The Private Jet
Once or twice a year, our friend Felix the tycoon comes to Provence for sunshine, French cooking, and a brief escape from the cares of his office. I’m not quite sure what he does—a little high finance, the odd merger, an occasional dip into real estate—but it always involves several guarded phone calls as soon as he arrives at the house, and his attaché case is always bulging with the latest information on cocoa futures or corporate high jinks. But whatever the deal of the moment may be, it is put aside twice a day for the pleasures of the table. Felix loves his food.
It was spring when he last visited us, and over dinner he was discussing his favourite subject: the next meal. Where would we like to have lunch tomorrow? What he had in mind was fish, perhaps one of those garlic-charged bouillabaisses that can only be properly made by a French chef with fresh Mediterranean fish. And of course, he said, the only possible place to eat something like that is at a restaurant that overlooks the sea.
There is no shortage of food with a view in our part of Provence—restaurants that overlook mountains, rivers, fountains, village squares, vineyards, valleys—almost any view is locally available except a view of the sea. The nearest temple of bouillabaisse is in Marseilles, sixty miles away and a nightmare when it comes to parking. Even for a good gastronomic cause, that’s a long haul. We asked Felix to think again.
He looked up from the assortment of cheeses that he had been deliberating over and beamed. Distance, he said, was not a problem. Nor was parking. He had brought his plane. It was at Avignon airport, a mere twenty-five minutes away, ready to take us wherever we wanted to go. The world was our oyster. Or lobster. Or even bouillabaisse.
By 9:30 the next morning we were at Avignon airport. Small and informal, it’s the way airports used to be when flying was fun. There was no standing in line to check in, no officious ground staff to herd us into a departure lounge, no waiting, no fuss. The pilot and his co-pilot met us, and together we strolled out to the plane.
It was a business jet, cream on the outside and quiet pale grey in the cabin. There were seven seats covered in glove leather, personal stereos, coffee and drinks in the stamp-sized gallery in the back. It was rather like the Concorde, but without that exasperating running commentary they insist on giving you, and with more leg-room. Felix told us it could cruise for four or five hours between refuelling stops, which meant that anywhere in Europe was within reach. As it happened, he had some business to do in Nice before lunch, so that Mediterranean city was our first stop.
We flew south until we reached the coast and then turned left, staying low enough to give us a continuous panoramic view of the Riviera. Felix consulted his restaurant notes as we passed over the towns and ports that shone in the morning sun. Let’s see now. There’s Le Chabichou in Saint-Tropez, Le Palme d’Or on the Croisette in Cannes, Belles Rives in Juan-les-Pins, La Bonne Auberge in Antibes—he made small humming noises of contentment at the thought of what the master chefs below us might be preparing. What a choice! What a choice!
The jet glided into Nice, and we had a pilot’s-eye view of the landing. Before the engines were even cut off, a car was on its way across the tarmac to pick us up and take us to the terminal. A decision had been made about the restaurant. We were going to Cap d’Antibes, and, to avoid battling the traffic back to Nice afterwards, we would meet the plane at Mandelieu, the small airport just outside Cannes.
A young man in impenetrable sunglasses and a designer suit met us at the terminal and massaged us into a stretch Mercedes Benz. Felix was off to buy a bank or a yacht, or maybe both. He waved aside the details. What was really important, he said, was that we should do a little shopping for him before lunch, some provisions for his kitchen at home. Armed with a list and the Mercedes, we headed for the old flower market.
The Rue St.-François-de-Paule, which leads into the market, is notable for two well-established and delightful shops that could make a statue’s mouth water. The first is Pâtisserie et Confiserie Auer, for chocolates and pastries and jams; the second is the tiny olive oil kingdom of Alziari.
The girl who served us in Auer was impressed by the jam requirements that Felix had scribbled down; un vrai connoisseur de confiture, she called him as she packed a huge assortment of jams made from clementines, bilberries, apricots, tiny bitter oranges, plums and melons. Did we have transport for this enormous carton? Indeed we did. As Felix had pointed out, you can buy in bulk when you have a plane to take the purchases home.
We went across the street and into Alziari. The shop is small and made smaller by the ceiling-high stainless steel vats filled with first-pressing olive oil, described, with typical Gallic bravado, as ‘extra virgin.’ We were invited to taste a teaspoonful before omitting ourselves. Virginal and delicious. We placed the order for several dozen litres, and while they were being drawn off from the vats and sealed in five-litre cans we worked our way down the rest of the list: three kilos of fat black olives; a dozen bottles of raspberry vinegar; jars of mild, almost sweet, anchovies in oil; pots of the olive paste called tapenade; packets of saffron; tubs of lavender-scented honey. By the time we were finished, there were two more enormous cartons, and the trunk of the Mercedes was beginning to resemble a comprehensively stocked gourmet store.
Felix joined us for a pastis in one of the bars alongside the flower market. He looked preoccupied, and I asked him if there had been a hiccup in his business dealings. Certainly not, he said. But on the way to the café, he had seen some exceptionally large and handsome langoustines and was now of two minds about what he should have for lunch. He communed with his appetite all the way to Cap d’Antibes.
Bacon, which one of the stomach bibles claims is the Rolls-Royce of seafood restaurants, rises like a perfectly cooked soufflé above the narrow coast road. The sea view is wall-to-wall, and the dining room is lighted by diffused sunshine. Felix rubbed his hands in anticipation as we went in, and his nostrils twitched at the scent of grilling fish, herbs and garlic. “All great fish restaurants,” he said, “smell like this.”
A middle-aged couple, she decorated with jewels and he with a major moustache, were bent in devotion over a steaming tureen. They both wore bibs, and as they watched the waiter transfer the contents of the tureen to deep dishes, they rubbed small rounds of toast with cloves of fresh garlic before spreading on a thick layer of rust-coloured sauce—the rouille that gives the fish stew a final pungent kick.
The main course was decided. To get into the spirit of the occasion, we started with mouthfuls of sea bass wrapped in a gauze of pasta and moistened with a truffle sauce. The white wine came from Cassis, a few kilometres away. We had travelled farther than anything on the menu.
Our tureen arrived, together with the trimmings and the bibs, and the waiter filleted the fish with just a spoon and a fork, deftly and quickly. He would have made a fortune as a surgeon. He murmured, “Bon appétit” and left us to it, and I wondered why it is that the best meals are often the messiest to eat. After twenty minutes with the garlic and the rouille and the rich, soupy juice, I felt that I needed a bath.
Lunch stretched into two hours, then nearly three, as lunches tend to do in France, and, a creature of bad habit, I began to worry about getting to the airport on time. Felix ordered more coffee and leaned back in his chair. “What you have to remember,” he said, “is that the plane doesn’t go anywhere until we’re ready to go. We decide the schedule. Have a calvados and stop thinking like a tourist.” I did both. It was wonderful.
We eventually got to the Mandelieu airport and loaded the gourmet store into the back of the plane. There was no word of reproach from the pilots. They’d been sunbathing. As we took off, I thought that I could very easily become used to this civilised and leisurely way of hopping around Europe, free of the time pressures and the cramped aggravation that have reduced airline travel to the same level of enjoyment as that of a subway ride at rush hour.
Was it, I asked Felix, completely beyond the resources of the normal wallet?
It all depends, he said. For instance, if one person were to take the plane from Avignon to Paris, the cost would be substantial—around 48,000 French francs, or £5,000, for fuel and landing fees. Mind you, he said, the plane lands in Paris only a few hundred yards from where the Concorde takes off, so if you were in a hurry to get to New York City, that would be the quickest way to go.
But there’s another way of looking at it. Let’s say your company has offices all over Europe, and let’s say that four of you need to visit those offices in as short a time as possible. Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich, Milan, and London could all be comfortably fitted into a work week. Plans could be changed and meetings could run over and it wouldn’t matter. You would never miss your flight. It’s not only convenient, it’s also the most time-efficient method of shifting busy executives around. And it would cost, in total, only about double the first-class commercial airfare for one.
I said that it sounded dangerously close to being a bargain.
Exactly, said Felix. If you’re doing business all over Europe, it makes perfect, comfortable sense.
I’m sure he’s right. But I shall always think of it as a hell of a way to go to lunch.