaux ’47 (ten bottles), and a Chambolle-Musigny ’34 (three bottles). When these are gone, he trusts he will have found some more.

  Marcel believes in long cooking in a copper casserole on a slow fire. “My coq au vin does not drown in wine,” he says proudly, “but it does require five hours of gentle cooking.”

  Another example of his art is the lapin à la bretonne. A three-pound rabbit is cut into six pieces. In a copper sauteuse it is sautéed in two thirds of a pound of sizzling rendered pork fat (Marcel uses fat cut from their hams) until it is golden; then the rabbit is flambéed in six ounces of Calvados or Cognac and removed to a large copper casserole. Into the sauteuse go a dozen small onions, four shallots, and a pound of mushrooms cut into small pieces; when they begin to color, three quartered tomatoes are added, along with salt and pepper and a bouquet garni including thyme, bay leaf, parsley, and a heavy dose of tarragon. After a gentle cooking, the vegetables are poured over the rabbit and covered with a bottle and a half of Muscadet. The cracklings of the rendered pork and six chipolata sausages are added to the rabbit, which is cooked over a slow fire for an hour and a half. After it has rested overnight, the dish is reheated. The rabbit is served on fried croutons with the sauce, to which six teaspoons of crème fraîche have been added, and with pommes vapeur.

  Since Marcel and his wife, Jeanine, are from Brittany, the menu is strong on fish and seafood, all of which are ordered directly from coastal ports.

  The restaurant has a big stone chimney with a wood-burning fire. The dining room is furnished with Breton antiques: cupboards, copper, pewter, pottery, and old guns. As with his wines, Marcel collects lovingly and buys carefully. He often buys antiques for his customers as well.

  For dessert, try one of Jeanine’s crêpes Plougastel. The rolled pancake is filled with beaten egg white flavored with crushed strawberries and a drop of Élixir d’Armorique—a liqueur so scarce that few Frenchmen have ever heard of it.

  June 1965

  ALLARD

  Naomi Barry

  Technically, Allard is a bistro. That is, it looks like a bistro. In the front room is the bar, which is indispensable to every bistro. However, here it is covered in gleaming pewter rather than in zinc, which should give you the tip-off. Actually, this is the number-one small chic restaurant in Paris and has been for thirty-five years.

  The windows are grilled, with iron bars. Inside, the coats hang on shining brass hooks, and the sausages of Fleurie hang like stalactites. The waiters match the décor in the traditional uniform of long black aprons, black trousers, and white shirts. The menu is written in purple ink and is characteristically undecipherable.

  The atmosphere breathes authenticity, for the building—number 41, rue Saint-André-des-Arts, at the corner of the rue de l’Éperon—is very old, dating back at least to the beginning of the eighteenth century. The premises have known earlier bistros, which left no recorded history but a bit of their personality and an undeniable note of veracity. The food is mother’s home-cooking style—provided your mother happens to be a very gifted cook from Burgundy.

  To this mock-simple place in the heart of the Latin Quarter comes an enviable parade of chauffeured cars choking up the narrow, twisted street. Parking is impossible in this neighborhood. The cars return after the meal. So many of the diners wear the red rosette of the Légion d’honneur in their buttonholes that the two plain little dining rooms sometimes take on the air of a ministerial conference.

  Paris is a fickle town. Allard was established in 1931, among the first of the deluxe bistros. That it has never wavered from lead position in this period is almost a phenomenon. During the winter it is wise to reserve a table a day in advance. During the spring and the fall, when Paris entertains visitors, an advance reservation of four or five days is almost a necessity. What is the secret?

  The answer, according to André Allard, is an insistence on sameness. Familiarity is solid and comforting, especially in a rapidly changing world.

  The business was started by Marcel Allard. His wife, Marthe, handled the kitchen. Now their son André runs the show. But André first stepped in as a young boy in 1939, working behind the counter, and then as a waiter. When he married Fernande, who also hails from Burgundy, she came into the kitchen and cooked at the side of her mother-in-law. By the time André and Fernande took over, the clients were well habituated to them.

  So the tradition goes on. Fernande continues to make the dishes that were introduced by Marthe. André continues to shop in Les Halles each dawn and to buy his wines in the same vineyards patronized by his father. Whenever the restaurant is freshened and painted, it is always as before. In 1964, Allard was able to absorb the boutique next door, which meant a slightly expanded kitchen and space for fifteen additional guests. The changes were so imperceptible that no one noticed.

  Allard’s popularity in large part, of course, is due to the steadfast quality of the cooking and to its gloriously vaulted cellars. “If you have a good dish and a bad wine, all is lost,” says André.

  He buys his wine by the barrel, concentrating on Beaujolais, Côte de Nuits, Côte de Beaune, and other regional wines from Burgundy, and Chavignol from the Cher. His model cellars—centuries old—have all the advantages. The subway lines and the trucking routes are far enough away to cause no tremors. The building has no central heating plant. The corridors of the caves are covered with gravel rather than cement, so that the ground may give a natural freshness.

  Allard keeps a specialized cellarman all through the year to bottle wines, label them, and seal them with wax. So subtle is the job that no bottling is ever done on a rainy day.

  If you were planning on a whiskey before dinner, forget it. André does not stock whiskey, in keeping with the tradition of Marcel, who died several months ago. As an apéritif, he suggests a Kir, which is particularly appropriate for a Burgundy house.

  A Kir is white wine (at Allard, it is Chavignol) and crème de cassis. The drink was invented by the Canon Kir, mayor of Dijon, capital of the old province of Burgundy.

  “It is a perfect opening for a meal,” says André.

  After dinner, there are all the brandies and alcools you could desire. Cognac, eau-de-vie de framboise, and marc de Beaugency are suitable products for this sort of restaurant, and so they serve them.

  Allard has its plats du jour that have become classics over the years.

  Monday: cassoulet.

  Tuesday: veal à la berrichonne.

/>   Wednesday: coq au vin and leg of lamb.

  Thursday: petit salé with red beans.

  Friday: boeuf à la mode and navarin.

  Saturday: coq au vin and leg of lamb.

  These specialties represent French country cooking at its most traditional. It takes courage for a present-day restaurant to make them because of the long hours of preparation, but Allard is a family affair, which makes it possible.

  Various fish au beurre blanc are served according to the seasons. The tricky foaming white-butter sauce accompanies turbot, sea bass, and pike. From January until May, it appears with fresh salmon of the Loire.

  The delectable scallops coquilles Saint-Jacques, sautéed in butter, are served during all the oyster months.

  Fernande Allard supervises the making of the pâtés and the terrines of hare, duck, and chicken livers. The matelote d’anguilles, a savory stew of eel, sounds more Norman than Burgundian, but this version is done with red Burgundy wine.

  Game is always a seasonal affair, but at Allard there are seasons within seasons. For example, the bécasse (woodcock) is preferred in November when it migrates south, rather than in March when it moves north again.

  “In November, the bécasse is larger and fatter,” says André, opting for the nourishment of birds in cooler climes.

  Now, my favorite dish chez Allard is duck with turnips, a dish that once almost caused a permanent break between us.