(Not Quite) Mastering the Art of French Living

by Mark Greenside

  Finally, Madame reaches across the table and removes my plate. Thank God, I think, as I watch her snap the heads off a dozen more of these guys and gals, crack their torsos between her thumb and forefinger, and peel away the shell and carapace to expose the corpse. I’m elated—until she puts the plate back in front of me with a look that says, “I made this for you!”

  Daniel and Monsieur stop eating and watch.

  On my plate are small chunks of white meat that look like brain or tumors or worse. I fork the smallest piece possible and drown it in Madame’s homemade mayonnaise, bite, chew, and swallow. The mayonnaise is great. I oyster-fork another piece and dip it in the mayonnaise. It tastes like lobster, crab, and shrimp combined. I fork another and another and another and clean my plate.

  The langoustine are followed by lotte, a dense, chunky white fish, like halibut. I clean my plate again. It’s lucky for us I’ve never seen a lotte or heard of it, because when I do, I see it’s one of the ugliest fish in the world—all head, no body, which means what I ate were cheeks. Fish cheeks! Holy Christ! What’s next?

  More Pig

  In the U.S., I eat pork rinds, which are more Monsanto than meat, the occasional ham sandwich and pork chop, sausage, and ribs. The only pork I eat regularly is bacon in a BLT. This makes me a bad Jew. For a Jewish guy—even a nonobservant, secular Jew by DNA—pig and shiksas are the no-no’s supreme. For a Jewish girl, it’s pig and non-Jewish guys. Muslims and Jews, at war for generations, agree on one thing: pig is dirty, devil food, poison, and not to be partaken. Grandma Esther wouldn’t eat in our house because once every decade, my mom, her daughter, would lapse and let bacon into her kitchen. Somehow, Grandma Esther knew, and it kept her eating her own-made egg salad out of an empty mayonnaise jar she brought from her house while the rest of us ate chicken or turkey or brisket. All of this is written. It’s the Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shall Not Eat Pig.

  Unfortunately, pig is the national animal of Brittany. There are more pigs in Brittany than people; more pigs than chickens and cows. Pork isn’t the other white meat, it is the white meat, and a good cut of pig, like a free-range chicken, is very high-end. As I’m already halfway to hell with a non-Jewish wife—Donna is Buddhist—the rest of my fall is easy.

  I’m driving through a neighboring village at eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning and see a high-rise erector-set construction of metal racks stacked in front of the church. It looks to me like the start of a new Inquisition, so I speed up and leave.

  On my way back, I see the racks are five rotisseries, and each one has a huge—more evenly bronzed than an Antibes or Ibiza beauty—two- to three-hundred-pound pig turning desultorily over the flames. That’s one thousand to fifteen hundred pounds of pig! A sign in front of the racks says the fête begins at seven o’clock. The fragrance is mouthwatering, so I park and get out of the car. The pigs are grinning, like they’re happy to see me and happy to be here; they’ve given themselves up to the grandest of French causes—gastronomic pleasure—and they’re just plain tickled to serve. I buy a ticket for seven euros, about ten dollars, and go home.

  When I return at seven thirty, the village is barricaded and thousands of people are in the streets. I park a half mile away, walk into town, and stand in a food line that looks like 1950s photos of life in the Soviet Union or a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Hundreds of people of all ages are standing in multiple squiggly wedges, each person holding a paper plate, looking as if he or she hasn’t eaten in weeks.

  By the time I get to the table, all that’s left of Piggie Number One is a smile.

  Piggie Number Two is on the cutting board, half gone. All I can think is, Which end did the rotisserie rod enter first?—as if the answer will affect the taste, hygiene, or whether I get trichinosis or some other piggy disease. That’s what I’m thinking and worrying about, feeling that rod sliding through me (through what? Andouille!)—when the guy with the knife says something I don’t understand.

  “Oui,” I answer, knowing my odds of answering correctly are fifty-fifty. Years before, when I took the SAT exams, I decided any answer I didn’t know was b. That gave me a 25 percent chance of getting it right. Here it’s 50 percent. Already I’ve doubled my odds. The guy says something else, and when I don’t answer, he cuts a square of pig and hands it to me on the point of his knife. I look at it thinking, pigskin—gloves, suitcases, shoes. I pull the meat from the point of the knife and bite it. It’s crisp, not greasy. I swallow. It’s delicious. I bought a slice of grilled pig once before at the village market and didn’t like the stuffing, but this—I’ve never tasted anything like it. The skin is brittle—crackling! The inside is juicy, meaty, and sweet, no gristle or fat. I thank the man profusely, “Merci, merci, merci beaucoup.”

  He cuts me a huge chunk of pig, making sure I get plenty of skin and juices, and points me on to the next person, who gives me a gigantic scoop of creamy scalloped potatoes and an even bigger scoop of ratatouille. I buy a demi-carafe of local cider and sit on a bench at a long table under a tent, eating a wonderful meal with hundreds of other full and contented neighbors. When I leave at ten o’clock, they’re cutting up Pig Number Four. If there’s such a thing as piggie addiction, I have it. If there are piggie idolaters, I’d be one. If Moses had been in Brittany, it would have been a golden pig. That’s how good it is!

  So later that summer when LeRoy is visiting and we drive past a restaurant named Cochon Grillé—“Grilled Pig”—I stop. I want him to know what I know.

  It’s noon, midi, and Cochon Grillé is empty, which is not a good sign in any country, but is especially bad news in France. I’m thinking health inspectors, or worse, pig plague. I’m ready to leave when a gruff, bearded fellow comes from somewhere and says, “Messieurs.”

  “Vous êtes ouvert?” I ask. Are you open?

  “Non.”

  LeRoy looks at me like, Let’s go—but I really want him to taste and experience grilled pig.

  “C’est un restaurant, oui?” It’s a restaurant, yes?

  “Bien sûr.”

  “C’est possible faire une reservation?” Can I make a reservation?

  “Combien de personnes?”

  “Deux,” I say, pointing to LeRoy and me, and holding up two fingers to be sure.

  “Deux?” he repeats, making it a question. At least I think that’s what he says, not “duh!”

  “Deux. À quel jour?” I’m asking him when we can eat there, he’s not asking me when I want the reservation. In fact, he’s acting as if he couldn’t care less. I figure he’s a stereotypical, disgruntled French waiter.

  “Mercredi,” he says, “À midi, la semaine prochaine.”

  It’s Tuesday, and he’s telling me to come the following Wednesday, nine days later, at noon. “Bon,” I say. “Je m’appelle Greenside.”

  He walks away not writing anything down.

  The following week, LeRoy and I arrive a little before noon. The parking lot—which is huge—is empty. As far as I can see, we’re the only people there. LeRoy looks at me like, this does not bode well. I’m thinking E. coli and Black Death.

  “Let’s go,” LeRoy says, and buckles up.

  I start the engine. The waiter sees us and walks to the car to greet us. He’s happy and full of cheer. LeRoy shakes his head like doom. I’m thinking at least I know how to get us to the hospital in Quimper. The waiter knocks on the window, saying, “Entrez, entrez,” and tries to open the door, which, thankfully, is locked. It’s our last chance. LeRoy looks at me, knowing in the U.S. I’d be out of here. I turn the engine off, and LeRoy groans like Chewbacca. He’s got a sensitive stomach, an irritable bowel, and is lactose intolerant. If this turns out as bad as it seems, I’m going to have to replace the plumbing in my house. Still, it’s France, and we’re here, and I’ve yet to have a bad meal—and the guy is holding onto the door handle.

  Reluctantly, we get out of the car and death-row-walk our way toward the front door, which is closed. Monsieur le waiter walks behind us to keep us f
rom bolting. He opens the door and leads us to a full bar. It’s 11:50 a.m. All I had for breakfast was coffee. LeRoy had some fruit. The guy uncorks a bottle of something and fills three glasses.

  “No, no, no, no,” LeRoy and I decline, in harmony.

  “Si, si, si, si, si,” he persists.

  “No, no, no, no,” LeRoy solos.

  Then Monsieur le waiter, now Monsieur le bartender, says the words that make it impossible to decline. “C’est gratuit.” It’s free—which either means it is free, it’s a gift that we can’t refuse, or it’s part of the price and experience, and since we’re paying for it anyhow—about fifty dollars each—we should drink it.

  I take a sip and gasp. It’s firewater. No wonder the Indians lost Manhattan, the lands east of the Mississippi, the plains, and the entire Southwest. LeRoy takes a sip and looks like he’s going to cry. He puts his hand on his belly, instinctively, as if that will stop his intestines from disintegrating. Meanwhile, Monsieur le bartender downs his in one gulp. “Nurse it,” LeRoy whispers, “nurse it, it’s our only chance.”

  It’s noon. We’re nursing. There’s not a single nibble to absorb or dilute whatever it is we’re drinking—and no one else has arrived. We’ve managed to discover the only restaurant in France that’s empty at midi and doesn’t serve food with drink.

  To kill time—rather than us, because clearly he doesn’t know what to do with us, Monsieur le bartender asks, “Vous êtes de quel pays?”

  “Nous sommes Américains,” I say, and instantaneously he becomes ecstatic, joyous, thankful—for help in the World Wars, NATO, cream cheese, Sylvester Stallone, who can tell?—and pours us another drink.

  LeRoy slumps on his stool.

  I’m about to tell him we’re really Brits, or Belgians, Arabs, or Germans, thinking, best-case scenario, he’ll throw us out; worst, he’ll hold back on the booze.

  That’s when the bus arrives. Not a mini bus or transit bus, but a huge touring bus. A bus for the Stones, The Beatles, Gladys Knight and every Pip she ever had, John Madden’s bus. There are more mirrors on this thing than in a cheap hotel in Las Vegas. The door glides open like it’s greased with butter, and eighty people pour out as if they were hostages who hadn’t eaten in days, instead of the two hours it’s been since breakfast. Everyone is neatly and casually dressed and perfectly coifed. The men are wearing pressed pants, polished shoes, and are freshly shaved. The women are in flowery dresses and high heels. They’re all in their seventies and eighties. It’s a retirement tour group, I figure, and we’re in for pork purée.

  The men head straight for the bar, where LeRoy and I greet them with, “Bonjour, bonjour,” as if we’re regulars, part of the official welcoming party, and we’ve been waiting for these guys forever. Monsieur le bartender fills their glasses from the same bottle he filled ours and charges them, which for some reason pleases me a lot. The women are met and greeted by a smiling lady who suddenly appears—Madame la bartendress?—and escorts them through two doors into a huge room filled with tables.

  That’s when the second bus arrives—bigger, and with more mirrors than the first—and another group of eighty people pour out, looking just as determined to eat as their compatriots. They too are well dressed and coifed and in their seventies and eighties. Talk about being early! It seems LeRoy and I came to a senior citizens outing a dozen years too soon.

  The men from Bus Number Two go straight to the bar, where LeRoy and I and the men from Bus Number One greet them with, “Bonjour, bonjour,” as if we’re regulars and part of the official welcoming party, and they’re our long-awaited friends. I almost feel like I fit in. The women go through the double doors to the room in the back and mingle with the women already there.

  LeRoy and I huddle up. We hug the bar and nurse our drinks, resuming an animated debate about the Giants and A’s, hoping in the pits of our empty, alcohol-laden stomachs that no one will be foolish or brave enough to talk to us, and the bartender will leave us alone. Monsieur le bartender pours us another drink, our third. Neither LeRoy nor I drink this much on a Saturday night or New Year’s Eve, but today, on a Wednesday, at noon, we’re looped.

  Monsieur tops everyone’s glass and leads us into the back room, where the women are chatting, mingling, and nibbling, thank God. There are a dozen long rectangular tables, each one holding serving dishes, chafing dishes, platters, trays, pots, tureens, bowls, and large and small plates of pig: pig parts, pieces, and particles; chopped pig, mixed, minced, diced, shredded, and smashed; gelled, smoked, salted, sweetened, fenneled, and thymed—a cornucopia of spices, herbs, nuts, fruit, and vegetables in every kind of pâté, cold cut, and wet and dry sausage imaginable, and some that aren’t. No two tables are alike.

  LeRoy and I and the 160 dig in. He and I have no idea what we are swallowing, and we’re probably happier and better for it, as it’s our only hope of getting sober.

  We’re eating whatever we’re eating—ears, snout, knuckles, feet—trying to avoid conversations we won’t understand, talking to each other as if it’s really important, like about nuclear arms and where the bathroom is, when the music, which has been playing softly in the background, suddenly blares, and men and women, who are on opposite sides of the room and who have had nothing to do with each other since they arrived or the last thirty years, couple up and begin to dance.

  It’s nice, these seventy- and eighty-year-olds gracefully fox-trotting around the pork-laden tables. They dance, nibble on pig intestine, and dance some more.

  A lady in a blinding yellow floral dress walks over and takes my hand. Her buddy in blue takes LeRoy’s. We’re sloshed, can barely move, and here we are dancing with two French ladies whose husbands are probably watching. LeRoy is a better dancer, so he’s twirling his partner. Mine is lucky I’m wearing sandals so I don’t break her toes when I step on them.

  By one o’clock, I’ve had four drinks, danced, and eaten parts of pigs I didn’t even know were edible, let alone existed. LeRoy is burning the dust on the dance floor. I’m ready to go home and nap. Madame la waitress opens another set of doors and leads all 162 of us in a single line—like at a state funeral—past a giant fireplace in which a whole three-hundred-pounder with that same happy-to-serve-you smile is turning and roasting, skin popping, on a spit. It’s like we’re paying final homage and saying thanks for a job well done.

  I’m about to ask LeRoy which end he thinks the rod entered first, when we enter a long, narrow room with tables arranged in parallel lines, set for 160 French people, LeRoy, and me. Spaced evenly down the center of the tables are baskets of bread, plates with hunks of butter, and carafes filled with red and white wine and water. “Looks medieval,” I say to LeRoy, “maybe there will be jousting.”

  “Or the plague . . . ”

  People sit in no apparent order, except LeRoy and me. We wait for Monsieur le waiter-bartender to place us, and he does, in the middle. Except for the three glasses, the place settings look normal. I know the glasses are for red and white wine and water. What I don’t know is which goes with which. The fellow next to LeRoy reaches over and fills the biggest glass with water and the smallest with white and solves that problem.

  Everyone is talking to someone. The lady next to me asks where we’re from. I tell her California, and the word goes up and down the table, and across to the other side. “Americans are here!”

  Finally, the pig is rolled in. It looks to me like a patient on a gurney going to surgery. I wonder what the old folks think of this, but from the looks on their faces, all they’re thinking about is eating.

  A guy in a stark-white three-story chef’s hat, snug-fitting stark-white chef’s apron, and more gold chains and medallions around his neck than Mr. T, steps forward, and I see it is Monsieur le waiter-bartender, now Monsieur le chef, and probably the owner, Monsieur le propriétaire, and Madame, his wife.

  Monsieur begins speaking—a welcome? A blessing? A prayer that none of us gets ill? Maybe he’s telling us the history of this pig, from artificia
l insemination to birth to gurney? He pauses, lifts the largest of the medallions from his chest and holds it out for us to see the picture of him in the middle. I get it! He’s talking about himself, establishing his bona fides as chef, sommelier, propriétaire, as Monsieur Cochon Grillé. He makes the first cut, and a murmur goes out from the crowd.

  Monsieur cuts and carves like a French Benihana and places a juicy chunk of pig on a plate. Madame adds ice-cream scoops full of ratatouille and scalloped potatoes, which seem to be de rigueur with pig. The plates are passed hand-to-hand down the row like a human conveyer belt. People help themselves to bread and butter, which are limitless, as is the wine. There’s enough food for seconds and thirds, and enough red and white wine to loop 162 full, sated, satisfied diners. I happily note the table is a mess and people are eating with their fingers, elbows on the table, occasionally talking with their mouths full of food.

  I turn to the lady next to me and say, “J’aime beaucoup le cochon.” I love the pig. I say it as if the pig is my secret lover, or I’m into some strange kind of porcine worship.

  “Oui,” she says, and turns toward the sane person on her right.

  The food keeps coming, until even the French can no longer eat. “I’m beat,” LeRoy says. “I just want to crawl under the table and sleep.”

  “Me too.” But just when I’m hoping for nap time, Monsieur Cochon Grillé returns with a floor mic and places it at the head of the tables, next to what’s left of the pig.

  “What’s this?” LeRoy asks me.

  “I don’t know.”

  I ask the lady next to me. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

  “Le chant,” she says.

  “Chanting,” I say to LeRoy. He’s Catholic, I figure he’ll understand.

  “Who’s chanting? What?”

  Two good questions, neither of which I answer.

  We all sit there staring at the mic, waiting for something or someone to appear. Heads turn, people look down their row, left and right, across to the other side, at the doors, the windows, floor, ceiling. It’s like being in school when the teacher asks a question and no one knows the answer, and everyone’s thinking, ‘Please, God, not me,’ and hopes, if they don’t make eye contact they won’t be called. That’s what we’re all doing, when an old fellow—late seventies, early eighties—wearing pressed yellow slacks, a bright-blue shirt, and sandals pushes his chair back and walks from the back of the room to the mic. I’m wondering if this is a setup, if he’s a ringer like the “volunteers” at Cirque de Soleil, or if this is for real.