TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/052190/0521270.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.6 KB | 187 lines

                                                                                TRAVEL, Page 76

The Great Cafes of Paris


Though times have changed on the old boulevards, the moveable
feast continues

By OTTO FRIEDRICH


    After we got married, one spring afternoon in Paris, we
wandered dazedly across the Place St. Sulpice, past the baroque
fountain where the four stone bishops stand guard, and ordered
a bottle of Moet & Chandon at the Cafe de la Mairie. Since that
all happened exactly 40 years ago, it seemed a good time to
return to Paris (When is it not a good time to return to
Paris?) to inspect some of the cafes where we had spent much
of our youth.

    Indeed, one can recall not only one's own past but that of
all Paris through its cafes. Both Robespierre and Lenin plotted
revolution in Paris cafes; Hemingway and Joyce wrote in cafes;
impressionism has been described by historian Roger Shattuck
as "the first artistic movement entirely organized in cafes."
Parisian cafes are not just places that serve food and drink
but places to meet friends and talk and work and make deals and
read the papers and watch life passing by.

    These grand institutions began during the 17th century with
the spread all over Europe of the Arab taste for coffee. The
oldest cafe in Paris is the Procope, which has been operating
on the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie ever since 1686. The Procope
was nearly a century old when it claimed Benjamin Franklin and
Voltaire among its customers. Later came the revolutionaries,
Robespierre, Danton, Marat and even Napoleon.

    The Procope was refurbished with a vengeance in 1988 --
Pompeian red walls, l8th century oval portraits, crystal
chandeliers, flintlock pistols and, for the waiters,
quasi-revolutionary uniforms. Also a tinkly piano. If that all
seems something that even Napoleon might call de trop, the food
is generally good (Michelin recommends it), and the oysters are
a joy.

    Most of the old Montmartre cafes where Manet and Renoir once
held court have long since given way to appliance stores and
garages, but the artistic oases of the Left Bank have remained
hospitable. Montparnasse reached its height during the 1920s,
when Hemingway used to sit and write stories in the Closerie
des Lilas, which had been a lilac-shaded country tavern during
the 17th century. Hemingway complained bitterly when the
management tried to attract a younger clientele by tarting up
the bar and ordering all the waiters to shave off their
mustaches. The Closerie is once again cozily moribund, and
Hemingway, like the friendly red lampshades, has become part of
the decor: a brass plate on the bar marks his presence, and his
face ornaments the menu, which includes a rumsteak au poivre
Hemingway.

    Montparnasse was quite dead after World War II, but it
enjoyed a modest revival in the '70s and '80s, when
restaurantification became the new fad (and source of higher
profits). Old-timers still mourn the fate of the Coupole, a
barnlike old brasserie that had served as home to Henry Miller,
Lawrence Durrell, Samuel Beckett; it was acquired by a
restaurant chain, torn down and rebuilt in 1988 into a sort of
yuppie grazing center. More felicitous was the 1986
transformation of the Cafe du Dome, a plain, bare sort of
place, where an impoverished writer used to be able to get a
saucisse de Toulouse and a plate of mashed potatoes for about
$1. One section of the Dome has been  turned into a really
excellent fish restaurant (Michelin gives it one star), with
a comfortably old-fashioned decor and atmosphere. The baked
turbot is superb, and the Macon makes it even better. But if
the sausage is only a memory, so is the old price: dinner for
two costs $100.

    "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young
man," Hemingway once wrote, "then wherever you go for the rest
of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable
feast." In my case, the moveable feast was spread at the
crossroads outside Paris' oldest church, the 6th century shrine
of St. Germain-des-Pres. Baron Haussmann cut a boulevard
through here during the Second Empire, and in came what memory
still rates as the three best cafes in Paris, and thus the
world. The first was the Flore (1865), celebrated as the
headquarters of existentialism. "It was like home to us,"
Jean-Paul Sartre once said, and Simone de Beauvoir wrote part
of The Second Sex here. One good reason is that the Flore has
a rather secluded second floor, where one can work in peace;
another is that the Flore always stayed warm.

    After the Germans smashed the Second Empire in 1870, a
number of refugees from occupied Alsace fled to Paris. Among
them was Leonard Lipp, who opened across the boulevard from the
Flore a little brasserie ornamented with luxurious blue and
green tropical birds on its tiled walls. Lipp's has long been
famous for its choucroute (a.k.a. sauerkraut), and purists
argue whether it deserves its reputation. But one outsider's
view is that anyone who willingly orders choucroute deserves
whatever he or she gets. The Alsatian plum tarts are much
better. The main attraction, though, is the beer, which comes
in glasses of increasing size, starting with a demi for a
half-liter, working up to a serieux and finally a distingue,
a mug holding a liter.

    The other specialty of the house is politics. The National
Assembly is just a few blocks down the boulevard, and when
sessions run late, legislators traditionally repair to Lipp's
for sustenance, discussion and intrigue. One of the regulars
over the years has been Francois Mitterrand, now, of course,
President of the Republic. Any cafe that can claim a President
among its customers has little need of further endorsements.

    The greatest of these three great cafes, the Deux Magots,
is the newest (1875), but it seems the most venerable and the
most welcoming. If Lipp's wonders who you are, and the Flore
wonders how much you've got, the Deux Magots wonders what you'd
like to be served. Located just across from the old church, the
Deux Magots derives its strange name from two large Chinese
statues that sit high up in the center of the cafe. Prices
today are appalling: a Coca-Cola costs $5, a Bloody Mary $10.
But as one sits on the eastern terrace of the Deux Magots in
a spring sunset, looking out toward the medieval church spire
across a newly installed array of lilacs, tulips and apple
trees all in flower, one can hardly help feeling that such a
vista is worth almost any price.

    Even back in the '40s, when prices were a lot lower, one
went to Lipp's or the Flore only on special occasions. For
hanging around, there were cheaper places, the Royal or the
Bonaparte or the Mabillon. And though St. Germain is still full
of wealthy and successful people, the artistic center seems to
be moving back to the Right Bank, to the slummy area being
rapidly gentrified between those two new cultural real estate
projects, the flamboyantly ugly Beaubourg art museum and the
unflamboyantly ugly Bastille Opera. "Try the Cafe Beaubourg,"
says one young American, "but I don't think anybody's writing
any novels there." "Try the Cafe Coste in Les Halles," says
another.

    Both are handsome new establishments, with a balcony for
crowd-watchers, and there are lots of youths and lots of
action, lots of blue denim, brown leather and black suede. But
one suspects that among all the fire eaters and street
jugglers, there are more drug peddlers than artists in this
crowded scene. "Terrible people," says one old-timer, speaking
of Les Halles the way New Yorkers speak of New Jersey. "Terrible
suburban gang kids."

    Aging and nostalgic visitors who find the cafe scene not
what it used to be also find good reasons for that. One is that
Paris cafes flourished because residential hotel rooms were
often dark and cold; prosperity has changed that. Another is
that, with prices high, many people prefer the neighborhood
cafe to the famous institutions. Still, the 40th anniversary
can be celebrated only at the Cafe de la Mairie, and though it
has become a bit fancy -- the old goldfish tank has
disappeared, along with the chessboard -- it is still a
neighborhood cafe. It bears its literary traditions lightly.
It hardly remembers that Saul Bellow used to drink here, and
William Faulkner too, or that Djuna Barnes set several scenes
in Nightwood here. In fact, when the proprietor was once asked
what she remembered of Barnes, she said she had never heard of
her. But the two coupes of icy Pommery tasted grand. Hemingway
was right: Paris is much changed, but the moveable feast can
still be celebrated.