Eating in Paris
Joanna Richardson takes the reader on a culinary tour of the French capital, asking why, for several centuries, Paris has been the gastronomic capital of the Western world.
Everyone carries away from Paris a series of indelible pictures. One of my clearest memories is that of a Parisian workman, in his bright blue denims, sitting at a restaurant table. Beside him was a dusty bottle; before him was a whole roast fowl, golden and succulent, on its salver. A napkin was spread across his chest, and a beatific smile across his face. There, to me, was the difference between the Frenchman and the rest.
No question of extravagance, no question of guilt or embarrassment. A Parisian had earned his pleasure, and he delighted in it. Food is a major pleasure in Paris; and only in Paris could the eighteenth-century gastronome, Grimod de La Reyniere, observe: ‘With this sauce one would even eat one’s father.’
There are half-a-dozen restaurants in Paris which still remain in a class of their own. I recently talked to the proprietor of a Parisian restaurant about them. Maxim’s, he considered, had declined, and so had Laperouse; but Le Grand Vefour was still among the experiences which you should have at least once in a lifetime. There you could enjoy French cooking in the grand manner.
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