THE FINE ART OF DINING
Paris is full of restaurants, but the list of those at which one may
enjoy both a supremely chic fashion exhibit and a dinner worthy to be
associated with the clothes are comparatively few. Indeed, where the
frocks are up to an epicurean standard the food is sometimes far below,
and there are cafés in Paris where a gourmet will find possibilities of
ecstatic moments, but where no swish of petticoats will break in upon
his rapt silences.
Not that the average viveur of Paris objects to association of pâté
and petticoat. Far from it. He will follow the petticoat even to the
Ritz where the pâté is fairly sure to be poor,--but he will occupy his
leisure intervals by enjoying a meal at the Café Voisin, or testing the
famous cellars at the Café Anglais.
As for Madame,--she is a bit of a gourmande, of course. One does not
live in Paris for years without learning the proper attitude toward
a dinner, and the Parisienne thinks more about her food than is
consistent with traditions of the fragile and ethereal feminine. When a
poetic vision in vaporous mousseline and lace knits her beautiful brows
and pouts her curving lips and waxes vastly indignant because an entrée
has not the right flavour or because a wine is not of the vintage
indicated by the label on the bottle, there is an uneasy stirring in
the mental pigeonhole where the observer keeps his illusions; but,
after all, the Parisienne, though knowing in matters gastronomic, does
not allow that knowledge to destroy her sense of proportion. She may
like a good sauce and a good wine, but she insists first of all that
a dinner shall be well seasoned with gaiety. She wants to dine where
she may wear her smartest frock and see the smartest frock of her
dearest foe, where she may see and be seen. She is coquette before she
is gourmande, and the restaurants where she can combine both rôles are
those to which she accords most enthusiastic favour.
Go out to the Bois on a fine night in June, if pâtés and petticoats
divide your allegiance, and eat your dinner in the courtyard of the
Château de Madrid or on the terrace at Armenonville. If you are a
stranger in Paris the latter will probably be your choice. The fame
of Armenonville has travelled far, and it stands for all that Paris
means to the visitor who has gained his knowledge of the sorceress city
from reading and hearsay. It is in the Bois, this famous restaurant
where all the mad, merry world of Europe has dined at one time or
another, and, though rivals have come and gone, though restaurants
more elaborate and cuisines more perfect have wooed the luxury-loving
crowd, Armenonville has held its own, has kept its place as the most
brilliantly popular café of Paris--and the most cosmopolitan.
[Illustration: The latest Plaything of the Duchesse d'Uzes]
Frankly speaking, the café retains its vogue by favour of the
demi-mondaine of Paris. Long ago she chose Armenonville for her own,
and she has remained loyal to her choice. This is not saying that for
the beau-monde the restaurant is taboo. Everybody goes to Armenonville,
but there, as to no other café, flock the high-class demi-mondaines
with their elaborate toilettes, their superb jewels, their consummately
sensuous allure; and, as always, in their wake comes a reckless,
prodigal crowd. Terrace, verandahs, and inner rooms are thronged night
after night, and the throng is the incarnation of the spirit that
has made Paris the hub of the frivolous world, has drawn from all
countries folk devoted to the worship of the vanities, has stamped the
money-spending set of Paris as the most consistently volatile, the most
systematically extravagant class of Vanity Fair.
The leisure class of France is unreservedly a leisure class. The
Frenchman of wealth, rank, and leisure is likely to give himself up
to what someone has called "the science of not making a living." He
does not have the vast business interests that usually claim the
wealthy American, he does not go in for public life as does the average
Englishman of a corresponding class; and, though exceptions to this
rule are many, the chances are that he concentrates his energies upon
amusing himself and assiduously cultivates every taste that will open
an avenue to pleasurable sensation.
He is, for instance, connoisseur of food and wine, but he is
epicure not glutton. Your true gourmet has with much effort and at
considerable cost trained his palate to an appreciation of subtle
distinctions, of vague, elusive flavours. Eating and drinking are
serious matters with him. He eats not to kill his appetite but to
tickle his senses, and he values his capacity for epicurean joys too
highly to endanger it by riotous indulgence. The Parisian viveur
devotes to his meals an extravagant amount of consideration. They
are to him sacred rites, mystic, unfathomable to the uninitiated.
The dishes are planned and arranged with reference to their relation
to one another, are harmonized, blended, resolved into wonderful,
sense-satisfying gastronomic chords. A succession of flavours leads
subtly and cumulatively to a gastronomic climax, drinks are not
absorbed with blithe impartiality, but run a faultless scale of
stimulation and form a fitting accompaniment to the progressive harmony
of the food.
It is with other pleasures as with eating and drinking. The Parisian
takes his gaiety with profound seriousness, and the foreigner, as well
as the Parisian, if he stays long in Paris, adapts himself to the
epicurean point of view.
Out at Armenonville, one comes into an understanding of that modern
paganism which lies at the heart of Vanity Fair, though the scene does
not represent the most subtly æsthetic expression of the cult, for the
place is overcrowded, and there is a hurrying and bustling of waiters,
the laughter is a trifle too loud, the perfumes are a trifle too heavy,
the jewels a trifle too resplendent. There is a burning fever in the
pulse of Armenonville, a strain of coarseness in the gaiety. The
Vanity worshippers go about their devotions with finer art over among
the great trees of the courtyard of Madrid.
But Armenonville is--Armenonville. One must take it as one finds it,
and one is likely to find it amusing.
The flowers and napery and service of the little tables on the
terrace--more popular on a summer night than the tables within
doors--glow with a roseate bloom under the shaded lights. Vivid ruby
and topaz gleam in the wine-glasses, the air is throbbing with the
wild, passionate music of the Tziganes. Men of all types and from all
quarters of the globe lean to look into the eyes of women marvellously
gowned, magnificently jewelled, flushed under the influence of music
and wine and admiration and conscious power. Laughter, wit, the tinkle
of glasses, the hum of voices talking gossip in all the languages
of Europe, delicately cooked dishes, rare wines, colour, perfume,
melody,--everywhere an appeal to the senses, an effort to meet the
demands of a class with tastes trained to appreciate the fine flower
of all things material, and with money to pay for the gratification of
its desires! Nothing in old Rome was in spirit more essentially pagan
and prodigal than this, but latter-day civilization has brought its
refinements. The Roman orgy has been translated into polite French.
If one sits long enough at one of the terrace tables, familiar faces
are likely to float within one's range of vision, for all the world
pays tribute to Armenonville, and public characters are many in the
crowd. Opera singers, theatrical folk, famous writers and painters,
professional beauties, diplomats,--all the celebrities whose pictures
are most often in the papers are among the diners. Over there at the
end table, Tod Sloan is sitting opposite a radiant being in cerise and
silver. At the next table the Prime Minister of England is dining with
an American Duchess and her English Duke. Beyond her Grace, little
Polaire of "Claudine" fame is keeping a tableful of men in a gale of
laughter. An American millionaire is host to a group of theatrical
folk of whom Maxine Elliott is bright particular star, and close at
hand the Newstraten, who owes her notoriety to the favour of another
millionaire, is vis-à-vis to a well-known Russian nobleman. Réjane,
the ever-youthful, is exchanging good French for bad with an English
theatrical manager. Leopold, King of the Belgians, boulevardier, dear
friend of Parisian cocottes, is in evidence. A Turkish pasha with
several members of his suite is back to back with the greatest brewer
of England. London's latest Maharajah is having a royal occidental time
in company with several pretty and titled English women. Mrs. Clarence
Mackay and several other members of the New York smart set are among
the elaborately gowned diners--but Madame Stanley and Margyl and the
beautiful Cavalieri are gowned as well and more bejewelled. The crowd
is never the same, yet always the same, and all through the year the
show goes on, though cold weather drives the diners from the terrace to
over-heated and over-lighted rooms.
Over at the Madrid, too, there is picturesque dining--but with a
difference. The old château lies on the edge of the Bois, an unimposing
building promising little, and, so far as the building itself is
concerned, fulfilling its promises. One does not go to the Madrid
in winter. The rooms are small and stuffy, and poorly adapted to
restaurant purposes, but during the season of al fresco dining, the
Madrid is all that there is of the most modish, a gathering place for
the most exclusive society folk of Paris. One drives boldly up to
the château and into an archway that leads through the building and
brings one out upon the edge of a big courtyard picturesquely set with
fine old forest trees under which men and women are dining at little
tables. Beyond the court are the stables and, though a high, thick
hedge intervenes, a muffled stamping of hoofs, the jingle of silver
chains, sometimes furnishes a subdued accompaniment to the music of the
Tziganes, an element hardly discordant and suggesting vaguely ideas
of mettled horses, of luxurious carriages, of all that goes to the
self-indulgence of such diners as those beneath the trees.
Things are more tranquil here than at Armenonville--gay,
sense-satisfying, artificial, wordly, but of a finer flavour. Here one
finds the most aristocratic of Parisian mondaines, the clique of the
Polo Club and la Boulié and Puteaux. Many nationalities are represented
among the diners, but the French are in the majority and the Parisienne
of the best type may be found under the great trees of Madrid. She may
be no more perfectly dressed, this mondaine, than her demi-mondaine
sister of Armenonville. Their frocks and hats come from the same
makers, their jewels were bought at the same shop on the Rue de la
Paix, the grande dame of Madrid has perhaps not so liberal a share of
good looks as the lionne of Armenonville, and may be made up quite as
conscientiously--for artificiality is beloved of the Parisienne, is a
part of her creed--but my lady of Madrid has the something which sets
her apart, the impress of race, of blood, of class. Even the veriest
stranger within Parisian gates who might wander from one café to the
other would realize at first impression that the two were separated by
more than the green stretches of the Bois. As to which café he would
prefer, that depends upon his tastes--and to some extent upon his mood.
One who does not "belong" at Madrid may feel himself a lonely outsider.
No one is on the outside at Armenonville save the bankrupt.
There are other cafés in the Bois whose fortunes have risen and fallen,
but none rank with Armenonville and Madrid, though quite recently the
Café de Lac has taken a fresh lease of life and begun to find favour
with the smart Parisian crowd.
Report has it, however, that there is to be a new restaurant in the
Bois, one that will totally eclipse the two reigning cafés, and will
set a new standard for the world. A syndicate with unlimited capital
has the project in hand, and it is said that the new pleasure palace
will rise on the site of the old Pre Catalan,--Arcadian little farm
where a herd of mild-eyed cows furnishes fresh milk for children, and
a little café supplies drinks of less Arcadian simplicity to anyone
who asks for them. For years the popular duelling ground of Paris was
just behind the buildings of the Pre Catalan. There is a little ruined
theatre, too, behind the restaurant, and all the smart world of Paris
has upon occasion gone out there to see the actors of the Théâtre
Français and the Odeon give classical plays upon the sylvan stage. Such
piquant incongruities are dear to the French heart.
But it is in the middle of the afternoon that the Pre Catalan is
charming. Carriages full of children, with their quaintly costumed
bonnes or their fashionably dressed mammas, roll up, one after another,
and deposit their loads, until the place is all abloom with babies
and musical with pattering feet and babbling tongues. They have come
to drink the fresh milk, these pretty, overdressed children. Even the
babies lead a life chic, in Paris.
And when the babies are all snugly asleep in their beds, the Pre
Catalan often has other visitors. Late diners who have made a night
of it in town cafés, and then driven about the Bois singing romantic
ballads and growing more maudlin moment by moment, drive up to the Pre
Catalan in the grey dawn, and weep upon the shoulder of the waiter who
brings them their glasses of fresh milk. It is milk they want. They are
in a state of exuberant sentimentality--of dramatic remorse. They have
renounced Bacchus and all his crew. They are beginning new lives. The
world is a weariness and a delusion, full of headaches and profound
melancholy--Fifi goes back to nature at the Pre Catalan in such a
mood,--but midnight finds her at the Café de Paris once more.
It is in this place of duels and babies and tipsy penitents that the
new restaurant is to shine resplendent, if plans do not miscarry.
Whether with all its grandeurs it will attract the crowd remains to be
seen. A restaurant's success is not always in proportion to the money
spent in equipping it. There, for example, was the Café des Fleurs. It
was the prettiest café in Paris. The men behind it were so wealthy that
they did not care whether the place paid or not. They lavished money
upon the decorations, the cuisine, the cellars. They hired the best
Tzigane orchestra in Paris--and the fashionable crowd stayed away. Why?
No one knows why. "The women would not come," says the promoter, with
a shrug. "There is no accounting for the whims of the women. There was
everything to attract them and they would not come,--c'était finis."
Cafés by the score have had this same history, or have had a brief
brilliant success and a failure sudden and complete. There was Cubats
on the Champs Elysées, superbly installed in a house where had lived
the mistress of Louis Napoleon. For a little while everyone went to
Cubats. The place had enormous success, and then, all of a sudden, the
crowd stopped going. Cubats did not exist. Perhaps the diners grew
tired of being robbed. Parisians of the high-living class do not object
to spending money. It is their metier, but the prices at Cubats were
monumental and the proprietor in other and less humdrum times would
have been a bold buccaneer or a bandit chief. One night a diner ordered
a melon with his dinner. The waiter reported that melons were out of
season. The patron growled, the waiter murmured that he would call
Monsieur. Monsieur came, bland, imperturbable, and listened to the
growling.
M'sieu wished absolutely to have a melon? But certainly. One could get
it. It would be for after the dinner instead of before the dinner,
however. That would be satisfactory?
The diner, mollified, signified his willingness to eat his melon
after his sweet, and when the appointed time arrived, the melon
arrived with it. Later, the bill arrived in its turn. One item read:
"Melon--250 francs." There was a storm and the matter went to the
courts, but the restaurateur remained imperturbable. The melon was
expensive--he admitted as much to the judge sorrowfully--but M'sieu
would have it. When one orders horses and carriage and sends a special
messenger post-haste through the night for many miles in order to
gratify a patron's whim, one must be paid for one's trouble. The judge
appreciated the point and the bill was paid,--but in time Cubats closed
its doors.
Outside of Paris there are many restaurants to which Parisians drive
or motor for dinner when they are tired of the Bois, yet want to
escape from city walls. The Reservoir at Versailles, and the Henri
Quatre at St. Germain, are the oldest, the most famous of the list,
and though for a time their prestige declined in so far as the truly
fashionable diners were concerned, both have taken on new popularity
since the automobile brought about a mania for dining out of town. At
the Reservoir one is in the midst of historic associations. The place,
with its decorations and furnishings in pure Louis XVI style, was
already famous when Marie Antoinette played at farming in the Petit
Trianon, near by. The place has seen many notable dinners, harboured
many illustrious personages, and its ancient grandeur clings about it
like a garment, though it caters now to the most mixed and modern of
fashionable crowds.
Historic memories swarm thickly about the Henri Quatre too. Louis the
XIV was born in the building which is now a restaurant, and a cradle
marks the café silver. From the terrace and the windows one looks over
miles of fertile valley, and at the tables one finds, save upon Sunday,
a particularly chic crowd. On Sunday the bourgeoisie invade the place,
but during the week it is very much the thing to run out to the Henri
Quatre for luncheon or dinner.
It is a pity le Roi galant cannot come back to his own for at least
one summer night. He had ever an eye for a pretty woman, and it would
warm even his ghost to watch the women who flutter from automobile or
carriage to the pavilion that bears his name. He would smile approval
too at the woman of the golf or tennis costume, for this hot-headed
Henry was catholic in his tastes. Perhaps it is the tolerance of
his spirit that has made possible at the Henri Quatre what would be
shocking at the Bellevue, where the Pompadour is presiding genius. La
Grande Marquise was not a marvel of morality, but upon etiquette she
stood firm. One must be in grande toilette for Bellevue, but for the
Henri Quatre--that is as one chooses.
Pretty women in ravishing toilettes flock to the tables of the
glass-enclosed verandahs; but, side by side with the woman of the
trailing chiffon and lace, of the wonderful driving cloak, of the
picture hat, is the woman who has been playing golf or tennis at some
one of the clubs round about St. Germain. The chances are that, being
French, she has not played violently enough to disarrange her costume.
It is as immaculate, as perfect in its way as the dinner toilette of
the woman who has driven out from town, but she adores le sport, and
she chatters about it enthusiastically over her truffles and champagne,
looking, the while, like a Dresden china image of a golf girl.
High above the bank of the Seine at Meudon stands the Bellevue, a
restaurant de luxe, which was built only a few years ago, and has had
a considerable vogue, but has suffered since the day of the automobile
arrived, because it is hardly far enough from Paris to afford a good
motor spin, though too far to be as convenient as the restaurants of
the Bois.
The Pompadour once had a villa where the picturesque white building
now stands far above the river and overlooking all the country round,
and in point of elegance the modern belles who dine on the terrace
or in the white arched dining-rooms live up to the traditions of
the place where the Grande Marquise held butterfly court; for one
dons one's smartest frock for Bellevue. From the river a funicular
leads up to the broad terraces in front of the Pavilion. Behind the
restaurant the wooded hill climbs on up toward the sky, and on its
top Flammarion's observatory is perched. There is a little hotel in
the woods, an unimportant place, where Bellevue parties may stay over
night if they do not care to go back to the city after a late dinner
or supper,--and it is not always easy to get back to town if one has
come out to Bellevue in plebeian fashion by train or boat, and lingered
late in defiance of boat and railway time-tables. A party of Americans
were stranded that way one night last summer. No train, no boat,--and
no knowledge of the little hotel in the woods. No carriage to be had,
unless les messieurs could wait indefinitely. Les messieurs, being New
Yorkers, were not fond of waiting. They tucked the mesdames under their
arms, and went out to reconnoitre. In the court stood a magnificent big
touring-car, in charge of a liveried and stately chauffeur. One of the
Americans boldly approached the imposing personage.
"My man," he said in French that was intelligible if scarcely academic,
"I want you to take us into town."
The Frenchman stared in amazement.
"But, Monsieur, this is a private automobile. M. le baron is having
supper in there with--eh bien, with a lady."
"Exactly," said the man from New York. "But you are going to take us to
town. The baron will never know you're gone. I saw the lady."
The chauffeur lapsed into what Mark Twain would call "a profound
French calm." He wrung his hands and rolled his eyes and shrugged his
shoulders and called the gods to witness that the baron would eat him
alive if he dared to consider such a proposition.
The man from New York listened with interest; and, when the
conversationalist paused for breath, ran his hand into his pocket and
brought forth something that clinked musically.
"It's worth one hundred francs to me to go to town in the baron's car,"
he said.
The chauffeur looked at the open hand, at the car, at the restaurant
door. His conscience struggled within him and was silenced.
"Voyons, M'sieu, we will consider." He tiptoed to a window, looked into
the dining-room, and returned with the air of a comic opera conspirator.
"C'est bien, M'sieu. They arrive at the salad. There is always the
dessert, the coffee, the cigar, the liqueur. One can do it, but it is
to be hoped that M'sieu and his friends do not object to speed."
That was a wild ride to Paris,--up hill and down, at top speed, with
never a slackening for corners or for foot passengers. The Americans
were dropped where they could take cabs and the hundred francs changed
hands.
"Much obliged. Good luck to you," said the man from New York.
The chauffeur consulted his watch. "Provided always that they have not
quarrelled," he murmured anxiously--and the machine shot away into the
night.
Down in the heart of Paris, the Café de Paris, the Café Paillard, and
the Ritz are the restaurants in which one may best study purple and
fine linen. There are other cafés famed for cuisine and cellars, but my
Lady of the Chiffons finds them dull, and in the creed of a Parisienne
dulness heads the list of mortal sins.
Americans and English are the mainstay of the Ritz, save during
the tea hour, when the crowd becomes cosmopolitan. At the Café
Paillard one finds the diners of the Madrid a clique aristocratic,
mondain, and chiefly French. The Café de Paris repeats the story of
Armenonville, though without the picturesque woodland setting and the
attractive al fresco features. The two cafés have the same clientèle,
the same atmosphere,--even the same proprietor. He is a subject for
congratulation, this proprietor. The famous old Café Foyot, under
the shadow of the Luxembourg, is his too, and the Café de Paris of
Trouville, and the Helder at Nice,--all, save the Foyot, tremendously
popular with the crowd vowed to extravagance and folly, and, as a
result of that popularity, all phenomenally successful from a financial
point of view. The Foyot also has a success, but of a different kind.
Naturally, the man who manages these restaurants is rich. His private
establishments are handsome, he spends money lavishly, but--and here
is the secret of his success--he is first of all a restaurateur,
eternally vigilant, neglecting no detail, proud of his metier,
glorying in his triumphs. He could buy, twice over, many of his
patrons, yet one will see him moving about among his hurrying waiters,
suggesting, prompting, reprimanding, seeing all things, adjusting all
difficulties, pouring oil on all troubled waters.
He stops for a moment beside an old patron.
"Ah, Comte X----, bon soir."
His eyes rest upon the fish that has been placed before the count, and
his face clouds. A motion of his hand brings an alarmed waiter.
"You serve the sole so, to Monsieur le Comte? You think perhaps that
the sole au vin blanc should have that air? Take it away."
"Pardon, M'sieu. You understand,--a moment more or less and a sauce is
spoiled. I am grieved that you should wait, but one dines well or one
has not dined at all. In a moment you shall have a fish that will be
as it should be. You have always the same burgundy, yes? I, too, am of
your opinion. It is the best in our cellars."
He hurries away, soft-stepping, alert, diplomatic, napkin over arm,
bowing deferentially here and there. A millionaire they say--but
certainly a restaurant-keeper who knows his business, such a one as
France can produce and Paris can appreciate.
There is another restaurateur in Paris whose name should not be left
out of any discussion of Parisian dining. A few years ago he would
have had no right to a place in this frivolous chapter, for though
his restaurant was famous it was not smart. The gourmet might dine
there--or rather lunch there--but the woman of fashion never found her
way down to the little old building whose battered sign of a silver
tower proclaimed that here was the Tour d'Argent, the café over which
presided the inimitable Frederic, Roi des Canards, last of the old
school of French cooks and hosts.
Even now the modish Parisienne does not go to the Tour d'Argent, but
Americans have taken up the old café, and pretty women and elegant
frocks are now no strangers in the Tour d'Argent, though one could not
call the place fashionable.
The wine merchants of the Halles des Vins could swear that, fine frocks
or no fine frocks, Frederic deserves a place in any chapter devoted to
the fine art of dining; for Frederic belongs to a school of cooking
which made the cuisine a fine art, and if the rooms of the little
tavern down behind the morgue offer no appeal to the senses in the form
of music and flowers and jewels and chiffons, they offer eating and
drinking good enough to offset many omissions.
The Tour d'Argent has been a restaurant for three hundred years, and
looking out from its windows over the cité patrons have been able to
see most of the great events of Paris taking place, but M. Frederic is
considerably less old than his café.
The Halles des Vins stand only a little way below the restaurant, and
the wine merchants learned to go to Frederic's for luncheon. They were
a high-living, exacting group of gourmets, patrons to appreciate good
cooking and put a cook upon his mettle. Incidentally they knew a thing
or two about wines, and through their friendly advice and favour the
cellars of Frederic became, in the opinion of many connoisseurs, the
best in Paris.
Others beside the wine-merchants found their way to the sign of the
silver tower. The fame of Frederic spread through Paris and beyond.
Last year in Nice, a New York man asked the chef of a noted hotel to
prepare for him a "canneton à la presse." "Cook it for me just as
Frederic does it," said the American. The chef shrugged his shoulders,
smiled, and shook his head.
"I shall be charmed to cook the duck for Monsieur, but to cook it as le
Roi des Canards cooks it?--Non, I have not the skill."
Tribute from a rival is tribute indeed. Frederic is King of the Ducks,
and he sits alone upon his throne.
You will probably find the king in the little ante-room to his
restaurant if you go down to the Tour d'Argent early enough to have a
talk with its autocrat. There in the little ante-room are displayed
game, meats, delicacies, dozens of things a patron might like to order
for his meal, and there stands Frederic, a typical French host, with
his long grey frock-coat clinging lovingly to his portly body, his side
whiskers framing his ruddy, beaming face, his napkin or towel over his
arm.
If he has seen you before he will know you. If he has seen you twice,
you and he are old friends.
His face takes on more luminous cheer as he catches sight of you, and
he bows profoundly, with a dramatic flourish of the napkin.
"Ah, bon soir, M'sieu. Tout va toujours bien?--et Madame?--et le petit?"
He leads you into the restaurant and finds a table for you. The
important matter of the dinner is settled, and then, if you are of
the favoured, Frederic will talk to you of his art, and you will hear
of refinements and subtleties of cookery which will make you smile
until Frederic has proved to you that they are not poetic fancy but
substantial fact. Your quail, for example, must be cooked before a
grape-vine fire. Nothing but grape-vine will do the trick. Frederic is
very positive on that point, and if you are skeptic, he may perhaps
take you out and show you the grape-vine fire. Afterward you eat the
quail and skepticism melts away into unquestioning faith.
That is only one of the mysteries of Frederic's cuisine. The man loves
his art, goes to all lengths to achieve the results he desires, would
rather invent a successful sauce than inherit a million, is as proud of
his canneton à la presse as is a painter or poet of his masterpiece.
On the whole, a majority of the public would probably prefer the
masterpiece of Frederic to that of the poet or the painter, and in
the chef's own mind there would be no doubt as to the comparative
excellence of poem, picture, and duck.
It takes three ducks to supply one duck to a patron at Frederic's. The
two extra birds give up their juices for the sauce that is served with
the bird--that wonderful sauce which Frederic makes himself in the
double brazier or chafing-dish which he sets on a side table near the
diner.
It is a treat to watch the making of that sauce, from the moment when,
after touching a match to the first brazier burner, Monsieur daintily
takes up some of the flame between his forefinger and thumb and
deposits it upon the other burner, to the final moment when with an air
of triumph the artist announces his complete success.
It is a treat too to see Frederic come and serve the duck. You are not
getting your money's worth if he does not do it himself.
And it is a treat, beyond the telling, to eat the duck and the sauce
which le Roi des Canards has prepared.
Small wonder that there are smart folk mingled with the marchands des
vins at the Tour d'Argent nowadays, and that the birds of passage
flitting through Paris go to Frederic's for a dinner or a luncheon.
Marguery is another of the chefs of the old French school, but he has
become business man rather than chef, as have most of the restaurateurs
of Paris. Only Frederic devotes himself passionately to his art, lives
for his cuisine, burns his grape-vine fires, and makes a religious rite
of preparing his sauces.
He is not only Roi des Canards, but the last of a royal line.