Remembrance of Things Paris

by Gourmet Magazine Editors

  With World War II came the fall of Paris, and the restaurant seemed nearly finished. Octave Vaudable died in 1942, leaving the enterprise and its uncertain future to his son, Louis. The Nazis placed the restaurant under a Kommissar, a well-known Berlin restaurateur whose name shall be mercifully forgotten. Possibly owing to its Merry Widow fame—The Merry Widow and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg were the Führer’s favorite musical works—Maxim’s became the hangout of Göring, Goebbels, et al. No one likes to remember those years, but Albert later said that “even Göring never got near table Number 16,” a modest consolation. It is no longer a secret, however, that the British Secret Service had its operatives at Maxim’s. Meetings of the top Nazis in the private dining rooms were at once reported to London. In 1944 Maxim’s was closed, but only after Louis Vaudable had managed to remove thirty thousand bottles of wine to a hideout in Burgundy.

  The reopening of Maxim’s in 1946 marks the beginning of the latest chapter in the life of the apparently indestructible institution. The kings were either gone or had become ex-kings, but there were many customers among the old rich (the Rothschilds), the new superrich (Getty, Niarchos, Onassis), the fashion czars (Dior and Givenchy), stars of the stage and screen (Maurice Chevalier, Marlene Dietrich, Noël Coward, Maria Callas, and Charlie Chaplin), also Sacha Guitry, Colette, Arthur Rubinstein, and many, many others. By that time the place had become part and headquarters of the Société Maxim’s, under its founder and chairman, Louis Vaudable. Now the corporation’s worldwide activities include Les Caves Maxim’s (wholesale wine merchants) and Les Cuisines Maxim’s (frozen plats cuisinés sold in many countries). Maxim’s makes guest appearances all over the world: in 1970 at the ninetieth-anniversary ball of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and in 1961 at the Restaurant de l’Exposition Française in Moscow. Ten years later, Maxim’s experts arranged the banquets and official dinners given by the Shah of Iran in Persepolis during the 2,500th anniversary celebrations of the Persian Empire.

  In short, Maxim’s has become Big Business and, incidentally, a third-generation enterprise. In 1970 François Vaudable (who had wanted to become a scientist) decided to join his father in the management of the family empire. Four years later François became a director of Maxim’s. He is a modest, relaxed young man who learned the business from scratch; he studied wines seriously with the late Édouard Pommier, the famous sommelier. François is unimpressed by the legend of Maxim’s but delighted with it because it pays off handsomely. He is sometimes puzzled by what he calls the secret code of behavior at Maxim’s.

  “It does exist,” he says, “but no one is able to define it. For instance, the same people who are relaxed at lunchtime when they sit at the omnibus and talk to each other across the tables would never do that at night, when Roger takes them into the salle. There they are formal, almost stiff. They greet each other correctly but wouldn’t talk to people at another table. Strange, isn’t it?”

  Certain things are just “not done” at Maxim’s, but again, it’s hard to define them. People are supposed to have a good time, but they shouldn’t get too drunk, not at Maxim’s. Gentlemen will kindly wear a tie or will be lent one by the management. Maxim’s is not an open-shirt joint, although elegant turtleneck sweaters are tolerated, especially when worn by world-famous conductors. The busiest seasons are from April to June and from September to December.

  Lunch is now more important than it used to be, but it shouldn’t be strictly a business affair. Women are welcome at Maxim’s for déjeuner, particularly the kind of women Roger approves of. Though big deals, sometimes involving millions, are discussed in the omnibus, most men order Bordeaux or Champagne, or both. The Champagne is likely to be Maxim’s own, the proprietor’s house wine. At night the men bring their ladies (not necessarily their wives) into the salle and again order Bordeaux and/or Champagne, but rarely a Burgundy. Maxim’s wine cellar is one of the finest in the world, no doubt about that, with over 120,000 bottles of sometimes priceless wines. (As Mr. Morgan might have said, if you ask for prices, don’t go to Maxim’s.) Originally, the cellars were located on the site where the American Embassy stands today.

  I now understand (I didn’t always) that women and sometimes even men like to see and be seen at Maxim’s. Nothing has changed. One comes in and leaves one’s coat at the wardrobe, high above. Paulette Payne, the famous hat-check lady and confidante of the high and the mighty, retired in 1974 after more than thirty years of service. On the walls are the playbills, the drawings by Sem, and the framed Peter Arno cartoon from The New Yorker showing a highly dissipated gentleman at the bar and the maître d’hôtel saying, “Ah, m’sieu, I have a table for you now.” The new-old bar, now called l’Impériale, is on the second floor, created and beautifully decorated by Maurice Carrère. Next to it is the salle where the Club des Cent meets for déjeuner the first three Thursdays of the month. One member, the brigadier, is in charge of the lunch. He composes the menu, selects the wines, and with half a dozen others attends a dress rehearsal, followed by a review. The déjeuner is usually attended by one third of the membership. Roger is glad about the difficult guests who help him to keep everybody on their toes.

  It’s no news that one can eat very well at Maxim’s. Alex Humbert, whom they called the “chef des chefs,” is no longer there, but his pupil and assistant, Michel Menant, “who possesses all the secrets of his maître,” is now in charge of the kitchen brigade of twenty-four. The hardest thing is to choose well; there is a very large card with the celebrated spécialités—sole braisée au vermouth Albert (sole braised in vermouth), noisettes d’agneau Édouard VII (noisettes of lamb), caneton nantais aux pêches (duck with peaches), and so on. We wanted something light, so Roger recommended coquilles Saint-Jacques au safran (scallops in saffron sauce), also known as coquilles Saint-Jacques Alex Humbert. The complicated recipe was beautifully executed and finished, and it was strictly grande cuisine.

  And the service is as good as it used to be, which means impeccable. Not many people at Maxim’s have time to watch the service—there are so many supposedly interesting people to look at—but it is a pleasure to see the help at Maxim’s at work under the omnipresent Roger. This is one of the last places on earth where service with a flourish is considered as important as the food and the wines. “The secret of Maxim’s,” says Roger, “has always been that our habitués are served what they like the way they like it, without having to ask for it.” Not many places in the world can claim that.

  Lunch may be “important,” but the time to go to Maxim’s is at night (unless you are a habitué who goes there several times a week, for lunch and dinner). Like an attractive woman of a certain age, Maxim’s is most fascinating under soft, artificial lights, when the pink-shaded table lamps, the red-velvet banquettes, the gilt-framed mirrors, and the stained-glass roof bring back the colors and memories of a fin de siècle fairy tale. It is so kitschy that it is beautiful. The night we were there two large tables were occupied by young people. Roger was pleased. Many of them were the children and perhaps grandchildren of former habitués. They had inherited their elders’ taste, money, and snobisme.

  “Some of them are already difficult about where they sit,” Roger said, with a fine smile. “They learn fast. Perhaps papa or maman told them that certain tables are just not possible.” Still, he said, the presence of the young people proves that Maxim’s remains alive. “They always come in groups, eight or twelve of them. It’s rare that we have a young couple. I suppose they are comfortable only when they are together.”

  The Vaudables, père and fils, are glad that the young people are beginning to come to Maxim’s.

  “We don’t want to rest on the legends and laurels of the past,” says Louis Vaudable. “Maxim’s should not be known mainly as a national monument.”

  “Absolutely,” says his son, François. “We’ll celebrate our hundredth anniversary in 1993, but, personally, I often find myself thinking of Maxim’s at the year 2000.”

  February 1978
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  THE CHEFS

  WHEN MICHELIN COMES KNOCKING

  Joseph Wechsberg

  How does it feel to be the owner of a distinguished two-star restaurant in Paris and to be told by three anonymous gentlemen who have just finished lunch that the Guide Michelin has just awarded you the coveted third star, which in France is akin to canonization? Jean-Claude Vrinat, whose father founded Le Taillevent in 1946, told me how he felt when exactly that happened to him. I was there on March 15, the day the new Michelin was put on sale. The Vrinats, père et fils, had not the faintest idea what was going to happen. There had been no rumor; no one had “leaked” the good news to them.

  “They introduced themselves and told me we’d been promoted. I thought they’d given us another fourchette.” (In the Michelin crossed forks denote the elegance of a restaurant; stars refer to the cuisine.) “‘No,’ they said. We’d been given a third star. My first reaction of happiness was immediately tempered by a sense of worry. I knew we were going to have difficult times. I called in Claude Deligne, our chef; the inspectors congratulated him, and we had a goutte of Champagne.”

  Jean-Claude tried to telephone his father, but he was out. At seventy, André Vrinat is semiretired and only comes to the restaurant twice a week to relieve his son. “I finally reached Papa that night. He was pleased but less surprised than I. He said he’d expected it for a long time.”

  So have many serious eaters in Paris who agree that Taillevent almost never serves a disappointing meal. “It was overdue,” one such gentleman with a triple chin told me, and he gave a resigned shrug, probably referring to the unfathomable ways of the Good Lord and the Guide Michelin. Taillevent is a wonderful place for people who like to dine in an elegant ambience, don’t care to see or be seen, and value a quiet, unhurried atmosphere. The restaurant is located in a hôtel particulier built by Napoleon III in 1852 for the duc de Morny. It still has the genuine aristocratic touch: dark colors, deep rugs, wood paneling, old paintings, subdued lights—the sort of place where even captains of industry and members of the government lower their voices instinctively. Bankers and diplomats never raise theirs anyway.

  Vrinat père comes from the Limousin in central France and was an engineer. Later he worked for Potel & Chabot, the famous catering firm, and finally opened a small place of his own in the rue Saint-Georges near the Opéra. He called it “Taillevent,” the sobriquet of the famous chef Guillaume Tirel (1326–95), who wrote one of the oldest cookbooks, Le Viandier.

  It is a French adage that great chefs and restaurateurs choose their métier under the influence of their mothers and grandmothers. In André Vrinat’s case it was his grandmother. (His son didn’t want to join the father and studied business administration, but now he loves being a restaurateur and has learned his métier well.)

  The restaurant has long been famous for its cellar, considered by some the finest in Paris. In fact, the wines often divert people’s attention from the classical cooking. Vrinat père had his wine list made up by the late Raymond Baudoin, one of the country’s most respected wine connoisseurs, who also designed the wine lists for Fernand Point’s Pyramide and Alexandre Dumaine’s Hôtel de la Côte d’Or. Baudoin organized a group of fifteen backers, château owners and wine merchants, who sent their best wines to Taillevent and became symbolic shareholders. Among them was Douglas Dillon, the former United States ambassador and proprietor of the celebrated Château Haut-Brion.

  In 1950 Vrinat moved the restaurant to its present location. In the cellar he keeps over thirty thousand bottles, and there is a reserve of fifty thousand more in Bougival. The wine list is magnificent in its scope, variety, and rarity. The oldest wine now on the list is an 1846 Château Lafite-Rothschild priced at 2,600 francs. Two years ago one could get an 1806 of that château for eight hundred francs, but we all know what happened to wine prices.

  July 1973

  LA GRANDE CUISINE FRANÇAISE

  Joseph Wechsberg

  Michael Guérard is the owner and chef of Le Pot au Feu, an unfashionable-looking small restaurant in the unfashionable working-class suburb of Asnières. The rue des Bas looks like a fine setting for what the French call a roman policier, a mystery novel. But M. Guérard is often discussed among serious eaters in Paris, and lately it has sometimes been difficult to get a table at his restaurant, which seats only thirty people. Guérard belongs to the small group (about a dozen members) that calls itself, with frankness and without modesty, “la grande cuisine française”—no more, no less, no such old understatement as “Traditions et Qualité.” The group includes some of the most interesting artists now performing on the French gastronomic scene. The unofficial spokesman is Paul Bocuse. Two celebrated members admitted to me, “Guérard is probably the most imaginative of all of us.” Apparently Michel Guérard has what matters most to an artist—the respect of his fellow artists.

  Guérard, a short, boyish-looking man, with thoughtful eyes and his hair combed down over his forehead, is forty and looks twenty-two. By now he may have moved to another location because the building where we went to dine, number 50, may soon be torn down; but he says he is going to stay in Asnières. He feels that if the customers like his place they will come all the way out to eat there; he is right. When we drove up the dark street, a sign at the corner said that the entrance was through le jardin, which turned out to be a couple of stunted trees with two small tables and two candles on them. To eat there, one must truly love Guérard’s cooking.

  The same attitude goes for the people inside. Le Pot au Feu is housed in a barnlike room, which some impressionable guests may call charming and others just so-so, with uncomfortable nylon-covered banquettes along the wall, red tablecloths and napkins, and a bar in the rear. It all sounds terrible but isn’t. The night we were there the customers all seemed to know each other, with M. Guérard serving as the invisible link. The diners get two small pots of butter, one filled with sweet, the other with slightly salted. There is a small, exquisite wine list, but no one fusses. We had something I had never had before: a white, repeat white, Beaujolais, which was fresh and fruity and light. Though it was served in a pewter pitcher and they couldn’t give me the exact source, it was unmistakably Beaujolais.

  At the Pot au Feu the excitement is not the people but what is served on the plates. The plates are the largest I’ve seen for many years—not a bad idea, because the portions are enormous. M. Guérard came to our table, looking absentminded, a poet of the kitchen. I asked him where he had learned his art, and he said, “Un peu partout,” which was not particularly helpful. Later I heard that he’d been named “Best Pastry Worker in France” when he was at the Hôtel de Crillon and that he’d spent some time at Reginskaïa, a restaurant specializing in nostalgic Russian dishes.

  No one at the Pot au Feu comes to see and be seen. There is a different kind of excitement. A double-chinned Frenchman next to us whistled admiringly as he was served the merlan à la julienne de légumes selon Fernand Point. Guérard, one of the few outstanding younger French chefs who is not a member of the School of Point, has long admired the great maître and named one of his most original creations in Point’s honor. Guérard resembles the maître in his philosophy; he loves challenges and likes to make matters difficult for himself, and he has the needed imagination and technical skill. Other famous restaurants serve the expensive varieties of fish—sole, turbot, and loup de mer. Guérard serves the lowly merlan (whiting), which, John M. Iversen of the Hôtel Lancaster said, “we serve the staff on Fridays.” Guérard is no fool, though, and studied Escoffier, who loved some inexpensive fish, such as cod. (“When it [cod] is really fresh the delicious flavour of its flesh admits of its ranking among the finest of fish.”) Guérard’s merlan was delicious, poached in a consommé with vegetables and served with a farce made of mushrooms and truffles and a sauce containing a little butter but no cream. Characteristically, Guérard asked at the end of our dinner, “Was it light enough?”

  The young kitchen artists in France unde
rstand that fewer people than before can afford to eat the heavy, creamy sauces made by the older chefs, no matter how excellent they are. Serious eaters are beginning to ask for lighter cooking even in the temples of French gastronomy where the word “calories” was once considered sacrilegious. This complicates matters for the chef. Guérard’s light, almost transparent cooking tells the truth and nothing but the truth. One would immediately discover a wrong note. (There was none that night.) On the other hand, a chef who uses plenty of butter and cream may occasionally conceal some shortcomings. Yet Guérard and his friends are on the right track. If Fernand Point were alive, he would approve of the trend.

  Taste, for instance, Guérard’s pâté d’anguille à la mousse de cresson. It sounds easy: a pâté made of eel with a purée of watercress. Actually, the dish is a masterpiece of imagination, design, and execution. A lot of work (perhaps, one should say, of virtuoso technique) is done in the tiny kitchen, smaller than that in many American houses, where Guérard works with three young men and a dishwasher. But the size and appointments of a kitchen have no relation to the quality of the food produced in it. Everything must be carefully thought out and organized. The salade gourmande is just that: green beans, foie gras, asparagus, and truffles. The terrine paysanne Prieuré Saint-Saturnin, made with chicken and goose livers, was luscious but not very light. Unfortunately, it was not the season to order Guérard’s foie gras frais des Landes préparé à la maison, which is said to be extraordinary. His latest creation is poissons cuits sous les algues (suivant arrivage), fish cooked under seaweed, which sounds quite attractive, but there was no arrivage