Cher Ami
The great Antoine died some years ago, in circumstances that I will come to later. But Chez L’Ami Louis, the restaurant that he owned and cooked in for more than fifty years, is still as he must have liked it: crowded and noisy, resolutely shabby, with a decorative sprinkling of pretty women ignoring their diets as they eat meals of nostalgic size.
This is rumoured to be the most expensive bistro in Paris. I prefer to think of it as a bargain for anyone who is not ashamed of being hungry. People who toy with their food, or who profess a liking for large expanses of empty plate with tasteful dribbles of raspberry coulis in the centre—these poor scraggy souls will be horrified at the abundance. If you are one of them, read no further. You will only suffer vicarious indigestion.
Chez L’Ami Louis is number 32 in the narrow, nondescript rue du Vert-Bois, where the sounds of heavy breathing were once louder than the traffic. This used to be a neighbourhood for assignations, a quartier in which every other building was a hot sheets hotel. Ladies and gentlemen could rent rooms by the hour in the maisons de passe before tottering round the corner, still slightly flushed, to recover at Antoine’s table.
Even in today’s less carefree and naughty times, it is possible to imagine that the well-barbered man and his deeply décolletée companion whispering in the corner are taking an evening off from marriage, untwining their fingers and glancing up each time the door opens to see if it’s anyone they know. Is it guilt, or are they just looking for famous faces? Politicians and statesmen, Roman Polanski, Faye Dunaway, members of the Peugeot family, Caroline of Monaco’s ex-husband, the beau monde, the demi-monde—they have all been here, and no doubt they will all be back.
But why? It is difficult enough to sustain the success of a restaurant for five years before fashion kicks the chef in the teeth and moves on to newer, smarter tables. How is it that a small and ramshackle establishment in an undistinguished street has been able to flourish since the 1930s? Even more remarkable, it is Parisians rather than tourists who have kept the restaurant busy; and Parisians, according to popular legend, are fickle and spoiled for choice. So why have they come, and why do they keep on coming?
Some of the best things in life are delightful accidents rather than deliberate inventions, and I have a feeling that Chez L’Ami Louis falls—or rather sits, knife and fork at the ready—into that category. There is a formula, if you can describe wonderful ingredients simply cooked and served in absurdly generous portions as a formula, but there is more to the place than that. It has a personality, a lusty air of appetite and unbuttoned enjoyment, and I suspect that this is the legacy of Antoine, whose ghost runs the restaurant.
You see Antoine’s photograph at the far end of the room as you come in—a great, grey-whiskered badger of a man, who in his prime weighed well over 200 pounds. He looks out from his photograph at a view that has hardly changed in half a century. The black and white tiled floor has been worn down in patches to bare concrete. A venerable wood-burning stove squats at one side, its rickety tin flue slung precariously across the ceiling. The walls are the colour of roasted leather, black-brown and cracked. Straight-backed wooden chairs, narrow tables with salmon pink cloths, voluminous napkins, plain and serviceable cutlery. No artful lighting, no background music, no bar, no frills. A place to eat.
The manager for the past fourteen years (whose name, appropriately, is Louis), as solid as a steak in his white jacket and black trousers, shows you to your table. The waiters take customers’ coats—cashmere, sable, mink, it makes no difference—roll them up and toss them with the practised two-handed flick of basketball players onto the head-high rack that runs the length of one wall. Gentlemen who wish to remove their jackets are permitted to do so, and are encouraged to tuck their napkins well up under the chin. The menu arrives.
It is a single sheet of white card, hand-lettered and brief: five entreés, ten main courses, five desserts. The choice varies with the seasons, and there are many clients who time their visits to coincide with the arrival of fresh asparagus, the baby lamb, or the wild cépes. By early December, when I was there, winter had come to the menu; it was thick with the kind of food that clings to the ribs on a cold night.
The first course of any good meal is anticipation, those marvellous, indecisive minutes with a glass of wine in the hand and the imagination dithering over the possibilities. A confit of duck? Some scallops, throbbing with garlic? Roast pheasant? Quail cooked with grapes? From where I was sitting, I could see into the kitchen, a blur of white-clad figures and copper skillets. I could hear the sizzle of meat and smell potatoes turning crisp. A waiter came past balancing a flaming dish at shoulder height. Veal kidneys flambé. He was followed by Louis, nursing a dusty bottle. Our waiter came and hovered.
When in doubt, my Uncle William always used to say, have the foie gras. In fact, it is one of the classics of the house, supplied by the same family for two generations and said to have reduced many a gourmet to whimpers of delight. Yes, some foie gras to start with, and then a little roast chicken.
I thought the waiter’s knife had slipped when he came back. There were four of us, and we had each ordered a different entree. But there was enough foie gras for us all—dense pink slabs, finely veined with pale yellow goose fat and served with warm slices of baguette striped from the heat of the grill. The other plates were covered with equally immodest portions of scallops, of country ham, of escargots. A second warm mountain of bread in case we should run short.
It is either a shameful admission of greed or a tribute to the responsible attitude that I bring to research, but I tasted everything, and I can say that I’ve never eaten a better dinner. Unfortunately, the main course was still to come. I was beginning to see how Antoine used to maintain his fighting weight.
He had started his career, so I was told, as a chef particulier, a private cook in a wealthy household, and one can imagine the terrible void he left in the family stomach when he went public, and came to the rue du Vert-Bois. Only two things in life could distract him from cooking; he loved horseracing and adored women. His favourite female clients were regularly smothered with garlic-scented embraces, and felt the touch of Antoine’s oven-warm fingers on their cheeks. And the ladies adored him. One evening when a world-famous beauty was experiencing some technical difficulties with her garter belt in the ladies’ room, it was not a woman who was asked to come to the rescue, but Antoine. He returned to the kitchen shaking his head in wonder, his hands forming voluptuous, quivering shapes in the air, muttering through his beard, “What magnificent thighs.”
As it happened, my next course was an equally voluptuous chicken. When I ordered it, I had overlooked a crucial word on the menu, which was entier. The whole bird, shiny skinned, honey brown, moist with juices and resplendent of thigh, was carved with a dexterity that I always admire and can never achieve. (The victims of my carving, for some reason, have bones in unnatural places.) Half of this statuesque creature was put on my plate. The waiter promised to keep the other half warm for later, and delivered the pommes frites—a six-inch high pyramid of plump matchsticks that snapped softly between the teeth.
Miraculously, I finished part one of the chicken while my friends dealt with their more reasonably sized young partridges. To the polite surprise of the waiter, I was unable to come off the ropes for a second round with the chicken, but he didn’t give up before threatening me with dessert. Wild strawberries? A nougatine glacée? A football-sized pineapple drenched in Kirsch?
We finally settled for coffee, and an after-dinner stroll to the kitchen, which I hope will be officially recognised one day as a national monument. It is manned by Bibi, Didi, and Nini, who somehow turn out spectacular food in a small area almost completely devoid of modern equipment. Twenty or thirty battered copper pans hang over a blackened cast-iron range that was installed in 1920. The hotplates have worn through twice in seventy years, and have been replaced, and the heat is provided by wood—old, well-seasoned oak. And that’s it. No microwaves, no gleaming computerised ovens, no expanses of stainless steel. The kitchen editor at House & Garden would have a fit.
But it works, so why change it? Anyway, change is out of the question. When Antoine was reaching the end of his career, he agreed to sell the restaurant on two conditions: the first was that it should be preserved in its original state; worn floors, rickety stove, cracked walls, and all. As for the food, that too should continue to be as it always had been—the best ingredients, plenty of them, simply cooked. The second condition was that his wife should be taken care of when he died.
The legend of Antoine’s death begins with his profound dislike of medical fuss and doctors. When he became ill, his friends pleaded with him to go to the best doctor in Paris. He refused. In that case, said his friends, we will arrange for the doctor to come to the restaurant to see you.
If you send a doctor anywhere near me, said Antoine, I shall kill him. But his illness persisted, and so did his friends, and one morning they brought a doctor—a brave doctor—to the restaurant. It was empty except for Antoine. He was seated at a table, a half-empty glass of calvados and a revolver in front of him, dead from a heart attack.
Is it true, or did he die peacefully in a clinic in Versailles? I know which ending I prefer, and I think Antoine would have preferred it too. It’s better to die at home.