La Ville-lumière

It was a warm fall night and as we stood outside the café the bright lights from across the Seine beckoned invitingly. You could see all manner of colour reflected in the water and I wondered if there was anyplace better on the other side of the river. But I knew I would have seen the same lights and thought the same thing if I had been there as opposed to here, so I quickly dispelled that thought and returned to the business of waiting.

We had been early for our reservation and were standing outside because there was no room to wait within. Liz was being particularly jocular and that made the wait quite a bit more bearable. It was funny to think that we had been just a few blocks down earlier in the light of day but suddenly it all seemed quite different at night, like the city were suddenly flush with new and completely different possibilities. Paris was a beautiful place with much womanly charm but the conceit was that she made you think she was all yours, at that moment and for all time, when the fact of the matter was she had never belonged, and could not truly belong, to any one.

They were finally able to seat us and I made it a point to be very deliberate in my actions walking in and taking it all in. I had only two days in Paris this time and only so many meals. While I was waiting I had had a view of almost the entire restaurant through the large windows but it was somehow different actually walking through it. The room was elongated and oddly-shaped – with nooks and crannies that marked somewhat private spaces for some tables. We, however, had a table right in the middle of the restaurant, next to several steps that led to the mezzanine. As I fingered the cardboard menu in my hands I wondered how many trips up and down those steps each waiter made every day.

The place was called Les Bouquinistes, after the book stalls on the banks of the Seine, which the café overlooked. I had been drinking all day but I found that my head was still clear and I was in a café in a city that I loved very much with friends I had not seen in quite a while. We were secure in our triumphs of the week gone past and were talking about who had said and done what that one time we were all together on Lincoln Field and of course none of us was never really wrong. We may have disagreed on several points but it all didn’t matter and of course there had been and always would only be one single truth. There were, however, many points of view.

Lincoln Field had been a long time ago and it made me think what a harsh world this was that breaks you and changes you without you knowing it. It was all I could do to see and hear and learn and understand to get by, to do my work and do what I knew and loved, and do it well but I had changed and so had my friends. It was all different now, of course. But I have found that when you sit down to eat and you drink some of the old times come back. And the more you drank the more it was like before again.

It seemed that nobody understood me when I spoke in French so I gave up pretty quickly and resorted to pointing, as did everyone else. The irony was that our waiter did not look or sound like he was French. The standout of the appetisers was the Brittany crab ravioli, which I only had a bit of but were exquisitely made, with the metallic taste of the ocean in a good way, swathed with glorious butter and tinged with fennel. Nobody really gave a damn what wine we drank for we were in France, and all the wine was good.

The diner’s ideal varies from person to person and the perfect dinner is different for everyone. Some people are just happy to have food put in front of them and not have to clean the dishes and some others are rather more picky. I don’t think I’m overly picky or particular but I do have standards and I know what I like. Elisabeth once said to me as she described her palate and her perfect dinner, “But I’m not a chef. I haven’t studied the culinary arts. I just know what I like to eat.” It was the most innocuous of statements but it was quite powerful. I know what I like from a dinner. The list may be long, but I still shouldn’t have to apologise for it.

That said, it is hard to have a bad meal in Paris. I was in Paris once as a young man, alone and broke, dusty from travel and hungry for sight, sound and nourishment. I tried to be as frugal as I could the first few days, and it mattered not, for even a simple baguette, freshly baked, could have brought me to tears. Three days into my stay I broke down, reasoning that if I could have a great meal for €4, the possibilities would be endless if I were to spend €40. I walked into a sleepy little bistro in the tenth arrondissement, where no tourists go to, and ordered duck confit a l’orange. It was delicious, and the madame who served me smiled beatifically as I wolfed it down.

The funny thing is, I don’t remember what I had at Les Bouquinistes. But it did fulfill most of my criteria for a good dinner out. The food was technically masterful, cooked with care and some of it was quite excellent. We had a knowledgeable waiter – one of my dishes had a creamy blue cheese, not particularly strong, with a mushroom-y flavour that was quite divine, and our waiter knew immediately upon asking what it was (Fourme d’Ambert). The timing of the meal was impeccable: food arrived not a second too early or too late, and we never felt hurried or rushed. And the company, of course, the company made the meal.