Memorable and Unmemorable Meals

We all have memories of our most memorable meals in France; for old folk it was at Bocuse or La Pyramide; for the middle-aged folk Senderens or Guerard; and for young’uns Gagnaire or Barbot.

For me, oddly enough, both key memorable meals (and it may be complicated by the fact that the dollar was King and my palate was maturing) occurred in the summer of 1984, when Colette and I “had” to go to a meeting in Vienna and decided to spend a little time before and after in France and French Switzerland.

The first memorable one was at Fredy Giradet in Crissier, Switzerland; it was simply astonishing food and we were so impressed that we asked if we could return in two weeks on our departure from Europe for a repeat. (In those days you had to call exactly 180 days before, or something like that, and this was 14; the answer, call on your way and we’ll squeeze you in; which they did.)

The second, tinged with nostalgia, was at Pere Bise, a few miles away, on that great “Claire’s Knee” lawn, when M. Bise, who was sitting 10 feet away having dinner, (he was no longer cooking) sent over the remainder of his top of the line Burgundy after I’d asked the waitress for a glass of red to have with my cheese (no glasses of wine in those days) and where we stayed several days without having booked either lodging or food.

But memorable meals aren’t always good. An incredibly memorable one for me that goes down in the history books as one of the worst ever was served up was by Helene Darroze in her downstairs place shortly after it opened (I’d already not been impressed by the 2^nd floor one a few months before); four of us ended up dumping our uneaten and inedible food into a plastic sack, leaving for the waitstaff to find and inform Mme Darroze.

And then there are the un-memorable ones.

The way I finally figure out that certain meals have been forgettable is always the same; I forget them. Typically I read an article/review and say to myself, “that place sounds really good.” I try to find out if I’ve been there before. First, I rely on my ever-failing memory. Then I search electronically. Next, I go through the archives, which in my case are piles of old business cards, bills and notes. Finally, I consult the food guides for signs that it might have existed before this year, dredging up ancient Gault-Millau’s, Michelins and Lebey’s. Nothing.

So, I call up and reserve and go and as I’m walking up the street, I say – “Oh s***, I remember this place now, oh man, it was ahhhhgh.” Luckily, most of the time I have an easily reachable backup place to bail out to, but rarely I suck it up and enter, under the (always) misconception that maybe the famous guy who wrote it up is right and I was wrong.

Because I’m a news, and especially a food-news, junkie (Colette will only allow me to subscribe to four newspapers in the US and one here (if you’re curious, #5 in the States would be the Washington Post and #2 here – Parisien), I’m always on the prowl for new finds, reading everything I can get my hands on in print or on the net.

The way things work in the way I choose restos – I print out reams of stuff from these media and pile them under my coffee-table, going through them daily and eating at their suggestions or rumors, throwing away the ones I go to, so that eventually I work my way down the pile, although like the miraculous replenishment of the widow’s oil and meal, it keeps growing up towards me. So, eventually Simon’s piece worked its way to the surface.

And so it was that eventually I reread a piece on a place called Les Coteaux in St Mande, written up a few weeks ago, by my current culinary critic hero, Francois Simon, finder of forgotten places (a sort of cross between the Saints Jude and Dymphna), wherein he ate at one of Christian Millau’s (the M. of GM) favorite places with the “master” himself there that meal.

Had I been there before or was it that other place in St Mande? I went through the steps above and came up dry. But something in the back of my head kept gnawing away, however.

So I emailed my buddy, the RFC, and he shot back “Dude, it’s old, I reviewed it in 2004.” Uhh, I went again to the internet and surprise, I had reviewed it in 2004 too and found it “mediocre.” “Mediocre,” mind you, not horrible, horrid, beyond redemption, just “mediocre.”

The trite wisdom among celebrities is that they don’t care what the press says about them as long as they spell their names correctly; and among neurotics, that they’d rather be hated than forgotten. Restaurants probably wish the same because it’s easy to recall great meals and insupportable ones, but the just plain, mediocre effort is hard to remember.

The moral: keep good records, perform what the geriatricians say are memory aids – crossword puzzles and acrostics, and have good but younger, friends, whom you can count on.

Where I wound up instead of Les Coteaux and did OK:

Le Telegraphe

41, rue de Lille, 7^th, (Metro: Rue du Bac)

T:01.58.62.10.08

Open everyday for lunch only

Menus at 24.50 and 29.50, a la carte about 50-60 €.

©2008 John A. Talbott