Remembrance of Things Paris

by Gourmet Magazine Editors

  (“A sherbet made from Champagne as a palate clearer.”)

  Suprême de Poularde de Bresse au Beure Noisette avec

  Pointes d’Asperges à l’Étuvée

  (“Chickens from Bresse. Only white meat.”)

  Château d’Yquem 1921 Truffles à la Mode de Périgord

  (“The truffles were specially selected. Each had to weigh ninety grams.

  One per person, steeped in port and served in an individual casserole covered with a pie crust.”)

  Magnum de Château Latour 1924

  Mousse Glacée Singapour

  (“Frozen pineapple mousse.”)

  Pêches de Montreuil Princesse

  (“The peaches were stoned and filled with a praline. They were peeled

  at the last moment. A little extra refinement.”)

  Frivolités en Corbeilles en Sucre

  (“Small petits fours,

  mignardises, presented in baskets spun from sugar.”)

  Magnum Champagne Pol Roger 1911 Magnum

  Champagne G. H. Mumm 1901

  Champagne Louis Roederer 1904

  Champagne Veuve Clicquot 1900

  Champagne Pommery 1905

  Lest I might think that all this belonged to the glorious past, Monsieur Alex brought out the extraordinary menu for the Julliard dinner, which was given in November 1965 and prepared by Mars Soustelle, the venerable chef of Lucas-Carton for the past forty years.

  There were forty guests, who met at seven P.M.in the extraordinary cellars where 180,000 bottles of wine are stored. “And not one of them is defective,” asserted Monsieur Alex.

  The cellar prelude began with marennes oysters, foie gras from the Landes with black bread, and a Château d’Yquem ’55. There were canapés of caviar, smoked salmon, and Parma ham. The fourteen-course dinner proceeded as follows: Crème du roi de la forêt (a velouté of mushroom soup) accompanied by a sherry from the reserves of Francis Carton; pâté de brochet “Talleyrand” with a Montrachet Les Caillerets ’62; noisette d’agneau “Trianon” with a Château Trottevieille ’57; feuilleté “Chanteclair” (cockscombs in a puff paste) with a Château Chapelle Madeleine ’37; granité “Alaska;” aspic de homard with a Corton-Charlemagne Domaine Louis Latour 45; surprise de Mars Soustelle (girolles mushrooms from Périgord) with a Château La Grave Trigant de Boisser ’29; bécasse à la façon de Francis Carton (woodcock prepared and flambéed by the maître d’hôtel at the table before the guests) with a Richebourg Domaine de la Romanée-Conti ’37; salade “Ninon” (a salad of mixed greens); cardons à la moelle (cardoons served with a sauce of beef marrow); poires doyenne du comice; Époisses du Château et Brie de Meaux (two superb cheeses always featured by Lucas-Carton) with a Magnum Château Latour ’04; pêches flambées “Lucas” (the peaches covered with granulated sugar and branded with a red-hot poker at the table) with a Champagne Bollinger ’29; le chant du cygne et ses frivolités with a Clicquot ’11; pot d’armagnac ’84, fine napoléon sans age, Vieille Chartreuse ’00, and savories.

  As long as this sort of table is still set, the good old days are far from dead.

  August 1966

  A SECRET CLUB

  Joseph Wechsberg

  Back in 1936, when everybody who was anybody wanted to make a crossing on the wonderful S.S. Normandie, the flagship of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, somebody at the Plaza Athénée in Paris had the brilliant idea of installing a small grillroom for those who had missed the boat. Later the Normandie was destroyed by fire in New York harbor, but the grillroom is still at the Plaza Athénée, a succès fou since it was opened. Located on avenue Montaigne, Le Relais Plaza has become a secret club (with unwritten statutes) and a definitive “in” place for the veritable insiders of the haute couture, the aristocracy, members of government, and also the place for professional snobs, who come to see and be seen. Also present are the last of the boulevardiers, jaunty and elegant, with flowers in their buttonholes, who come because, as one told me, “the dear old Relais Plaza is exactly as it was in ’36. Now how many places can make that claim?”

  Everything has been faithfully preserved (which doesn’t always please the barmen and waiters). M. Albert, the dignified Turk of indefinable age, still pours the coffee. The blackboard is carried through with the name of a habitué who is wanted at the telephone. Only habitués dare call the Relais to ask for a fellow habitué. Even the dresses worn by the ladies haven’t changed much since ’36, only the prices. The service is excellent, and the cuisine is reliable, though no one comes here for the cuisine. The ambience is quite different at lunch and dinnertime. At one o’clock, never before, and never later than one-thirty, the lunch club members, the great names of the haute couture, drop in. M. Balmain comes five times a week. M. Givenchy, M. Laroche, and M. Saint Laurent appear frequently. And many others: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, a sprinkling of the old names of France, and Madame Messmer, the wife of the Prime Minister. Tourists, even in the millionaire class, haven’t much of a chance at the Relais Plaza. Some come at noon and are tactfully informed that they must be gone by one when the table “belongs” to someone. Or they may come after two-thirty when it’s all over.

  The social topography at the Relais Plaza is as strict as it was at Le Pavillon in New York under Henri Soulé, when only God and M. Soulé decided exactly where the guests would sit. There was no appeal against the decision of le grand Henri, who used to say with disarming frankness, “Le Pavillon, c’est moi.” At the Relais Plaza the great decisions are made by M. Claude, who performs with dignity and knowledge and knows the unwritten rules. (“The worst mistake is to ask a man, ‘Who are you?’ If I don’t know who he is, he’s got little chance.”) Some clients are sent to the bar and told to wait for their table. Some get discouraged or maybe have too many drinks and walk out, which was the idea anyway. The most “desirable” tables are near the revolving door and close to the bar where it is very uncomfortable and one is bothered constantly, but people like to suffer. The most desirable seven tables at the old Pavillon (today La Côte Basque) were in the sanctuary, the small entrance room between the checkroom, the rest rooms, and the door. Same old story.

  Having been recommended by M. Paul Bougenaux, the general manager of the Plaza Athénée, we were given a tiny table near the kitchen door, the equivalent of Lower Siberia or maybe Outer Mongolia. But M. Claude, who has a heart and a sense of humor, told us, smiling, that the gentleman behind us wearing dark glasses was “le roi du pétrol,” and he didn’t care where he sat. And that nice, simply dressed woman nearby was “la Baronne Guy”—Rothschild, that is—and she didn’t care either. I was reminded of Henri Soulé’s favorite woman customer, who told him, “Don’t worry, M. Soulé. Any table will do. Where I sit, it’s chic.” Voilà!

  At lunch the Relais Plaza is the rendezvous of le Tout-Paris. Other places in town claim this distinction, but I think the Relais truly deserves it. The day we went, there were practically no foreigners, ourselves excepted. Everybody seemed to know everybody else. The women were good-looking: Some were expensively underdressed, wearing leather jeans and strange garments; others looked like they could be (and probably had been) on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. And the men were attractive. This doesn’t mean that we were surrounded by wealthy socialites and displaced parasites. On the contrary, there were some very hardworking people around us who like the place because it’s convenient, one doesn’t have to eat much—it’s really a sort of glorified snack bar—and one meets one’s friends there. M. Claude told us about the Marquis de la Bruyère, a faithful club member and client of long standing, who had been away for two years, arrived in Paris in the morning, came for lunch at one o’clock, got his table, naturally, and saw all his friends, immediately feeling comme chez soi (at home).

  The club members worry continually that the management may decide to modernize things, God forbid. Every year, before the place closes in August, they urge M. Bougenaux and M. Claude not to change anything, neither the décor nor the formula.
A number of years ago, when the hotel was sold with the George V and La Trémoille to what was called “British interests” (actually the tycoon Charles Forte), there were dire predictions that the flagship was leaking and might be sinking fast. But Mr. Forte knew better than to interfere. I am not sure he could get M. Balmain’s table; that is, unless M. Balmain happened to be away, which is as it should be in this kind of place.

  At night the ambience at the Relais Plaza is quite different. Three theaters are in the immediate vicinity, including the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where history was made on May 29, 1913, when the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring caused such a scandal that the composer and Pierre Monteux, the conductor, had to escape through a window. Had the Relais existed then, they might have sought solace there. Today first-nighters gather at the Relais for an early postmortem, many women wearing the creations of the couture artists who were there for lunch. When Herbert von Karajan conducted the Orchestre de Paris, he came to the Relais. Georg Solti, sorry, Sir Georg, who now conducts the orchestra, also comes there. I am sure he gets an acceptable table, close to the door.

  The Relais Plaza stays open until two A.M.and serves warm dishes until one or one-fifteen, which means they need three crews of cooks and waiters. The cuisine is the same as that at the respected Régence Plaza, where they like fancy dishes such as soufflé de homard Plaza (lobster soufflé). But at the Relais the diner is just as welcome if he orders only toast Relais Plaza, smoked eel on scrambled eggs. There is a very large menu, ranging from soupe à l’oignon gratinée to timbale de framboises parisienne. The wines range from a Beaujolais en carafe (twenty-five francs) to a Château Margaux ’59 (eight hundred francs). If you, Madame, belong to the three thousand women on earth who can still afford haute couture—ten years ago, there were twelve thousand such women—you may want to read the sentence on the last page of the menu, which says, “Pour vous, Madame, après le charme des présentations de Couture, le Relais Plaza sera votre rendez-vous à l’heure du thé-cocktail.”

  January 1974

  MAXIM’S

  Naomi Barry

  I’m going to Maxim’s

  Where all the girls are Queens

  A sentimental army

  To captivate and charm me.

  Lo Lo, Do Do, Zou Zou,

  Clo Clo, Margot, Frou Frou—

  The Champagne I will sip, sip, sip

  Could sink a battleship….

  It is more than half a century since Franz Lehár wrote The Merry Widow, but the aura of romance he created still lingers on undiminished. The world continues to dream of Maxim’s as the meeting place of Lo Lo, Do Do, Zou Zou, and Margot.

  In the 1900 edition of Baedeker’s guide to Paris, the correct and austere German chided Maxim’s by describing it as “an elegantly fitted-up restaurant, frequented mainly at night, for gentlemen only.” It was his tactful way of indicating that the glittering and gorgeous women who supped with half the nobility of Europe were not exactly

  “ladies.”

  At the same period, the dapper Boni de Castellane, husband of Anna Gould and a Maxim’s habitué, summed up the situation by quipping, “Virtue is the mediocre attribute of women who have never had a chance to lose it.”

  Nonetheless, many society women and their daughters during the Belle Epoque yearned to join the fun. Rumor has it that a few daring ones, heavily veiled, slipped up a secret staircase for a midnight supper in a private dining room for the delicious experience of finding out what it was all about.

  So famous, or infamous, was the reputation of the splendid house on the rue Royale, but a few steps from the majestic Place de la Concorde, that at the start of World War I, Kaiser Wilhelm exhorted his generals to hurry up with their western offensive so they could all soon meet again for a Champagne dinner at Maxim’s.

  History has since transformed the world. Nothing has remained static. What goes on now chez Maxim’s? Tonight the banana-colored Rolls-Royce of the Maharani of Baroda is at the door. Aristotle Onassis and Maria Callas are at a corner table. The orchid loveliness of a bouquet of South American heiresses blooms under the soft caress of the amber lights. And the Champagne that is sip, sip, sipped could still sink a battleship. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

  The clothes may be different, but the décor is rigorously the same. The mahogany walls with arabesque appliqués of gleaming brass, the tall mirrors framed in mahogany whorls, the stained glass, the fleur-de-lis bracket lamps, the potted plants, the murals of rosy-fleshed nymphs are the quintessence of the cosseted hothouse luxury of Paris 1900. The French government has cannily classed the interior as a historical monument, a memorial to one of the gayest and most pleasured periods the world has ever known. Maxim’s is what it has always been—an illusion palace within whose walls breathe love, wealth, glamour, high living, power, beauty, magic, and the shadow of that immortal Merry Widow. No alteration can be made in Maxim’s without the approval of the Beaux-Arts administration, a permission not likely to be given.

  To enter the doors of number 3, rue Royale these days is a formidable security check—of your own ego. The trademark of a Maxim’s waiter is deftness of service and a turned-down mouth. Obviously, the regular customers here are solid enough in themselves that they don’t need to be bolstered up by smiles from the help.

  One day I made a tremendous discovery. It was the middle of the afternoon. The luncheon guests were gone. The waiters had removed their coats. In their shirtsleeves, they were rearranging tables. Even among themselves, their mouths were still turned down.

  I breathed like one reborn. The deprecating expressions had nothing to do with me. They were part of the physiognomy. So remember that when you come in shyly from Akron, Dallas, Tulsa, or Duluth and you get a reception like a dash of bitters. Your counterparts from Oslo, Zurich, Madrid, or the Seizième arrondissement are not being greeted more sweetly.

  One exception to this dour staff is the maître d’hôtel, Edwin Meissner, who grew up in the house over the last twenty years. He is a tall, thin Alsatian with an extraordinary resemblance to Valentin le Désossé (Valentin the Boneless One), the immortal high-hatted dancer in the Moulin Rouge posters of Toulouse-Lautrec. Meissner moves around the crowded dining room like a ribbon of silk, and he carves a caneton aux pêches as if he were doing a production number in a ballet. He also does not regard it as beneath him to remember your name.

  A few years ago, Serguy Prince Lubomirsky—a Polish émigré—told me he came to Maxim’s one evening escorting a wine-sodden and ragged old crone. She was a street vendor of newspapers in his neighborhood. Intrigued by her stylish and rather wicked repartee, he fell into conversation with her. She revealed she was the daughter of Émilienne d’Alençon, a music-hall artist who had been one of the most famous in the galaxy of the ladies of chez Maxim’s.

  Lubomirsky felt it was only fair that the unfortunate daughter should also have a chance to revel for a night at Maxim’s. Up on a table nimbly leaped the disreputable-looking old bawd. For hours, in a croaking voice, she sang the nostalgic songs of her mother’s repertoire. The dining room was enchanted. Here and there a tear rolled down the withered cheeks of an elderly gentleman who remembered the delectable Émilienne. A note of unrespectability has always been cherished by Maxim’s.

  Emily Post, that wise and not sufficiently honored arbiter of the social scene, once observed that often the only difference between a smart party and the other kind was the way the women dressed. Maxim’s is exigent. On Friday evenings, all guests must come in full formal attire.

  However, since it is even more fun to impose your own rules, the unwritten law made up by the guests now demands evening clothes on Tuesdays as well. These gala Tuesday nights belong to the pretty little debutantes of Paris, who, with traditional French thrift, have provided themselves with extra opportunities to wear their ball gowns and thereby amortize for their papas their murderously expensive coming-out dresses. And when, after dinner, the center of the floor is cleare
d for dancing, the room becomes a whirling parade of Paris haute couture.

  It is time now to talk of médaillons de veau Orloff and matters culinary. The cuisine in this tureen of snobbishness gambols from passable to great. I first realized its potential excellence when I was wandering through the antiquated cellar kitchens and found an unused portion of simplicity in the form of a baked custard. Chef Alex Humbert, who dresses like a banker when off duty, handed me a spoon. The custard was exquisite beyond belief, lifted from its customary blandness by the subtle flavor of raisins previously soaked in rum.

  On the other hand, I am not an advocate of sole Albert, which is one of the starred dishes on the menu. I think many people order it because it is named after the late and legendary Albert, who for twenty-five years was the autocrat of Maxim’s. During his reign, his icy glare for those whom he did not deem worthy of the gilded life was responsible for sending hundreds of crumpled souls to dine miserably in other restaurants where they were greeted with more welcome.

  The great Escoffier catalogued 185 recipes for preparing sole, that incomparable fish from the icy waters of the English Channel. I don’t think he would have added sole Albert as his 186th, despite its present popularity. In this dish, the sole is given a topside coating of fresh bread crumbs and baked in a pond of dry vermouth. The level of the vermouth is carefully controlled so that no liquid touches the bread crumbs, which are moistened only with melted butter. The heavy slathering of bread crumbs counteracts the delicacy of the sole and produces a dish far too dry for my taste. Utterly disappointing.

  However, I do love potage Billy By, closely associated with Maxim’s and one of the most festive of party soups. According to the Countess de Toulouse-Lautrec, in her book Chez Maxim’s (McGraw-Hill), Louis Barthe, a former chef at Maxim’s, in 1925 “was working in the kitchen at Ciro’s, a restaurant in Deauville known for a special mussels dish with a particularly succulent sauce. One day a very good customer, Mr. William Brand, decided to invite some American friends to Ciro’s. Mussels are generally eaten with the fingers in France, using one double shell as tongs to scoop the meat out of the others.