And what of the signature dish? It reminds me of a wedge of Australian meringue layer cake, except that this one is composed of two levels of pale-fawn foie gras marinated in verjus (halfway between grape juice and vinegar) and three of very thin white slices of big field mushrooms. A ‘dust’ of dried mushrooms covers the top, looking a bit like cocoa powder. The confection is originally a puck constructed to bread-and-butter-plate size — four servings per puck. It sits on a base of millimetre-thin crunchy biscuit in a slick of walnut oil. A lightly bittersweet lemon purée makes a groin to the northeast. It’s so ridiculously simple but such a huge treat. I grieve as I finish it, which happens rarely.
Pascal Barbot joins me after service. I congratulate him on his dishes, recognise their Australian characteristics, and rave about his foie gras ‘cake’. Yes, he says, it’s perfect for a signature dish because foie gras and mushrooms are available all year around. Unassuming, Monsieur Barbot says he is just doing his job and loving it. He’s happy with progress. Because the place is small, his team can concentrate on quality. (He’s thirty-three, Christophe Rohat a year older.) There’s a two-month waiting list for dinner and a three-week one for lunch.
I suggest the Murray River salt on the scallops. He is delighted. He’d love to have such a product and wants me to email him a contact. He was five years at Alain Passard’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant, Arpège. Passard, who crossed over to vegetables in 2001, eliminating red meat from his carte, is his greatest influence. But he also worked with Alain Senderens. He was two years in London and a year in Noumea. We talk about his years in Sydney. He was responsible for cooking the dinner list at Tony Bilson’s Ampersand overlooking Cockle Bay. Sydney liberated his culinary thoughts. It freed him in the head — ‘dans ma tête’.
The Australian style is a natural phemonen, he reckons, in which cooks don’t question whether oysters, ginger, leeks and peanuts go together, they just do it. Assembling diverse foodstuffs is part of Australia’s gastronomic heritage these days, a phenomenon he believes is about twenty years old. (He clearly bothered to find out such things when he lived in Australia.) In Paris his cooking has to be a little more restrained than it might be over there, he says. You can introduce exotic ingredients in France, but this country has a convention of butter and cream, and you have to think of your clients. He likes to play what he calls ‘little notes’ of unusual foodstuffs in his culinary music. He passes on a short list of the Parisian restaurants he likes, and I promise to send him an address for Murray River salt.
And the cost of what I ate? Once again, I’ve been a guest, but for a meal at Astrance you will pay, says Michelin, somewhere between 70 and 150 euros. Reasonable, under the circumstances. Strolling back to Passy station, I’m surprised at how light I feel — even after such a lunch — and how enthusiastic I am at discovering new taste delights. How much I’m enjoying the ride! Just as well. I have reserved a test-run of one of France’s greatest dishes tonight — tête de veau (veal’s head) — at a small restaurant renowned for its rigour in upholding the great tradition.
The mother of the same Pierre with whom I shared the dodgy paella once asked me — when I was new to France — if I ate absolutely everything. It’s a common enough question here. Yes, of course, I said. At the weekend, she said, she was doing tête de veau, a great favourite with the family. My new wife and I had been invited to their country cottage, quite a substantial house, as it turned out, on the tailored banks of the Loing canal at Montigny, south of the capital.
Madame Veschambre was a champion cook, and a weekend at Montigny consisted mainly of eating and drinking. The tête de veau, as I recall, was a lunch event. (It had to have been, of course, lunch being traditionally more important in France than dinner, especially for families.) The sun shone, light flooded the dining room, the french doors were flung wide and the silver-grey canal flowed nowhere in particular in the middle ground, beyond flourishes of blue hydrangea. Time gets in the way of recollection and I can’t now remember what we had for starters. (We most definitely would have had starters, probably salamis, terrines and other produce of the fermented pig.) And I can’t recall, even, if the tête de veau was served French-style, piled high on a huge communal plate in the middle of the table. (It almost certainly was.) Madame Veschambre insisted I get the best bit, though, a nice slice of cheek. Within seconds it was in front of me. And I looked and couldn’t believe what I saw. A closed eye socket, the upper lid heavily lashed, was mid-plate. I smiled politely. I toyed with the dish for a few minutes, eating around the socket, before giving up. Madame Veschambre sliced some fresh ham to replace my tête.
I’m recalling this shameful incident — the shame on me — during the five hundred metres I need to walk on a very cold night to find Le Pré Cadet in the rue Saulnier. (But in those days, I tell myself, I wasn’t a professional eater.) Le Pré scores a single spoon and fork in Michelin. But it’s one of only forty eating places in the city’s twenty arrondissements rated a ‘Bib Gourmand’. In these, you may eat a quality meal for 33 euros or less, without drinks. Its tête de veau, says Michelin, is the pride of the maison. It’s certainly a modest place. Its name is in plain block letters on windows hung with curtains of white gauze, a model sailing ship in one of them.
Inside, it’s of handkerchief size. Already, most of the closely packed tables host spirited convives. A middle-aged man, plainer in appearance than a bureaucrat’s briefcase, darts around the room like a hummingbird after nectar. Indeed, I can’t recall his face or the way he was dressed as I write this only weeks later, but I hope Michel Le Boulch won’t mind my saying he was probably in a maroon sleeveless jumper. Or grey. I’m sure he had a plain long-sleeved shirt on. None of which is relevant to the tête de veau, of course.
He sits me down in the centre of the room near a square column with mirrored surfaces. I run through again what I’d mentioned on the phone when I made my reservation. He’s fascinated: an Australian who wants to write about tête de veau. He darts off and returns with a cutting from a Parisian newspaper lauding his restaurant and its wonderful traditional dishes. He will fax it to me. His sole waiter joins us to gawk at the Australian who wants to write about tête de veau! (Let me add, by way of context, that many French might ask you, even these days, to which countries Australian doctors go to get their training. Or if we really do eat only gum leaves and boiled mutton.) So I am from outer space. But within minutes they are aware that I know a little, and I am shown the utmost deference and respect.
By the sounds of the conversations around me, the diners — perhaps the place holds about twenty-four — are equally English and locals. Perhaps Le Pré has been written about by a London newspaper. A table of six Frenchpersons in front of me, however, has an empty chair. In bubbly mood, their word-plays are becoming cleverer by the empty glass. They’re waiting for a birthday boy, I overhear. He’s had to drive back from Meaux, his wife tells the others. Oh, says a chap with a ruddy complexion shone like one of the Sun King’s walnut tables at Versailles, he takes his hat off to him in this frigid weather and at this hour. Dashing back for his birthday dinner. Hmmm, he adds. Perhaps he’ll win a prix de Meaux. They all roar with laughter: brie de Meaux (the cheese) and prix de Meaux (there’s probably no such thing) sounding similar.
Le Pré Cadet’s little bar inside the door is so cluttered with bottles, notices, posters and paraphernalia that it’s almost obscured. The dishes emerging from the kitchen seem to come from that direction, too. The rest of the restaurant is just plain cosy. The chairs are solid, a deep red and upholstered, and red-brown felt covers the floor. Tables are double-draped, first in a heavy cardinal cloth, then a yellow one. The big fabric napkins match the top cloth. The ceiling and walls are painted yellow, and naïve-style art in pencils and pastels that I don’t think is very good hang on them. On a very modestly priced list, not a single dish deviates from the Gallic straight and narrow: twelve burgundy-style (garlic and butter) snails cost 16 euros; herring fillets with warm potat
oes (9 euros); a whole avocado, half filled with crab meat, the other half with yabby tails (10 euros); roasted sole (24 euros); sweetbreads (25 euros); fillet steak with a green pepper (not capsicum) sauce (25 euros); and a ‘véritable andouillette’ with Meaux mustard costs 19 euros. I order the tête de veau en serviette, et les sauces for 24 euros.
‘You’ve labelled the andouillette 5A,’ I say to Monsieur Le Boulch. ‘I’ve seen the same sort of thing in other restaurants. What does it mean?’
He begins a tortuous alliterative journey. It stands for an association that certifies the quality of the sausage, he says. It’s the… He tries once. Twice. Draws breath, tries again to get the name right. His young waiter intervenes. Monsieur Le Boulch left out ‘amicale’, he offers. They decide finally that the five capital ‘A’s stand for the Association Amicale des Amateurs d’Authentique Andouillette. Or perhaps it’s ‘andouillette authentique’, says Monsieur Le Boulch. And Duval, his supplier, is one of the best. I’ll have to return another night, I say, as they dash off to serve other customers. I’m left to wonder how many snags worldwide have their own shotgun-riding associations.
Accompanied by big slices of crusty brown bread, a pot of rillettes (pork shreds and fat) is Le Pré’s amuse-bouche. Some amuse-bouche! The fires are well and truly stoked, appetites sated to a degree, by the time you get to entrées. Monsieur Le Boulch and I discuss wines. The just-released beaujolais nouveau is not very good, he says. Nonetheless, he pours me tastes of this and two other beaujolais. He hopes a Morgon 2004 won’t displease me. He’s proved correct.
The birthday boy arrives and there is much kissing and back-slapping. Arnaud says you must have won a prix de Meaux to get here roughly on time, says his wife. They laugh even louder at the joke’s rerun.
Under a huge silver cloche, my veal’s head arrives. Monsieur Le Boulch scintillates with pride. He lifts the lid. There is enough food on a yellow napkin under the cloche to feed New Zealand. Sprinkled with fresh parsley choppings of erratic sizes are enormous logs of steamed carrot of intense colour, boulders of steamed spuds and enormous, pale and translucent treads of meat from a veal’s head. You see, he says, it’s the real thing. Everything’s there. With a serving fork he begins poking, calling the roll as he goes. Brains, cheek, tongue and ‘oreille’. I mishear. What? ‘Oreille, oreille,’ he insists. He tugs at his left ear. Oh, yes, I laugh. Of course. Onto the plate in front of me he forks enough food to last me a fortnight. It seems not to have reduced what’s on the platter.
The young waiter arrives with the sauces — classics called gribiche and ravigote. They’re homely, rough-chopped concoctions in stainless-steel kidney dishes. A gribiche contains hard-boiled eggs, oil and vinegar, mustard, sour gherkins and soft green herbs, mostly parsley. The ravigote is a shallot-infused white sauce very rarely seen these days. It’s flavoured with herbs — mainly chives, but also tarragon — at the last moment. I look for eyelashes. There are none. Bearing in mind what I’ve eaten already today, I do well to try a little bit of everything. Soft, sweet, gelatinous, perfect in every classical way, but, yes, I’ll grant you, eating this kind of food takes stick if you’re not used to it. And I’m always worried about indigestion.
The lights dim and Monsieur Le Boulch marches to the birthday-boy’s table holding high a cake stuck with five spitting and hissing sparklers. We all sing Happy Birthday, and the birthday boy, all smiles, bows to the room. I stall on the veal’s head. The sauces are so good, though; so deeply rooted in family and what it stands for — ideas of incalculable value for the French.
Monsieur Le Boulch has had the Cadet for sixteen years, he tells me. Before that he owned the Bar des Artistes, which he sold when his wife got ill. His chef, William Dhenim, has been with him forever. I tell him how much I enjoyed the head. He’s only doing his job, he says. Now, he suggests, I should finish off with their just-made apple sorbet, calvados (apple distillate) poured on top. How can I resist? Monsieur Le Boulch pours the liqueur with embarrassing enthusiasm over three orbs the size of tennis balls. They’re excellent, with a fruitiness so fresh it squabbles with my tongue, and cost me the grand sum of 6.50 euros.
Many French restaurants of modest persuasions battle hard to do well, partly because French home cooking is often excellent. The Pré Cadet, for instance, serves what you would get from the most talented of home cooks. Nothing more nor less. Add Monsieur Le Boulch’s authentic hospitality, and you’re almost at the hearth on a freezing night. And without the washing-up to do afterwards.
day six
I need a swim. A swim followed by a long walk. I have gone without any semblance of real exercise for days. I’m going to promenade nostalgically today, revisiting one or two favourite haunts. But before I start, a swim. The nearest public pool is not too far, in the rue de Rochechouart. I’ve got a bathing cap that I never use in Australia, knowing they’re obligatory in France.
Low and diffuse leaden clouds seem to hover in the icy air just above the tenth’s mansard roofs. They’re menacing. Threatening. I’m at the pool in ten minutes. It’s part of a municipal sports complex, one of several around Paris, that appears to have been built perhaps in the 1970s judging by its concrete brutalist style. You pay 2.60 euros and descend several flights of stairs to the water. I find the idea of a public swimming pool well below street level — buried in a dungeon, if you like — unnerving. A bit spooky, as Dame Edna might say. It reminds me of Herbert Read’s green child leading Olivero by the hand into the grotto and the caves of the dead at the end of the story. ‘The water had no sooner closed over them than it seemed to be sucked away from their bodies, to curve upwards at their feet, to arch over their heads, until it formed a perfect spheroid.’ I descend the stairs without incident, no child, green or of any other colour, to lead me.
Men and women change in unisex rooms in France. A friend who played water polo for Australia and is a masters swimming champ tells me this convention dates from the days when only men swam in Europe. Athletic swimming, as opposed to genteel breast-stroking, was seen to be unfeminine. It’s only recently, he believes, that women en masse dipped their toes in the water. There are cubicles you can lock, I hasten to add, but showers and most wet areas are common to the genders. I suspect that this thrills many men who aren’t used to it and probably appalls many women. At this pool, you get a kind of clothes-horse or dumb-butler in blue plastic for your belongings and give it to an attendant in return for a numbered rubber bracelet that most swimmers wear around their ankles.
The pool is a standard twenty-five metres long and has about eight lanes. All but two are being used for coaching or mucking about in. None of the lap lanes is marked fast, medium or slow, and swimmers of various speeds (there are nine in the lane I choose) are trudging — or its aqueous equivalent — up and down, reluctantly exercising, it seems. I swim a few laps with difficulty because of the crowd. A middle-aged bloke with the body of a skinned rabbit has a no beg-pardons approach. He’s ripping up and down, overtaking when he shouldn’t, raining accidental blows on others with an extravagant crawl. Even on those swimming in the same direction. He shows utter contempt for people going the other way. He collides and ploughs on. His bonnet de bain (swimming cap) is stamped in block letters RCF — Racing Club de France, I guess, which is a very snobbish and exclusive organisation. He must be a member, I reason, begrudging having to train with the hoi-poloi. I take off after him, catch him, and clip him firmly on the heels with my hand. I do it again. I don’t like him, he doesn’t like me, but I think he gets the message. He glares at me as we turn, but I detect a little more deference from then on.
A girl in a very slinky and virtually transparent red one-piece stops alongside me at the end of the lane. Her skin is exquisite, pale and smooth, the pool water giving it a high gloss. It’s the skin you notice most in Europe, I find. You want to stroke it, a very dubious thing to do, under the circumstances. I struggle to restrain myself. Is it always like this, I ask. (I indicate that I’m talking about the crowd
ing, not her skin. It’s my standard opening line in pools.) No, she says, there are usually three lanes. What about signs saying fast, medium and slow? Yes, usually, she says. She doesn’t know what’s happened today. It wouldn’t be the case where I come from, I say.
‘England?’ she guesses.
‘Australia,’ I say.
‘Oh, well,’ she almost sneers, ‘you’ve got more space over there.’ She curls a lip and pushes off for the other end.
It’s so cold as I walk back to the apartment that the air seems to be crystallising, turning into a brittle icy mist all by itself. I shower and change and, when I rejoin the rue des Petites Ecuries, rugged up, scarved, gloved and wearing an old woollen ski beanie, snow is falling very lightly.
I’m off first to the big shops, as they call them — the department stores on boulevard Haussmann. I want to revisit a favourite place, the food hall of Galeries Lafayette. By the time I get to the Folies Bergère, four hundred metres from my front door, the snow is heavy. There is virtually no wind and flakes the size of rose petals waft down, swinging like pendulums as they descend. The Folies these days, by the way, remains an important music hall where many acts — from jazz performers to risqué reviews — are staged. A plaque outside, though, boasts of its hottest and most glorious days in the 1920s: of Josephine Baker, who made her name here in 1926 wearing a belt made of bananas; Colette, who gave women riding instructions on ball-breaking many decades before the liberation of her gender was a twinkle in Germaine’s brain; and Maurice Chevalier, the vaudevillian boulevardier without peer. I photograph the gorgeous artdeco façade and its nude dancer, who seems to be ascending into the clouds or perhaps walking on water across a stream. Braving increasingly heavy snow, which is by now gathering on windscreen wipers and the seats of scooters parked on footpaths, I take a left at the rue Laffitte then a right onto the boulevard. In ten minutes I’m up the escalator and at the entrance to the food hall.
Paris on a Plate Page 8