“Show me another pleasure like dinner which comes every day and lasts an hour.”—Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, senior advisor to Napoleon I, Emperor of France.
Six foreign food writers, 15 minutes late for their reservation, piled into a tiny Paris restaurant in the shadow of Hôtel des Invalides.
With a fixed professional smile, the maîtresse d’ guided them to their table, the largest in the room. As coats were shed, seating wrangled over, enquiries made about the location of the toilettes, little attention was paid to the glares of other diners, some of whom, having booked months before, were paying €500 a head for what, if three Michelin stars meant anything, was some of the best food in France.
Nobody in the party took time to note the smooth leather chairs, undulating walls of pale pear wood or the glass lighting fittings by master verrier René Lalique, souvenired from a carriage of the original Orient Express. (The nude nymphs and shepherds molded into the glass were intended, explained the chef on his website, to evoke ancient Rome’s most ecstatic ritual, the Bacchanal.)
Menus, proffered, were barely consulted, the journalists having opted for the tasting menu or menu de dégustation: a cruise in 12 dishes through the master chef’s creations, a parade of flavors and textures designed to display his inventiveness and that of his team.
Watching from the staircase that led down to the subterranean kitchen, the chef judged the party ready to start eating, and dispatched the first course, careful to ensure that each diner received his or her plate at exactly the same moment: the so-called service Russe or Russian service at its most effective.
He was less pleased to see some of the journalists chatting at they ate. One even put down her fork, rummaged in her handbag for a notebook and scribbled a few lines. None commented on the food. Glaring, the chef descended into his underground domain.
Ten minutes later, waiters cleared the empty plates and served another course. As they did so, one journalist peered at his portion, then those of his colleagues.
“Didn’t we just have this?”
Taking notice for the first time, the others agreed. What they’d been served was identical with what they’d just eaten.
Was this a glitch in the famously perfect service?
Were standards at France’s most select restaurant starting to slip?
A waiter was summoned. A few minutes later, he returned from the kitchen.
“I spoke to the chef. And yes, he did send out the same dish twice.”
“He wants you to start the meal again. The first time, you were not paying attention.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Portions of this book, in a different form, appeared in The French Riviera and Its Artists (Museyon, 2015) and in The Perfect Meal: In Search of the Lost Tastes of France (HarperCollins, 2013).