6

RÉGIS

Twiggy Sanders, a Frenchwoman from Toulouse who for decades with her husband has owned and operated the fromagerie (cheese store) in the Marché Saint-Germain where Régis buys his butter and cheese, has known Régis since he opened Huîtrerie Régis two hundred yards from her shop. She tosses off two quick stories about Régis and his women friends.

“I used to stop by to drop off Murielle, an elderly lady who was a sculptor and lived on rue de Tournon. I used to check in on her daily. She loved oysters, so I would leave her regularly in Régis’s care for her treat and would pick her up later. She adored Régis. One can’t be indifferent to Régis. He is un personnage. Very attachant [again, likable and engaging].”

Twiggy, un petit bout de femme, a tiny woman, vivacious, energetic, and always in a good mood, explains that after seeing him around the neighborhood and at her shop, their friendship grew through encounters at J’go in the Marché Saint-Germain, a popular modern Gascon café-brasserie that is known for its good southwestern food in generous portions. The owners are from Twiggy’s home province, Gers, and she goes there with her husband, daughter, and mother-in-law, particularly on Sundays when the morning market closes late and they are ready for late lunch. “I feel like I am among friends, and my circle there often includes Régis,” Twiggy says.

“I like to spend time with him, although I know nothing of his private life (except that he is divorced), not even where he lives, although it’s not in the center of Paris and involves quite a daily commute with his truck.” She adds, “I know that sometimes he takes a taxi back late at night.

“He is very discreet, which I respect,” she continues, “yet he tells me his adventures in travel and love and has plenty of amusing anecdotes. He talks highly of his longtime friend Martine. She has a clothing shop, and awhile back she had serious health issues and was at the hospital. When her friends could not work for her, Régis did. He went to sell shirts! Would you believe this? That’s Régis. He’ll do anything to help friends. I know that if I’d call him for help tomorrow, he’d come and sell cheese. Very big heart in friendship.”

THE BEGINNINGS

Régis is in his late fifties and wasn’t always in the oyster business, but started in the auto business. He was born in Jarnac, in the heart of the Cognac region, to a Périgord father and a Charente mother. He had a happy childhood growing up between the Charente and Dordogne regions, with grandparents who were farmers in nearby Limousin. His maternal grandmother had a great influence upon him and gave him a sense of responsibility. She was a true maîtresse de maison, and during World War I was left alone to handle the farm and the rearing of three children. She would get up at 3 a.m. to sell at the market in nearby Angoulême. Her food was what we would call today bio or organic. Régis has delicious memories of her pintade (guinea fowl) recipes (thus he loves Jacques Brel’s song about the “pintade du Périgord”) and her wonderfully traditional, simple home cooking. She was also a great baker and made him cherry clafoutis, which he makes, using her recipe, for his huîtrerie during the short cherry season just before he closes for the summer.

Early on in life, he became a great nature lover, and walking is his favorite hobby. Today he likes to trek in the mountains and spends a few weeks each summer in the Alps. The Atlas mountain range in Morocco has of late become an obsession, so much so that he took a three-week excursion there with a few pals last summer. Just talking about it makes him salivate. What a way to escape.

School for him, though, was “academic”; not too strong in French he confesses. He was not the best of students, but was liked by his teachers for the same reasons his customers like him today. At the end of his last school term, the principal said to his father, “He is okay. He can do something else; school is not for him.”

That was okay because for this man of passions—women, hiking, oysters—an early passion was cars and being a mechanic. After a summer at the farm, he found a job for a year as a mechanic, then went on to get his CAP (certificat d’aptitude professionnelle) after two years of study.

One day, a friend took him to see a car race, and he saw an ad with an invitation to “become a mechanic for racing cars,” and that was it. He applied, got the job, and for some years was part of a Renault Formula One team. Next he decided to open his own shop, which led him to selling Alfa Romeos. That period lasted about fifteen years, and toward the end he bought an auto-parts firm and a few years later he sold it. By then, he certainly had acquired customer and sales skills… and a long list of contacts, many of which he maintains to this day.

But he still had that siren’s call to oysters, and an idea for his kind of oyster bar, that had been percolating for years. He acquired his oyster knowledge via his mentor, Jean Maurice Garnier, an oyster breeder in Mornac-sur-Seudre. And with that anchor affixed, he began to test his idea by setting up an oyster counter outside a friend’s restaurant in Levallois, just outside Paris. It was enough of a trial investment to tell him he was on the right track.

He wanted to create something different. Vive la différence. Yes, there were plenty of good places to eat oysters in Paris, including some big establishments with big names, but he was disappointed by the large brasseries, the places running on numbers, turnover, where the customer was a mere number. More often than not, he found the oysters full of grit, which means they were shucked by someone who had not been trained, or trained properly, or who had to open so many that there was not time for perfection. He wanted, like so many passionate people, to create an atmosphere that was not an atmosphere as defined in books, but a personalized ambience built around the customer and giving him or her the best he could. He wanted his customers to feel like the food and service were coming from the heart, his heart (his romantic trait). He has always believed the customer is right in general, though some can be unpleasant (read impatient), and for that type, his little gem of an oyster shack is not welcoming. Yet a restaurant with fourteen seats and a couple of outside tables cannot accommodate many people. And in his definition of a good restaurant is the statement “It’s one which is not for everyone,” and he leaves it at that. No further comment… except: Et c’est bien. And it’s good.

Régis’s concept of being great versus good, or his “best” (we all have our definitions), is first illustrated in his use of the best ingredients—from oysters, wines, butter (beurre demi-sel cru à la baratte de bois [salted hand-churned butter] from Pascal Beillevaire, made with raw cream and Noirmoutier salt), and bread made by the Alsatian bakery Kayser, to the one dessert made by himself every day (following, as I have noted, his grandmother’s apple tart recipe most of the season and, toward the end, a spring fruit-of-the-week clafoutis). If there are leftovers of things like dessert and bread, they are never kept for tomorrow, as he gives the food to friends and business neighbors on the little street. He also sets the tone with white linen tablecloths, real napkins, beautiful dishes, and nice silverware; and, a few years into the business, he learned about the importance of glassware and is excited to get new wineglasses.

He also picked a professional and experienced écailler, or oyster shucker, the previously mentioned Alain, with almost twenty years of experience. Alain trained and worked in the top Paris oyster establishments on the Right Bank, mostly the seventeenth, sixteenth, and eighth arrondissements. While Régis was testing the competition, he and Alain met, and the two indeed have a good and trusting working relationship and share the same passion and respect for the oyster. Their personalities sometimes clash, but that’s another story!

As one friend shared, “Régis is charismatic, protective, wants to please, and, yes, he can be coléreux [irascible]. Don’t go there when it happens. Don’t try to mediate. You have to know how to le caresser dans le bon sens du poil [rub him the right way]. When things don’t go his way, he’ll fight. Nothing scares him. I have seen him in action.”

I return to my refrain: The French love oysters, and Parisians adore them. Régis’s place was an immediate success.

He has lots of regulars and an international clientele. Of course, Parisians come from all over the city—some are writers, businesspeople, actors and celebrities, gourmets and gourmands, and restaurant owners and chefs (Madame Lasserre is a regular, as is the famous chef Alain Dutournier). Like the Russian couple mentioned earlier, one Spanish customer gives him a call when he lands in Roissy and comes directly to the restaurant, even though there is a no-reservations policy, but just to make sure that he’ll be expected no matter the wait!

Just about every afternoon toward the end of lunch service, a Pakistani newspaperman comes in selling Libération and also Le Monde. The guy is an intriguing character himself who has written a book, and for sure he knows what he is doing showing up at the time he does; otherwise, no doubt Régis would have read him the riot act and he would not have become part of the family and the daily drama.

His greeting to the staff as he comes in is “Bonjour, les enfants,” an old French phrase that shows familiarity with French culture as well as humor, especially since the staff and most of the clients are older than him except for the lunch waitress.

When asked what he thinks of Régis, he replies without thinking a second, “This man is not into making money, he is a bosseur, a hard worker; his place is nice and clean, his staff pro, and his customers real connoisseurs.”

The oyster shucker smiles and offers him an espresso. “Don’t you like oysters?” I ask.

“Yes, when they offer me some, I eat them.” He laughs, and after selling a few papers to the locals, some of them regulars he recognizes, including one elderly lady who is a weekday fixture with her dozen oysters and a glass of Sancerre, he leaves with an “Au revoir, m’sieurs-dames.”

RÉGIS’S TEMPER

Régis has an enemy, his credit card machine. They constantly fight it seems. One day he was in a foul mood because his card machine did not work through the lunchtime service. After a few back-and-forths with the company, someone showed up to fix the device and connections. New batteries and all. Solved for now. At the dinner service, the first customer asked for his bill and the next episode began. The machine didn’t work and wouldn’t work. Seeing the filled room and the upcoming disaster, his fuse got lit. He went around the counter with the machine and, in front of the crowded customers, he threw the machine to the floor and stomped on it again and again. It just took a few seconds, and no one said a word, including Régis. Apparently understanding and agreeing, many of the customers got up and helped him destroy the thing. What he must have had to deal with to have it replaced is another story, but that’s Régis.

A year or so later, he sees a lady he recognizes with some guests. She is an American who speaks in French, and he goes to her table and greets her. She opens her wallet and takes out a tiny blue piece of plastic and shows it to him with “Vous étiez un peu énervé ce soir là” (You were a bit upset that evening). He laughed and sent a complimentary bottle of wine to her table.

WOMEN

I have come to think of Régis in regard to oysters as akin to what Azzedine Alaia is in regard to fashion: le maître absolu, best described as a reference—no fashion show, but a few trunk shows, no compromise, total integrity, an attitude, and did I mention even a bad temper at times. If Alaia knows how to dress women, Régis knows how to feed them. One pushes the door and enters their universe. Some are welcome, some not so much, and a few not at all. One must know how to speak to them. He certainly knows how to speak to women.

Régis, something of what is known as a man’s man, clearly loves women, pretty women. In love, when he was young, he must have been un coeur d’artichaut (someone who falls in love with every girl he meets), Twiggy says. “Now he is a bit tamed because he is getting older. I’ve met some of his ex-girlfriends, who were all beautiful women.

“He makes us laugh a lot, especially with tales of his amorous adventures,” Twiggy adds. “He sometimes gets carried away and tells such intimate details that I can’t help exclaiming ‘Pas possible!’ [Not possible!], amid spasms of laughter. But I know he is telling the truth. You cannot make up such details.”

When I tell Twiggy that a female regular once said to me that Régis was likable as a perfect friend or lover, but as a husband, “non, jamais, never,” Twiggy paused and said she would agree with this woman’s opinion.