While there may be fewer opportunities than there were formerly to
get special Lyonnaise, Toulousian, or Bordelaise dishes in Paris, the
Provinces themselves offer abundant opportunity to study and enjoy the
infinite variety of French cookery. How large a field is open to the
student may be inferred from the fact that Col. Newnham-Davis devotes
no fewer than seventy pages of his "Gourmet's Guide to Europe" to
a study of the inns, hotels, and restaurants of Provincial France.
He found that "almost every town of any importance has some special
dish or some special pâté of its own; there are hundreds of good old
inns where the cuisine is that of their province, and there are great
tracts of country which ought to be marked by some special color on all
guide-book maps, where the cookery is universally good."
This noted English epicure advises gourmets who have time to journey
leisurely and especially those who have an automobile at command, to
make a journey of gastronomic exploration in the district between
Montpellier and Toulouse, which is "a cradle of good cooks" and where
some of the traditions of cookery of the old Romans still linger. The
land of the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Saône is another and more
northerly paradise of good cooking. "In Dordogne there is not a
peasant who cannot get a traveler _en panne_ a truffled omelette which
would make an alderman's mouth water ... and all the Midi from the Alps
to the Pyrenees is a happy hunting ground for the gastronome."
[Illustration: Coming to market, Brittany]
My own experience in these regions is much more limited, but wherever
I followed this epicure's advice I found him a reliable guide. In most
parts of France, however, a guide to good cheer is hardly needed, for
you can stop at almost any inn with the assurance of getting a savory
lunch, dinner, or supper. In Provençal inns garlic is no doubt used too
freely, but no harm can come to those who cannot stomach it, since its
warning appeals as distinctly to the nose as the rattlesnake's does to
the ear.
The Pyrenees are famed for trout and chicken. The chicken we found
excellent, the trout less so. An innkeeper with whom I discussed the
matter admitted frankly that they left something to be desired in the
matter of flavor. A Parisian epicure to whom I had mentioned trout one
day, shook his head and suggested sole or turbot instead.
Sole is at its best at Dieppe. In that town there is a restaurant,
formerly frequented by Whistler, where the waiter, to please fastidious
guests, proudly serves soles caught with his own hands in the early
morning hours.
Cannes has a hotel the guests of which can go to a tank and with a net
catch the particular fishes they want to eat half an hour later. At
Aix-les-Bains there is a caterer who "will not have any salt-water fish
in his larder, for Aix in summer is so hot that sea fish do not always
come to table quite fresh, and this risk he will not run, in the
interest of his clients."
America is not the only country where oysters are cheap. At Caen one
pays only ten or twelve cents for a dozen of the best bivalves from
Ouistreham and Courselles.
All along the French coast, west and south, one comes across dishes
which owe their unique and usually delicious flavor to some special
variety of shell fish, peculiar to the place, which is added to the
sauce.
Marseilles is perhaps the best place for experimenting with
shellfishes new to the visitor's palate. That this city owes
its international fame largely to a special marine stew called
bouillabaisse everybody knows. As I have eaten this dish in Marseilles
itself but once and that so long ago that I do not remember the
details, I will quote Col. Newnham-Davis's graphic remarks on it:
"The Southerners firmly believe that this dish cannot be properly made
except of the fish that swim in the Mediterranean; the rascaz, a little
fellow all head and eyes, being an essential in the savory stew, along
with the eel, the lobster, the dory, the mackerel, and the girelle.
Thackeray has sung the ballad of the dish as he used to eat it and his
_recette_, because it is poetry, is accepted, though it is but the
fresh-water edition of the stew. If you do not like oil, garlic, and
saffron, which all come into its composition, give it a wide berth;
but I should mention that the bouillabaisse at the Reserve is quite a
mild and lady-like stew compared to that one gets at Bregailla's or the
restaurants of the Rue Noailles."
Marseilles is not far from Italy, but before we proceed to that
country, to learn what it can teach us in regard to wholesome and
enjoyable foods, we must return for a moment to Paris to consider a few
more of the specialties in which it asserts its gastronomic supremacy.
However interesting the Provinces may be because of their local dishes
and delicacies, and because of the proof they afford that the value
of well-cooked food is appreciated throughout France, their most
important function, from our point of view, is that of providing the
first-class material out of which the Parisian cooks prepare their
chefs d'œuvres of culinary art. This material is sent daily from all
directions to the metropolis in special express trains, to be offered
for sale in the Halles Centrales, which, to the lover of good food and
beautiful flowers, is one of the most interesting spots on earth.