The ‘50’s, Lobrano and me: Trips down memory lane

In a perfectly charming article in July’s Gourmet, Alexander Lobrano takes a trip down memory lane to the great old favorites of yesteryear: L’Ambassade d’Auvergne, Auberge Le Quincy, Chez Georges {soon to lose its long time chef}, La Grille, Josephine Chez Dumonet, Au Moulin à Vent, Robert et Louise, La Tour de Montlhéry Chez Denise + Le Train Bleu. Apparently he was prompted to do so after recalling his first trip to France at the age of 14. 

Well, I didn’t come until I was 18 but my trip was equally impressionable. I was on what was then called the Experiment in International Living and after a month in Douai and almost a month on a bicycle going from Chartres to the Pointe du Raz in Brittany, we came back to Paris for a week before returning to the States. 

In Douai, I ate with my “French family,” no great hardship since my “mother” had a professional chef in the kitchen and my “father” was a wine and grocery entrepreneur. In fact, the meals, including aperos, wines and digestifs there were spectacular, most surprisingly lunch which was a creative rearrangement of the night before’s dinner. On the trail along the Loire, however, it was more spartan, with La Vache Qui Rit and fresh fruit and veggies being the high points. 

But in Paris, things were decidedly different. On the one hand, we were housed in a functional dorm-type building in the 11th that had a sort of Resto-U which was equally functional; nutritious, ample and pretty tasty. We also would venture out to cafes and bistros and Viet Namese restaurants, which in those days were the student equivalent of Chinese in the US. 

But our canny group leader, who seemed years older than we, but turned out not to be, had secreted away money from our accounts for two great splashes at Le Tour d’Argent + Maxim’s. Now this may sound infra-dig in 2009, but then it was pretty posh. 

The night at the Tour d’Argent is still fixed firmly in my memory. The view over the Seine, the Bateaux-Mouches, the numbered pressed ducks, the fantastic sauces and the elegant service. It surely was a few levels up from the crummy cafes and truck-stops we frequented along the Loire when the rain got too heavy to eat on the “beaches.” There were no aperos or digestifs but I knew we were doing serious business with the red wine because my French “father” had given me a tutorial every night after dinner and it had stuck (interestingly, he always sat and listened to the synopsis and results of the Tour de France, Scotch in hand, before dinner). 

Like Mr. Lobrano, I still recall the smells of the Tour, the smoke, the sauces and the cheese. But most of all I recall the elegance and impeccable service, the putting on and taking away of silverware, glasses and such, and the fact that while we were American student-tourists, we were treated like CEO/PDG’s; never in America. 

A few nights later it was Maxim’s. Now this was long before Gigi, Maurice Chevalier and “I’m going to Maxim’s” and at the time it was a pretty elegant place, touristy sure, but not oppressively. That night we did have champagne, I don’t know how our leader managed it, because I suspect that even in those days it was ruinously expensive.  

And again I recall the quite good food, wonderful wine, smells of the sauces, seamless service and great cheese. Oddly enough, the voiturier remains an element in my mind as well. 

So thanks Mr L. for stirring up these old memories. In the past 50 years restaurants have come and gone, the Tour has lost its helmsman Claude Terrail, poor old Maxim’s is a joke of a museum these days, Le Train Bleu is more flash than food, l’Ami Louis is so vastly over-priced and Lipp + Les Deux Magots are over-run by nostalgic American Troisieme Agers. But the memories linger on, don’t they? 

These thoughts echo my nostalgia revisiting: 

La Maree
1 rue Daru, 8th (Metro:Ternes) 
T: 01.43.80.20.00 
Open 7/7 
Menus = 29 for 2 courses, 35 € for three 

Blog: John Talbott’s Paris
©by John Talbott 2009