French Lessons (2 page)

Fate
intervened. I had stopped at a fork in the road. Chance made me turn right
instead of left, and two minutes later I arrived in the miniature village of
Saint Martin de la Brasque. It was a sight to restore one’s faith in
shortcuts. There was a tiny square; the houses on it had their windows
shuttered against the heat. Tables and chairs were set out in the shade cast by
a line of plane trees, and lunch was being served. The air was so still I could
hear the splash of the village fountain, one of the best of all summer sounds.
I was delighted that I hadn’t stayed in Aix.

I don’t
remember exactly what I ate that first time under the trees at the Restaurant
La Fontaine, but I do remember thinking that the food was like the most
satisfying kind of home cooking: simple, generous, and tasty. I was given a
table next to the fountain, an arm’s length from the wine keeping cool in
the water. Madame Girand, the young proprietor, told me that her husband was
the chef, and that the restaurant stayed open throughout the year.

Since then, I’ve been back many times. The food has always been good
and the restaurant has nearly always been well attended, even in winter. Word
has spread. People come from as far away as Aix, or from the other side of the
Luberon, an hour or more by car.
Ça vaut le voyage.

If
Madame Girand and her husband have the stamina to keep at it for the next
thirty or forty years, La Fontaine might join those other restaurants, large
and small, that have become institutions. You find them all over France, places
like Chez l’Ami Louis in Paris or the Auberge in La Môle. They are
not always the most fashionable of restaurants, nor are they the most eulogized
by the guidebooks. But they have something about them that I—not to
mention a few hundred thousand French customers—find irresistible. A very
distinct character, the comforting feeling that you and your appetite
couldn’t possibly be in better hands.

There is an air of
confidence about these restaurants that comes from three or four decades of
practice. They know what they do best, and they do it, ignoring the fads of the
day. Their menus will be adjusted, but only slightly, to reflect the seasons.
Asparagus will appear in the spring, wild mushrooms in the fall, truffles in
the winter. As for the rest—the scallops, the terrines, the lamb, the
confits,
the
gratins
of potatoes, the
tarte maison
and
crèmes brûlée
s—
why ever think
of changing them? They are the classics that have kept generations of people
happy.

Naturally, the food and wine in these establishments will be
brought to your table by that most excellent and highly skilled of men, the
professional waiter. There seems to be a widely held belief nowadays that
anyone who has enough physical coordination to balance a tray on the palm of
one hand has what it takes to be a waiter. It is something young people often
do while they’re deciding what to do. Usually amiable and eager to
please, but very seldom knowledgeable, they provide little more than a
transport service between kitchen and customer. A serious waiter, a career
waiter, is in a different league. He can add another layer of enjoyment to your
meal.

You should ask him to be your guide, because he knows the food
better than you do. He himself has probably eaten everything on the menu dozens
of times over the past twenty years. He can tell you exactly how each dish is
cooked and what would be the ideal combination of courses, light and heavy,
savory and sweet. And he is on close personal terms with the cellar,
particularly with some small local wines that you may not have come across
before.

Now watch him at work. It seems effortless. There is no furtive
wrestling with the wine bottle; the cork never sticks or breaks, but comes out
with a smooth turn of the wrist, to be given a brief, considered sniff of
approval. Nothing is rushed, and yet all you need—cornichons to go with
the pâté, or a good fierce mustard for the daube—is there on
your table when it should be. The bread basket is refilled; the glasses are
topped up. You don’t have to ask for anything. Your man is telepathic: He
knows what you need before you know it yourself.

I’m sure that
waiters like this exist in other countries, but in France there seem to be so
many of them—unhurried, calm, on top of their job. It is considered an
honorable occupation. I like that. In fact, I have often thought that these
superlative waiters deserve some official recognition, and there could be no
better place for them to receive it than in the pages of another flourishing
French institution, the Michelin guide.

The guide celebrated its one
hundredth birthday in 2000. It was published, as usual, in March—a
red-covered tome, bulging with good addresses—and, as usual, it flew off
bookstore shelves. Other countries, of course, have their restaurant guides
(considerably slimmer than the Michelin), and some of them do very well. But
the Michelin does better than very well; it is an immediate national
best-seller, year after year. In a later chapter, we shall see some of the
discreet workings of the red guide in more detail. I only mention it here
because it is another example of a thriving gastronomic tradition, and of the
continuing search for exceptional food in every corner of the country.

Where else would people get worked up about salt? To the rest of the world,
salt is a necessary but anonymous part of the diet, about as fascinating as a
glass of tap water. But not in France. Here, salt is something that gourmets
argue about. Some of them will tell you that the ultimate saline experience is
sel de Guérande,
the gray crystallized sea salt gathered along
the Brittany coast; others prefer the white
fleur de sel
found in the
Camargue. Not long ago, I bought some of the latter to try. It came in a
decorative cork-topped pot, and the label featured the name—in this case,
Christian Carrel from Aigues-Mortes—of the
saunier
who gathered
the salt. Very good it is, too, particularly when sprinkled on radishes or
fresh tomatoes.

More and more small companies, or individuals like
Carrel, are making visible efforts through their labels and packaging to
separate themselves from the industrial food business. The chicken farmers of
Bresse have been doing it for years; every single bird wears on one ankle an
aluminum identification ring, marked with the farmer’s name and address.
Now you can find similar detailed information—with its implicit promise
of higher quality—on jams and
tapenades
and cheeses, on sausage
and olive oil and honey and pastis. These delicacies are likely to cost more
than their mass-produced competitors, but the difference in taste is worth the
difference in price.

More proof that the French stomach is far from
being neglected is spread out in front of you every week at any of a thousand
markets throughout the country. In Provence alone, there are enough of them to
offer you the choice of a different market every day, and they seem to be in no
danger of suffering from lack of customers. On the contrary, they appear to be
getting bigger and more popular. I remember Coustellet market twenty years ago,
when there were no more than ten or twelve small vans in the village parking
area. You could buy local vegetables and fruit, some goat cheese, half a dozen
eggs, and that was about it. Today, the market has grown until it covers nearly
an acre, and in high season it’s packed every Sunday morning.

It’s not only what the French eat that sets them apart from so many
other nationalities but how they eat it. They concentrate on their food,
sometimes to such an extent that they put aside the joys of arguing with one
another. And they are determined to extract the last ounce of pleasure from a
meal, a tendency that my old boss Mr. Jenkins liked to describe as
“making beasts of themselves.”

There is a wonderful
photograph taken, I think, in the 1920s, that shows a group of men in suits
seated around a table. They are about to eat spit-roasted
ortolan
s—
tiny larklike birds that are now a protected
species. But before taking that first crunchy mouthful, they must observe the
ritual of appreciating the bouquet. This is the moment that has been captured
by the photographer. There they sit, these respectable, well-dressed men, each
of them bent low over his plate with his head completely covered by a napkin,
so that the fragrant steam can be trapped, inhaled, and properly savored. It
looks for all the world like a coven of hooded monks saying grace before having
lunch.

No doubt when the
ortolans
are finished there will be a
little sauce or gravy remaining on the plate. Too exquisite to leave, this
final treat will have to be dealt with in the correct manner, using a piece of
purpose-built cutlery that only a Frenchman could have invented. It resembles a
spoon that has been flattened, leaving no more than the hint of a lip along one
side. The sole function of this ingenious utensil is to scoop up what is left
of the sauce in a genteel fashion (thus avoiding the plebeian habit—one
that I love—of using bread as a mop).

As it happens, there is a
socially acceptable way to do even this if the cutlery doesn’t run to a
full set of equipment. You take your bread, tear it up into small pieces, and
then use your knife and fork to steer the bread through the sauce until you
have cleaned your plate. I learned this at a dinner party some years ago, where
my host was delighted to instruct me on some of the differences between English
and French table etiquette—and, of course, the superiority of the French
way of doing things.

As a boy, I was taught to keep my hands under the
table when they were not occupied with knife or fork or glass—a curious
habit, my host said, and one that encourages mischievous behavior. It is well
known that hands at English dinner parties have a tendency to wander under the
table, squeezing a thigh, caressing a knee, and generally getting up to no
good. In the best French households, the rule is the reverse—idle hands
must be kept on the table. Dalliance cannot be allowed to interfere with food.
First things first is the rule, and, during dinner at least, fondling is
prohibited.

Hastily putting my hands back where they should be, I asked
if there was a logical reason why the French, unlike the Anglo-Saxons, almost
always set the table with the forks facing downward. Was it, I wondered, to
protect tender and well-brought-up fingers from being pricked by the tines of
the fork? My host looked at me with an expression I’ve seen a hundred
times before on a hundred French faces—half-amused, half-puzzled. How
could I be so ignorant about something so obvious? Forks are placed like that,
of course, in order to display the family crest engraved on the back.

Learning about food—learning to eat—is a series of edible
adventures and surprises. For instance, just when you think you have mastered
the potato, that such a basic ingredient could have nothing new to offer, you
discover
aligot,
a velvety blend of mashed potatoes, garlic, and
Cantal cheese. Or you are introduced to the unlikely but triumphant combination
of tiny wild strawberries served not with cream but with vinaigrette sauce.
Then you encounter roasted figs. The education of the stomach never ends.

And it is normally a most pleasant process. The people who spend their
lives making good things to eat and drink are, on the whole, a very congenial
bunch, pleased when you show an interest in their work and more than happy to
explain how they do it. I have occasionally seen chefs frazzled and
bad-tempered at the end of a fourteen-hour working day, and I remember one chef
who was so terminally drunk that he fell backward out of his kitchen, cursing
loudly. But these were exceptions. On the whole, working with food and wine
seems to bring out the better side of human nature. It’s difficult to
imagine a misanthrope who is prepared to spend his days doing something that
gives so much pleasure to others.

Enjoyment is contagious, and this is
perhaps best experienced during one particular meal of the week. Here you will
see children, parents, grandparents, and occasionally the family dog; young
couples giving themselves a treat; elderly ladies and gentlemen poring over the
menu as if the pages held the secret of life; local families dressed to kill,
and visiting Parisians decked out in full rural chic—a mixture of
generations and social backgrounds, gathered together to observe another
tradition that shows no sign of dying out: Sunday lunch.

For me, there
is one moment in particular that almost makes the meal by itself: Aperitifs
have been served—pastis or kir or white wine or, on red-letter days,
champagne—and menus are being read with the concentration of a lawyer
going through a page of fine print. Suggestions and countersuggestions go back
and forth across the tables. The carpaccio of fresh tuna? The
soupe au
pistou
? The asparagus flan? And then what? The cod in a herb crust? The
stew of veal and peppers? Or
pieds et paquets,
the Provençal
recipe that elevates humble mutton tripe to new heights?

In fact, it
doesn’t matter what you choose. It is those few moments of anticipatory
limbo that are special. For five or ten minutes, conversations are muted,
gossip and family matters are put aside, and everyone in the restaurant is
mentally tasting the dishes on offer. You can almost hear the flutter of taste
buds.

Lunch progresses at an unhurried pace, as all good lunches
should. People eat more slowly on Sundays, and drink a little more wine than
usual. They forget to look at their watches. Two hours slip by, often more.
Eventually, with appetites satisfied, a drowsy calm comes over the room as the
plates are cleared away, the tablecloths are brushed, and coffee is served. A
lazy afternoon lies ahead: a book, a doze, a swim. The chef makes a ceremonial
tour of the tables, gathering compliments, happy to share with you one or two
favorite recipes. Curiously, these dishes never taste quite the same at home,
no matter how carefully the recipe is followed, no matter how talented the
cook. There is something about Sunday lunch in a French country restaurant that
goes beyond food. But unfortunately, ambience doesn’t travel.