The Restaurant, a Geographical Approach: from invention to gourmet tourist destinations 9781786304346, 1786304341

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The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach

Tourism and Mobility Systems Set coordinated by Philippe Violier

Volume 3

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations

Olivier Etcheverria

First published 2020 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address: ISTE Ltd 27-37 St George’s Road London SW19 4EU UK

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA

www.iste.co.uk

www.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd 2020 The rights of Olivier Etcheverria to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020930311 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78630-434-6

Contents

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ix

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xi

Part 1. The Restaurant: An Eminently Urban Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

Introduction to Part 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3

Chapter 1. The Geographical Origin of the Restaurant: The Urban Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1.1. From bouillons… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2. … to the establishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5 6

Chapter 2. The Concentration of Restaurants in the City Centers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15

2.1. A center-specific logic… 2.2. … to a logic of axes . . . 2.2.1. Axial diffusion . . . 2.2.2. Social diffusion . . .

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Chapter 3. The Geographical Diffusion of Restaurants in Provinces by Cities and City Networks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41

3.1. The geographical diffusion of restaurants in the provinces: an application of rank-size law… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2. … but disrupted by tourism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach

Part 2. The Restaurant in Terms of Places and Geographical Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47

Introduction to Part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49

Chapter 4. Logics and Strategies for Locating Restaurants . . . . . . . . . .

51

4.1. The logic of proximity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.1. Proximity to the political and administrative sphere and the business world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.2. Proximity to the cultural sphere and the artistic world. 4.1.3. Proximity to food retail and supply points . . . . . . . 4.2. Accessibility logics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3. The logic of landscape charm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4. The logic of assimilation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.1. Affectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.2. Appropriation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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51

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51 54 58 60 66 73 73 76

Chapter 5. Restaurants in the City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

87

5.1. Restaurants in small cities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2. Restaurants in average-sized cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3. New dynamics in large cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

88 90 91

Chapter 6. Restaurants in the Countryside and the Relationship Between Cities and the Countryside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

97

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6.1. Restaurants in the countryside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2. The restaurant, the city/countryside relationship and nature in the city . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

100

Part 3. The Restaurant at the Heart of the Tourist System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

111

Introduction to Part 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

113

Chapter 7. The Relationship Between the Restaurant and Tourism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

115

7.1. Complementary relations between restaurants and tourism 7.1.1. Along the coastlines, at the beach . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2. In the mountains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2. The interdependence between restaurants and tourism . . . 7.2.1. The restaurant through tourism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2. The restaurant for tourism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 8. The Restaurant, a Tool for Gourmet Tourism . . . . . . . . . . . .

141

8.1. Cavaillon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2. Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3. Megève . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

142 147 151

Chapter 9. The Restaurant as a Gourmet Tourist Destination. . . . . . . . .

155

9.1. The gourmet tourist destination: from the 3-star Michelin restaurant… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2. … to a network of restaurants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

155 159

Part 4. The Restaurant as a Tool for Local Development . . . . . . . . . . . .

163

Introduction to Part 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

165

Chapter 10. Restaurants and Local Development in Urban Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

169

10.1. At street level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2. At neighborhood level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

169 178

Chapter 11. Restaurant and Local Development in Rural Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

185

11.1. On the scale of the plateau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2. Across the country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3. At the village level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

186 193 200

Part 5. The Restaurant: What Heritage? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

207

Introduction to Part 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

209

Chapter 12. The Restaurant: From Monument to Heritage . . . . . . . . . . .

211

12.1. The restaurant as a historical monument . . 12.2. The restaurant as a showcase for intangible cultural heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.1. The repertoire restaurant . . . . . . . . 12.2.2. The haven restaurant . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.3. The observatory restaurant . . . . . . . 12.2.4. The conservatory restaurant . . . . . . 12.3. The restaurant in heritage . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 13. Tourists as Actors in the Process of Adding Cultural Heritage to Restaurants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.1. Parisian brasseries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.2. Lyon’s bouchons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.3. La Mère Poulard restaurant in Mont-Saint-Michel 13.4. What about the bouillons? . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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251 258 261 263

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

273

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

275

Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

285

Foreword

The impact of a restaurant’s location on its environment is rarely studied, yet it can be a major factor. We can even talk about a total synergy, and there are many examples: what would the city of Roanne (and even its station!) be without the Troisgros brothers? What would the city of Saulieu be without Bernard Loiseau’s Côte-d’Or, Valence without the Pic, Laguiole without the Bras, Saint-Bonnet-le-Froid without the Marcon, Fontjoncouse without Gilles Goujon, etc.? Lost and unknown places are at the top of the bill thanks to the grace of a restaurateur who attracts amateurs, tourists, the curious among us, etc. The wine-growing regions have understood this impact of gastronomy on their territory and are developing wine tourism at a fast pace and with great success. Because, in fact, what is France’s DNA, if not the combination of food, wine and landscapes? I am delighted that a book is now devoted to this subject. I thank Olivier Etcheverria and I wish all readers a pleasant read! Guy SAVOY Chef Restaurant Guy Savoy 11, quai de Conti, Paris

Introduction

“If worst comes to worst, as long as bistronomy cultivated its garden in its favorite neighborhoods, it would do no harm. Going somewhere else is another story. Tackling the 8th arrondissement in this case is not an easy task. It is undoubtedly the most difficult area in Paris, the most paradoxical. Both poor in gastronomic culture, but of a hysterical demand; wealthy, incidentally expensive, but regularly stingy; lily-livered or exhausted, there is enough to unscrew the head, swallow the chef’s hat. Cooking in this district requires nerves of steel, a strong chest, the willpower of a sumo. That’s why the arrival of Nicolas Chimot and Manon Fleury (previously Astrance and Semilla respectively) was a bit scary. Like a true thermal, cultural, a limit rake. To welcome this duo, you probably needed the skin of a good old crocodile (Le Mermoz), a true Parisian bar counter, with its elbow bar, its mosaics and the sound reverberations of a hyper-eighth audience: loud in mouth, in ringtones – and me as well. It is to be hoped that such neat plates will nail down the local mouths. For on this side, the partition is boiling, piercing. It does not depict a tapestry, nor is it stuck-up. It removes its coat, rolls up its sleeves and enters the arena. It’s funny, as there’s so much urgency to demonstrate, like these cockles and beans in fresh mint bouillon. And especially this striking dish of spinach, apparently harmless and predictable, hitting hard with a green wheat and a stunning cream of cumin. The rest is carefully bistroed: roasted white asparagus, curdled milk, blood orange, new turnip perch chicken, vinegar apple, Saint-Gilles whiting, crayons-sabayon leeks with herb butter. Desserts languishing in a benevolent horizontality: candied rhubarb-syrup of hibiscus-streusel or panacotta-pink grapefruitananis from Iran. The dish of the month.” [SIMO 18, author’s translation]

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The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach

This review by François Simon from the restaurant Le Mermoz, 16, rue Jean-Mermoz, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, is a delicious demonstration of the fact that the restaurant is a geographical object. It raises the stakes of the logic and strategies of its location and the relationships maintained with its location space. The enunciation of the dishes reveals choices of supply and highlights the interplay of discourses and gastronomic imaginations that symbolically positions the restaurant between integration and travel. The restaurant was born in the city, and, more precisely, in the center of the city. It is indeed found in a context of fullness, in the spatial context of density and diversity. The geographical location and distribution of restaurants should be seen in relation to the differential qualities of urban areas, growth dynamics, and urban planning and development. The restaurant derives a large number of its characteristics from those of the urban environment. Its organization, functioning and development require proximity and accessibility that result in concentrations. Correlatively, restaurants qualify, distinguish and participate in the prioritization of cities. They play a role in the relative geographical positioning of a city and its place in city networks. Restaurants are mainly frequented by urban eaters; these being both permanent and temporary residents, e.g. tourists. Restaurant attendance is an urban practice that has a particular impact on the city or places with urban qualities. As a result, restaurants demonstrate effects on the city, its structure and dynamics. They supply the city’s urban properties. They play a role in its influence and attractiveness. Restaurants play an important role in shaping the tourist image and building a city’s tourist reputation. Tourists deploy their recreational tourism practices in a privileged way. They play a role in the development of tourism in the area and in the emergence of forms of food tourism. They are sometimes gourmet tourist destinations. The restaurant’s role in creating the conditions necessary for local development is real. Chefs have an effect on places and in the creation of new ones, in both urban and rural areas. This influence on places leads to the question of the characterization of the restaurant as a form of heritage. Thus, the study of the establishment, operation and development of restaurants mobilizes geographical themes: spatial location, distribution and diffusion logics; dynamics of globalization, tourism and heritage; processes of identity construction and even territorial symbolization; enhancement and re-enhancement of city– countryside relations; emergence and re-emergence of the question of nature in the city. The salience, originality, notoriety and vitality of restaurants play a role in the organization and dynamics of spaces. Symmetrically, the qualities of spaces and customers influence the characteristics of restaurants, the cuisine served, the service,

Introduction

xiii

the decor, the management style, the discourses and the gastronomic imagination that infuse and diffuse there. There is also a questioning and re-questioning of the place of customers in the location and functioning of restaurants and their geographical role. The restaurant only exists if it is frequented by customers, if there are gourmet practices of permanent and temporary inhabitants. The choice and attendance of a restaurant are linked to the qualities of the location space. Hence, a geographical approach to restaurants differs from a geography of restaurants. It makes the customer the joint inventor and central actor of the restaurant by trying to analyze the practices, their sensitive relationship, their preferences, their discourses and the gastronomic imagination of the restaurant. Indeed, restaurant practices depend on the most pleasant geographical ambiences and landscape amenities to develop them, from which the desire to eat and drink is born. There is no gourmet predisposition of a particular place to host a particular restaurant and the choices and practices of the customer determine the location of a particular restaurant in a particular place. This book does not deal with “great” restaurants. However, the study of locations, the relationship between restaurants and their locations, and their geographical effects lead to highlighting the exemplary nature of “great” restaurants. It should be recalled that for the Michelin Guide, the attribution of stars resonates with geographical logic: 1-star restaurant: a very good restaurant – worth the stop; 2-star restaurant: excellent cooking that is worth a detour! – and a 3-star restaurant: exceptional cuisine that is worth a special journey! This book is structured into five parts. The first part aims to show the urban and, more precisely, Parisian origin of the restaurant. The location logics and the relationship of the restaurant with its places and spaces will be discussed in the second part. Since a significant proportion of urban residents whose frequent restaurants are tourists, the third part focuses on the dynamics of restaurant tourism, the restaurant as a tool of food tourism and, sometimes, as a gourmet tourist destination. The fourth part discusses the role of the restaurant in creating the conditions necessary for local development in urban and rural areas. Finally, the fifth and last part raises the question of the monumentalization and patrimonialization of restaurants. This attempt at a geographical approach to the restaurant is exciting, rich but risky because of the multidisciplinary dimension of the object. This is why the indulgence of historians and specialists in the topics discussed is solicited.

Part 1

The Restaurant: An Eminently Urban Subject

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Introduction to Part 1

Before the invention of the restaurant, inns, taverns, caterers, guesthouses and cafés offered food and drink, but the food was random in quality and not very varied in nature. The meal was eaten at a communal table, at restricted times, in an uncomfortable way. In this context, a new place, intended for eating outside the home, was opened in the city at the end of the 18th Century and presented many original features.

1 The Geographical Origin of the Restaurant: The Urban Environment

1.1. From bouillons… Originally, the “restaurant” was a cheap broth prepared and enjoyed in the city. Pierre Andrieu thus evokes the craze for the “divine restaurant”: “The term then applied to bouillons, one of which, the ‘divine restaurant’, was for a long time the most popular. It consisted of a mixture of poultry and very finely minced butcher’s meat, distilled in a still with pearl barley, dry roses and Damascus grapes. In the 18th Century, a doctor named Clarens simplified the formula. According to him, we were to limit ourselves to cooking fat poultry in a little flavored water. Clarens’ recipe was successful and it was this recipe that, when commercialized, was exploited by Boulanger, known as Champ d’Oiseaux, rue des Poulies, at the site of the current rue du Louvre.” [AND 55, p. 26, author’s translation] In 1765, the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française defined the restaurant as “a food that restores, that repairs forces […]. A restaurant in particular is called a strong restorative consommé, a meat press”. Jean-Robert Pitte points out that: “Since the late Middle Ages, the word ‘restaurant’ has meant these rich bouillons consisting of poultry, beef, various roots, onions, herbs and, depending on the recipe, spices, candy sugar, toasted bread or barley, butter, as well as products as unusual in appearance as dried rose petals, Damascus grapes, amber, etc.” [PIT 96, p. 771, author’s translation]

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach

1.2. … to the establishment Gradually, the name of the dish came to designate the place where it was tasted: “The worldwide success of the word ‘restaurant’ gives the French a just cause for pride. First used to designate a rich and invigorating bouillon, then various small, robust dishes designed to restore weak health or, quite simply, energy reduced by fatigue and hunger, it was only applied at the end of the 18th Century to the establishment where they were served. The founding event of this institution took place in 1765, rue des Poulies, near the Louvre, where a certain Boulanger, known as Champ d’Oiseaux, served ‘restaurants’, i.e. bouillons, but also sheep’s feet in white sauce with a portion under the sign written in Latin…: ‘Venite ad me, omnes qui stomacho laboratis, et ego vos restaurabo’.”1 [PIT 91, p. 157, author’s translation] The situation reflected Boulanger’s business sense and restaurants grew rapidly. In his Histoire du restaurant en France, Pierre Andrieu quotes, on this subject, P. de la Mésangère: “Besides the fact that Boulanger sold bouillons, there was food at home, but since he was not a caterer, he could not serve stew. Instead, he served poultry with coarse salt, fresh eggs, etc., and this was served without a tablecloth on small marble tables. Other restaurateurs followed his example, including Wauxhall, at the Colosseum and all the assembly and public celebration venues. Novelty, fashion and above all, high prices accredited them, because a person who would not have dared to sit at a guesthouse’s table would easily pay for the same expensive dinner at the restaurant!” [AND 55, p. 26, author’s translation] Although the restaurant’s geographical origin is Parisian, Jean-Robert Pitte nevertheless points out that it shares common characteristics with London’s taverns: “As with many cultural changes, the French restaurant does not have a simple genealogy. It also has English ancestry. The taverns on the other side of the Channel, i.e. the establishments where wine is served and which are pitted against brasseries, are often elegant and famous. One of the most famous and refined London taverns of the 18th Century was owned in the 1670s by a son of a president in the

1 Come to me, all of you whose stomachs are in distress, and I will restore you.

The Geographical Origin of the Restaurant: The Urban Environment

7

Bordeaux Parliament, Mr. de Pontac. The wine produced by his father on his estate in Haut-Brion was consumed there.” [PIT 91, p. 158, author’s translation] The name given to one of the first famous Parisian restaurants, La Grande Taverne de Londres, opened by Antoine Beauvilliers in 1782, and sometimes considered as the first “grand restaurant”, illustrates this influence: “Antoine Beauvilliers brought the profession to its pinnacle. He was also an essential link in the historical geography of French gastronomy, as he was one of the first officier de bouche (chef) of a prince – the Count of Provence, the future Louis XVIII – to establish his own business […] Beauvilliers […] opened a chic restaurant where everybody who was anybody was running around and enabled the high court cuisine to take to the streets. He first established himself at 26 rue de Richelieu, under the name of La Grande Taverne de Londres, then a stone’s throw away, but in the heart of fashionable Paris, in the Valois gallery at the Palais-Royal.” [PIT 91, p. 160, author’s translation] In Paris à table, Eugène Briffault highlights Antoine Beauvilliers’ reputation at the Palais-Royal: “Beauvilliers was the one that first attracted the most people. He never made his mark as a chef, but he had a quality that is nowadays considered extinct: he was entirely focused on the people who came to his house for dinner, and constantly went through his rooms, to make sure that his diners were happy. At the slightest doubt, he would have one dish replaced by another, head down to his kitchens, and loudly scold the careless worker.” [BRI 03, p. 91, author’s translation] For Rebecca L. Spang, Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau was the first restaurateur. She places the invention of the restaurant at the heart of an original socioeconomic strategy: “The ‘invention’ of the restaurant, the creation of a new market sphere of hospitality and taste, was but one component of Roze’s plan to fix the economy, repair trade, and restore the health to the body politic […]. Nevertheless, Roze’s role in the invention of the restaurant is particularly significant, for it epitomizes (if only by the variety of its

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The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach

projects) the restaurant’s place in intricate networks of market expansion and commercial growth. Like others of his era, the first restaurateur saw the long-stigmatized mechanisms of trade (the circulation of goods and the stimulation of desires) as potential conduits of social benefit and national improvement. Roze de Chantoiseau, who invented the restaurant while running an information office, attempting to abolish the national debt, and editing a commercial directory, was hardly unique in the range of his interests. In 1766, when this first restaurateur opened his doors, culinary issues were often incorporated into a wide range of discussions.” [SPA 00, pp. 13–14] She thus insists on the complementary professional activity of communication and publications of Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau, who published in 1769 Almanach général d’indication d’adresse personnelle et domicile fixe de Six Corps, Arts et Métiers2. François-Régis Gaudry specifies: “This directory listed, in alphabetical order, several thousand merchants, traders, craftsmen and entrepreneurs who each demonstrated talent and initiative in their own field […] Similarly, a supplement to the almanac listing the new caterers indicated ‘Roze, the First Restaurateur’. Smart and intuitive, Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau was actually intelligent enough to play on two sides to support his business: he was Chantoiseau the author-publisher on the one hand, and Roze the restaurateur, on the other. Since 1766, the restaurant was located in the Hôtel d’Aligre, rue Saint-Honoré, at the same address as its publishing house.” [GAU 06, pp. 21–22] In addition, Rebecca L. Spang points out that: “Like any number of these enterprising authors and would-be reformers, Roze de Chantoiseau frequented the aristocratic and administrative circles in Paris.” [SPA 00, p. 15] But who was the first restaurateur then? Boulanger or Roze de Chantoiseau? An answer is provided by François-Régis Gaudry: “The famous Boulanger consigned to the dungeons of history and Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau suddenly presented as the undisputed inventor of the restaurant? Not so sure, because it may be that the two people are actually only one. Indeed, in several texts of the time, Boulanger was also called ‘Champ d’Oiseau’, a nickname strangely close to ‘Chantoiseau’.” [GAU 06, p. 21, author’s translation] 2 Which roughly translates to “The General Almanac of Personal Address and Permanent Residence of Six Corps, Arts and Crafts”.

The Geographical Origin of the Restaurant: The Urban Environment

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Eugène Briffault, for his part, attributes Lamy as the first creator of the restaurant: “The first restaurateur in Paris was a man named Lamy. He opened his private rooms in one of the dark and narrow passages that surrounded the Palais-Royal at the time.” [BRI 03, p. 91, author’s translation]. In Le mangeur du e XIX siècle, Jean-Paul Aron confirms: “The first authentic restaurateur, Lamy, served very ordinary dishes around 1773.” [ARO 89, p. 19, author’s translation] Rebecca L. Spang also mentions the opening of an establishment run by the restaurateur Minet: “In March 1767, L’Avantcoureur (The Forerunner), a journal dedicated to innovation in the arts, the sciences, and ‘any other field that makes life more agreeable,’ announced that a new type of establishment had opened in Paris’s rue des Poulies. The new business specialized in ‘excellent consommés or restaurants always carefully warmed in a hot water bath.’ These restaurants were available at all hours, at reasonable prices, and were served in gold-rimmed, white faience dishes.” [SPA 00, p. 34] The restaurant is an expressive form of Parisian elite social demand for dietetics and taste: “As much a scientific innovation as a culinary curiosity, the opening of the first restaurant responded to the 18th Century elite culture’s preoccupations with the pursuit of health as well as its fascination with cuisine.” [SPA 00, p. 26] François-Régis Gaudry insists on this dietary interest by pointing out that Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau first named his restaurant the “Maison de santé” (literally meaning the health home): “This name, which came to disappear a few years later, betrayed the medical mission of the first restaurants. Roze prepared, for the attention of the urban elite who suffered from vapours, miasmas and bronchial weaknesses, ‘reconstituting bouillons’ which he served in small cups. These consumers drew their success from their nutritious and digestible properties because they knew how to capture the rich flavor of meat and vegetables while presenting them in a liquid form.” [GAU 06, p. 22, author’s translation]

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The restaurateur Minet offered fresh eggs, fine butter, jellies and “cream of rice and gruel from Brittany with fat and milk”. The restaurateur Vacossin, rue de Grenelle, served cream cheese, fruit, semolina, Palais-Royal biscuits, capons with coarse salt and “lunches with fine herbs”3. In the first restaurants, it was also possible to eat rice or vermicelli soups, macaroni, fruit purées, etc. According to Rebecca L. Spang, the craze for these “healthy” dishes was linked to a sociocultural context under Rousseauist influence: “Rousseau’s sensitive characters inhabited a milk-and-honey world of (comparatively expensive) fruits and dairy products. When restaurants served ‘simple’ bouillons, they similary contributed to the construction of a mythical version of sincere, healthful country life which proved acceptable to an urban, elite population.” [SPA 00, p. 42] It is an urban cult of sensitivity: “As an emotional or intellectual state with physical manifestations, the cult of sensibility also conjured up its own spaces: the farm where Marie Antoinette played milkmaid, Rousseau’s grave, and the restaurant. The restaurant introduced Rousseau’s desires – not just the paradoxically refined simplicity of his ideal meals, but the equally perplexing publicity of his privacy – into the marketplace.” [SPA 00, p. 63] Thus, since their invention, restaurants, these urban places, mainly frequented by urban diners, have produced and disseminated discourses and, even more so, gastronomic images of the countryside and nature. In this Parisian, urban, sensory context, the restaurant was originally both a public and a private place where consumption and tasting practices took place: “The restaurant was a publicly private place: Minet promised the weak-chested ‘a public place where they can go to take their consommé’, but (and in no less certain terms) another restaurateur advertised his establishment as perfectly suited to ‘those who would hardly want to eat in public’. Neither expansively ‘public’ nor narrowly ‘private’, the restaurant offered the possibility for a public display of private self-absorption.” [SPA 00, pp. 86–87]

3 Weekly sheets L’Avantcoureur of 1767, quoted by Patrick Ramboug [RAM 10, p. 190].

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Lounges and staff met this need for privacy and even confidentiality. Therefore, the restaurant initially demonstrated original properties. It was frequented by urban diners who were looking for quality products, sometimes rare or even luxurious, rigorously chosen, skillfully cooked and carefully served. François-Régis Gaudry underlined the diversity of restaurant customers: “The restaurant welcomed a heterogeneous clientele: merchants, intellectuals, aristocrats, actors, financiers, officers… But the greatest sociological innovation lied in the appearance of women, seduced by the delicacy of the dishes and the intimacy of the private rooms.” [GAU 06, p. 25, author’s translation] According to Eugène Briffault: “The establishment of the restaurateurs was a social fact. Under the regime in which they succeeded, good food was the privilege of opulence; the restaurateurs made it accessible to everyone. A man who could, once in his life, spend twenty or twenty-five francs on his dinner, if he knew how to choose his dishes, and if he sat at the table of a first-rate restaurateur, was treated better than if he dined with a prince: he was served with as much splendour as in a palace; he ordered at will; his taste and desire knew no boundaries; free from all consideration, he obeyed only the whims of his fantasy and his delicacy. Restaurateurs therefore took a great step forward in social equality, established by the community of enjoyment much more than by theories that would never succeed in placing the poor on an equal footing with the rich.” [BRI 03, pp. 92–93, author’s translation] In a prepared, comfortable, peaceful and clean room, diners enjoyed their varied dishes set up at individual tables and, most often, tablecloths4. “They thus avoided promiscuity and could make confidential or courteous comments”, emphasized Jean-Robert Pitte [PIT 91, p. 159, author’s translation]. It was even possible to choose your table. The richness of restaurant decorations was significant. Diners “were served individual portions of dishes that they chose from a framed sheet of paper, before resolving the ‘paying card’, i.e. the bill” [PIT 91, p. 159, author’s translation]. Thus, the menu was born, presenting the prices. Food was served on demand all day long. Wine was no longer used only to quench your thirst:

4 In Paris à table, Eugène Briffault emphasizes: “Originally, the restaurateur was not allowed to put a tablecloth on these tables. They were covered with a green or jasper waxcloth” [BRI 03, p. 91, author’s translation].

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it came to accompany dishes and allowed for food and wine pairings. Water could be served in bottles. The service remained attentive to the expectations and demands of diners. Indeed, Rebecca L. Spang insists on the emergence of a new form of manners that gave primacy to the individual and to their needs, desires and pleasures: “The restaurant gave new significance to the individual’s emotions, utterances, and actions, and elaborated a whole new logic of sociability and conviviality. While the serving of salutary dishes was the restaurant’s initial raison d’être, fans of the restaurant spoke with equal enthusiasm about the many other delights available there.” [SPA 00, pp. 66–67] The restaurant therefore became a place of free choice where food intake was motivated, desired and individualized. According to Tristan Hordé, the restaurant appeared in a context in which the idea of the individual was affirmed: “the idea of the ‘individual’ was imposed, at least in the dominant urban social classes” [HOR 17, p. 12, author’s translation]. Then, the restaurateur responded to the expression of individual needs and desires related to taste; the taste preferences of the individual eater. Rebecca L. Spang points out that: “Some twenty years after they were first established, restaurants no longer specialized in providing delicately healthful soups to a genteelly weak-chested clientele but in catering to individual tastes. While the traiteur fed large groups, the restaurateur offered single servings and small, intimate tables. […]. The restaurateur invited his guest to sit at his or her own table, to consult his or her own needs and desires, to concentrate on that most fleeting and difficult to universalize sense: taste.” [SPA 00, p. 75] Therefore, the diner held an essential role: they made a real choice. They took on a “buyer” role. The birth of the restaurant thus marked the transition from a situation where the eater was an agent (human operator or agent capable of voluntary actions and their own initiatives but possessing no strategic competence: he/she was not a decision-maker and even less a designer) to one where he/she became an actor (agent with subjective interiority, intentionality, autonomous strategic capacity and an ability to express oneself) [LUS 03, p. 39]. The buyer (the diner) of this particular service, that of catering, was therefore at the initiative and design stage, insofar as there was a simultaneity of production and consumption. Thus, the diner became a “coproducer” of the catering service with the chef.

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DEFINITION.– Services are: “in the broadest sense, all economically productive activities that do not include the manufacture of material objects. In a narrow sense, this whole, excluding exchange activities. Services are in fact an economic and spatial phenomenon quite apart in the production of wealth. Unlike material goods, services are only realized by consuming them: the usual production/consumption distinction does not work very well. The production of a service involves the combination of three elements: a material basis, a contact staff and a customer. There is therefore joint production by the customer and the company. The economist Jean Galdrey proposed the concept of ‘servuction’ to reflect this specificity. It follows that a service is not tangible and cannot be stored.” [STO 03, pp. 834–835, author’s translation] How is the concentration of restaurants reflected? How did restaurants spread in Paris?

2 The Concentration of Restaurants in the City Centers

Restaurants were born in urban areas and are particularly concentrated in the city centers. DEFINITION.– The urban center is an “urban geotype characterized by the maximum association of the density and diversity of social realities […]. An urban center has a potential, linked to its level of urbanity (urbanity being considered as societal production, arranged in space, resulting from the interaction of density and diversity), and also to the modalities of the spatial disposition of density and diversity. This potential, which expresses the attractive and polarizing capacity of the center, is called centrality” [LUS 03, p. 144, author’s translation]. The center offers the specific coupling of density and diversity from a human, socioeconomic and cultural point of view. The centrality of restaurants corresponds to a strategic location that places the needs of the dense and diverse at the heart of the concerns of the first restaurateurs. The density and diversity of the permanent inhabitants ensure a potentially stable local customer “fund”. In addition, the density and diversity of temporary inhabitants (tourists) allow for additional customers. More generally, this centrality of restaurants is expressed in the density and diversity of flows, relationships and exchanges, products, capital, information, discourses and imaginations. The first restaurants were established and developed in the center of Paris, particularly at the Palais-Royal.

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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While the restaurant requires density and diversity, it was initially so, as shown by the solid and liquid contents of the menus of the first restaurants. The menu of the restaurant Véry is exemplary (see Figure 2.1). Pierre Andrieu recalls the geographies of this restaurant: “At the beginning of the First Empire, a Lorraine native named Véry opened a restaurant in Les Tuileries, on the terrace of Les Feuillants, and then, in 1808, opened a branch near the Palais-Royal theater, and its reputation was soon to eclipse the first house […]. Véry’s name alone evokes a Palais-Royal sparkling with life and luxury, galleries cluttered with beautiful figures with bare arms, shoulders open to the air, while passing by them, dragging their Essling or Jena swords, the dashing officers, Oudinot’s grenadiers or Murat’s horsemen.” [AND 55, pp. 38–39, author’s translation] In a context of concentration, restaurants, places of density and diversity, were intersected by flows and animated by centripetal forces. Through the service offerings, practices, discourses and imaginations they instilled, restaurants also produced density and diversity, and thus reinforced them. It was a dynamic of polarization. 2.1. A center-specific logic… Since their invention, restaurants have found privileged locations in the city center, which is a geographical context of concentration (accumulation of a large number of social realities in a limited area) of people and socioeconomic and cultural activities, and therefore of potential customers. And products too. DEFINITION.– “In the narrow sense, [centrality is] the central position of a place or area in a space. By extension, the ability to polarize space and make a place or area attractive, which concentrates actors, functions and objects of societies […]. In geography, the centrality of a place only really makes sense when we associate its position in physical space with the measurement of the radiation of potentials and functions located in that same place and when we consider the gradients and ‘fields’ that they produce and have in space. Walter Christaller constructs his model of central places based on an examination of the relationship between commercial and service functions and the physical distance between settlement points. According to this model, a balance between demand, and supply of goods and services is spontaneously organized in the regional space, which minimizes consumers’ travel costs. This is why supply functions are concentrated in the most accessible, so-called central places: those where demand reaches the levels necessary for supply to be profitable.” [DEM 03, pp. 139–140, author’s translation]

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Figure 2.1. Menu from the restaurant Véry

In the center of Paris, the first restaurants were established in the Palais-Royal district. Rolande Bonnain says: “At the end of the 18th Century, the first restaurants were found around the Palais-Royal, which was the old center of Paris. Small streets,

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luxury shops, average restaurants, gambling houses, the district attracted youth, politics, Parisian literature.” [BON 75, author’s translation] The Palais-Royal and its surrounding area provided the necessary conditions, in terms of market, supply and demand, for the establishment of the first restaurants. On the supply side, Valérie Ortoli-Denoix explains: “The abolition of corporations unleashed competition, and pork butchers, sellers of roast meat, pastry chefs… no longer had a monopoly on their specialities.” [ORT 90, p. 19, author’s translation] On the demand side, it is clear that there was a dense and diversified pool of potential customers: “Legislators who arrived in the capital, provincial legislators who were attracted to the Assembly [and] new wealthy people – for fear of settling down too quickly – formed the cohort of potential clients ready to sit down to eat. And why run around the streets when the best are at the door of the Assembly, in the heart of the city?” [ORT 90, p. 19] Indeed, Jean-Robert Pitte insists on the relationship between the development of restaurants and the presence of “revolutionary” customers at the Palais-Royal: “The increase of quality restaurants in Paris dates back to the Revolution. It is true, as has often been said, that a number of talented cooks then lost their masters, emigrated or were executed by guillotine. This was the case for Méot, the chef to Prince de Condé, who settled in 1791 on rue de Valois. But the other reason was the clientele, i.e. the revolutionary leaders themselves. They were determined to remove all symbols of the Ancien Régime1 or religion, but they were determined not to throw the baby out the bathwater. Of the entire cultural and artistic building erected by the monarchy and the court, gastronomy was one of the most easily recoverable, and Marat or Danton were never suspected of being enemies of the Republic because they come to Méot’s sumptuous dinner […]. The provincial deputies present in Paris throughout the Revolution, who lived in pensions, provided a

1 The Ancien Régime is a French term for the political and social system of France from the Late Middle Ages until 1789.

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sufficiently large and stable clientele to allow restaurants to multiply.” [PIT 91, pp. 161–162, author’s translation] In the aftermath of the French Revolution, restaurants, which multiplied very rapidly, seduced and encountered the new gastronomic expectations of Parisian urban customers. Jean-Paul Aron begins his book Le mangeur du XIXe siècle by presenting the event represented by the opening of the Robert restaurant: “On July 17, 1789, Prince de Condé went into exile, leaving a plethora of first-rate artists, roasting chefs, sauce chefs and pastry chefs, unemployed. Before the end of the year, Robert, who had managed his kitchens, founded a restaurant. This reclassification was more than a symbol: it crystallized scattered aspirations; it kicked off a new diet.” [ARO 89, p. 17, author’s translation] Their real and ideal sociocultural role can be specified: “Because they were born from the fall of the nobles, restaurant cooks and, by analogy, bourgeois houses enjoyed incomparable prestige. In Parisian mythology, they play a prominent role. They regulate worldly life, love and business, and they lend their frameworks to the imagination. The memory of the pioneers hangs over the dinners of the whole century.” [ARO 89, pp. 118–119, author’s translation] Jean-Paul Aron evokes a “greedy opinion” that was nourished by the relationship between the sphere of restaurateurs and the world of the bourgeoisie: “Under the Directory, in the street, in the press, in clubs, in gambling rooms, there was a greedy opinion. The glory of restaurants emerged from this sound network; between the right places and the new society a market is concluded: it provided subsidies, they created an unusual image of excellence. An advantageous treatise: the bourgeois enriched the bosses who illustrated them in return. The event disrupted perspectives, grayed the imagination.” [ARO 89, pp. 311–312, author’s translation]

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The introduction deputies at the Palais-Royal explain the enthusiasm for regional kitchen restaurants: “Arriving from all parts of the kingdom, the deputies had kept their provincial customs. The influence of those from Provence was particularly noticeable: the people of Marseille who came to celebrate the Federation’s feast brought along with the hymn of Rouget de Lisle the use of tomatoes, which had been used very sparingly until then, oil and garlic cooking, which would henceforth perfume the agape of the revolutionists.” [AND 55, pp. 32–33, author’s translation] Thus, the restaurant Les Trois Frères Provencaux acquired a great notoriety: “Around the same time, Les Trois Frères Provencaux, which served a bouillabaisse and cod brandade, settled in the neighborhood [PalaisRoyal]. Even if we can imagine that the Provençal cuisine of this establishment lost part of its local color under the Parisian sky, its introduction represented a small revolution. Culinary exoticism was gaining recognition, and eating out implied the acceptance – or the search – for a certain change of scenery.” [PIT 91, p. 160] René Héron de Villefosse reports on the opening conditions of the restaurant: “Rue Helvétius – the former name of our rue Sainte-Anne, at the corner of rue de Louvois – had just opened the restaurant of three Marseille partners: Maneille, Barthélemy, known as Trouin, and Simon, brothers-in-law and whose famous name was first that of the Frères Provençaux. They brought from the banks of the Durance the secret of cod brandade and Provençal-style lamb chops. Gaston Derys even added that they made known in Paris bouillabaisse, green olives and the red mullet of Marseille. With this barber from Porte Saint-Denis, where all the Francs-Comtois used to meet to taste cornstarch, they can be considered as the inventors of regional cuisine in the capital. They are about to move into the Palais-Égalité.” [HER 56, pp. 133–134, author’s translation] In the past (see Figure 2.2), the concentration of restaurants was remarkable and it is the same situation today (see Figure 2.3), at the Palais-Royal.

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Figure 2.2. Map of restaurants and cafés at the Palais-Royal at the end of the 18th Century and under the influence of the Empire (source: according to [PIT 91, p. 163]). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

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Figure 2.3. Map of restaurants and cafés at the Palais-Royal today (source: field research). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

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Adil Alkenzawi describes the Palais-Royal as an urban plateau in the center of the city of Paris: “The Palais-Royal is a fundamental example of the construction of places in the 18th century; it transforms the sensitivity of an era and the way in which the ‘world’ is created through architecture, appropriated and appreciated. It includes a set of buildings located in the center of Paris near the Louvre, built on a rectangular urban plateau perpendicular to the Seine, which covers a flat area of 405 by 123 meters, between rue Saint-Honoré, the Place du Palais-Royal and the Place du Théâtre-Français, Rue de Montpensier, Rue de Beaujolais and Rue de Valois. Rectangle in shape, located on the north-south axis, in a superb setting of a cooled inferno, where the French Revolution was fuelled. Over the centuries, the roles of the Palace, (which became royal in 1642 by Richelieu’s donation to Louis XIII), varied from the residence of the royal ‘favorites’ to those of administrative offices during the Empire. The Palace, whose entrances are located respectively on the four cardinal directions, currently houses the State Council, the Constitutional Council, the Ministry of Culture and the Comédie-Française state theater.” [ALK 08, author’s translation] Organized around a garden and a pool, the Palais-Royal is a place to walk, displayed as an “urban passage”: “The Palais-Royal is architecture, and above all a place built and reorganized. It is an urban organization emerged around a central core that is the garden, protected materially by the architecture and symbolically by the sculpture […]. The genesis of the Palais-Royal reveals the invention of an urban apparatus, that of the ‘urban passage’ (W. Benjamin, J.L. Déotte). In the sense that the Palais-Royal can only be seen from the inside. For it is an urban palace within the city, a fragment of a city, surrounded by narrow streets; the perspective thus passes to the second degree.” [ALK 08, author’s translation] It is a scene of political power. Long remembered for its associations with the absolute monarchy and the Bourbons, it took on a new political dimension after the French Revolution, which explains the location of many restaurants.

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The restaurant is animated by the practices of political actors and crossed by political speeches and imaginations. In this sense, Méot is a “political” restaurant: “The most famous example of these princely cooks converted into revolutionary restaurateurs remains Méot. A former Officier de Bouche to the Duke of Orléans, this colorful character opened his establishment on 26 May 1791, within the hotel that belonged to the Chancellery of Orléans, located on rue des Bons-Enfants (at the corner with a passage ending in the arcade 177 of the Valois gallery)…. All the trendy dishes were served there, even if it meant cooking them in a revolutionary sauce. To accompany turbot fillets, the sauce made of butter, lemon juice and herbs was no longer called ‘maître d’hôtel’ (master of the hotel), an expression with too noble a connotation, but more simply ‘homme de confiance’ (trusted man). Similarly, care was taken to avoid introducing into the dish with the Queen’s veal nuts, which were carefully renamed the Director’s veal nuts. Among all the Parisian restaurants, Méot was the model child of the Revolution. Wasn’t the 1793 constitution drafted in a lounge that was removed from his establishment? Didn’t Robespierre, Danton and Saint-Just appear in the worst hours of the Terror? Wasn’t the execution of Marie-Antoinette finally celebrated on October 16, 1793? The members of the Revolutionary Court enjoyed a béchamel of fins and foie gras, a fine roasted chicken, 12 larks per person and champagne!” [GAU 06, pp. 29–31, author’s translation] Jean-Robert Pitte therefore stresses: “The same link between taverns and parliamentary life has long been observed in London. Thus, French haute cuisine, descended from its pedestal, remains linked to the exercise of power, as it was under the Ancien Régime.” [PIT 91, p. 162, author’s translation] According to Adil Alkenzawi: “Cardinal Richelieu’s choice of this place is significant: symbolic and political. The intention of Richelieu and his architects was not limited to locating the palace complex in the center of the city of Paris, but rather to creating an urban centrality in the form of an ‘urban passage’ that can be understood as the foundation of an appropriate ‘world place.’” [ALK 08, author’s translation] Over time, the political dimension of the Palais-Royal continued and grew stronger: the facilities of the State Council in 1875 (1, place du Palais-Royal), the Constitutional Council in 1958 (2, rue de Montpensier) and the Ministry of Culture in 1959 (3, rue de Valois).

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It is also a cultural place marked by the Academies (Academy of Sculpture and Painting 1661–1692 and Music 1773–1781) and theaters (théâtre de Beaujolais and then the Palais-Royal in 1784 and, above all, Théâtre-Français, founded in 1680 and installed Salle Richelieu since 1799). The cultural atmosphere was recently reinforced by the installation of Daniel Buren’s contemporary art device Les Deux Plateaux (commonly known as the “colonnes de Buren”) in 1986 in the main courtyard. The esthetics of the columns are essential: “By combining technical and esthetic functions, the galleries and columns acquire the status of a rule of concordance or common denominator that determines the inscription of objects on the PalaisRoyal site […]. The double Buren plateau at the Palais-Royal is an arrangement mentioned with the particularity of essentializing the columns […]. Thus, the double Buren plateau can find a deeper meaning in the 18th Century plateau. Buren’s invented modernity does not deny the classic, but creates equivalents: two materials for urban writing.” [ALK 08, author’s translation] In front of the Comédie-Française theater, Place Colette, the Palais-Royal-Musée du Louvre metro station was estheticized by Jean-Michel Othoniel in 2000 with Le Kiosque des noctambules (aluminum mesh frame with colored Murano glass rings). For Adil Alkenzawi… “[The Palais-Royal] an urban site, where architecture, sculpture and landscape blend together. Its garden, planted with lined trees, adorned with flowerbeds and a central basin, still contributes to its identity in the heart of the capital, a green interior cut away or protected from the city that is accessed through galleries and peristyles suitable for walks, strolling and entertainment.” [ALK 08, author’s translation] Eugène Briffault insists on the centrality of gourmet cuisine: “The Palais-Royal was then the center of all those whose pleasure occupied their lives; there, the noisiest restaurateurs had gathered; at their head, there was Véry and the Trois Frères provençaux, whose memory will not perish. Around the Palais-Royal were gathered distinguished houses: Beauvilliers, Robert, and this other trilogy, whose gastronomy created made a pun: Rô, Méot and Juliette; we also mentioned the Veau qui tette, this Celebration of the Parisian bourgeoisie. At that time, each house had a special reputation. Robert

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excelled in all beef dishes and in ordered dinners; the Veau qui tette owed its prosperity to sheep feet; there were some who boasted of double grilling; the Frères provençaux made their fortune with cod with garlic, the famous brandade and their flawless cellar; at Rocher de Cancale, Baleine flourished by the high quality of its wines and its excellent fish; the Cadran Bleu and its gallant mysteries made Henneveu a success. Some food lovers, more extravagant than delicate, enjoyed partaking in the wonders and masterpieces of each cuisine in the same day; others enjoyed dinner in reverse, starting with dessert and ending with soup: extravagance of stomachs delirious and jaded with all flavors.” [BRI 03, pp. 95–96, author’s translation] According to Adil Alkenzawi: “Taken as a whole, the Palais-Royal is not quite an architectural project, but the expression of an ‘open urban project’ and the invention of an urban writing medium that is ‘the Plateau’: the invention of an urban esthetic […]. Three things have not changed in all the Palais-Royal’s formation-transformation phases: the concept of ‘urban passage’, the relationship of the elements of the architectural project to their common urban inscription support, the plateau, and the meaning of the Palais-Royal’s development and extension (perpendicularity to the Seine as the city’s structural axis).” [ALK 08, author’s translation] Thanks in particular to its restaurants, the Palais-Royal functions as a hub, animated by centripetal flows. Dense and varied, it is attractive (attraction socially constructed according to the representations). It reveals a particular concentration of restaurants, as well as other commercial activities, including food shops, from which it is logical to believe that they are linked to it if not necessarily. It is a hub of services, jobs and potential customers. This polarization explains the installation of the first restaurants, their density and diversity, and also the permanence of this singular concentration even today. In addition to the density and diversity of the restaurants, the urban centrality of the Palais-Royal is also revealed by the permanence of a “great” restaurant: Le Grand Véfour (2 Michelin stars). This presence, even today, is explained by the sociocultural realities, landscape amenities and ideals of the Palais-Royal. Le Grand Véfour helped to maintain them and thus make the Palais-Royal a hub that always polarizes. Located at the corner of the Beaujolais gallery and the Joinville peristyle, it is one of the oldest restaurants in Paris still in operation (see Figure 2.4).

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Figure 2.4. Le Grand Véfour (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

The Café de Chartres sign on the garden side of the facade recalls the first name of the establishment, which was opened in 1784 by the Aubertot lemonade seller, chosen in honor of the Duke of Chartres, who built the Palais-Royal: “In 1784, the monumental assembly built by Louis, the architect of the Théâtre de Bordeaux, and the Théâtre-Français in Paris, was completed. The Palais-Royal, definitively dethroning the Marais, became the most brilliant magnet of Parisian life and above all the birthplace of French gastronomy.”2 Located in front of the Petits Comédiens theater, Le Grand Véfour is particularly popular with artists and politicians: “The business of Fontaine [Aubertot’s successor], owner of Café de Chartres, was going well since in 1791, four years after its installation and despite the troubled period, he asked for permission to pitch a tent in the gardens to expand his café and shelter his customers. Driven by the success of the eating lunches with forks, he began to serve delicious dishes ensuring him an honorable place among the young lions of the restaurant industry – Bœuf à la Mode, Méot and the Frères Provençaux – and attract a gourmet clientele that is in addition to that of politicians.”3

2 http://grand-vefour.com, accessed September 22, 2018. 3 Ibid.

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Two owners, Charnier and Moynault, succeeded Fontaine. In 1820, Café de Chartres was bought by Jean Véfour. According to Alexandre Balthazar Grimod de la Reynière: “The former Café de Chartres, after many and varied fortunes, is now one of the busiest restaurants in Paris. Mr. Véfour brought the crowd back. Nowhere is a stir-fry, a Marengo chicken fricassee, a chicken mayonnaise better prepared. The lounges are crowded with diners from 5 p.m. in the evening.”4 Luxury products were served such as black truffles (marengo chicken with truffle at 8 francs) and exotic fruits (including pineapple grown in greenhouses in Sarcelles). The fire in the wooden galleries in 1828 and the closure of the playhouses in 1836 led to a long decline of the Palais-Royal’s fortunes. However: “Thanks to the talent and know-how of the Hamel brothers, Le Grand Véfour, worthy and imperturbable, resisted this fierce competition and witnessed the decline of the Palais-Royal with complete serenity. In 1840, he was even at his best and definitively triumphed over his only real rivals, Frères Provençaux and Véry. While the great dinners were held at the Rocher de Cancale, dear to the stomach of Grimod de la Reynière, the lunches of the Grand Véfour, ‘very well supported’, were the most popular in Paris. Ten years later, Tavernier, the new owner of the Véfour, even managed to circumvent this nuisance from Véry.”5 In 1944, Louis Vaudable, owner of Maxim’s restaurant on rue Royale, bought the Grand Véfour. The restaurant’s decoration is refined: carved woodwork with Louis XVI style garlands, mirrors and painted canvases fixed under glass inspired by Pompeian neoclassical frescoes – game, fish, flowers and women with flowered baskets – on walls, rosettes, garlands and medallions featuring allegories of women painted in the style of 18th Century Italian ceilings. In 1948, Raymond Oliver, originally from Langon, served a Parisian-influenced Southwestern cuisine there: “As a promoter of regional cuisine, he was fully committed to the recipes of his Southwest and reviving old recipes that had fallen into oblivion. The fish terrine Guillaume Tirel, also known as Taillevent, Charles V’s master chef and author of the first cooking treatise written in French, the sweetbread with verjus – green grape juice – is similar to foie gras, garlic chicken, lamprey or Prince Rainier III pigeon…”6

4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid.

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Raymond Oliver was awarded a third Michelin star in 1953. The same year, the chef appeared in the first television cooking show Art et magie de la cuisine, which he co-hosted with Catherine Langeais for 13 years. It gave him a worldwide reputation. “The era of the star chef is open: kings, queens, politicians, women of the world, fashion designers, financiers, have all succeeded each other in the golden lounges during the thirty-six years of Raymond Oliver’s reign”. The restaurant’s reputation is also linked to the presence of a clientele from the world of culture (Jean Giraudoux, Sacha Guitry, Louis Aragon, Elsa Triolet, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Marcel Pagnol, Jean Genet, André Malraux, etc.), in particular Jean Cocteau (loyal customer who lived at 36, rue de Montpensier) with whom Raymond Oliver wrote a book, Recettes pour un ami, published in 19647. After Jean Taittinger, chef Guy Martin became the owner of the Grand Véfour in 1991. From this center, restaurants spread geographically and socially. 2.2. … to a logic of axes Restaurants spread geographically according to a logic of axes, mainly on the right bank of the Seine initially. 2.2.1. Axial diffusion During the 19th Century, the flow of eaters and, correlatively, the locations of restaurants mainly moved towards the west of Paris [ORT 90]. The Parisian geography of restaurants was modeled on that of urban transformations, in particular the layout of structuring openings (boulevards) and the organization of a traffic network linking the center with the new districts. Rolande Bonnain explains: “When prostitution played too much of a role in the activities of the neighborhood [Palais-Royal], the establishments that did not live off it migrated to the Boulevards, where the great cafés and restaurants were frequented and cited by Alexandre Dumas or Balzac could be found: the Grand Hôtel, the Café Anglais, the Café de Paris, the Maison Dorée, the Café Riche. The appearance of the neighborhood was no longer the same: wide avenues where private cars traveled, large establishments where luxury could be seen in the decoration and the number of seats offered by the restaurant. All the Parisian activities 7 Book republished by Les éditions de l’Épure.

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were gathered there, divided between money and entertainment: banking, luxury shops, theater, music, dance and the press were crowding boulevard des Italiens and the surrounding area.” [BON 75, p. 120, author’s translation] The geographical spread of restaurants can be linked to the new socioeconomic and urban dynamics of Paris: “The restaurateurs, in their travels, followed the phases of Parisian emigration […]. From 1815 to 1830, this greatness was not reduced; but perhaps, as it spread, it was less real, less solid and less sustainable than in the previous era. Thus, the number of restaurateurs increased; these establishments, with admirable intelligence, addressed all needs and all distractions; they were placed at all levels of society, and spread in the existence of each other and in life in general new facilities, of which they had not found anywhere the traces and the indication. This was the true and first merit of the restaurants in Paris during these 15 years.” [BRI 03, p. 93, p. 98, author’s translation] At the same time, it followed, supported, maintained and reinforced the urban “staging” of the city of Paris. Thus: “Under the Empire a new geography was emerging. The Palais-Royal no longer had a monopoly; establishments opened in the Les Halles district (Le Rocher de Cancale, rue Montorgueil) and already on the main boulevards (du Temple, des Italiens). An isolated individual to the west, Ledoyen, foreshadowed the success of the Champs-Élysées district. At the Palais-Royal, customers came to enjoy themselves, but their place of activity was close; from then on, it was the places for walking and the theaters that attracted restaurants.” [PIT 91, p. 166, author’s translation] The boulevard des Italiens – the Boulevard – (Café Anglais, Café Hardy, Café Riche, Maison Dorée, Café Foy, etc.) is particularly elegant. Eugène Briffault specifies: “At La Chaussée-d’Antin, the lunches of the Café Anglais; Hardy’s famous ramekins and Riche’s skewered kidneys attracted the young and elegant world. It was cheerfully said ‘that you had to be very rich to dine at Hardy’s or very bold to dine at Riche’s.’” [BRI 03, pp. 93–95, author’s translation]

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Indeed, Café Riche, at the corner of rue Le Peletier, was renowned for its exorbitant prices, rated by Pierre Andrieu: “In 1867, the value of the business of the Café Riche was estimated at one million [francs.]! Certainly the most expensive restaurant in Paris. The cuisine was incomparable: the shrimp sole, which was lovely to taste with a Bouzy red, was magnificent, and the Riche sauce, the chef’s secret, made all the well-off gourmets in Paris up their game.” [AND 55, p. 55, author’s translation] Along the boulevards, there were theaters frequented by an audience that appreciates dinner after the performances in the restaurants. Similarly, private firms or lounges were also sought. Rebecca Spang explains: “Better suited to confidential tête-à-têtes than expansive sociability, the restaurateur’s new spaces emphasized the private, the intimate, and the potentially secret” [SPA 00, p. 78]. She explains: “‘Personal’ needs and ‘private’ desires dominated the mythology and rhetoric of the restaurant; they were what separated the restaurant from other forms of public eating” [SPA 00, p. 79]. Café Anglais was renowned for its facilities and, more particularly, for one of them, the Grand seize. The last act of Jacques Offenbach’s comic opera La Vie parisienne, premiered on October 30, 1866 at the Palais-Royal theater, took place there – a rondeau by Métella narrates a late night in this room: Quand vient le matin, quand paraît l’aurore, On en trouve encore, mais plus de gaieté ! Les brillants viveurs sont mal à leur aise, Et dans le “Grand Seize”, on voudrait du thé ! Ils s’en vont enfin, la mine blafarde, Ivres de champagne et de faux amours, Et le balayeur s’arrête, regarde, Et leur crie ! Ohé ! les heureux du jour ! (When the morning comes, when the dawn appears, You can still find some, but no more cheerfulness! The bright shining ones are uncomfortable, And in the “Grand Seize”, we’d like some tea! They finally leave, the pale appearance,

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Drunk with champagne and fake love, And the sweeper stops, looks, And screams! Ahoy! The happy ones of the day!) The boulevards promoted and directed denser and more varied travel through a wide and flat sidewalk leading to smooth traffic, sidewalks that facilitated easy and pleasant pedestrian traffic and gas lighting that allowed safe night traffic. Thus, François-Régis Gaudry underlines: “Under the Second Empire, the boulevards were the aorta of Paris, draining dandies, marquises, lions, mistresses, courtesans, politicians, journalists and stock market people. In this worldly fauna, writers were a species apart. While they know how to mix with the crowd, they also had their favorite addresses. They were not necessarily the best, nor the most expensive, but those where the bosses knew how to welcome them. Several of them were entitled, in the gazettes, guides and other testimonies of the time, to the nickname ‘academic restaurants’.” [GAU 06, p. 105] These are Peter’s (24, passage des Princes/5 bis, boulevard des Italiens), Café Américain/Grand Café Capucines (boulevard des Capucines), Café Brébant (boulevard Poissonnière) and Marguery (boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, formerly boulevard de la Porte-Saint-Martin), for example. As an extension of Rue de Rivoli, Place de la Concorde and Avenue des Champs-Élysées are gradually being affected by the geographical spread of restaurants, as demonstrated by René Héron de Villefosse: “After the winning boulevards of the Palais-Royal, here is the Champs-Élysées, which show the ends of their branches. We are still in the middle of greenery, in 1852, but, from 1855, exhibitions followed one another, giving birth to the giant palace of Industry which witnessed the satellites of the Dioramas, café-concerts and other summer restaurants appear all around it, from which we keep some charming samples. The Marbeuf district was built, the Étoile was completed. Prince Napoleon, the Duke of Morny, Princess Mathilde, the Païva, the Duchess of Alba came to be housed there. Let’s not be surprised to see the birth, on rue Royale and in its west, of a series of surprising representatives for gourmet food and refined people, not to mention the Mabille ball!” [HER 56, pp. 194–195, author’s translation]

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On Rue Cambon, the restaurant Voisin was run by Braquessac, a winegrower in the Bordeaux region, with chef Choron. The Prunier restaurant opened in 1872 on rue Duphot. Grilled meats, snails and sheep feet in chicken sauce were served there, but the restaurant was especially famous for its oyster dishes: oyster soup, fried oysters and Boston beef fillet. On Rue Royale and Place de la Madeleine, Lucas opened up, followed by Francis Carton, Larue, Weber and Maxim’s. Indeed, René Héron de Villefosse points out that: “The 1900 exhibition dedicated Maxim’s to the world view. The main entrance was Place de la Concorde, surmounted by a statue of the Parisian woman, due to Moreau-Vauthier, perched on a golden ball and topped by the ship of the city of Paris, surrounded by electric light bulbs and entirely risqué. Maxim’s happened to be the bar, café, restaurant, the nearest box to this onlooker trap. No foreigner of any brand, who came for the giant event, who did not come to Maxim’s for dinner.” [HER 56, p. 259, author’s translation] At the beginning of the 20th Century, still in a logic of axes, restaurants progressed to the Bois de Boulogne: “It was the great fashion of Ledoyen, the Pavillon Élysée, Laurent, the Champs-Élysées, the Pré Catelan, the Pavillon d’Armenonville, Madrid, the Grande Cascade and the Bois de Boulogne.” [PIT 91, p. 172, author’s translation] Valérie Ortoli-Denoix underlines: “No major operation having replaced Haussmann’s work, the previous trend is confirmed. Nine thousand restaurants are spread throughout the capital, almost all of which are served by the metro. Ignoring the east where an anarchic development of poor neighborhoods is taking place (Charonne, Ménilmontant, Belleville), the restaurants mentioned above are associated with the simultaneous development of rich neighborhoods in the west (Champs-Élysées, Monceau, Passy, Auteuil, Champ-de-Mars). The periphery and the recent boulevards des Maréchaux, traced on the site of the Thiers enclosure, have only few votes. The Seine and the axis Gare de l’Est – Boulevard SaintMichel are still borders delimiting Paris into four zones, including the northwest which dominates.” [ORT 90, p. 23, author’s translation]

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2.2.2. Social diffusion The geographical diffusion of restaurants came to be combined with a social one. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin evokes the development of restaurants at fixed prices: “Some restaurateurs proposed to join good food with the economy, and by getting closer to the mediocre fortunes, which were necessarily the most numerous, to ensure that the crowd of consumers could be satisfied” [BRI 82, p. 281, author’s translation]. Brillat-Savarin provides information on the profiles of diners who frequented them: “Restaurateurs – considered under this last point of view – rendered a service to this interesting part of the population of any large city which consisted of foreigners, soldiers and employees. They were led, by their interest, to the solution of a problem which seemed contrary to it, namely: to make good food, and yet at a moderate price, and even at a low price.” [BRI 82, p. 282] Eugène Briffault presents cheap restaurants: “In the Latin Quarter (next to the ‘fixed price’, but above it) was the cheap restaurant; the ‘maximum’ [price] was 30 cents a dish for the use of ‘gentlemen-scholars’. The solemn moment of the day, which the kitchens and restaurant departments called all hands on deck, acted with unparalleled violence; young appetites rushed towards substantial dishes with fury. There was a cry of general distress, when the ‘chef’ proclaimed in a resounding voice this terrible sentence: ‘There is no more beef!’ Two or three restaurants on rue de la Harpe and rue SaintJacques, at the head of which we will place Rousseau and Flicoteau, the immortal Flicoteau, whose dynasty founded its fiefdom near Place de la Sorbonne, stood out among all the others. On these tables the carafes were gigantic; the wine only a prejudice.” [BRI 03, p. 116, author’s translation] He specifies: “Near the Palais-Royal, something similar to the restaurants of the Latin Quarter was created for the artistic world. There too, at dinner time, we saw the flocks of voracious locusts flocking to Rouget et al., from the small café and the workshop, to fall on all combinations of roasted or boiled beef, veal and mutton under all circumstances. In these areas, wine was known, but only in small doses, by decanter or quarter bottle.” [BRI 03, p. 116, author’s translation]

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Similarly, Antoine de Baecque underlines: “Undoubtedly because, in the same space, the most contrasting restaurants coexisted – either by their specialities, their menu, their personality, their appearance, their location, or, quite simply, by their price. The density of the boulevard actually attracted the ‘popular restaurant’, which was, half a century earlier, an antinomy. The first generation restaurateur sought to seduce the elites; his table was an obvious sign of social and cultural success. In the middle of the 19th Century, on the contrary, some institutions sought to feed the less fortunate, the working classes, students and bohemian artists. Yet they also call themselves restaurateurs.” [BAE 19, p. 183, author’s translation] The social diffusion of restaurants was particularly sensitive on the left bank of the Seine. In the Latin Quarter, in the 1830s, the restaurant Flicoteaux was famous: “In Paris, poor students, like Horace Bianchon who appears in several Balzac novels, went to Flicoteaux, a very famous and modest restaurant located on Place de la Sorbonne or in the other two or three restaurants on Rue de la Harpe, Viot or Rue Saint-Jacques. In these restaurants, bread was served at will, not wine or spirits, but wellcooked beef, well-baked chops. The service was done by boys. Dinners were à la carte.” [BON 13, pp. 285–286, author’s translation] This accelerated with the birth of bouillon restaurants: “In the mid-19th Century, the popular restoration of Paris was at the dawn of a small palace revolution. A certain Baptiste-Adolphe Duval, a butcher of his condition, had been thinking for some time about a way to feed the small population of Les Halles, composed of workers, employees and craftsmen who lived further and further from their workplace, and needed to be able to eat outside their homes without spending too much money. One day, he came up with this brilliant idea: to bring ‘restaurant’ bouillons up to date, those restorative consommés made from meat and vegetables that were at the origin of the invention of the restaurant in the mid-18th Century[…]. Duval opened his first bouillon restaurant in 1854, rue de la Monnaie, where he mainly offered cheap boiled beef. He certainly did not suspect that success would push him to open new establishments at a frenetic pace (boulevard Saint-Denis, Madeleine, place du Havre, boulevard des Italiens, rue de Rome, rue de Clichy, boulevard Poissonnière, rue du Quatre-septembre, rue de Rivoli, boulevard Saint-Germain…), thus

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constituting the first commercial empire in the history of the restaurant industry. Half a century later, his wife and son Alexandre took over and headed some 40 branches… Duval had his own butcher shops, his own purchasing centers, his own industrial bakery, his own milk company, his own Seltz water factory, cellars in Bordeaux and Bercy and laundry.” [GAU 06, p. 92 and p. 95, author’s translation] At the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century, the number of bouillon restaurants increased: Chartier, Boulant, etc. Louis Isidore Chartier, also known as Camille Chartier, a butcher in Orgeval, opened his first bouillon restaurant at 7, rue du Faubourg-Montmartre in 1896 and then branches at 142, boulevard Saint-Germain in 1904 (now Brasserie Vagenende), at 3, rue Racine in 1906 (now Bouillon Racine) (see Figure 2.5) and at 59, boulevard du Montparnasse in 1906 (today Bouillon Chartier Montparnasse, an establishment created in 1858, bought by Chartier in 1903 and renovated in 1906).

Figure 2.5. Inside the Bouillon Racine, located at 3, rue Racine (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Social diffusion was reinforced with the appearance of creamery restaurants in the mid-19th Century. The rural exodus led to new arrivals in Paris who appreciated and consumed dairy products on a daily basis. They frequented Turkish and Georgian creameries where they bought milk, yoghurts and cheeses, and soon tasted them standing up. The creamers progressively set up tables and served hot milk bowls and “cuts” of brie8.

8 See Jeanne Gaillard, Paris la ville, 1851–1870, Honoré Champion, Paris, 1976.

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During the second half of the 19th Century, brasseries also developed. Michel Bonneau explains: “In the second half of the 19th century – following the Universal Exhibitions of 1855 and 1867, and the war of 1870 which led to the loss of Alsace and Lorraine – the freedom given to the beer trade led to the appearance of the brewery restaurant, which competed with coffee shops and ultimately proved to be more popular. The freedom to sell beer, whose consumption was increasing due to urbanization, and the possibility of eating simple dishes to accompany beer (sausages, ham, cheese, cabbage) encouraged the development of brasseries in a niche market between the restaurant and the luxury restaurant.” [BON 13, p. 292, author’s translation] These were establishments serving beer brewed in Alsace and Germany, and transported to Paris by the Eastern Railways: “The first establishment of this new type appeared in Paris in 1847 on the ground floor of a building at 26, rue Hautefeuille. We owe it to a French naturalized German, Louis Andler, who had only the means of basic decoration – whitewashed walls, barrels, cheese wheels, rustic oak chairs and benches – but compensated with his good humor and his sense of conviviality.” [GAU 06, p. 123, author’s translation] Thus: “After 1870, the ‘Alsatian brasserie’ appeared on the initiative of Alsatians who had withdrawn to Paris, serving both beer and Alsatian cuisine (sauerkraut, pork shanks, herring apples in oil, veal head, flambé pie, etc.). The brasserie is in fashion.” [BON 13, p. 292, author’s translation] From the 1860s onwards, brasseries refined their decor (Zimmer in 1862 on Place du Châtelet, Bofinger in 1864 on Place de la Bastille, Lipp in 1880 on Boulevard Saint-Germain, Mollard in 1895 on Rue Saint-Lazare). They thus became showcases of the decorative Art Nouveau and Art Deco style (Le Vaudeville in 1918 on Place de la Bourse, La Coupole in 1927 on Boulevard du Montparnasse). At the beginning of the 20th Century, restaurants serving regional and foreign cuisine developed, as in the Latin Quarter: “In the heart of the district, in 1925, the Rôtisserie Périgourdine opened on Place Saint-Michel, under the direction of the Rouzier

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brothers, in the place of a grill room that has not left much trace in history. Here, regional cuisine was at the forefront, and that of a particularly rich province. What about the gratin périgourdin: minced fresh mushrooms, fresh cream and truffle strips, covered with a puff pastry and put in the oven… and the stuffed pike, and the hare in royal style, and the rooster in paste and truffles under ashes?…” [HER 56, p. 282, author’s translation] The restaurant Méditerranée opened on Place de l’Odéon: “It was fishing, Place de l’Odéon, which led to the Méditerranée, where Provençal cuisine was to find one of its great Parisian homes, the spiritual heirs of the Frères Provençaux, as later on the Relais de Porquerolles, rue de l’Éperon. In Méditerranée, decorated by Vertès in southern tones, grilled wolves with fennel, fried scampi in tartar sauce, crustaceans and bouillabaisse were appreciated by artists in writing or prestidigitation, with Cocteau and Picasso mainly. Following blackcurrant and rosé from the Var, the stuffed mussels looked as good as in Bandol or Cannes; it is one of the graces of our time to have been able to see Paris, the center of the globe, receive at home in the desired way so strange or so distant that it seemed.” [HER 56, p. 284, author’s translation] Similarly, “Châtaignier, rue du Cherche-Midi, despite its very simple service, offered nothing to anyone, but its pike with white butter and nutmeg being better than in Nantes or Saint-Nazaire and the quality of all its dishes remaining perfect.” [HER 56, p. 284, author’s translation] In 1932, Marthe Allard, a peasant woman from Burgundy, acquired a restaurant at the corner of rue Saint-André-des-Arts and rue de l’Éperon (see Figure 2.6). The chef mother and her daughter-in-law offered Burgundian cuisine dishes: frog legs, duck with olives and rooster in wine. The restaurant was a former wine merchant (the window grills preserved) transformed into a bistro La Halte de l’Éperon by Vincent Candré. Simple dishes were cooked by Josephine, “one of the first ‘Parisian cooking mothers’”9. From the 1930s until the end of the war, Allard remained a family-oriented neighborhood bistro. After the war, Allard forged a reputation that would be consolidated year after year. In 1946, Marthe and Marcel Allard’s son, André, married Fernande who continued to serve the dishes passed on by her mother-in-law. They were served with wines from Beaujolais and Burgundy. In July

9 www.restaurant-allard.fr, accessed January 3, 2019.

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2013, the restaurant was bought by Alain Ducasse: “Fernande Allard’s precious legacy will continue to inspire us. There is no question of touching the house’s DNA, we will simply make sure that it is part of its time.” The kitchen is still being prepared today by a woman, Pauline Berghonnier.

Figure 2.6. Restaurant Allard, located at 41, rue Saint-André-des-Arts (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

However, René Héron de Villefosse points out that: “This does not mean that between these two world wars the taste of foreign cuisine was not within reach of our jaws. You could go around the world in 12 restaurants…” [HER 56, p. 285, author’s translation] Valérie Ortoli-Denoix points out: “Accessible to a large number of people financially and locally, Parisian restaurants are exploding in various directions. The most characteristic extension is to the south.” [ORT 90, p. 24, author’s translation] Especially in the western part of the left bank. Jean-Robert Pitte therefore specifies that: “Throughout the 20th Century, this distribution persisted. A diffusion is carried out even in the peripheral districts of the capital and the suburbs, but for nine-tenths of them, the establishments are all located west of a railway line from East Bastille to Porte d’Orléans.” [PIT 91, pp. 172–173]

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Until the second half of the 19th Century, the restaurant remained an essentially Parisian place, becoming emblematic of the capital as Rebecca L. Spang points out: “The restaurant had become a true cultural institution, among the most familiar and distinctive of Parisian landmarks. Until well after the middle of the 19th Century, restaurants were to remain an almost exclusively Parisian phenomenon, one rarely encountered outside the French capital.” [SPA 00, p. 2] She specifies: “For even by the middle of the 19th Century, restaurants were still an overwhelmingly urban phenomenon, inventions of the capital and icons of its pleasures. To be conversant with the protocols, rituals, and vocabulary of restaurant going was to be quintessentially Parisian and supremely sophisticated.” [SPA 00, p. 172] So how did restaurants spread outside the capital?

3 The Geographical Diffusion of Restaurants in Provinces by Cities and City Networks

The geographical diffusion of restaurants in the provinces was slow and uneven. It passed through cities organized in networks: “From the beginning, the most permanent role of a city has been to enhance a situation in a network. Centrality is nourished by the agglomerated power that converges exchanges and relations towards privileged centers: the polarization of the territory arises from this duality between the centers and their peripheries.” [PUM 89, p. 75, author’s translation] City networks show a hierarchical organization that is expressed in regular arrangements according to the size of cities [PUM 89]. This model is formalized by the central place theory [PUM 89]. 3.1. The geographical diffusion of restaurants in the provinces: an application of rank-size law… In the provinces, restaurants spread geographically through the cities in a rather hierarchical way. Overall, the first restaurants appeared in the old centers of the big cities. They were particularly well supplied with multimodal transport (intertwining of the different modes of transport) and a point of convergence of flows (intertwining of interrelationships).

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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In Bordeaux, for example, Philippe Meyzie, writing in the Journal de Guyenne, mentioned the existence of “restaurant tables” at 1784 rue Mautrec and 1785 place Saint-Rémi. He specifies that this was a complementary activity for café owners [MEY 07, p. 72]. He also mentions the creation of the Restaurant de la Poste at 1805 rue Porte-Dijeaux [MEY 07, p. 73]. However, Philippe Meyzie points out that the development of restaurants remained very limited during the first half of the 19th Century [MEY 07, p. 73]. In 1825, Le Chapon Fin opened on rue Montesquieu near the Théâtre-Français, “but it was not really successful until the second half of the 19th Century” [MEY 07, p. 73, author’s translation]. In 1901, Cyprien Alfred-Duprat created a decor of stony ground and caves and Joseph Sicart (former sauce chef at Café Anglais) served a fine cuisine: “Very quickly, all of Bordeaux was seduced, as was the clientele of cruise ships calling at the nearby port. Then, to verify the emerging reputation of this exceptional 28-year-old master chef, the rich customers of the Café Anglais, owners of the very first motor cars, stopped in Bordeaux on the road to Biarritz, which was then the queen of the seaside resorts.” [MES 98, p. 27, author’s translation] The restaurant was awarded 3 Michelin stars in 1933. The development of restaurants took place at the end of the 19th Century and at the beginning of the 20th Century. The Dubern restaurant opened its doors in the Allées de Tourny. Paul Dubern created a delicatessen in 1894 at 62 Allées de Tourny, and moved it to number 42 on June 1, 1905, into a bourgeois house. Two renowned restaurants were already established in the area: Le Chapon Fin and Le Café Anglais. In 1914 or 1919, Dubem set up a restaurant on the first floor. After World War I, new restaurants opened on and near the backstreets: Restaurant Italien, Moderne, Madrid, etc.1. Starring in the Michelin Guide, the restaurant thus became an “institution” of the city, frequented by both Bordeaux residents and tourists on the way to the Basque Coast. In December 2016, the restaurant was bought by Yunjie Zhou, who already owned Château Renon in Tabanac, since March 2015. In 2018, he opened the restaurant Quanjude and developed a franchise. The restaurants of the Chinese chain Quanjude specialize in Peking duck. The cuisine is provided by Olivier Peyronnet (formerly of Shangri-La Paris) and four Chinese chefs, including Feng Xu, great master of the Peking duck, and the service by Fabrice Rollo (formerly of La Tour d’Argent in Paris) and William Numa. In the provinces, restaurants appeared particularly in and around stations. Indeed, the railway came to be a tool for guiding the geographical diffusion of restaurants and the station became a favored anchor point. The square (la place) and the station 1 See Pierre Dupuy Schoell, Isabelle Dupuy Schoell, Pierre Chavot, Dubern, une maison bordelaise depuis 1894, Éditions Confluences, Bordeaux, 2013.

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road (avenue de la gare) were places where restaurants were located. Many provincial cities served by the railway had a station restaurant or a station brasserie, offering a catering service in the form of a buffet. At the initiative of Vincent Bourrel, SNCF’s general secretary, a partnership was established between the company and 64 station buffets in provincial towns “so that dealers could serve, every day, at an affordable price, a tourist menu, that needed to include one or more regional dishes, carefully prepared according to the traditional recipes of good old French cuisine” [AND 55, p. 123, author’s translation]. In cities, old centers and station districts were hubs, centers of density and diversity, animated by lines and links that were as much tangible as intangible. They were frequented by both permanent and temporary residents. 3.2. … but disrupted by tourism Philippe Meyzie mentioned that restaurants developed from the beginning of the 19th Century in the spa town of Bagnères thanks to tourist numbers [MEY 07, p. 73]. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the increase in mobility and the deployment of tourist practices accelerated the geographical diffusion of restaurants in the provinces. Thanks to the individual means of transport, cars, the cities, served and linked together by national roads – which constituted axes, structuring the geographical space – became places where restaurants could be set up. Hoteliers promoted the opening of restaurants in their establishments in coastal, thermal and climatic cities. Route nationale 7 is famous. Throughout its route, restaurants, and especially great restaurants, multiplied in stopover towns. Thus, tourists discovered local products and regional recipes from Burgundy, Lyon and Provence through these restaurants. Jean-Robert Pitte explains: “To enhance the long journey on the N7, between Paris and the Côte d’Azur, wealthy Parisians then got into the habit of treating themselves to stages of discovery and gastronomic pleasure. Thus, the success of Alexandre Dumaine at the Côte d’Or in Saulieu, of Mère Brazier in Lyon or at the Col de la Luère in summer, of Fernand Point at La Pyramide in Vienna, of Raymond Thuillier at the Oustau de Baumanière in Les Baux-de-Provence, etc. could be explained. Never before would a great chef have dared to serve snails, gratin dauphinois or a simple leg of lamb with herbs. Today, such dishes are required by

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customers alongside lobster and truffle foie gras, which retain their prestige everywhere.” [PIT 96, p. 776, author’s translation] Many restaurants that obtained 3 Michelin stars between 1933 and 1939 were located along and near this “diagonal gourmet” [BAI 91] (see Figure 3.1). On the French Riviera, it was not until the second half of the 19th Century that restaurants developed, thanks to the attendance of British tourists in particular, especially during the winter. The restaurants initially settled in the main cities of the coast, notably in Nice. This development was encouraged by the arrival of the railway, in Cannes in 1863, Nice in 1864 and Monaco in 1868 (and Menton in 1869). In Nice, restaurants developed in the city center, on the avenue de la gare and along the beach front (the Promenade des Anglais) where the great hotels were built. The names of some restaurants referred to renowned Parisian establishments during the first half of the 19th Century, such as Le Bœuf à la Mode and La Maison Dorée, or had an English sound like Garden-House and London House. The development of restaurants led to the scarcity of guesthouses2. In Brittany, the geographical distribution of creperies is illustrative, as Pierre Flatrès demonstrates: “The diffusion of creperies takes many forms. In Lower Brittany, the first increase of creperies was seen in towns and seaside resorts, then in tourist areas in the interior and in small towns and large villages in general. It should be noted that along the coastal belt and, more rarely, inland, creperies could be isolated, at the roadside. Finally, creperies also opened in smaller communities. Only a minority of municipalities do not have one. The fashion for creperies has, this time, clearly crossed the linguistic border, which appears poorly on a distribution map. Creperies are indeed quite numerous in some districts of the eastern Côtes-du-Nord and Morbihan. However, in Ille-et-Vilaine and Loire Atlantique, while creperies have multiplied in the main cities, especially Rennes and Nantes – Rennes beats records with some 70 creperies – and, to a lesser extent, in coastal resorts, they are rare outside the cities.” [FLA 90, p. 137] The geographical diffusion of restaurants in the provinces has generally respected the urban hierarchy. But tourism has been a disruptive factor.

2 See Émilie Tuz, “L’apparition des restaurants de luxe dans les Alpes-Maritimes (1860– 1914)”, available online: www.departement06.fr.

The Geographical Diffusion of Restaurants in Provinces by Cities and City Networks

Figure 3.1. Map of 3-star Michelin restaurants from 1933 to 1939 (source: according to [MES 98, p. 22]). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

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PART 2

The Restaurant in Terms of Places and Geographical Spaces

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Introduction to Part 2

In Géographie du commerce, in 1977, Jacqueline Beaujeu-Garnier and Annie Delobez defined trade as follows: “Trade is a complex process that encompasses everything from production to consumption” [BEA 77, p. 7]. “Trade is the transfer of possession for consideration”, they clarify [BEA 77, p. 9]. In the case of catering, it is a transmission following a culinary transformation. For both geographers, trade exists because of the 3 Ds: a difference that leads to exchange, a desire to sell and buy, and a physical and ideal distance [BEA 77, p. 10]. They refer to a bourgeois model of commerce: “Consumer behavior and sales practices in Western Europe have a family resemblance, reflecting a certain European bourgeois culture.” [BEA 77, p. 50, author’s translation] Regarding the logic of location, Jacqueline Beaujeu-Garnier and Annie Delobez point out that “The purpose of any commercial activity is the attendance of a ‘clientele’ […]. The golden rule of localization must therefore theoretically be the search for the optimum number of visitors” [BEA 77, p. 141, author’s translation]. There are time, resource and cost constraints that hinder desirability. This search for the optimum attendance results in a need for visibility for restaurants. Thus, restaurants are overwhelmingly located in the center and along the main streets, avenues and boulevards of cities (and villages), which constitute structural axes, routes of penetration and convergence. They are vectors of the geographical diffusion of restaurants (see Part 1). They are also located at crossroads and in the squares of cities (and villages), which are hubs, crossroads and points of convergence. These geographical locations allow maximum visibility. In addition, many restaurants have a corner plot, a layout on two or even three sides (bipartite or tripartite facade). This is panoramic positioning on the square itself and on the two adjacent streets.

4 Logics and Strategies for Locating Restaurants

Restaurants exploit the differential qualities of sites and are located according to the relative advantages of the chosen location. The location of a restaurant is determined by the cross-geographical approaches of the chef/restaurateur and the diners who jointly evaluate the qualities, functionalities, highlights and amenities of a place in a specific context. 4.1. The logic of proximity 4.1.1. Proximity to the political and administrative sphere and the business world Already at the Palais-Royal, the restaurant is a place crossed by political speeches and imaginations, frequented and legitimized by politicians. Many political and administrative places are marked by the proximity of restaurants. From the Quai d’Orsay to the boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg, Thiou is an example of such a restaurant. Thiou started cooking and became famous in the 1990s in Les Bains Douches, a night establishment frequented by showbiz customers attracted by the festival. “The customers were friends”, says Apiradee Thirakomen1. It is a trendy place where she invented her signature dish: the Weeping Tiger (tigre qui pleure). She was named Foreign Chef of the Year by the gastronomic guide Pudlo in 2000.

1 Interview with Apiradee Thirakomen, nicknamed Thiou, on September 10, 2018.

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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The restaurant was originally located at 49, quai d’Orsay, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, a few steps from the government building of the Assemblée Nationale, close to ministries and company headquarters. “Success came by word of mouth. It was a clientele of politicians and businessmen, CEOs of large companies. They were looking for discretion, a quiet and discreet restaurant where they felt comfortable”. The clientele was mainly composed of regular customers. Success depended on loyalty. “They all knew each other. The restaurant operated as a private club.”2 In 2016, she moved her restaurant to 94, boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg, in the immediate vicinity of Les Invalides: “It is in the heart of the 7th arrondissement of Paris, which is so dear to her, facing the dome of Les Invalides, that Chef Thiou has just opened her new restaurant”, says the Thiou website3. This new location confirms the desire to maintain the political and business client base: “On the edge of the quiet, tree-lined gardens, and with a splendid view of the Dome of Les Invalides, the address is quite the opposite of the first restaurant where the chef was working, for which only one thing was criticized: the dark aspect of the room […]. Blond wooden panels on the walls, deep cognac-colored leather seats and large bay windows seduce an elegant clientele who are sure of their flavors […]. Some politicians from the nearby Assemblée Nationale have already taken over the place, alongside gourmet shoppers.” [AND 16] Apiradee Thirakomen emphasizes: “The older generation are coming back. It’s a very Parisian restaurant”4. Indeed, tourists represent only about 5% of the clientele. For several years now, she has been advising the restaurant Le Jardin, 22, rue du Portalet in Saint-Tropez, which is frequented by the same type of clientele. On the website of the Saint Tropez restaurant, Thiou is presented as “the empress of Thai cuisine”: “After her restaurant which impressed all of Paris, Thiou invites you to Saint-Tropez to discover her refined Thai cuisine through her immutable style, carefully measured spices and her good agile and well-trained tricks.”5

2 Ibid. 3 http://restaurant-thiou.fr, accessed July 31, 2018. 4 Interview with Thiou on September 10, 2018. 5 www.lejardin-saint-tropez.com, accessed February 23, 2019.

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In Mémoires du restaurant, François-Régis Gaudry recounts the birth of the first business restaurant: “Thus the Champeaux restaurant opened in the 1800s at the corner of rue Vivienne and rue des Filles-Saint-Thomas, almost on the place de la Bourse. Once the Palais Brongniart was completed (in 1827), the establishment became the first business restaurant, where steaks and chickens were eaten while speculating.” [GAU 06, p. 50, author’s translation] The restaurant Lasserre is located in the 8th arrondissement near the avenues of Champs-Élysées and Montaigne. It is a unique business restaurant: “To cross the door of the restaurant Lasserre is like arriving at someone’s home: a cosy elevator takes you to the room, designed like a real small theater. There is a unique blend of luxury and intimacy. The restaurant room, on the first floor, will delight you with its spectacular sunroof, decorated by Louis Touchagues, and allows you to have lunch or dinner in the open air.”6 Indeed, the restaurant offers businessmen a tasting environment subtly and ideally designed by its creator René Lasserre: when it is hot, the roof is open to cool the room and, thus, does not force the diners to remove their jackets. More recently, the restaurant Rural by Marc Veyrat opened in the Palais des Congrès, place de la Porte-Maillot, in the 17th arrondissement. Being a restaurant of the Moma Group, it is clearly aimed, at lunch and dinner, at a clientele of business trips and meetings, as confirmed by the official website of the Office du tourisme et des congrès de Paris: “In the center of Paris, Marc Veyrat has set up his new restaurant, Rural, and reinvented the inn of yesteryear. A timeless and rural setting playing with contrasts and surprises, in the heart of the Palais des Congrès. Ideal for your business lunches and dinners.”7

6 http://www.restaurant-lasserre, accessed July 29, 2018. 7 http://convention.parisinfo.com, accessed July 31, 2018.

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The restaurant wants to break from its immediate geographical environment by “going green in the hypercity”, the website announces8. The decoration designed by the interior designer Lionel Jadot is described by François Simon as follows: “The decor looks like a sheltered area with an exploded barn, with raw concrete, ventilation pipes, benches, wool and veneered wood plaids here and there […]. Don’t expect the big thrills, but rather an atmosphere of uncomplicated meals with colleagues, large tables and good-natured spirit.” [SIM 17, author’s translation] The restaurant is a meeting place: “A continuous service of smiles, generous meals, the wish to welcome everyone: from the youngest children who will have their shed, to comfortable seats for parents. A real place of life: from dinner with friends to a more professional breakfast… A place to meet and exchange, just like the village square and café.”9 The Rural formula offers starter and main course or main course and dessert for €30 or starter, main course and dessert for €35. The buffet of Mémé Caravi’s desserts is well-liked (semolina sabayon with raisins, verbena cream, Savoy cake and blueberry compote, etc.). The opening hours are long: 7 days a week from 10:30 am to 10:30 pm. The distribution and location of Michelin’s 3-star restaurants in Paris in 2019 should be seen in relation to this logic of proximity (see Figure 4.1). 4.1.2. Proximity to the cultural sphere and the artistic world The location of the first restaurants in the Palais-Royal and on the boulevards is an indicator of the dialogical relations between the restaurant and the cultural and artistic world. From the outset, restaurants have been located in the immediate vicinity of cultural sites. Today, more and more frequently, restaurants are being opened within cultural establishments themselves.

8 rural-paris.com, accessed July 31, 2018. 9 Ibid.

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Figure 4.1. Map of the location of 3-star Michelin restaurants in Paris in 2019 (source: Michelin Guide 2019). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

Indeed, there is nowadays a gastronomization of cultural places that offer one or more places for eating with a qualitative objective (in Paris, for example, Monsieur Bleu and Les Grands Verres at the Palais de Tokyo, Loulou at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, La Girafe at the Cité de l’architecture, Café Marly at the Louvre, Georges at the Pompidou Center, etc.), on the one hand, and sometimes when seeking the signature of a known and recognized chef, on the other hand (Guy Savoy at the Monnaie de Paris, the Bras family at the Soulages Museum in Rodez, Alain Ducasse at the Château de Versailles, Éric Guérin at the Musée d’Arts de Nantes, etc.).

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In May 2015, Guy Savoy left his 3-star Michelin restaurant on rue de Troyon to settle at the Monnaie de Paris: “I was guided by an esthetic sense. The old restaurant was located in a small street near the Étoile, without any aesthetic interest”10. About the new restaurant: “What matters is to be in a unique place. The building has been in existence since 1775. Its location is exceptional: on the banks of the Seine, on a corner, at the corner of the Quai de Conti and rue Guénégaud, near the Pont des Arts and the booksellers. There is a history and an esthetic about the place that makes it unique.”11 Located in this way, the restaurant offers magnificent views of Paris: “it is possible to look at Paris from the eleven windows”, underlines Guy Savoy12. The restaurant consists of a row of six lounges: Vert Galant, Bibliothèque, Belles Bacchantes, Bouquinistes, Scènes de Paris and Académies where diners are welcomed by Virginia Mo’s “Sourire” presentation plates. The salt shaker, pepper shaker, two butter dishes and candle holder on the tables take the form of colored drops of water by Laurent Beyne. Some of the dishes are designed by Bruno Moretti. The lounges are decorated with works of contemporary art (notably those of Fabrice Hyber). For Guy Savoy: “Esthetics is a recipe for well-being and even happiness. I have a desire for overall esthetics that has repercussions on the kitchen. Here, the place has an unconscious way of influencing the kitchen and dining room teams. It necessarily puts you in a state of respect. Here, the work is perceived and carried out differently. The atmosphere is more peaceful.”13 The chef has invented a dessert dedicated to this place described as “unique and sublime”: the “Purement chocolat sous la Monnaie de Paris” – a crispy tube containing a dark chocolate mousse, cocoa sorbet and a fleur de sel biscuit, accompanied by a chocolate cromesquis. Alain Ducasse and Elior Group created Musiam in April 2017, a contraction of museum and the word “miam” (meaning “yum” in French): “As an extension of their strategic agreement concluded in 2015, Elior Group and Ducasse Paris are creating Musiam, a new entity that 10 Interview with Guy Savoy, October 19, 2018. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

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combines their expertise to position themselves in the cultural tourism market. The birth of Musiam, intended to become a major player in the field of catering for French museums and cultural establishments, consolidates the partnership between Elior Group and Ducasse Paris around the exchange of know-how and experience for the design of new catering methods. 60% owned by Ducasse Paris and 40% by Elior Group, this new entity integrates the restoration activities granted to museums, monuments and cultural sites currently managed by Areas, the Elior Group brand dedicated to the travel industry.”14 In 2017, Alain Ducasse created the Alain Ducasse Culture entity15. In April 2017, the Musiam brand was created, “managed by the joint venture as part of Alain Ducasse Culture”16. According to Philippe Salle, President and CEO of Elior Group, “this partnership with Ducasse Paris makes it possible to place gastronomy at the heart of historic sites that are emblematic of French culture”17. For Alain Ducasse, this is a strategic development: “Recognized in the commercial and managed catering sector, Ducasse Paris has already acquired strong experience in catering in cultural venues with IDAM at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha and OreDucasse at the Château de Versailles, in Versailles. Musiam represents a growth lever that is consistent with the deployment of the company’s strategy.”18 Musiam has 400 employees. Concerning the culinary offer, “there is a corporate chef for the 40 points of sale to set up a framework and a homogeneity”19. Thus: “Following an inventory, the Musiam teams will gradually submit recommendations to the licensors for a quality restoration, adapted to the diversity of customers and exceptional sites emblematic of French heritage.”20

14 April 2017 press release provided by Ducasse Paris, translated here into English. 15 The Alain Ducasse group is made up of nine entities or “businesses”: catering, hospitality (inns and the Les Collectionneurs network), consulting, training, publishing, chocolate, coffee, culture and reception (particularly events in museums). 16 Interview with Lyonel Nowitz, Director of Concessions Operations of Alain Ducasse Entreprise, on December 28, 2018. 17 April 2017 press release, translated into English. 18 Ibid. 19 Interview with Lyonel Nowitz on December 28, 2018. 20 April 2017 press release, translated into English.

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These cultural places, museums, monuments, theaters and operas, in whose immediate vicinity and sometimes in whose heart restaurants are located, are places of leisure as well as tourist practices. 4.1.3. Proximity to food retail and supply points Restaurants are crossed by incoming flows of goods. It is therefore logical that they should be located as close as possible to food shops and places of supply for reasons related to economy, convenience, freshness, taste and gourmet atmosphere. Many city center markets (covered markets in particular) are thus surrounded by restaurants: Markets of the City of Biarritz, La Baule and Pouliguen markets, NotreDame de Versailles market halls, etc. Many chefs like to frequent them and use them as a source of food (especially for plants). The “market return” menus reflect this market taste. Sometimes, restaurants are set up within the markets themselves. The Marché des Enfants Rouges located at 39, rue de Bretagne in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris is an assembly of vendors and restaurants/corners. It is described on the official website of the Office du tourisme et congrès de Paris: “The Enfants Rouges covered market, created in 1615, has not aged a bit! The oldest food market in the capital is located in the Haut-Marais, a stone’s throw from rue de Bretagne. Parisians and tourists fill up on fresh produce by enjoying the colorful and fragrant stalls. In a friendly and good-natured atmosphere, we improvise a lunch break at the Italian grocery store, at the organic stand, at the Lebanese caterer or at the Japanese snack bar. On Sundays, brunch lovers flock to Estaminet, a restaurant nestled in the heart of the market, or to La Petite Fabrique.”21 The market has about 20 restaurants and food stands (Le Traiteur Marocain, Le Stand, Corossol, Au coin bio, Chez Taeko, Le Burger fermier des Enfants Rouges, L’Estaminet des Enfants Rouges, Chez Ahmed, Mezze libanais de Mario, Chez Alain Miam Miam, Les Enfants du Marché, etc.). All around the market, in the parallel and perpendicular streets, many restaurants are crowded as well as food artisans and wine merchants. François-Régis Gaudry presents the restaurant Mr. T, 38, rue de Saintonge: “Coping with the sweet hysteria of a trendy neighborhood, overcoming your fear of the hipster trap, facing a name doped with testosterone and tattooed fat arms wielding the shaker, coming face to face with yet another Japanese chef messing around behind a counter… Strangely 21 http://convention.parisinfo.com, accessed July 30, 2018.

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enough, so much effort sometimes leads to reassurance. Mr. T has enough spirit and energy to lead us on a thrilling adventure. The decor? Clever, it plays two games: on one side, an elegant bistro space with Baumann chairs; on the other, an acid terrazzo counter on a background of concrete walls sculpted by Vassilis Karatzas, a striking signature of street art […]. In this singular place, the thin Japanese blade deceives its world. At first glance, the menu looks like a ‘slash kitchen’. But behind the ‘beetroot/raspberry/gorgonzola’ there is a little jewel: a pulpy salad in shades of red, seasoned with a creamy Piedmontese cheese sauce. The ‘taco squid/tomato/avocado’ reveals a crispy corn tortilla, deliciously garnished, delivering a sharp play of color, texture and acidity. Comfort food within reach of the gastrointestinal tract.” [GAU 17, author’s translation] It is also the same at Mr. T kebab (see Figure 4.2). Created at the request of King Louis XIII under the name “Petit marché du Marais”, it is protected as a historical monument by inscription by decree of March 8, 1982. Today, this logic of proximity to food shops and places of supply is reactivated thanks to the enthusiasm for local food, the search for short trips and the sustained interest in food traceability. In connection with these local logics, commercial and tourist practices are being deployed and are reflected, among other things, in the number of people visiting restaurants.

Figure 4.2. Mr. T kebab from the restaurant Mr. T, 38, rue de Saintonge (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

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4.2. Accessibility logics A large number of restaurants are located along or even within transport networks and hubs. Transit and waiting areas related to transport are very frequently used by restaurants. These locations are in line with accessibility. DEFINITION.– “Accessibility can be defined as the offer of mobility, which does not depend on the decisions of the person who is mobile or on who decides on mobility but on the other components of the travel system he or she uses. Accessibility includes all possible movements in a given situation […]. Defined as part of a market, accessibility presupposes that it must be met with a ‘solvency’, which is not only monetary. The different solvencies, i.e. the ability to respond positively to an offer considered interesting in itself, are the result of various skills, including, for an individual’s mobility: availability of time to make the trip, knowledge of the travel services offered or the ability to take advantage of the trip. These various kinds of skills are articulated in decision-making and arbitration processes, the result of which will or will not be a choice of travel […]. In all cases, accessibility defines a travel virtual map, which includes the trips made and a large number of other elements. Taking into account the relationship between the virtual (accessibility) and the current (travel) is one way of approaching the concept of mobility.” [LEV 03, p. 35] The restaurant Le Flandrin, 4, place Tattegrain, in the 16th arrondissement, is located in the former café at the station of the Petite Ceinture line, opened in 1878 on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition, now the RER C station Avenue Henri-Martin (Ermont-Eaubonne line at the Champ-de-Mars). The restaurant was opened in 1932 by the grandfather of Jacques Malafosse, the current owner. A few steps from the 16th arrondissement town hall: “Le Flandrin, a former SNCF station with Art Deco architecture, spanning the tracks of the former ‘petite ceinture’, has become a super chic brasserie, where the kitchen has just gone up a notch […]. The kitchen has risen to the level of the recent decor created by the inspired designer Joseph Dirand […]. Here is a chic, surprising, fashionable place, with a warm welcome, impeccable service but, fortunately, always dedicated to its traditional clientele, over whom the discreet Jacques Malafosse watches over. As in Visconti’s The Leopard, inspired by the novel by the Sicilian writer Lampedusa, ‘if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change’…” [BEA 18]

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The restaurant Le Train Bleu at Gare de Lyon in Paris was built by architect Marius Toudoire for the 1900 Universal Exhibition for the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée Railway Company (PLM). It acquired a national and international reputation as the Buffet de la Gare de Lyon, and was renamed in 1963 as a tribute to the ParisVintimille blue train that runs alongside the Mediterranean Sea. The restaurant is an invitation to travel: “Embark on an unforgettable journey aboard a legendary train from Paris: Le Train Bleu. This gastronomic institution welcomes you to the heart of Gare de Lyon, in the 12th arrondissement, the central district of the capital”22. The restaurant, which serves around 500 people a day, offers dishes revisited by Maison Rostang: “Thus, the real gratin dauphinois, without cheese or eggs, a Rostang signature dish, enhances the famous roast leg of lamb (with a slicing car), a must-have on the menu of the establishment”23 (see Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.3. Roast leg of lamb, cut up and served in the slicing car (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

In a growing number of stations, there is now a dynamic of “gastronomization” which is reflected in a qualitative reorientation of restaurants, catering points and food shops, on the one hand, and the commitment of chefs known and recognized as

22 www.le-train-bleu.com, accessed August 2018. 23 www.le-train-bleu.com, accessed February 23, 2019.

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culinary advisors, on the other hand: Éric Fréchon at Saint-Lazare station, Thierry Marx at Gare du Nord, Michel Roth at Metz station and Christian Le Squer at Rennes station, etc. This dynamic was initiated by Patrick Ropert, director of SNCF’s Gares & Connexions, who also launched the gourmet operation “Chefs de gare: la gastronomie entre en gare”(meaning “Station masters: gastronomy enters the station”): “At the crossroads of cities and regions, stations have always maintained a privileged relationship with local cuisine, particularly through station buffets that carried the flavors of French heritage. This openness to taste prefigures the change in perception of stations: they are no longer mere places of connections and flows of traffic, but have become places in their own right in people’s lives. Today, contemporary stations position gastronomy at the crossroads of local, national and international mobility, with numerous catering offers and the arrival of Michelin star chefs.”24 Léonor Lumineau presents this dynamic: “Today, SNCF Gares & Connexions wants to ‘rebuild stations into real city districts, ‘city boosters’, notably through catering’, [Patrick Ropert] asserts. The interest is also economic: 10 million people pass through French stations every day. So many potential customers. ‘25% of our turnover is generated in the catering sector (the second largest purchased item after newspapers, NDLR). We are not only serving the trains, we are also serving the city,’ says Patrick Ropert. In addition to restaurants run by top chefs, Gares & Connexions has launched a more general policy aimed at welcoming top-quality brands (La Place’s fresh fruit and vegetables, premium bakers Bara and Éric Kayser, American Five Guys hamburgers at the Gare du Nord, in particular) […]. The recipe is simple. ‘You need the chef, the industrial support and the location,’ says the director of Stations & Connexions. L’Étoile du nord, by chef Thierry Marx, is financed and operated by Lagardère Travel Retail France, a specialist in retail trade in transport areas […].

24 www.gares-sncf.com, accessed July 7, 2018.

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Concerning the layout, the chefs also had to adapt to the station clientele. Le Lazare has a suitcase locker room. Decorated by architect Karine Lewkowicz with touches of leather, wood, brass and copper, there is a lounge for morning coffee, a corner with large tables for business meals, a restaurant room and a central bar for quick snacks. L’Étoile du Nord has three areas: a brasserie on the ground floor for a quick visit, a bar on the first floor for a glass of wine and a good meal, and a bakery for takeaway dishes.” [LUM 17, author’s translation] Station restaurants (within the station) are thus considered, within the spaces currently designed by SNCF, as levers for animation and local development on the geographical scale of districts in the heart of cities, as privileged tools insofar as they promote the articulation between density/diversity and quality. The representation of routes shows a willingness to manage constraints related to travel (and distance) and to approve temporary sedentarization. These are restaurants that want to be very welcoming, without any frills. Without any flamboyant decoration, they offer a simple and tasty cuisine, along the main national and departmental roads (Le Paris-Nice in Brignoles, for example). In 1934, the Guide des relais routiers, the first guide on routes, appeared: “Good, cheap restaurants for everyone. The Guide des relais routiers continues with determination the route it has been based on since 1934. It will take you along the national and other departmental roads of deep France, where you can eat well, where you can drink good small regional wines at a good price. Thanks to the restaurant addresses classified by department, region, welcoming quality and, of course, by level of catering with its famous Relais Casserole, you can make regional gastronomic stops.”25 Even if highway restaurants only exceptionally meet the culinary and gustatory expectations of diners, there is also a dynamic of “gastronomization”. Espace Gourmand Capucin signé Bras in the Millau Viaduct area (A75 highway) was built on an old caussenard farm in Brocuéjouls (see Figures 4.4 and 4.5).

25 relais-routiers.com, accessed July 7, 2018, quote translated from French.

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Figure 4.4. Inside Espace Gourmand Capucin signé Bras (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Figure 4.5. Outside Espace Gourmand Capucin signé Bras (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

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The gourmet proposal is based on an innovation: the capucin. This is a “coneshaped cake, crispy and soft at the same time, cooked on the spot and garnished with local products chosen and cooked according to Michel and Sébastien’s recipes”26. Starting from the shape of a capucin, “a very old cast iron kitchen utensil which consists of a long stem finished with a conical funnel pierced at its tip”, Michel Bras “then relied on the skills of the professional high schools of Decazeville, specialized in metalwork, and Rodez, for the electrical part, to develop the machine to manufacture capucins and able to transform the dough into cones”27. The gourmet area is a real success, which is explained by the possibility of a “fast cook rather than fast food” tasting: “In 2009, the first capucins were served in this place, established and managed by André Bras, and delighted visitors, happy to find a hot coffee and its toasted fouace or a capucin topped with veal from Segala or aligot28 with Comprégnac truffles”29. The same applies to the restaurant (cafeteria) at the Poulet de Bresse highway service station on the A39 high between Bourg-en-Bresse and Lons-le-Saunier. It participates, through the tourist practices of discovery (taste) and shopping, in the promotion of Bresse PDO chicken: “However, this area in Dommartin-lès-Cuiseaux has become the second largest chicken seller in Bresse after the restaurants of chef Georges Blanc […]. ‘There was a demand from tourists who wanted to bring something back from Bresse. Today, the area sells between 15,000 and 17,000 chickens per year,’ explains Jean-Claude Marquis, who breeds for slaughter in Varennes-Saint-Sauveur. He supplies the shop at the highway station. Sales are divided between the shop, which has 5,000 to 7,000 chickens sold per year, and the self-service restaurant, which has about 10,000 chickens.” [PRO 17] Finally, in airports, the dynamics of “gastronomization” is also real. For example, Exki and Caviar House & Prunier Seafood Bar restaurants were recently opened at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris (Terminal 2E, Hall K and Hall M reserved area). At the same time, the chef of Grand Véfour, Guy Martin, is in charge of the I love Paris restaurant, which is also located in Terminal 2E, a reserved area in Hall L:

26 bras.fr, consulted on August 8, 2018. 27 Ibid. 28 Aligot is a dish made from cheese and mixed with mashed potatoes. It is found in the Aubrac region in southern Massif Central of France and is very like fondue. 29 bras.fr, consulted on August 8, 2018.

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“‘Our strategy is to offer a gastronomic experience that is emblematic of Parisian life.’ These are the words of Augustin de Romanet, CEO of Paris Aéroport (ADP group), who wants to attract the largest number of passengers to Paris airports by offering them distinguished cuisine. Gilles Choukroun was the first Michelin star chef to settle in Paris-Orly, in the heart of the public area of the southern terminal. His restaurant, named CUP, for Cuisine urbaine parisienne [Urban Parisian Cuisine], opened its doors last June in an urban market setting hosted by artist Da Cruz. The menu revisits brasserie classics while offering luxury snacks with oriental specialities: grilled veal kebabs or hot dogs at €11.50, fish & mint tzatziki chips at €16, not to mention the traditional ‘dish of the day/coffee’ packages priced at €14. Grand Véfour’s two-starred chef, Guy Martin, won the title of Best Airport Food at the FAB conference (Airport Food and Beverage), just ahead of Gordon Ramsay and his Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food restaurant at London Heathrow. Inaugurated last year, the I love Paris restaurant, entirely decorated by India Mahdavi, offers traditional French dishes (blanquette de veau, potau-feu30) and more contemporary dishes (vegetarian burgers or mango carpaccio), as well as a selection of high-end sandwiches and a champagne bar.” [HER 16, author’s translation] Whatever the journey, restaurants located along or within transport networks and hubs meet a demand from passengers as well as seek to establish and maintain links to the places, through a logic of accessibility. 4.3. The logic of landscape charm Restaurants are located in a landscaped environment considered remarkable and from which the desire to eat and drink is born. This is the case for many restaurants located in the mountains. The Flocons de Sel restaurant in Megève is one such example: “All this is shown this winter on the clear representative map of the Flocons de Sel, built on the edge of the mountain – the sky above you, the wooden chalets to experience and enjoy a light-filled dining room with a terrace facing the mountain. This Megève site, integrated into the alpine setting, allows you to enjoy this performance in full harmony with the air of the summits. When a chef feels good in their nest, happy to live by their passion, plate performance has the chance 30 Blanquette de veau is a French veal ragout. Pot-au-feu is a beef stew.

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to be dazzling. Happiness at the table, absolutely.” [RAB 15, author’s translation] The restaurant’s website emphasizes the mountain landscape: “The exceptional natural setting offering a unique place for the establishment, the atmosphere of the house, the spirit of the cuisine, the creativity of the chef and the quality of service are the ingredients that distinguish this outstanding restaurant, awarded 3 Michelin stars.”31 Similarly, the opinions posted on TripAdvisor often highlight the landscape qualities: “the magnificent setting that surrounds the place”, “this superb place in the middle of nature”, “the magnificent setting away from the center of Megève” and also “the place on the mountainside with a view of the mountain pastures”32. This link is authorized by a geographical anchoring of the cook: “The ‘hamlet’ of chalets is revealed at the bend of the curves that wind up to three kilometers above Megève. It is there, between the meadows of the mountain pastures and the forests, at an altitude of 1,300 m, that the 3-starred chef Emmanuel Renaut came to locate his Flocons de sel seven years ago. A place that reflects the image of this entrepreneur with the appearance of an excited teenager: always ready to marvel at the nature around him, eager to put on his boots to hunt for mushrooms or to fetch the wood that will flavor his recipes, inexhaustible when he talks about the plants carefully aligned in the mini-gardens distributed in the ‘territory’ and those that perfume the paths separating the different points of his little paradise […]. Emmanuel Renaut offers nature directly, from producer to consumer. A nature in all its most vegetal aspects […]. Both around the mountain and on the plate.” [COS 15, author’s translation] (see Figure 4.6) Restaurants can be located high up a natural site, allowing a remarkable view of the landscape that can be enjoyed while eating. This location is to be attuned with a landscape esthetic that places the diner in an overlooking position of “domination” of the landscape. Le Belvédère restaurant in Saint-Germain-la-Chambotte offers a panoramic view of Lac du Bourget. The restaurant located “20 minutes from Aix-les-Bains, 30 minutes from Annecy and Chambéry” offers “an exceptional view over the entire Lac du Bourget. Built in 1882, the restaurant Le Belvédère

31 www.floconsdesel.com, accessed August 6, 2018, translated into English by the author. 32 Accessed July 6, 2018, translated to English by author.

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caught the attention of Queen Victoria who, on several occasions, brought it international fame”33. (a)

(b)

Figure 4.6. a) Megève meadowsweet faisselle in a thin shell; b) strawberry and oxalis tartar (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

33 www.belvedere-la-chambotte.com, accessed July 6, 2018.

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The restaurant La Grande Cascade is located in Napoleon III’s former hunting lodge, and offers a view of the Bois de Boulogne. This “natural” atmosphere of the restaurant was heightened with the extension of a very popular terrace: “During the summer months, La Grande Cascada transforms itself, offering a retreat into the sunshine. Situated within the verdant stageset of the Bois de Boulogne, the restaurant boasts a magnificent terrace where guests can enjoy the finest cuisine in the open air. The lush flora and the quiet tranquillity of the Bois de Boulogne offer welcome respite in which one can enjoy a leisurely lunch or dinner away from the tumult of central Paris. A second covered courtyard is the perfect place to escape the office, a fine foray into the natural landscape for aperitifs and a selection of carefully-selected wines by the glass.”34 Similarly, the location of Le Corot restaurant in Ville-d’Avray was chosen for the esthetic view of the ponds and the forest of Fausses-Reposes: “West of Paris, Ville-d’Avray, birthplace of the Corot ponds, is a preserved commune where many artists and writers have chosen to live for two centuries, away from prying eyes. As early as the 19th Century, Ville-d’Avray became a holiday resort, attracting many personalities from the cultural scene who came to recharge their batteries at the edge of the ponds. Artists, painters, writers and musicians were attracted by its charms and come to be inspired by it. Today Ville-d’Avray, a listed site, enhances its beautiful heritage and remains a cultural center, rich in the memory of Corot’s paintings immortalizing the forest and the ponds, now called the ‘étangs de Corot’ (Corot ponds), in homage to the Impressionist trailblazers.”35 The hotel and restaurant offers a “Saveurs & Nature” (flavor and nature) workshop which includes a visual incorporation of the landscape before its gustatory incorporation: “Walk through the forest with a naturopath to discover edible plants. You can also enjoy a delicious vegetable lunch in our starred restaurant Le Corot where you will discover the taste of the herbs seen that very morning”. Along with Le Corot and the Café des Artistes, Les Paillotes is the third restaurant in the “chic and retro” establishment: “At the end of the 19th Century, the Cabassud inn was a

34 http://www.restaurantsparisiens.com/la-grande-cascade/en/home-page-en/. 35 www.etangs-corot.com, accessed July 6, 2018, author’s translation.

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meeting place for many painters, poets and musicians. The sound of laughter, lively discussions and dancing steps still resonates today on the raised terrace”36. In the city, this logic can be linked to the amenities of the built landscape of the covered passages. Thus, the Passage des Panoramas boasts around twenty restaurants over a length of 133 meters (see Figure 4.7). It is the oldest covered pathway in Paris, opened in 1799 between boulevard Montmartre in the north and rue Saint-Marc in the south, in the 2nd arrondissement. In 1934, the architect Grisart opened three additional galleries inside the block: the Saint-Marc, Feydeau and Montmartre galleries. Caffè Stern’s website anchors the restaurant in the venue’s history in the Passage des Panormas, situated in a corner and at the intersection of the Passage and the Galerie des Variétés (see Figure 4.8): “Caffè Stern is located in the Passage des Panoramas, the oldest of the seventeen covered pathways of Paris that survived Haussmann’s great urban renovation work during the 19th Century. Most of the richly decorated galleries disappeared to make room for the first department stores. The premises that now house Caffè Stern were originally an engraving workshop, opened in 1834 by Moïse Stern and Anselme Aumoitte [...]. Moïse Stern eventually took over the business in his name and the Maison Stern bookplate was changed to an upright lion whose front paw rested on the MS monogram. It can be found on the sign that still stands above the front door. This sign also contains two date, 1867 and 1997, which correspond to the Gold Medals that were awarded to Stern at the Universal Exhibitions [...]. In 2008, Maison Stern left the Passage des Panoramas and move to 131, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, in the 7th arrondissement. On July 10, 2009, the premises of Maison Stern, its decorations and furniture, were entered into the French Historical Monuments Register. In September 2014, after two years of restoration work, the Alajmo brothers opened the doors of this historic place once again. Under the name Caffè Stern, the workshop has been reborn with a new soul, that of a refined Italian café bistro, and continues, like its predecessor, the same quest for excellence.”37

36 Ibid. 37 alajmo.it, accessed July 6, 2018, author’s translation.

Logics and Strategies for Locating Restaurants

Figure 4.7. Map of the location of the Passage des Panoramas restaurants in Paris in 2019 (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

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Figure 4.8. Caffè Stern, 47, Passage des Panoramas (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

The Passage des Panoramas offers a particularly dense and diversified range of restaurants: from the 2-star restaurant in the Michelin Guide (La table du 53) to the crêperie (Bisou Crêperie, see Figure 4.9) and trendy restaurants such as Noglu, Canard & Champagne and Astair.

Figure 4.9. At Bisou Crêperie, the “Freak crêpe”: Nutella, caramel, Breton shortbread, mini marshmallows, popcorn and whipped cream (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

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Since January 21, 2019, the Passage des Panoramas has included a new 1-star Michelin restaurant: Racines (see Figure 4.10).

Figure 4.10. In Racines, the vitello tonnato (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

In direct link with the logic of landscape charm, going to a restaurant often involves going for a walk, which helps create the right atmosphere for tasting and enjoying the landscape. 4.4. The logic of assimilation The restaurant is a tool for assimilation. Through the food product cooked and eaten, assimilation can be effective for both the chef and the diners. 4.4.1. Affectivity The logic of affectivity is reflected, on the chef’s side, in the construction of a sensitive link and a visceral relationship at the restaurant’s location. Frequently, the chef is a native who does not plan to cook elsewhere. From the point of view of diners, frequenting these “affective” restaurants can fuel the affirmation of an attachment to the place.

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In Lescar, a Béarnaise town with a population of 9,958 in 2015 (INSEE), Olivier Nicolau is a chef of the Arraditz restaurant, which means “roots” in Béarnais. The restaurant is presented on the website as: “Located at the foot of the ramparts of the medieval city of Lescar near Pau, the restaurant Arraditz combines the past with the contemporary in a new and refined setting”. Born in Bordeaux, Olivier Nicolau arrived in Béarn with his parents at the age of 5. He grew up in Lescar. After many professional experiences in the South West with Michelin star chefs, he decided to take over a restaurant that had been in operation for more than 50 years. “One weekend when I returned to my parents’ house, I was surprised to see that the establishment was closed. I checked with the city hall. I discovered that the restaurant was to be taken over.” It was then obvious to him to settle down then and there. His parents live 5 minutes from the restaurant. After two years of work, Arraditz opened on October 7, 2014. Affectivity is also expressed through supply – “95% of the products used are local, even the cooking oil”38: “Snails come from Lannecaube, asparagus from Aire-sur-Adour, citrus fruits from Eugénie-les-Bains, from Thierry Dupouy, farmed suckling lamb from Amatik from Gotein-Libarrenx, vegetables from Bastelica in Verlus, peanuts are grown in Soustons. The fish comes from the farthest, from Saint-Jean-de-Luz.”39 The chef explains: “I don’t enter into business with a supplier without visiting their farm. I talk to them, I find out the season of the product, when the product starts and when it finishes.”40 It is therefore a question, for each product, of testing its producer, of establishing with him bonds of knowledge and recognition, of trust, of sympathy and even of familiarity. Indeed, Olivier Nicolau shares the same geographical and professional culture with his suppliers, as well as the same preferences regarding local taste. Affectivity is also expressed through cooking. Even though it is not a Béarnaise cuisine, the tastes are Béarnaise: with the culinary enhancement of greuil in a dessert for example (Corsican clementine soft biscuit made from warm French toast served warm and creamy and with clementine salad, greuil farmer sorbet and matcha green tea). Some culinary techniques and recipes belong to the Béarnaise repertoire: escaoutoun (Presa roasted and braised ibérica pork, around the corn, escaoutoun linked to the farm sheep of the Cruhot, homemade black pudding polenta and red wine jus) and arrasimat (candied wild strawberries like a “arrasimat” (or “raisinée” (sour marmalade))), rhubarb and fresh strawberries, ogeu/verbena/mint sorbet and caramelized Arlette biscuits) for example. It is based in particular on Simin Palay’s

38 www.arraditz.com/, consulted in March 2018. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid.

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book La cuisine du pays. It is also possible to taste a traditional Béarnaise beer from the Naba brasserie in Oloron-Sainte-Marie. This assimilation makes it possible to “make oneself known to the locals because the best advertising remains word-of-mouth, it takes longer, but it is the surest way”41. Arraditz bears the “Restaurant de qualité” (which roughly translates to: “good-quality restaurant”) label of the Collège culinaire de France42. The logic of affectivity also explains the appearance of one of his friend’s restaurants, of Béarnaise origin, about 30 kilometers from Lescar, in Morlanne, a town with 581 inhabitants in 2015 (INSEE). In June 2008, David Ducassou opened Cap é Tôt, a name meaning “from head to toe” in Béarnaise. The chef was born in 1974 in Morlanne and grew up there watching the cafés gradually disappear. After acquiring a solid professional background in Parisian restaurants, David Ducassou decided to take over the village’s last bar, equipped with a bowling alley (nine lanes), and introduced an original decor: “Outside, a few pots and pans and cutlery at the entrance are an invitation to discover this totally unusual restaurant: you will see on one side, in front of the bar, a room with bistro tables and chairs, with an original wooden floor featuring 475 names of Béarnaise villages and, by a few glass plates, you will see the cellar, installed in the very heart of the bowling alley. On the other side, there is a cosy atmosphere and a contemporary decorated restaurant. There are two separate rooms for different meals, one which is reserved for the gastronomic menu where eight dishes are offered for tasting. The cuisine, prepared by chef David Ducassou, is based on the best values of the region. It is presented either on contemporary plates or in copper pans […]. A good time for tradition and innovation! And this year the chef is opening a new establishment in the town: Les cochonneries du Cap é Tôt.”43 This room is lit by large lamps that take the shape of Basque-Béarnaise berets. The menu, which is constantly being reinvented, offers both classic dishes, sometimes with a Béarnaise flavor (Camou Cihygue doe steak, young carrots, 41 Ibid. 42 Core values: independence, transparency, engagement, sharing and diversity. Three convictions: 1) there is no quality cuisine without a quality product; 2) there is no quality product without transparency regarding the origin of the products and regarding the breeding and cultivation methods; and 3) behind each product and each quality restaurant, there is the story of a person and a location (restaurantdequalite.fr, accessed on July 8, 2018). 43 Petit Futé 2019 guide.

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vinous jus or Minute croquettes of veal feet, poached egg, Béarnaise emulsion) and dishes that invite you to enjoy a tasty journey (fillet of fried Norwegian skreï, vegetable wok, soya dressing, groundnut ginger). It is indeed a kitchen that creates the necessary conditions so that diners can return without risking getting bored with the reinvention, and can venture into new products and tastes without feeling shocked or provoked by a well-balanced creativity. The “Russian” fennel almond, celery sorbet44 dessert is a representative example: the Russian (or Russian of Oloron) with almonds, a pastry speciality of Oloron-Sainte-Marie, is well-known to all Béarnaise residents, but it is topped here with a butter cream with fennel seeds and flowers rather than praline cream. Today, Morlanne has its own restaurant and its new guest table/wine and dining bar (Les Cochonneries du Cap é Tôt) as well as a joint farm and hostel, and a tea room. David Ducassou, who only cooks in Morlanne, has made his dream come true45. The logic of affectivity therefore sometimes constitutes a deviation from the urban environment. Despite the difficulties, in Lescar as in Morlanne, restaurants beat in the heart of the place as the two chefs’ hearts beat for the place and their restaurants. 4.4.2. Appropriation Always pursuing assimilation, the location of foreign kitchen restaurants reflects a desire for real and/or ideal appropriation of the spaces in which they are located. As a result, their locations frequently reveal singular concentrations. In Paris, Greek restaurants are concentrated in the Latin Quarter, particularly on rue de la Huchette and rue Saint-Séverin. Rue de la Huchette has been famous since the Middle Ages for its roast meat sellers, caterers, cabarets and inns. It is hosted by the Théâtre de la Huchette (1948, a theater specializing in plays by Eugène Ionesco) and the Caveau de la Huchette (1948, a jazz club). At number 11 rue la Huchette, broth can be found. In December 1972, the first Parisian pedestrian district was circumscribed around the Church of Saint-Séverin. This district now has one of the highest concentrations of restaurants and the highest concentration of Greek restaurants in Paris. In a very similar way, Greek restaurants offer slightly different dishes, mainly gyros and souvlaki, moussakas and Greek salads. Greek restaurants that are both more original and of a finer quality, offering more personal and creative culinary preparations, are found in more dispersed

44 The dishes mentioned above made up the dinner menu on March 8, 2018. 45 Exchanges with David Ducassou, March 8, 2018 and April 27, 2019.

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and temporary locations such as Evi Evane on rue Guisarde (6th arrondissement)46, Etsi on rue Eugène-Carrière (18th), Ikône on rue Saint-Denis (2nd), Le Mavrommatis on rue Daubenton (5th) and Yaya (in Saint-Ouen) for example. In the former Greek district of Ménilmontant, near the Greek-Turkish culinary restaurant Zagros (boulevard de Ménilmontant), Profil grec, on rue de Savies (20th), is a delicatessen with a few tables where you can eat. In his article “À Paris, la cuisine grecque sort des clichés” (In Paris, Greek cuisine is escaping clichés), Camille Labro [LAB 17] insists on the distinctive culinary offer of these geographically dispersed restaurants. The journalist mentions Pierre-Julien Chantzios, co-creator with his brother of the Kalios brand and the Yaya restaurant: “Most people who have never been to Greece think that Greek cuisine is about gyros and plates being broken in rue de la Huchette. But those who have spent time there know that it is an incredibly varied, subtle and generous cuisine.” The Mavrommatis brothers, originally from Cyprus, run four restaurants: Le Mavrommatis on rue Daubenton (5th), Le Bistrot Mavrommatis on rue Duphot (1st), Les Délices d’Aphorodite on rue Candolle (5th) and Le Bistro Mavrommatis Passy on avenue Paul Doumer (16th). Opened in 1993, Le Mavrommatis is the only Greek Michelin star restaurant in Paris (1 star in the Michelin Guide 2018) and the first Greek Michelin star restaurant located outside Greece itself [MAL 18]. In 2018, the restaurant’s decor was revisited by Régis Botta, inspired by the architecture of the troglodyte houses on the island of Santorini. Intimate lighting and sound systems have been redesigned by Roger Dubois. According to Andréas Mavrommatis’ wishes, the new decor is deliberately refined, without the usual clichés of Greek restaurants: “To reflect the spirit of Greece and the Mediterranean, the restaurant is carved into a sculptural vaulted space, punctuated by arches and

46 Restaurant named Foreign Table of the Year 2017 by the Pudlo guide, author’s translation: “From a stone and beam tavern in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Nikolaou sisters, Maria in the dining room, Dina in the kitchen, have made a discreet embassy of gourmet Greece. The best olive oils, the wines of the Peloponnese and the islands, the recipes of yesteryear, lightened, reviewed, magnified with art: this is what is proposed here with discretion, wisdom, cheerfulness and modesty. We trust the mezze of the day. And we enjoy the fine chickpea or ‘fava’ purée, served with octopus and strawberries, tarama – the best in Paris! – spiced with bottarga and lemon zest, dolmades or vine leaves stuffed with raisins, dried tomatoes and Greek yogurt, or the pretty cod keftedes that make the most delicate appetizers to share. In short, with the welcome ouzo, here is a place that takes you directly to the Cyclades.”

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pierced with alcoves. Everything is curved and volute. All materials are as if washed by the sea, salt and the Sun. On the ground, a sandblasted marble floor. On the walls, facades in raw walnut, pierced with typical inlaid patterns. Behind one of them, the marquetry work leads to the kitchen […]. The chair itself was created for the restaurant. This armchair is inspired by a Mediterranean plant, and is made up of 3 bronze leather petals, placed on the carved wooden and brushed brass legs.”47 The cuisine is without folklore, with Greek taste notes such as scallops from Port-en-Bessin, carpaccio, marinated shells with spices, smoked bottarga seasoning from Messolonghi, steamed monkfish, sea urchin tongue and chickpeas, tahini sauce with cuttlefish ink and chocolate-olive and basil, taïnori ganache with olives and basil, confit kumquat and orange flower ice cream. The restaurant’s customers are “people left of the river” and become the “Greek people of Paris”: “Long before the star, the chef had already managed to attract some celebrities: from Ormesson, then President Hollande, or even this young minister named Macron. But also Delanoë, or Ayrault who came for his wedding anniversary […]. The Greek people of Paris are also regulars there. The late Georges Moustaki even wrote the foreword to the cookbook. The filmmaker Costa-Gavras, who lives in the neighborhood, sometimes visits as though he is a neighbor. TV presenter Nikos Aliagas, who has recently started practicing photography, offered to take shots for the latest restaurant in the 14th arrondissement.” [MAL 18, author’s translation] There is a remarkable concentration of Japanese restaurants in the Little Tokyo and the Japantown areas, more specifically along rue Sainte-Anne, which has about 20 restaurants, most of them located side by side (see Figure 4.11). This concentration of restaurants (of Japanese origin as well as other Asian denominations and those that are non-Asian too) is accompanied by the joint presence of Japanese and non-Japanese food shops (Asian and Italian in particular). It is interesting to note the presence of a Roellinger Spice Warehouse and the Cité des Voyages of the Voyageurs du Monde agency. The settlement of Japanese immigrants in this area began in the 1960s. The first Japanese restaurant, Takara, opened in 1963: “The oldest Japanese restaurant in Paris is not located on rue SainteAnne… but next door, on rue Molière. Originally created near the 47 “Le Mavrommatis et l’élégance de la Méditerranée” by Roger Dubois, available at: http://www.roger-dubois.fr/le-mavrommatis-et-lelegance-de-la-mediterannee/, author’s translation, accessed February 3, 2019.

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Pantheon in 1958 by Iso Ashibe, who has since relinquished the business to his children, this ‘treasure’ (translation of his name) was brought here in 1963. Since then, he has consistently offered authentic Japanese cuisine, from raw fish to shabu-shabu, Japanese fondue to broth. And it was only in the 1980s that Japanese restaurants multiplied in the area…” [PAY 17b, author’s translation]

Figure 4.11. Location of Japanese restaurants on rue Sainte-Anne in Paris in 2019 (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

In the 1980s and 1990s, gay restaurants, bars, saunas and nightclubs that brought rue Sainte-Anne to life migrated to the new gay district of the Marais and were

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replaced by Japanese restaurants. They are frequented by Japanese people who live and/or work in the district, by Japanese tourists, and more generally by Asian, Parisian and French tourists who love Japan and Japanese cuisine. Similarly, Chinese restaurants in Paris are concentrated in four districts: the Choisy Triangle (avenues de Choisy and Ivry in the 13th arrondissement), Belleville, the Latin Quarter and the Arts et Métiers/Temple area. Yu-Sion Live underlines: “One of the characteristics of the Chinese living abroad is their concentration in cities, particularly in neighborhoods where they rebuild community life with social, cultural, economic and even political activities. This phenomenon is shown in their search for a rebalancing of their way of life in the country they’ve emigrated to.” [LIV 92, author’s translation] Regarding these concentrations, Emmanuel Ma Mung speaks of “central trading territories”: “Their centrality is defined morphologically by the weight - however modest - that they represent in the Sino-Asian group, but even more so, by the spatial polarity that they exert as Asian shopping centers, as centers for exotic foods from other populations (including for indigenous people), and as supply centers for a large share of Asian companies, as well as for non-Asian companies (such as the Arts et Métiers/Temple sector, leather goods and costume jewelry).” [MAM 99, p. 147, author's translation] Yu-Sion Live recalls: “The first Chinese restaurants were opened in Paris before the First World War: the first, on rue Royer-Collard, near the Panthéon (5th arrondissement) and the second along boulevard Montparnasse (6th arrondissement). Between 1920 and 1940, some forty establishments were created, at least fifteen of which were still in operation shortly before the Second World War. Two thirds of them settled in the Latin Quarter, some in the 2nd and 8th arrondissements (districts of shops selling objects and offering Chinese pedicures), or near the Gare de Lyon (peddlers’ district) in the 12th arrondissement. It appears that Chinese restaurants from the inter-war period were located in areas where Chinese concentrations were found. The clientele included Chinese, Asians (Japanese, Siamese, Burmese…) and Europeans who had travelled to Asia.” [LIV 92, author’s translation]

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Indeed, after World War I, the first Chinese immigrants settled in Paris in the Latin Quarter and in the districts of Gare de Lyon and Arts et Métiers (as well as in Boulogne-Billancourt and Cormeilles-en-Parisis in the Paris suburbs). They were mainly Chinese from Zhejiang Province, the cities of Wenzhou and Qingtian. Yu-Sion Live insists that “this concentration of Chinese people in the same space strengthens the group’s social ties, sense of community and social cohesion” [LIV 95, author’s translation]. Between 1954 and 1975, Chinese immigrants came from Southeast Asia due to the decolonization of Indochina. It was mainly the Cantonese from Vietnam who joined the first migrants from the inter-war period in the Latin Quarter. Yu-Sion Live explains: “It was only at the end of the 1950s–early 1960s, following the arrival of the Sino-Vietnamese after the decolonization of Indochina (1954), that Chinese catering experienced its first boom.” [LIV 92, author’s translation]. Finally, in the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese immigrants settled first in the Porte de Choisy neighborhood, and then in Belleville. Anne Raulin recalls that the Chinese then benefitted from large-scale urban renewal programs. In the Olympiad zone (13th arrondissement), new Chinese restaurants were opened on the street or in covered galleries. She thus specifies: “The low commercial density in the 13th and 19th/20th arrondissements (where the Belleville neighborhood is located, which is experiencing increasing commercial sinization) and the lack of native competition for space in these urban areas have contributed to leaving the path clear for ethnic trade of various origins.” [RAU 88, p. 230, author’s translation] Thus, in Little Asia: “The strength of intra-community competition was just as striking, particularly in the restaurant sector: this quasi-monospecialization framework, having seen the opening of some sixty restaurants in a few years, led to an abundance of advertising formulas contributing to the lowering of meal prices. This competition led to a sometimes dizzying turnover for some commercial locations.” [RAU 88, p. 235, author’s translation] There is now a “Vietnamization” of restaurants in the Choisy Triangle: “This late settlement of Vietnamese people – until then grouped around Place Maubert in the 5th arrondissement of Paris and resistant to being too close to Chinese merchants – is explained by the way the Vietnamese in the Paris region are supplied with food. They are happy to frequent French suburban hypermarkets and, for certain commodities and special occasions the Chinese supermarkets in the

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13th arrondissement, located in this case in the vicinity of this shopping mall: such a habit of frequentation (whose model was already established in Vietnam) has almost forced the transfer of Vietnamese establishments in this sector.” [RAU 88, p. 236, author’s translation] Anne Raulin therefore speaks of “minority centralities” [RAU 00]. The concentration of the Choisy Triangle reveals the role of urbanization in the location-relocation of restaurants and, more broadly, of the urban food trade. René Péron underlines indeed: “Urbanization certainly plays an active, and more direct, brutal, role in the restructuring of the retail trade apparatus as the establishment and development of supermarkets. This is not to minimize the latter phenomenon and, more generally, the influence of competition, but draws attention to the fact that it is neither exclusive nor the only important one. Renovation has provided the most striking illustration, but, in order to be more diffuse and, sometimes, more progressive, other development operations: restructuring, road works, traffic plans, pedestrian zones, etc., are qualitatively even more numerous.” [PER 81, author’s translation] The establishment of Chinese restaurants plays a role in real and ideal appropriation. The location of Chinese restaurants is mainly linked to the high rate of residence and the way Chinese people live. Thus, Emmanuel Ma Mung showed two types of geographical concentration of Chinese restaurants in Paris: an ethnic concentration linked to the presence of a relatively large Asian population that gives rise to community trade (13th arrondissement and Belleville) and a classic concentration linked to the commercial nature of the place and its tourist appeal (5th arrondissement) [MAM 90, pp. 251–252]. The appropriation passes “through a memory that they attach to the places and that, when it becomes collective, creates a territorial entity” [TAR 95, author’s translation]. Indeed, the restaurant allows a real and ideal appropriation through the hypervisibility of the signs and the symbolism of the restaurant facades. Emmanuel Ma Mung speaks of market territorialization: “It is not a question of land appropriation, although it exists, but of appropriation by marking the space through the signs we have or by attributing different meanings to signs that are already there.” [MAM 99, p. 159, author’s translation]. According to Emmanuel Ma Mung, they are “identity theatres”: “They can be understood as elements and ‘theaters of staging’, of ‘self-presentation’ of the community within the framework of a symbolic negotiation of identities that is played out between the community and the surrounding society. What is remarkable

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is that this staging proposes the image of commerciality, of entrepreneurship.” [MAM 99, p. 148, author’s translation] Bernard Dinh refers to the new generation of young restaurateurs who display and claim their biculturality as an asset and an attraction in a socioeconomic context that values cultural diversity: “Their attraction to cultural and social mixes undeniably benefits a local ethnic business run by a new generation of merchants who have grown up or have lived in France for a long time and who adapt easily to this new situation. But, even more importantly, they influence collective representations by symbolically reclassifying a district that becomes a cosmopolitan and lively center run by, on the one hand, their massive use of public commercial space (streets, cafés, bars, terraces, restaurants, associations…) and, on the other hand, by the positive perception they have of their district and that they communicate, tending to make the negative representations attached to it disappear.” [DIN 09, author’s translation] In these concentrations, the culinary offer, although broad, is most often quite similar. Along rue au Maire, restaurants mainly offer Wenzhou style dishes (Zhejiang cuisine – zhecai): Wenzhou sauce noodles, steamed Zhejiang buns, ravioli and noodle soups, and hotpots, for example. Generally, it is outside these concentrations where it is possible to find unique restaurants and differentiated culinary offers: “Parisians are finally discovering the many faces of Chinese cuisine. Over the past few months, there has been a growing number of addresses reflecting the culinary diversity of a country that is said to have – at least – eight major regional cuisines, often grouped into four families – those of the North-East (Shandong), the South-East (Jiangsu, Anhui and Zhejiang), the South (Fujian and Guangdong) and the SouthWest (Hunan and Sichuan). Far from locking themselves in the ‘Chinatown’ of Belleville and the 13th arrondissement, restaurants such as Les Jardins de Mandchourie, Délices de Shandong, Carnet de route, La Taverne de Zhao, L’Orient d’Or or Les Trois Royaumes, Les Pâtes Vivantes escape community reflexes to offer themselves to the curious food lovers and a renewed Chinese clientele […]. While, in recent decades, the Parisian ‘Chinatown’ has seen an influx of workers and farmers from Wenzhou or Dongbei, the 2000s also saw a spectacular increase in the number of Chinese students and tourists in France. More skilled and better educated, this new type of population partly explains this new wave of restaurants.” [DAV 13, author’s translation]

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Since 2011, La Taverne de Zhao, located at 49, rue des Vinaigriers, has been serving Chinese cuisine that is largely influenced by the city of Xi’an. The specialities are stuffed breads (momo), large noodles (liang pi) and food served in earthen pots (chef’s broth, minced chicken, Chinese mushrooms, five flavored tofu, Shanghai vegetables, seaweed, soya leaf and Chinese cabbage, served with a choice of vermicelli rice, sweet potato noodles or Chinese udon). Some cold starters are particularly original: platycodon shoots, sliced chicken, crispy lotus and sesame cream or steamed spinach pâté, soy sauce, Zhenjiang vinegar and spicy oil. The desserts are creative – coisof: black sesame ice cream and egg shortbread or green tea flan and flowers. The red corrugated facade (see Figure 4.12) and the interior decoration (marble countertop and celadon-colored walls) make the restaurant esthetically different.

Figure 4.12. La Taverne de Zhao, 49, rue des Vinaigriers in Paris (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Located at 88 boulevard de l’Hôpital, Les délices de Shandong restaurant offers somewhat puzzling dishes: garlic jellyfish, scented duck tongues, chili tripe, pork ears with cucumbers, spicy and sour soup, etc. Although in the 13th arrondissement, the restaurant is isolated, away from the Choisy Triangle: “Délices de Shandong is the most renowned restaurant in Shandong cuisine in France. The chef and owner of the restaurant, Mr. Xue, originally from the city of Qingdao de Shandong, has thirty years of

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gastronomic experience […]. The Délices de Shandong restaurant is also a meeting place for Chinese intellectuals in Paris. At Délices de Shandong, you will find yourself surrounded by Chinese Sinologists, artists and writers.”48 Originally from Macall, Vai Kuan Vong, the chef of the restaurant Chez Vong, 10, rue de la Grande-Truanderie, is renowned for his Peking style Bresse chicken, cooked to order, which requires dexterity (finesse and fragility of the skin) and technical control both in terms of the amount of spices and the duration of cooking. The restaurant’s website mentions that “he arrived in France in the middle of the ‘revolution’ of New Cuisine and decided to revisit in his own way the beauties of his cuisine while preserving his original identity.”49 This dish is served in the refined setting of a “Chinese inn with a rich old-fashioned decor with stone columns, old knick-knacks and abundant vegetation.”50 As for the only Greek 1-star Michelin restaurant located on rue Daubenton, outside the Greek restaurant district, the Shang Palace, the only Chinese 1-star restaurant in Paris is located at 10, avenue d’Iéna, within the hotel Shangri-La and serves specialities influenced by Cantonese cuisine (yuecai) and dim sum (dianxin). Similarly, this logic explains the concentration of creperies in the shade of the Montparnasse station. Outside Paris, Versailles now has six Portuguese cuisine restaurants: Saudade, 20, rue du Général-Leclerc, Alma, 9, rue des 2-Portes, La Grille de l’Orangerie, 6, rue de l’Orangerie, Chez Gaby, 3, rue de la Cathédrale (Portuguese/French), Le Tonneau d’Or on rue de Montreuil (Portuguese/French) and La Maison de Mana, 13, rue Satory (Portuguese/Brazilian). Christine Volovitch-Tavares recalls that Portuguese immigration exploded between 1962 and 1972 in France, particularly in the Paris region [VOL 95]. The department of Yvelines, along with that of Val-deMarne, was the department with the highest number of Portuguese immigrants during this period: 2,118 in 1962, 18,764 in 1968 and 59,911 in 1974 [VOL 95]. They were farmers, craftsmen, traders and students who fled poverty, dictatorship and decolonization wars. This strong Portuguese presence was particularly visible in the professional sectors of services, public works and processing industries. Among the services, catering and the food trade were attractive. In Versailles, Portuguese cuisine was mainly concentrated in the Saint-Louis district (four out of six), where there is also a Miradouro pastry shop and tea room, 5 bis, rue d’Anjou

48 www.delicesshandong.com, accessed on March 6, 2019, translated to English here. 49 www.chez-vong.com, consulted on March 6, 2019. 50 Ibid.

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(see Figure 4.13). This concentration is explained by the inhabiting logics, on the one hand, and the density and diversity of the flows linked to the proximity to the Saint-Louis cathedral (Chez Gaby is located on rue de la Cathédrale), with the Château de Versailles (La Grille de l’Orangerie which faces the orangery of the Château de Versailles and on one side of the Pièce d’eau des Suisses) and carrés Saint-Louis, on the other hand.

Figure 4.13. Map of the location of Portuguese restaurants in Versailles in 2019 (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

Thus, as Jean-Robert Pitte points out, “there are few places where assimilation and a change of scenery are as intertwined as in a restaurant” [PIT 90, p. 6, author’s translation].

5 Restaurants in the City

Restaurants have an essential relationship with the city. They exist through qualities, amenities and urban functions. Through their presence, they strengthen them. DEFINITION.– The city is a “geotype of societal substance based on co-presence. The city is, in its very principle, a spatial option, a geographical act. It is a question of creating a situation, involving a society as a whole, in which joint presence makes it possible to tend towards distances equal to zero, towards a space with zero dimension, conceived on the geometric model of the point […]. Another way of defining the city is to highlight the combination of density and diversity. As a joint presence, i.e. concentration, the existence of the city is based on its density. Density of inhabitants, but also of all other realities, material (buildings, mobile objects) and immaterial (information, communication, culture). As a societal situation, the city implies maximum diversity because, unlike a concentration of the same kind, the city presupposes a strong otherness, of a level sufficient to ‘making society’. In addition, the existence of intra-urban sub-areas, with neighborhoods themselves demonstrating diversity, completes the accessibility arrangements between the city’s places […]. To achieve interaccessibility between its different locations, the city needs a set of networks that are both complete and fast.” [LEV 53, pp. 988–989, author’s translation] Jacqueline Beaujeu-Garnier and Annie Delobez demonstrated a hierarchical location of shops that is expressed according to the hierarchy of centers, responding to the size effect. Thus, relations between restaurants and cities are part of the urban hierarchy.

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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5.1. Restaurants in small cities In Chartres, with a population of 38,875 in 2015 (INSEE), restaurants (like those selected by the Michelin Guide) are located mainly in the old town center (see Figure 5.1).

Chartres

Classification of restaurants according to the Michelin Guide’s criteria

Urban boulevards Residential streets

Pedestrianized zone Special buildings

1 star High quality cooking,worth astop!

Pedestrianized roads Cycle lanes

Green spaces

Michelin Plate Good cooking

Railways

Sporting ground

Rivers

Figure 5.1. Location map of restaurants selected by the Michelin Guide in Chartres in 2019 (source: according to the Michelin Guide 2019). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

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The restaurants are mainly located in the pedestrianized zone around NotreDame de Chartres Cathedral (Le Cloître Gourmand and Esprit Gourmand, for example), Place des Épars (Le Georges, La Cour du Monarque and McDonald’s, for example), near the Eure (on the banks of the Eure river or in the perpendicular streets, Le Saint-Hilaire, for example). Similarly, several restaurants are located around Place Billard (a Baltard-style covered market). The proximity effect with the cathedral is both physical and symbolic, as is the case with the restaurant Le Pichet 3 (19 rue du Cheval-Blanc), which specializes in King Henri IV’s poule an pot (poached chicken), as he was coronated in Chartres in 1594. The catering on offer is relatively limited and modestly differentiated. Chartres has 67 traditional restaurants (UMIH), including about 30 in the hypercenter (close to the tourist office). References to local specialities are frequent (prepared in Chartres, à l’Eurélienne, Chartres pâté, local beers). There is already a hierarchy, even though it is not very advanced: one restaurant has 1 Michelin star (Le Georges) and four establishments are distinguished by the Michelin Plate: Le Saint-Hilaire, Esprit Gourmand, Le Cloître Gourmand and La Cour du Monarque. Le Grand Monarque (Jallerat Family), 22 place des Épars, is an emblematic gourmet place in Chartres. The hotel offers five catering facilities: Le Georges restaurant, La Cour du Monarque brasserie, Le Madrigal lounge bar, the Terrasse and the Cave à vins Jean Carmet. The website indicates: “As the founding couple of the spirit of the Grand Monarque, Georges and Geneviève Jallerat have worked for more than 30 years at the head of this local institution […]. The name Jallerat is therefore inseparable from the Grand Monarque and is closely linked to the history of Chartres and the Chartres people. This dynamism, this permanent curiosity of what the finest French gastronomy and hotel business can offer, this love of the vine and conviviality: that is the Jallerat spirit.” Foreign cuisine restaurants are relatively undiversified. There are several restaurants offering Indian-Pakistani cuisine, such as Punjab and Le Mughal. There are few restaurants with regional cuisine (several creperies and a restaurant serving classic Lyon cuisine, for example).

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5.2. Restaurants in average-sized cities In Reims, with a population of 184,076 in 2015 (INSEE), restaurants (like those selected by the Michelin Guide) are also located in the city center (see Figure 5.2).

Reims

Classification of restaurants according to the Michelin Guide’s criteria 2 star 1 star Michelin Plate Excellent High quality Good cooking cooking,worth cooking,worth astop! d ! Urban highway Pedestrianized zone Special buildings Green spaces Sporting ground

Urban boulevards Residential streets

Bib Gourmand Good quality, good value cooking: ≤ €40 Cycle lanes Railways and streetcar lines Rivers

Pedestrianized roads

Figure 5.2. Location map of restaurants selected by the Michelin Guide in Reims in 2019 (source: according to the Michelin Guide 2019). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

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The restaurants are mainly located in the area opposite the station (Le Foch and Le Pavillon CG, for example), in the pedestrianized area of Place Drouet d’Erlon (Brasserie Excelsior Reims and La Vigneraie, for example), in the area of place Forum and place Royale (Doko Koko, Le Millénaire, Le Crypto, for example), in the Notre-Dame de Reims/Opéra/Musée des Beaux-Arts district (there are many foreign cuisine restaurants on rue de Chanzy in particular) and the Boulingrin halls area. The 1-star Michelin restaurant Racine (6 place Godinot) is rather isolated, without being far from the cathedral. In the case of Reims, the environment of a champagne house can be found (Le Parc Les Crayères and Le Jardin Les Crayères). This logic can be related to the tourist attendance linked to champagne. In the other districts, there are spin-offs of restaurants that meet the expectations and needs of those working nearby. The catering on offer is refined, densified and diversified. Reims (intra muros) has 190 traditional restaurants (CCI de la Marne). It is more differentiated. The hierarchy is more marked: one 2-star Michelin restaurant (Le Parc Les Crayères), three 1-star Michelin restaurants (Le Millénaire, Le Foch and Racine), three establishments distinguished by the Michelin Plate (La Vigneraie, Le Crypto and Doko Koko) and 2 with a Bib Gourmand (Le Jardin Les Crayères and Le Pavillon CG). It is also worth noting the presence of the restaurant L’Assiette Champenoise, on Avenue Paul Vaillant-Couturier, in Tinqueux, a neighboring town of Reims, which has had 3 Michelin stars since 2014. There are more and more restaurants with creative cuisine, regional cuisine and foreign cuisine. There are two Basque cuisine restaurants (Le Petit Basque and L’Espelette). “Concept” restaurants are developing (Vapeurs et Gourmandises, Chez Jérôme, Paulette and La Végé Table – both located in passage Talleyrand, for example). In the Reims sphere of influence, there is a 1-star Michelin restaurant in Montchenot (Le Grand Cerf) and in Champillon (Le Royal). 5.3. New dynamics in large cities In its 2016 edition, the Fooding guide highlighted the geographical spread of “suburban” cuisine. The “suburban” would be chefs and diners who appreciate food and restaurant meals of militant value: “We’ll drop the dress code. It has to change. We’ll downgrade, we’ll downgrade… We’ll leave our market town for the suburbs. One blesses diversity, the other blesses the opposite. Change yourself! Myself, ourselves… We’ll divorce ourselves from cynicism to marry our times, to be stronger together. We’ll de-systematize, counter-propose, move

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the lines of the rules of the game […]. Update every day, we’ll work on the daily special. We’ll do our own little cooking. Suburban. We’ll share it […].” [CAM 15, author’s translation] “Suburban” cuisine has made its mark mainly in the east, north of Paris and beyond the ring road. Marie-Catherine de la Roche presents: “‘It is the revenge of the suburbs,’ chanted the Fooding, good food neo-bible. The iconoclast and nowadays unavoidable little guide, after having broken down the barricades between haute cuisine and the liberated and libertarian simmering of the scoundrels’ bistros, food cellars and other cheap gastro restaurants, intends to send us elsewhere. Into the suburbs of gastronomy, precisely […]. And, no doubt, ‘suburban’ cuisine (a revolutionary term if ever there was one) is pushing the margins of the plate far beyond the wealthy neighborhoods…. A new generation of chefs, who have taken up residence on the outskirts of the city – that of the city centers and a starched kitchen – is imposing their centrifugal force, disorienting and frightening food lovers. Their off-center gastronomy is not cluttered with ‘fabulous’ tablecloths and ritualized service. And even, sometimes, the choice of dishes, deliberately displaying carte blanche. In fifteen years, we have seen the phenomenon grow. Everywhere young chefs have stormed the working class neighborhoods to turn them into the ‘theater of a hyperactive cuisine, in search of something new. What they have in common is that they have distanced themselves from the superfluous, trying to do good things without increasing the bill,’ says Alexandre Cammas, founder of Fooding, who does not hesitate to speak of a ‘cultural revolution’. In Paris, one of the first to give the signal for this migration was Inaki Aizpitarte. This self-taught Basque native, after sharpening his knives in Abbesses (La Famille) and Vitry-sur-Seine (MAC VAL), was a trailblazer in Goncourt. In this almost ‘no-mange land’ of the time, which is now so popular, he set off two bombs: Le Chateaubriand and Le Dauphin. His sensual cuisine, seductive, sometimes annoying, but off the beaten track, has taken the Republic and its taste buds backwards, exploding the codes of good gastro-thinking. This was followed by a rush to the east […]. Is this counter-power about to dance a carmagnole [a dance to a song popular at the time of the French Revolution] with the fine tables that up until now have made hearts pound in the capital? One thing is certain: the gastrosphere no longer revolves only around the city-centric plates of Michelin-starred people.” [CAR 15, author’s translation]

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In the new town of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, in Montigny-le-Bretonneux, the Espace Saint-Quentin shopping mall hosts many restaurants: “A true shopping village in the heart of the city, Espace Saint-Quentin combines a mall, a cinema, an outdoor leisure area and a restaurant for a pleasant shopping trip downtown”. Hammerson, incorporated as a joint venture, is a co-owner (with Carrefour, the Town Hall of Montigny-le-Bretonneux and the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Urban Community) and manager of Espace Saint-Quentin1. Hammerson is a British company specializing in retail (shopping malls and outlets). Opened in 1987 and renovated in 2014, the mall has 136 stores, including some 20 restaurants. As Jérôme Charbonneau, Deputy Sales Director in charge of catering, explains, the catering offer consists of “locomotive”2 restaurants: McDonald’s and Burger King (Burger King can be found opposite McDonald’s, in the place of El Rancho restaurant in December 2015), for example, and restaurants offering “more differentiated and worldly”3 cuisine: L’Oliveto, Venghour and Crazy Hall, for example. Starbucks is also present, as well as small restaurant chains such as La Croissanterie and Pomme de pain. There is also regional cuisine: La Table de Savoie and La Table de Bretagne. In 2018, Damien Coache transformed the restaurant Le Tournebroche into Rest’o Cocorico, which consists of a meat counter and a wine bar. “This allows for a higher average basket than before and differentiation”4. The strategy aims at “a mix between restaurants such as McDonald’s and Burger King, which are essential, and more upscale restaurants with an average basket of less than 30 euros” and “mixing national chains and independent restaurants”5. The restaurants are located in a privileged way around the lake: “The big catering, the seated catering is grouped in the form of a hub which is a destination for lunch and dinner. Around the basin, it is possible to sit on an outdoor terrace and eat in the sun. Espace SaintQuentin is a mall that is half inside and half outside. The small restaurants, coffee shops and snack bars are scattered to give rhythm to it.”6 The catering on offer thus has a wide choice of culinary preparations, likely to please the greatest number of people. Completed by the offer of restaurants located in the immediate vicinity, it reveals the concomitance of the five world best-selling items: hamburgers, pizza, sushi, kebabs and cappuccinos [FUM 09].

1 www.hammerson.fr, accessed March 13, 2019. 2 Interview with Jérôme Charbonneau, March 13, 2019. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid.

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Beyond the Parisian ring road, the Yaya restaurant, 8 rue de l’Hippodrome, in Saint-Ouen, was opened by Grégory and Pierre-Julien Chantzios in June 2017. The two brothers developed the Kalios company (Greek delicatessen products: olive oils and olives from Kalamata, pistachio nuts from Aegina, almonds from Thessaly, honey from the Peloponnese, wild herbs in branches and processed products – Cretan breadsticks, marmalades, jellies, etc.). In 2010, they took over the family farm, established in 1832 by their grandfather Petros Chantzios, in Neochori-Ithomi. The establishment of the Yaya restaurant in Saint-Ouen “is an opportunity: not a choice but not an obstacle either”7. The architecture was entrusted to Olivier Saguez, of Saguez & Partners: “The double height south-facing windows let in natural light. The Mediterranean blue and white of the lime markings are softened by pastel tones and the presence of light wood on the mezzanine staircase and on the huge bar counter. The open kitchen creates a warm bond between the guests and the kitchen staff. A bookcase-trellised panel over the full height and width of a wall, organized as a giant pantry of Kalios products, offers to take away this new air from elsewhere. Like in a Cyclades house, where architecture and furniture are one and the same, the benches are cut into the walls. The chairs and high stools are made of straw and raw wood, like driftwood. The rope suspensions are reminiscent of fishermen’s nets. Graphic sets of pebbles or a carpet are painted in the same way as the lime markings of the narrow streets, by the plastic artist Jean Oddes, who painted a stylized map of Greece on the wall.”8 Regarding the culinary offer, Gregory and Pierre-Julien Chantzios joined forces with a young Colombian social media chef Juan Arbelaez. First, they had to “bring the Parisians to the restaurant. The role of the gastronomic, travel, lifestyle and women’s press has been important. The architecture and the Greek cuisine we have revisited seduce”. Then, it was a question of “making people come back: thanks to affordable and attractive prices, new products, the delicatessen and thanks to events”9. Indeed, the restaurant organizes “Yaya Parties” on Thursday evenings, Greek banquets and exhibitions. Mégane Rouault also insists on the quality of the gourmet on offer: “everything is homemade, even the bread, all the products are sourced”. Finally, although outside Paris, Yaya is located “in the Greater Paris area, in the Paris sphere of influence and 3 minutes’ walk from the metro”10. It is 7 Interview with Mégane Rouault, head of marketing and communication at Yaya Restaurant, August 22, 2018. 8 www.saguez-and-partners.com, accessed February 23, 2019. 9 Interview with Mégane Rouault, August 22, 2018. 10 Ibid.

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therefore easily accessible for local business clientele at lunchtime (there are many offices nearby) and Parisian leisure clientele in the evening. Mégane Rouault points out that the restaurant is attractive because it is located “in an eco-responsible district, a new district where the average age is 30–40 years old”. In addition, the restaurant is open within the Nouvelle Manufacture Design. Similarly, after 35 years of experience, Thai chef Oth Sombath recently set up his new Baan Nat restaurant at 61 avenue Laplace, in Arcueil, in the Val-de-Marne, between the RER B Laplace station and the crossroads of the Vache Noire (D920), near the Porte d’Orléans. In large cities, some new locations concern restaurants offering a “fast casual” offer as defined by The NPD Group11: “Fast casual is a great success thanks to the elements that underpin it: good quality and fresh products, traceable ingredients, prepared on site in an open kitchen and served at the right quality/price/time of service in a working atmosphere. The flavors are sophisticated or ethnically inspired and the drinks are premium, such as vitamin water, juice, milkshakes…” Hawaiian cuisine restaurants have enjoyed recent success, as confirmed by Hélène Brunet-Rivaillon’s article “Où manger un vrai poké bowl, spécialité hawaïenne qui fait fureur à Paris?”12: “For the past two years, poké bowls have been flourishing on every street corner. Inspired by the traditional dishes of Hawaii’s fishermen, this dish was popularized by Hawaiian chef Sam Choy. It became a classic of Californian meals, before becoming popular in New York City, then throughout the United States, on surf spots on the Peruvian Pacific coast, as well as in European capitals. The recipe? A large bowl of washed rice (with a layer of starch removed) flavored or with vinegar, with cubes of marinated raw fish (often bluefin tuna or salmon), diced fruits and vegetables (cucumber, avocado, pineapple, mango, radish), all served with onions, seaweed or macadamia nuts. Fresh, nutritious, high in protein, low in processed foods and 11 Report on the forecasts for the food away from home catering market 2017–2018–2019. Maria Bertoch, Industry Expert Foodservice, The NPD Group points out: “The French are doing better, and it shows! With a certain optimism for the future, they have found their way back to restaurants”. The study reveals that the value of food away from home catering increased by 1.8% in 2017. Fast food restaurants are the most dynamic, with a 2.3% increase in attendance. 12 “Where to eat a read poké bowl, a Hawaiian specialty that is all the rage in Paris?”

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extremely digestible, poké has quickly established itself as the high energy and healthy solution […]. In Paris, specialized restaurants are concentrated in the 8th (Moe Poké, Tiki Bowls, Poké Toké) and 10th (Ahipoké, Natives, Canal Poké) arrondissements, but the other districts are not to be outdone: Palika Poké has taken up residence in the 2nd, Ono Poké in the 5th and Atelier Poké in the 9th.” [BRU 18] Thus, these restaurant locations reveal the dynamics of new urban centers, new urban centralities. Michel Lussault speaks of “spaces of peripheral centralities” [LUS 03]. Overall, the distribution and location of restaurants are based on the rank-size law. On the one hand, there is a size effect. As the size of the city increases, so does the number of restaurants, their density and diversity. As the size of the city increases, so does the density of similar restaurants and also the density of different or even original restaurants that produce diversity. On the other hand, there is also a relationship of restaurant order that varies with the size of the city. Finally, as the size of the city increases, so do the original and anomalous locations. However, tourism disrupts the size law and explains the irregular locations of large restaurants in tourist places, in relation to their size. In addition, restaurants have become an integral part of the urban character of premises, which sometimes undermines the rank-size law. Thus, some restaurants find locations in the countryside.

6 Restaurants in the Countryside and the Relationship Between Cities and the Countryside

Restaurants, which are essentially urban, are relatively uncommon in the countryside, where the inn1 and farmhouse2 models still dominate to a large extent. However, since the 1980s and 1990s, the restaurant model has been used in some rural areas. This change is explained by the combination of two processes: – a change in the relationship with nature, from a Promethean conception of nature (man dominates nature) to an Orphean conception of nature (man deals with nature)3; – a change in the qualities of the countryside, which is reflected in the development of urban characters with the increase in mobility, including information. In “La notion de rural et les rapports ville/campagne en France: les années quatreventes”, Nicole Mathieu notes the “invention of the rural as nature” and the “esthetization of rurality” [MAT 98]. It also evokes the multiplication of new “campaign desires” [MAT 04, authors’ translations].

1 See Alain Cazenave-Piarrot, “Auberges de campagne dans les Pyrénées françaises du centre” in [MAR 12]. 2 See Vincent Moriniaux, “Les fermes-auberges, le difficile bet de sauver l’agriculture par la restauration” in [MAR 12]. 3 See the work of Joseph Huber (2001), Christian Godin (2012) and Maurice Wintz (2016).

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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6.1. Restaurants in the countryside In the countryside, many restaurants are linked to a vegetable garden. As part of a strategy to shorten supply chains, these are restaurants that highlight the freshness and esthetics of a countryside garden. In Gyé-sur-Seine, the restaurant Le Garde Champêtre is presented by the Fooding guide thus: “Far from taking a breather in the Champagne region, the delightful country chef Matthew Robertson (Auberge de Chassignolles in Auvergne) has teamed up with Juan Sanchez (Semilla, Freddy’s) and the winemaker Cédric Bouchard. Together they’re toiling away in the Aube, and tending to a garden that, when at its zenith, winds up on the plates once night falls. The scintillating décor done by the group’s fourth musketeer, photographer Petter Lippmann, transforms the high limestone walls of this small former freight yard into something magical. Think an oak wood bar, black granite tables and terrazzo floors.” The restaurant activates the local rural memory: “Our restaurant, fed by our organic farm4, is inspired by the historical work of a forest ranger, protector of the rural environment. Mr. Droze, the last one in Gyé-sur-Seine, who retired at 82, and was a memorable person. If we discovered a swarm of bees, we called Mr. Droze. Any violation or drift in communal laws, we called Mr. Droze […]. The new Garde-Champêtre de Gyé-sur-Seine is a restaurant fed by its 1 hectare farm. Vegetables are produced organically in the restaurant’s vegetable garden or purchased locally. Meals are prepared ‘at the last minute’, with the freshest ingredients. The main source of heat is an open fire.”5 Located in an abandoned SNCF depot on the D671, at the entrance to the village, the restaurant is a spacious place that is part of a rural setting: “The atmosphere in the dining room is also truly remarkable. 7-meter high ceilings, giant bay windows, the kitchen and fireplace in the

4 Vegetable garden and chicken farming. 5 www.legardechampetre.fr, consulted on March 18, 2019.

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room, in plain view, create a peaceful, warm and reassuring dining experience. In summer, a large terrace overlooks the hills of the Seine Valley.”6 In addition to its nutritional function, the restaurant also has a mediating function: “Le Garde Champêtre is far from being a simple restaurant. Its baptismal name is synonymous with the values enshrined in its recipe, which has been simmered for a long time: forging social bonds and protecting nature […]. This renovation is already being experienced as a revolution in the village. The Auberge wine-growing region, the Côte des Bar, enriches its tourist potential with this new player. Cultural life also benefits: concerts and artistic events are planned.” [SYM 19] The restaurant’s website emphasizes the link to the place and the place that links: “Just like the forest ranger role of the time, we hope to stimulate social interaction and community spirit. A playground for children, bowls and badminton will be available to the community, not just to restaurant guests. Our website will become an information center on events in the region, addresses of champagne producers, places to visit in the Seine Valley.”7 Through the product that is placed in the mouth, Le Garde Champêtre restaurant thus plays a role in the permanent and temporary habitability and hospitality of the countryside. But restaurants linked to vegetable gardens are not always located in situ, in the countryside. Indeed, more and more urban cooks are “integrating” the supply chain by cultivating their garden(s) directly. This reality reactivates the questions of the relationship between city and countryside, on the one hand, and nature in the city, on the other.

6 Ibid. 7 www.legardechampetre.fr, consulted on March 18, 2019.

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6.2. The restaurant, the city/countryside relationship and nature in the city From an agricultural point of view, the city/countryside relationships are organized by the von Thünen zoning theory. DEFINITION.– “The elements of the model are an isolated central city, surrounded by a homogeneous agricultural plain, served by an isotropic communication system, resulting in a transport cost only proportional to Euclidean distance, with a market whose prices are assumed to be fixed. The result of these factors is an organization of agricultural specializations in concentric circles from the market city. In this theory of agricultural ‘belts’, the order and succession of speculations from the center is explained by the spatial distribution of the land rent or economic rent. The nearest rings are destined for high value-added or high-demand production at the time, the price of which cannot be burdened by too long transport (vegetables, fruit, milk and then forests, because wood was still vital, and finally cereals without fallow land), the most distant being characterized by an increasingly less intensive development (cereals and weeding plants with fallow land, extensive livestock farming). Any modification of data only results in a distortion of the model but does not call into question its principle: von Thünen himself introduces into his scheme a waterway that influences the regularity of the system […]. The operating principle of the model, according to which an activity is located in order to maximize its profits and minimize its costs, remains valid…. The concepts by von Thünen have undergone a theoretical renewal, to the point that Jean-Marie Huriot (1994) even speaks of the ‘Thünen paradigm’ and ‘Thünen spaces’ […]: the von Thünen model remains the more or less explicit reference, whenever we look at qualitative differentiations in land use, when they are organized in concentric rings from centers to peripheries.” [MAT 03, pp. 923–924]. Thus, Jean-Robert Pitte showed for Lyon that: “… it arouses, in the neighboring countryside, high-taste productions and attracts them to its markets, where they find buyers, even if their price is high. For example, a fish dumpling from Lyon uses pike raised in the Dombes ponds, bread crumbs from the bas-dauphinois wheat and, for the Nantua sauce, Bugey crayfish, Bresse cream and white wine from Mâcon or Montagnieu.” [PIT 91, p. 104] In the early 2000s, after the tremors of the mad cow crisis (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), Parisian chef Alain Passard, at the Arpège restaurant, 84 rue de

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Varenne, decided to turn to the culinary enhancement of vegetables. In 2002, he bought his first 4 hectare garden in Fillé-sur-Sarthe, near Le Mans, in the Gros Chesnay estate, the sandy soil being particularly favorable for tomatoes, asparagus and carrots. The first gardener, Sylvain Picard, favored cultivation practices promoting biodiversity. For example, he planted hedges that protect vegetables from the wind and provided shelter for a variety of wildlife. The permaculture system was then in place. The estate also houses an apiary. Alain Passard acquired a second 6-hectare garden in 2005 in Buis-sur-Danville, near Évreux, in the Eure department, the Bois Giroult garden. The clay soil is interesting for root vegetables, bulb vegetables and black and red berries. The first gardener, Loïc Chataigner, implemented a system of cultivation in layers and also practiced complementary crops. Finally, in 2008, the chef bought the Porteaux à Genêts garden in the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel. Its alluvial soil promotes the cultivation of fruit trees. “I chose the gardens according to the altitude, rainfall and soil. It is necessary to find the best living comfort for each vegetable. The better the living comfort of the vegetable, the more beautiful it will be, the more fragrant it will be, the more tasty it will be”8. The gardens are ploughed by animal traction and cultivated without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Faunal richness is sought: “[…] the creation of water points for amphibians, stone houses for weasels, hedgehogs and reptiles, perches for birds of prey, hedges and trees for birds, all this animal life is welcome in the gardens to avoid any treatment”9. In 2018, the three gardens represented a total cultivated area of more than 10 hectares, an annual production of fifty tons carried out by 11 paid gardeners: six at the Domaine du Gros Chesnay and five at the Bois Giroult vegetable garden. Alain Passard explains: “Thirty tons for the restaurant and twenty tons for Les Paniers d’Alain. Vegetables are transported daily by drivers in nonrefrigerated vans. One day from Le Mans, one day from Evreux”10. Vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers from the three gardens are available in the “Grands crus du potager” on the board, the menus “Le déjeuner des Jardiniers” and “L’Hiver des Jardins”. Alain Passard’s vegetable cuisine is reflected in the development of ad hoc culinary preparations for vegetables (onion gratin from Bois Giroult with young purslane shoots, Sarawak black pepper) (see Figure 6.1) and the transposition of culinary techniques adapted to the meat tissue of vegetables (plant-cut purple tartar with cream of horseradish and beetroot) (see Figure 6.2). They can also be reinvented recipes (vegetable lasagne in a honey-lacquered gardeners’ brioche pie with Kalamata black olive emulsion) (see Figure 6.3).

8 Interview with Alain Passard, February 20, 2019. 9 www.alain-passard.com, accessed February 20, 2019. 10 Interview with Alain Passard, February 20, 2019.

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Figure 6.1. Onion gratin from Bois Giroult with young purslane shoots, Sarawak black pepper (source: Olivier Etcheverria). A great vegetable creation by Alain Passard, now a classic and essential dish. At the Bois Giroult vegetable garden, 6 tons of conservation onions are grown annually, and in the Gros Chesnay vegetable garden, 400 kilos of spring onions are grown annually

Figure 6.2. Plant-cut purple tartar with cream of horseradish and beetroot (source: Olivier Etcheverria); tartar prepared with smoked red beetroot

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Figure 6.3. Honey-lacquered gardeners’ brioche pie, Kalamata black olive emulsion (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Alain Passard scrupulously respects the seasons of the plants produced in his three gardens. Thanks to the progressive links woven between the restaurant and the gardens, the concrete city/countryside relationships (through the daily supplies, the tastings that gardeners carry out in the restaurant, the visits that diners can make to the vegetable gardens, the discourses and gastronomic ideas broadcast by the chef, gardeners and service staff, the return of organic plant waste to the gardens11), he achieves “the combination of two trades, the combination of the gardener’s handiwork and the chef’s handiwork”12. He seeks to enhance the value of the gardener’s profession by combining it with that of a cook, which is now widely valued: “As in cooking, there is an artistic side to gardening”13. For Alain Passard, the vegetable gardens are a source of culinary creativity: “The gardens have become fabulous places for creation. I need this contact with nature. I need to offer my five senses emotions, to nourish my imagery. The gardens are a beautiful school for the senses”14. The vegetables of Fillé-sur-Sarthe and Bouis-surDamville are also used in sweet preparations: “I use the sweetness of the vegetables. My objective is to enhance the value of the natural sugar in vegetables”15.

11 During daily deliveries, organic vegetable waste (such as peelings) is collected and returned to the gardens where it is then transformed into compost. 12 Interview with Alain Passard, February 20, 2019. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid.

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Whether it is the décor of the room or the plate, the chef aims to give diners the reality and ideal nature of these city/rural relationships. In an Art Deco style decor: “Alain Passard chose Lalique Cristal in pear tree waves to the rhythm of Bacchanalia for the walls of the restaurant. The smooth leather chairs seem to blend in with the movement. The windows are glass waves made by Bernard Pictet that contrast with the transparency of a Venetian glaze and seem to play with daylight. One of the chef’s collages called ‘Aubergine au curry vert’ served as inspiration for a stain glass window that welcomes guests and reigns by its superb intense colors over this temple of vegetable cuisine.”16 Through the “natural harmonizations” of his culinary compositions, he invites diners, sitting at the table on rue de Varenne in Paris, to go to the countryside to “rediscover the plant life and offer their senses other emotions”17. In doing so, Alain Passard breaks with models of urban-rural relations based on contradiction or even antagonism: the materialist model (economic opposition), the Rousseauist model (moral opposition) and even the demographic model (relationship of permanent main and secondary or temporary residential migrations) [MAT 04]. It is a symmetrical urban–rural relationship model based on complementarity and dependence. This new city/countryside ideology is reflected in the acts of blending and tasting practices in restaurants, in professional training (culinary apprenticeship of “Arpeggians” to use the neologism formulated by Fooding) and in the sale of Alain’s baskets (4,000 subscribers). According to Bernard Merigaud, “the mapping of the vegetable garden is established at the same time as the map of the Arpège. And vice versa.” [MER 08] Through his culinary and gastronomic offerings, Alain Ducasse at Plaza Athénée, designs and disseminates an idea of nature in the city, an idea of nature in Paris. He implements the gastronomic positioning of “naturality”: “Eating healthier and more natural food is today an expectation and a necessity that it is time to translate into the field of haute cuisine. Exceptional products expressed in their simplicity, a technique that has the elegance to disappear to be at their service. This is the cuisine I sincerely love. A cuisine of naturalness, that is liberated and emancipated.”18

16 www.alain-passard.com, accessed January 27, 2020. 17 Interview with Alain Passard, February 20, 2019. 18 Press release by Denis Courtiade, manager of the restaurant Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée, p. 1.

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The tasting of dishes constitutes, for diners, a real and ideal practice of nature, avenue Montaigne, within a palace, both through culinary compositions marked by a healthy frugality inspired by nature and a dressing of the plates from which emerges a natural esthetic19. Naturalness is expressed by the fish/vegetables/cereals trilogy. Concerning fish and, more generally, seafood products (octopus, lobster, etc.), Alain Ducasse is committed to sustainable fishing and favors line-caught fish caught by small boats in order to respect fish resources. The noble but also “humble” fish is valued by the executive chef Romain Meder. Bass and mackerel are bled on the boat as soon as they leave the water using the ikejime method: “This technique, commonly used in Japan, prevents toxins from spreading when the fish dies and allows the organoleptic qualities of its flesh to be enhanced. The latter will retain a perfect texture and will remain pearly and translucent”20. Thanks to a partnership with the Château de Versailles21 and Alain Baraton, chief gardener of Trianon and the Grand Parc de Versailles, Alain Ducasse has created and recreated the Queen’s vegetable garden, in the immediate vicinity of Marie-Antoinette’s hamlet. In his article “Les groses légumes de Versailles”, Philippe Douroux, evoking Queen Marie-Antoinette, states: “She had reconstituted nature with calves, cows and pigs, fruits and vegetables, according to Rêveries by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Of course, the animals had to be manicured and the vegetables cleaned, but it was like nature” [DOU 14]. Today, the Queen’s vegetable garden consists of small gardens trimmed with boxwood, small fields and greenhouses located near the Trèfle basin. The gardener in charge of the vegetable garden, Mehdi Redjil, grows organic vegetables, fruits, aromatic plants and spices to ensure the exclusive supply of the Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée restaurant: “Today, Mehdi Redjil and three other gardeners cultivate this exceptional area, a rich and pesticide-free land that was not used for 19 See Alain Ducasse, Christian Regouby, Manger est un acte citoyen, Actes Sud, 2017. 20 Press release, p. 3. 21 “At the initiative of François Delahaye, general manager of Plaza Athénée and Catherine Pégard, president of the public establishment of the Château, museum and national estate of Versailles, the hotel – as part of its patronage policy – has entered into an exclusive partnership with the Château de Versailles to supply vegetables and fruit to Alain Ducasse’s restaurant”, says the press release p. 4. Philippe Douroux, in his article “Les groses légumes de Versailles”, underlines: “To have access to the production of the queen’s vegetable garden, Alain Ducasse, the Michelin multi-star chef (he has eighteen in all the different restaurants he runs) will not pay any money. The queen’s vegetables do not sell by the kilo. Having become a patron of the Versailles estate – for an undisclosed amount but which may be between €60,000 and €70,000, since it will make it possible to hire two gardeners to look after the vegetables – he will be able to recover the production from Marie-Antoinette’s vegetable garden” (Liberation, June 27, 2014) [DOU 14].

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fifteen years. Applying innovative permaculture processes, he tests the most suitable and succulent varieties.” [ALO 17] About 20 kilometers from Paris, “this partnership aims to blur the boundaries between the cook and the gardener” [BRU 15]. The juices of vegetables are used in sauces and aperitifs: “Vegetable juices are short and direct, away from (too) long simmered aromas. The chef adds ginger and lemon to the carrot and turnip and juice to give it life and prepares it for almost one minute to preserve all its aromas. These vegetable juices are served, at the beginning of the meal, in a glass of Cristallerie royale de Champagne, founded in 1678 thanks to a privilege granted by Louis XIV and now belonging to the Haviland group.”22 Cereals are grown by small producers, quinoa from Anjou by Jason and Maud Abbott in Longué-Jumelles, tall red corn from the Basque Country by Jon Harlouchet of the Idiartia farm in Bussunaritz, for example. This local variety is valued on a culinary scale in Tagliolini de maïs torréfié, les épis égraines liés au beurre, tartufi di Alba (see Figure 6.4).

Figure 6.4. Tagliolini de maïs torréfié, les épis égraines liés au beurre, tartufi di Alba (Tagliolini of roasted corn with butter and white truffle) (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

The meal begins with toasted cereal cakes and thin slices of rice flour bread (Boulangerie Chambelland, 14 rue Ternaux in Paris) served with semi-salted butter from Laurent Akpamagbo’s Le Ponclet farm in Locmélar, Finistère. 22 Press release, p. 10.

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Legumes also play an essential role in “raw” dishes23 and are selected with the same high standards as fish, vegetables and cereals. The press release emphasizes the delicacy with which chickpeas are produced by Gisèle Taxil-Wardell and Noële Taxil in Laragne-Montéglin: “can we imagine that the chickpeas served were sorted one by one, by hand, by the Taxil family, passionate female farmers settled in the Hautes-Alpes?” He points out that this “meticulous care” of the producer is extended by that of the cook. Thus, the lentils are enhanced on a culinary- scale in the dish Puy green lentils and caviar, with a delicate eel jelly (see Figure 6.5).

Figure 6.5. Green lentils from Le Puy and caviar, with a delicate eel jelly (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Alain Ducasse’s cuisine at Plaza Athénée can be linked to Japanese Shojin cuisine: “He also invited Toshio Tanahashi, one of the few chefs specializing in Shojin cuisine, to come to Paris to share his knowledge with Romain Meder and his team. But, make no mistake, for Alain Ducasse, it is not a question of making Japanese cuisine: ‘We wanted to capture some characteristic tastes like tofu or seaweed. We have retained some elements of this cuisine by integrating them into our own vision and culinary culture.’ The guest will find an echo, for example, in the thin tofu leaf that covers the marinated tomatoes offered as a starter or in a few miso and dashi tastes discreetly present here and there.”24

23 Press release p. 9. 24 Press release, p. 11.

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The desserts by Jessica Préalpato are as much a part of Alain Ducasse’s naturality as the savoury preparations of Romain Meder. It praises “desserality” [PRE 18]. Her sweet preparations are mainly composed of fruits and cereals. They are slightly sweet and marked by acidity and bitterness. Jessica Préalpato works with fruits that are not commonly used in pastry making, such as persimmon, medlar and rosehip. She also enhances the value of seaweed (Nice lemon, tarragon kombu seaweed) and soya milk (peanuts from the Hautes-Pyrénées, soybean fontainebleau). Sober and raw, “[…] the dessert plate arrives with nothing but the cut little jewel. Wild, a little colorless, runny, foamy. We were expecting a Swiss lake in all its majesty: it is a frog pond” [CAR 18]. Just like her “amateur” dessert: creamy malted barley, frosted beer and hops (see Figure 6.6).

Figure 6.6. Creamy malted barley, frosted beer and hops (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

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This respect for nature can also be seen in the decoration of the restaurant’s dining room and the setting of the table. The dishes are served on solid oak tables, not covered, for a direct sensual contact with the material: “The knots and veins of the wood attract the eye and call for caressing. If the hand continues its gesture and slides towards the lower part of the tray, it will discover leather because what is not seen must be as beautiful as what is seen for the customer’s delight to be perfect.”25 The “shack” is a bridge to nature: “On the left, an astonishing structure, in the shape of an upright hull of a boat, delimits a unique space in the restaurant. Its very elegant and refined contemporary lines install a verticality in the volume of the room and thus connect the floor and the ceiling. The interior is made of sculpted staff, the exterior of wood. Patrick Jouin explains: ‘The choice of wood on the outside evokes a reverse side, a back side with the décor. For me, it is a tribute to all the craftsmen and suppliers whose know-how remains invisible behind the scenes, but whose hard work is essential to the perfection of the restaurant guests’ experience.’” 26 Similarly, Pierre Tachon’s “object plate”, manufactured by porcelain maker J. L. Coquet, is: “[a piece] so unusual that he imagined as a link between land and sea. The sea, by its shape, inspired by a shell fragment. The earth, by the material used to make it, porcelain treated with matt enamel. This delicate ring with its soft, soothing organic lines invites the customer to sit at the table.”27 In Paris, within the Plaza Athénée, Alain Ducasse is developing a “nature culture”28. The cuisine at Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée is one of the nature/city relationship. It is an urban naturality: a natural shift from the countryside to the city. Through the act of blending and tasting practices, it reactivates the question of 25 Press release, p. 18. 26 Ibid. 27 Press release p. 25. 28 See Nicole Mathieu, “Repenser la nature dans la ville : un enjeu pour la géographie” [MAT 00]: “We propose the concept of a ‘nature culture’ to analyze how each individual understands the passage between his values and representations of nature with his practice and a knowledge of its consequences on the natural world and the environment.”

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environmental responsibility and sustainable development. Indeed, for Périco Légasse, Alain Ducasse’s naturalness is a committed approach: “But this naturalness does not only concern the integrity, whether vegetable or maritime, of the foodstuff, obviously acquired, but also all the precautions and requirements taken to ensure that these products are intrinsically irreproachable, sustainably grown or harvested, and fairly rewarded to their producers.” [LEG 16] In doing so, Alain Passard and Alain Ducasse “reinvent” the historical relations between Paris and the countryside, in line with von Thünen’s zoning model. In Paris, through their restaurants, their culinary offerings and their gastronomic discourses and imaginations, Alain Passard and Alain Ducasse show a commitment to a respectful management of resources and the construction of relationships with nature that remobilizes, thanks to gardens, the reality of a management of soils, waters, living worlds of plants and animals, seasons and weather. These “natural” cuisines and gastronomic discourses and imaginations of nature seduce all urban dwellers, whether permanent or temporary. For tourists, these gourmet experiences are ways of discovering and living in places in the city and in the countryside.

PART 3

The Restaurant at the Heart of the Tourist System

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Introduction to Part 3

Rémy Knafou and Mathis Stock define tourism as the “system of actors, practices and spaces that participate in the ‘recreation’ of individuals by moving and temporarily living outside the places of daily life.” [KNA 03, p. 931, author’s translation]. The relationship between tourism and restaurants is old and powerful. They are legitimized by the Michelin “gastronomic-tourist” guide, which establishes the starbased restaurant distinction system. They find a form of spatial expression through the “diagonal gourmet”: “The presence of road infrastructures favors the diffusion of restaurants along the diagonal of accessibility to tourist areas, Rhône-Alpes, Midi […]. This is the myth of the national road 7 and its gourmet stages.” [BAI 91, author’s translation] (see Figure I3.1). Thus, “mainly from the cities, [tourists] take great pleasure in taking a break from their surroundings by tasting local cuisine and wines in the landscapes where they come from.” [PIT 91, p. 180, author’s translation] In their article “La localisation de restaurants de marque: les critères implicites dans l’information du Guide Michelin”, Antoine Bailly and Jean Paelinck insist on “the role of potential customer density, geographical and regional tourist attraction and accessibility” in the location of starred restaurants that they describe as “branded” restaurants [BAI 92, author’s translation].

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Number of restaurants 98 3 0

Ratio of 2 and 3 star Michelin restaurants per 1 million inhabitants 0 2 3 6 7.5 10

Figure I3.1. Proportion of 2- and 3-star restaurants according to the 1990 Michelin Guide (source: [BAI 91]). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

The permanence of the diagonal gourmet is a translation of the inextricable relationships that link restaurants and tourism. What are their characteristics? What are the reciprocal effects of restaurants and tourism? What is the role and place of the restaurant in the emergence of food tourism? To what extent are Michelin’s 3-star restaurants, which are worth the trip, gourmet tourist destinations?

7 The Relationship Between the Restaurant and Tourism

Logically, in the context of tourism, i.e. off-day practices deployed in off-day spaces, a large number of tourists use restaurants to satisfy their needs and desires for food and to taste dishes away from home (see Table 7.1).

Time

Ingurgitation (short time) Tasting (long time)

At home Ready to eat Home made

Space Away from home Picnic (snacking, street food) Restaurant

Table 7.1. Food practices in space and time (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Indeed, the restaurant is a privileged place for the deployment of recreational tourism practices. Attendance at restaurants is an essential part of a tourist’s stay: the tourist takes the time and gives himself time to taste (harmony of taste and food and drink). The discovery and encounter with an Other and an Otherworldliness involves, in particular, food and taste. Attending a restaurant is thus a practice of diversion. A study conducted by the One Poll polling firm for the foreign exchange company Travelex on 1,000 French adults aged 18 to 55 in June 2015 shows that 70% of respondents found out on the Internet before departing information on the restaurants to visit at their holiday destination: “A large proportion, 40%, were looking for the right address more than two weeks before D-day. While a third party reserves their table in advance, more than 60% ‘prefer spontaneity’”1. 1 bfmtv.com website: “For 46% of French people, local gastronomy is a key factor in choosing a holiday destination.” Online since July 31, 2015, accessed March 26, 2019.

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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7.1. Complementary relations between restaurants and tourism The restaurant and tourism are complementary. Wherever there are tourists who implement their recreational projects by deploying practices that differ from the day-to-day and off-daily space, there are restaurants. 7.1.1. Along the coastlines, at the beach In the south of France, the Pourcel brothers were among the first to offer a “star quality” culinary and gastronomic offer at a beach restaurant in Villeneuve-lèsMaguelonne: “At Carré Mer we are not a concept, we have something else – a family spirit, an atmosphere, a soul, a DNA created 9 years ago, since the straw hut first landed on the beach of Villeneuve-lès-Maguelonne. Every season, we invite our customers to discover a new history, one whose esthetics we reinvent according to the inspiration from our travels. This year black has appeared, a black that highlights these ethnic necklaces made of shells brought back from the other side of the world. Christian Collot, our decorator, signs his name in a place that forgets borders and invites you to experience a waking dream.”2 Beach restaurants, especially those offering beds, deckchairs or mattresses and parasols, are adapted to seaside tourism practices: “Carré Mer faces a marine environment of exceptional purity, a beach like nowhere else. This hut has become a ‘gathering place’, animated by friendship, sensitivity and the wisdom of human relations. ‘Zen and natural’, this hut/restaurant plays between simplicity and sophistication, each object, each color, each fabric, each suspension constructs a dialogue between cultures.”3 Rest and the strengthening of social ties are two reasons for frequenting the beach. Of course, the discovery of Pourcel’s cuisine explains the choice of the beach restaurant Carré Mer: “The beauty of the site, the ‘bistronomic’ cuisine based on fresh produce and inspired by the market, the signature cocktail menu, the

2 carre-mer.fr, accessed August 22, 2018. 3 Ibid.

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music, the welcome from our loyal teams all contribute to making Carré Mer over the years an ephemeral ritualistic summer destination.”4 The cuisine is: “Simple but refined, based around Mediterranean flavors, you can enjoy a nomadic and regional cuisine. Salads to share, grilled fish, plancha meats, pasta and risottos. From the bar or the beach, at the table or on the deckchairs, from the starter to the dessert, you will appreciate the large plates composed according to the market.”5 Particularly appreciated by tourists, fish restaurants are located in a privileged way along the coasts and, more particularly, near or even on the beaches. For these thematic restaurants, contextualization is essential. They present original atmospheres, linked to the marine environment, the beach, where the desire to eat (fish) and drink is born and which promote the tasting experience. Direct visual contact with the landscape is sought after and makes it possible to link, through the product cooked and put in the mouth, the dishes served with the spaces of “production”, marketing and recreation. Indeed, the large bay windows allow eaters to taste fish, shellfish and crustaceans while communicating directly with the landscapes from which they come and indirectly with the fishermen who caught them [PIT 93, ETC 04, ETC 11, ETC 17]. The restaurant is integrated into the beach, and the beach is often integrated into the restaurant, as a decorative element, in such a way that an inner/outer dialectic relationship is established. Thus, the quality of the food served in the restaurant is associated with the quality of the beaches supported by diners [PIT 93, ETC 11, ETC 17].

7.1.2. In the mountains Famous ski resort Courchevel has 75 restaurants6. In 2019, it had the highest number of Michelin stars in proportion to the number of inhabitants, i.e. 12 stars among 7 restaurants (the 3-star Le 1947 – the 2-star restaurants Le Chabichou, Le Kintessence and Le Montgomerie – and the 1-star restaurants Baumanière 1850, Le Sarkara and Le Farçon7) for 2,425 permanent inhabitants in 2019 (INSEE, the town hall’s website). This ski area plays on the image and international reputation of

4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 www.courchevel.com, accessed March 26, 2019. 7 Precisely located at La Tania-Courchevel.

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great chefs who are culinary advisors and place their students at the kitchen stoves of the hotels they recommend. This is the case for Yannick Alléno at Le 1947 restaurant at Cheval Blanc Courchevel and Jean-André Charial at Baumanière 1850 restaurant at Le Strato hotel. The Courchevel winter 2018–2019 press release insisted on the fact that: “Courchevel offers an exceptional quality and variety of restaurant and has always been a pioneer when it comes to gastronomy. In 1979, Michel Rochedy’s Le Chabichou became the first Courchevel restaurant to earn a Michelin star. Five years later, in 1984, it received its second star. Today, 7 of the resort’s restaurants boast Michelin stars, making it the strongest concentration of Michelin stars in the mountains.”8 Frédéric Bianchi, in his article “Comment cette station […] est passée d’alpage pour les vaches à haut-lieu gastronomique mondial, avec une concentration record d’étoiles par habitant?” (How did this resort go from being a mountain pasture for cows to a world-class gastronomic center, with a record concentration of Michelin stars per inhabitant?), identifies two stages in the construction of Courchevel’s gourmet reputation. The first was the arrival of chef Michel Rochedy at Le Chabichou restaurant: “And it is through gastronomy that Courchevel has already started to upgrade. It was a certain Michel Rochedy who initiated the take-off of the resort. This young Ardèche native chef – trained at the home of André Pic, a star of gastronomy at the time – moving to this village in the early 1960s where he bought the Chabichou, a hotel that he transformed into a gastronomic restaurant. A first at the time.” [BIA 17, author’s translation] The second is linked to the Albertville Olympic Games in 1992: “It was the 1992 Albertville Olympic Games that gave Courchevel a new lease of life. The first 5-star hotels arrived at this time” [BIA 17, author’s translation]. Le Sarkara restaurant is the “first gourmet dessert restaurant in the world”: it offers “a bold menu of desserts reinterpreted by Sébastien Vauxion”9.

8 Courchevel winter 2018–2019 online press kit, consulted on March 26, 2019. 9 www.lek2palace.com, accessed March 27, 2019: “With Le Sarkara, its 1 Michelin star gourmet dessert restaurant, Le K2 Palace offers a world first. In a magical, cosy setting at the heart of the establishment, the pastry chef Sébastien Vauxion takes dessert to dizzying heights, with a selection of extraordinary dishes cooked to order, a light starter, a hot main, gourmet dessert. Unusual, avant-garde: at Le Sarkara, the experience is incredible.”

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The Collection Menu The Coconut Mushroom. Mushrooms, sorbet and coconut milk, roasted grated shortbread, citron water and candied yuzu from Mr. Bachès, fresh herbs The White Carrot. Caramelized ravioli with white carrot, cranberries from Savoie, poached pears and delicate Chignin bouillon Cheese like Dessert. Fresh goats cheese from the Pattu farm, sea buckthorn jelly, shortbread with roasted flour and vegetable sorbet My Floating Island. Snow whites, English cream with original vanilla, thinned out caramel leaves and a slither of cashew nut Box 7.1. Collection menu at Le Sarkara restaurant

7.2. The interdependence between restaurants and tourism Beyond complementarity, restaurants and tourism are mutually reinforcing. Tourism and tourists play a role in the culinary and gastronomic orientation, in the organization and dynamics of restaurants. Restaurants contribute to the change in the qualities of tourism, tourists and tourist places. 7.2.1. The restaurant through tourism The characteristics of tourism, tourism institutions and tourists show the effects on the structuring and development of restaurants and catering in tourist places. At Le Castellet, the Christophe Bacquié restaurant, which obtained its third Michelin star in February 2018 in the Michelin Guide, is part of a complex that highlights the interdependence between tourism and leisure and forms of catering: “The Castellet plateau complex (tour, airport and hotel restaurants) was designed by Mr. Ecclecstone in 2001 after the tour was bought from the Ricard family. The logic of the network remains, even if the whole is now much more open to the region and tourism. Alexandra and Christophe Bacquié lead the group including the beautiful hotel and restaurant of Le Castellet, opposite the tour base, and the Grand Prix Hotel located next to the airport […]. The clientele of the HôtelRestaurant du Castellet has evolved and is now 70% open to tourists and regional customers; 30% of the figure is linked to the tour’s

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activity[…]. The hotel has health trails and cycling paths that lead into the pine forest. And a six-hole golf course. All on 12 hectares (ha). The spa has just been renovated and extended to 700 m2 – an investment of €3 million.”10 In line with the tourist and leisure practices of car track tours, the complex consists of the 5-star Hôtel du Castellet and Relais & Châteaux (41 rooms and suites) with two restaurants Christophe Bacquié 3 stars in the Michelin Guide and San Felice Guide, the 3-star Grand Prix Hôtel (117 rooms) with the restaurant Circuit du Castellet-Pitlane (seats 140, open 7 days a week, lunch and dinner), the Paul Ricard car tour and the Castellet International Airport, built in 1962 by Paul Ricard and refurbished in 2001. The restaurant Circuit du Castellet-Pitlane, which mainly welcomes technicians and riders from the motor racing circuit, offers a timed formula with a daily special and gourmet coffee at €12 served in 45 minutes. The 3-star Michelin restaurant welcomes team bosses and highly publicized race car drivers. On the Instagram social network, chef Christophe Bacquié has posted photographs, taken as part of the Formula 1 Grand Prix, with the President of the International Automobile Federation (FIA) Jean Todt (June 23, 2018), Mr Honda and Pierre Gasly (June 23, 2018), riders Romain Grosjean (June 23, 2018) and Fernando Alonso (June 22, 2018). On its website (News section), the Paul Ricard track announced on February 26, 2018: “Chef Christophe Bacquié with three Michelin stars in the Michelin Guide. The chef of Hôtel & Spa du Castellet joins the very closed circle of the triple star receipients of France in the 2018 edition of the red guide. On Monday, February 5, chef Christophe Bacquié – chef of his eponymous restaurant at Hôtel & Spa du Castellet – was awarded his third star. An accolade for someone who was born on June 9, 1972 in Montreuil, and spent his entire childhood in Lumio, Corsica. After L’Oasis in Mandelieu-la-Napoule, 3 stars at the time, he took his pots and pans to the island of Beauty, at La Villa in Calvi where he collected 2 stars before joining the Hôtel du Castellet in 2009. The Mediterranean flows in the veins of this 2004 MOF (Best Worker in France) vintage, who constantly honors fish, crustaceans, shellfish and other molluscs. The St. Pierre-Tourteau-Caviar trilogy and its sour cream, flavored with a zest of combawa, the rack of Mediterranean langoustines and their coral-colored juice, the red mullet fillet of rock bass boosted by a full-bodied juice surrounded by thorny artichokes and line-caught hake cooked in sparkling butter lacquered with a 10 “Hôtel du Castellet : un couple à la manœuvre”, June 15, 2016, Var Entreprises: var-entreprises.com, accessed August 22, 2018.

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brown poultry juice and truffle condiment are all signature dishes. This activist for a responsible and sustainable cuisine pays tribute to the beautiful products of land and sea. Close to his teams and producers, he values emotion, the chef’s motto: ‘To be the artisan of a good table is to share the emotions of a successful meal.’”11 The links between the track and the Christophe Bacquié restaurant are therefore dense and can be described as interdependent. For both of them, it is interesting to note that the Paul Ricard track is the first circuit in the world to have a 3-star restaurant in the Michelin Guide. Christophe Bacquié thus shared an article published on the Food & Sens online gourmet site (Chefs & News section) on his Instagram account on April 2, 2018: “On June 22, 23 and 24, F1 will return to France after a 10 year absence. Indeed, the return to the Castellet track is a real event – it has been much anticipated by the public. The Grand Prix de France to be held on the Paul Ricard track is due to the will of Christian Estrosi, the former president of the PACA Regional Council. An audacious bet in the process of being won, 65,000 visitors are expected and everything will be sold out […]. And uniquely, the Castellet track is the only F1 circuit that benefits from a 3-star Michelin restaurant, since chef Christophe Bacquié received the highest rating this year.” The press is reporting this strong link: “Three hundred meters from the Paul Ricard track, Christophe Bacquié is more than ever in pole position. In the shade of the paddocks, the 45-year-old chef magnetizes the limelight with the 3 stars awarded in the 2018 edition of the Michelin Guide” [DAN 18, author’s translation]. There are also links between Le Castellet International Airport and the 3-star restaurant, through an air catering offer for some pilots in particular12. Le Castellet is a village in which tourists come to taste what Provence has to offer. Christophe Bacquié’s cuisine is also Provençal and, more broadly, Mediterranean with its Corsican taste notes. Its “Throughout the years” menu offers you the opportunity to discover dishes “cooked and refined over time, from Corsica, or imagined in Provence, my emotional dishes make up this menu”: modern Aioli, vegetables from our local market gardeners, Mediterranean octopus (see Figure 7.1) and the “Excellence Miéral” Blood Pigeon cooked in spicy salt paste, and sour juice with wild myrtle vinegar express this geographical integration.

11 Circuitpaulricard.com, accessed August 23, 2018. 12 Discussion with Fabien Ferré, Christophe Bacquié’s sous chef, on May 8, 2018.

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Figure 7.1. Modern aioli, vegetables from our local market gardeners, Mediterranean octopus (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

These interdependent relationships lead to the emergence of a “Castellet destination”13. The Paul Ricard track website presents: “The Paul Ricard track is at the heart of the ‘Destination Castellet’, a unique site dedicated to leisure and tourism in the south of France, in the heart of Provence, between the sea and the mountains […]. Near the Paul Ricard track are a wide variety of infrastructures: an international business airport, a 3 to 5 star hotel park, restaurants with varied atmospheres and flavors and leisure and relaxation facilities that meet all expectations.”14 The catering offer is completed by the Grand Prix Burger/La Tarte Tropézienne fast food restaurant, located in Xtrem Park, with a view of the racetrack.

13 There is a French magazine Destination Castellet published by Cape Éditions. 14 http://www.monopolypedia.fr/editions/sport/circuit-paul-ricard/circuit-paul-ricard.php, accessed August 23, 2018.

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In Vendée, the Société publique locale (SPL) Océan Marais de Monts Tourisme is at the initiative of labeling Monts cuisine through the “Cuisine montoise Créativité mer & marais” approach: “What if enjoying local cuisine in the restaurant immediately plunged you into the family and traditional cuisine of the Breton-Vendée Marshes? Can you smell that hot salted butter tickling your nostrils? Yes, you are with Josette, Jeanine, Simone, Monique, Annick or Ginette, the Marais natives cooking the recipes of their mothers, their grandmothers. These market gardeners are committed to sharing their stories and know-how. The ‘Montoise cuisine’ approach allows them to meet chefs who wish to offer their food lovers the pleasure of authentic, fresh and gourmet local cuisine. From this meeting were born dishes to be tasted in ten quality establishments in the Pays de Monts. What a pride for these inhabitants, bearers of the oral heritage, to know that their culture is appreciated and safeguarded.”15 The labeling process is sponsored by Nantes native chef Yvon Garnier, who founded the Institut Édouard Nignon for the promotion of Nantes cuisine in 2004. It is particularly supported by the Office du patrimoine culinaire des terroirs (OPACT) created in Le Perrier in the Vendée department. Within the Office du patrimoine culturel immatériel (OPCI), an interregional association for the promotion and study of intangible cultural heritage, OPACT is implementing a program to identify, document and promote local food products and popular culinary preparations, mainly in the Pays de la Loire region. The idea of creating a label emerged in 2014 when the OPCI launched a market garden collection among the permanent BretonVendée marshes. The label “Cuisine montoise Créativité mer & marais” concerns 15 catering structures: – in Saint-Jean de Monts: La Quich’notte, Le Robinson, Chez Bastien, Le Petit Saint Jean, La Villa, La Langoust’in, L’Espadon, Le Golf, Le 104, Le Salon des desserts; – in Notre-Dame de Monts: L’Estran; – in La Barre de Monts/Fromentine: La Bourrine aux saveurs; – in Le Perrier: Le Glajou; – in Soullans: Le Traiteur Soullandais; – and Le Fouée’d truck. 15 Press release 2017.

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It enhances the value of agricultural or artisanal products: – soil: bonnotte (potato), poultry from Challans, préfou (bread filled with salted butter and chopped garlic, originally pre-burnt dough, the word comes from the French meaning for fear of being made in patois), mogettes (dry white beans also called lingot, IGP16 since October 9, 2010); – sea: seafood (especially with pine nuts) and fish (especially sardines from Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie); – dessert: Vendée brioche (Label rouge since 2003 and IGP since 2011), market garden flan or fion (Easter dessert to enhance the value of eggs stored during Lent and spring milk); – alcohol: troussepinette (marinating of plum or quince thorns or quince shoots or nuts or peach leaves), kamok (coffee liqueur created in 1812 in Luzon by the liquorist Henri-Aimé Vrignaud for Dutch sailors who came to dry the Vendée marshes/an anagram of moka), Vendée kingdom; – condiments: fleur de sel, samphire. It has led to the inventory of about 40 recipes: – traditional market garden recipes or recipes revisited by the chef: roasted eels on vine shoots (Le Glajou), eels with parsley (L’Estran, La Quich’notte, Le Glajou, Le Robinson, Chez Bastien, Le Petit Saint Jean and Le Traiteur Soullandais), frogs’ legs with parsley (La Quich’notte, Le Glajou, L’Estran, Le Petit Saint Jean and Le Traiteur Soullandais), frog legs with cream (La Quich’notte), hash margate17 rata18 (Le Traiteur Soullandais, La Villa), moules maraîchines19 (La Langoust’in), roasted lobster (La Langoust’in), rivéros20 soup (La Villa), gralaïe21 (L’Espadon, L’ Estran), Auguste de Croix-de-Vie sardines on toast (Le Golf), bignaïe22 (La Bourrine aux saveurs), lèt-bèr23 sauce (La Bourrine aux saveurs), market garden flan (Le Salon des desserts, La Villa, Le Glajou, La Bourrine aux saveurs du Daviaud), brioche de Vendée (Le Salon des desserts), caillebottes à la crème de kamok maison24

16 Indication geographique protegee is the classification of a product’s quality and authenticity. 17 Margate is a French regional word for cuttlefish. 18 Cuttlefish (margats) stew (rata) of cuttlefish simmered with carrots, potatoes and onions and flambéed with cognac. 19 Mussels cooked in cream or béchamel mixed with the cooking juice of the mussels, shallots, onions and parsley. 20 Soup of small shore crabs caught off Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie. 21 Slice of bread toasted in the fire spread with butter and mogette beans. 22 Thick crepe with bacon. 23 Buttermilk sauce (lèt-bèr). 24 Curdled milk with goldfinch flower (replaced with whey from the 1950s onwards).

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(La Quich’notte), caillebottes à la fleur de chardonnette (La Bourrine), foutimassons or beignets25 (Le Salon des desserts), fionaïe26 (La Bourrine) and pilaïe27 (La Bourrine); – “Fantaisie Gourmande” recipes (original creations based on local market garden products): flowing mogettes (Chez Bastien), revisited mogette ham (La Quich’notte), smoked eel ravioli (Le 104), marinated sardine fillets (La Quich’notte), pork cheek and chorizo margates (Le Glajou), Thai vinaigrette margate stir fry (Le Golf), whole marinated sardines (La Villa). Some recipes are also developed by François Litou in his Fouée’d truck: hot fillet of margate rata à la Maraîchine revisited (with island style cream with carrots), fillet of brunoise margate and fouée with smoked mackerel rillettes. Finally, recipes enhance and re-enhance the value of the marsh’s gray pumpkin, a vegetable found and called “péa d’tamarane” (tamarix skin) by market gardeners: marsh gray pumpkin soup (La Quich’notte, Le 104), poultry tournedos and roasted marsh gray pumpkin (La Villa), caramelized marsh pumpkin chocolate shortbread and white chocolate/pumpkin foam (Le Golf), revisited citrolle pâté28 (Fouée’d truck). The label “Cuisine montoise Créativité mer & marais” aims to enhance the tourist value of a culinary identity and local taste preferences. The SPL Océan Marais de Monts thus highlights the tourist experience “Eat like a local29”: “Among the profiles of culinary travellers are the authentic ones; travellers looking for an authentic gourmet experience, or dishes and drinks prepared according to the recipes and traditions of the territory visited. Several studies even prove that the authentic culinary experience is a factor in choosing a destination. The ‘Montoise cuisine’ approach makes it possible to reshape a tourist’s imagination on the basis of an unknown popular heritage of great qualitative value: the food traditions of the Breton-Vendée marsh. Tourist experiences are indirect encounters with the locals. In the long run, the relationships developed will become direct in the form of meals at home or other participatory actions.”30

25 Doughnuts eaten on Mardi Gras. 26 Egg custard flavored with cinnamon and baked in the oven. 27 Milk millet. 28 Turnover with pumpkin sauce like an apple turnover. 29 Press kit 2017. 30 Ibid.

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For the SPL Océan Marais de Monts Tourisme, the project is a step in the heritage development of the food traditions of the Breton-Vendéen marsh. The objectives of this patrimonialization process are as follows: “[To] encourage the transmission of know-how from the inhabitants to the broadcasters, enhance the value of agri-food and craft resources, increase the awareness of regional products, raise awareness among travellers and inhabitants of a heritage too often restricted to market gardening community alone, create economic sectors based on knowledge of the culinary heritage: producers, broadcasters and consumers.”31 The SPL Océan Marais de Monts Tourisme is positioned at the interface between permanent and temporary inhabitants: “The inhabitant, a member of the market gardening community, is proud to pass on his knowledge and know-how. He is a true ambassador of his culture. A culture that, in contact with the tourist culture that was massively established in the 1950s, has been able to preserve itself but needs to be appropriated by all the inhabitants themselves and the travellers. The SPL Océan Marais de Monts Tourisme meets the entire sector through reports, articles and culinary chronicles.”32 It organizes meetings between permanent residents and chefs in order to transfer revenue. The chefs ensure the transmission with the temporary inhabitants. Thus, tourism institutions (and tourists) are innovating with the labeling process and are initiating a process of heritage enhancement for the food lover. This particularly original initiative in a mass tourism venue has a direct impact on the culinary and gastronomic offer of the 15 catering structures involved in the process. 7.2.2. The restaurant for tourism The restaurant reveals effects on the qualities of tourism and tourist places, on the practices and views of tourists, on tourist discourses and imaginations and on tourist attractiveness.

31 Ibid. 32 Ibid.

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In connection with National Highway 7, located opposite to the station, Troisgros restaurant was the main contributor to the reputation and tourist centrality of the city of Roanne since 1930. In 2017, the family settled in the village of Ouches, with 1,158 inhabitants in 2015 (INSEE), 8 kilometers from Roanne. Nicolas de Rabaudy recalls: “The modest Roanne café became a famous three-star restaurant in 1968 – just after Paul Bocuse in 1965 – and the best restaurant in the world for Gault and Millau. The world’s finest gourmet meals, led by Japanese and Americans, were enjoyed in the two brothers’ modest dining room. The Socialist town hall had to equip the modest Roanne airport to accommodate the jets of the ‘rich people’ who came to taste the ‘grand menu’ composed of thrush mousse, sorrel salmon and floral cheese with marrow accompanied by gratin forézien and finished with the dessert farandole: a real feast (15 euros) served in a sub-prefecture already affected at the time by unemployment in the textile industry […]. Over time, Roanne has remained a kind of capital of good food, creativity, inventiveness, flavors and fair tastes […]. Yes, a gastronomic epic at the forefront of the world’s catering industry, imitated everywhere. Roanne, a place of pilgrimage, with your taste buds awake […]. So why leave Roanne in February 2017 and abandon this modest hotel-restaurant (25 rooms), so appreciated by the world’s fine beaks, which was the magical place of food loving? For another life close to nature, far from endemic unemployment, urban pollution and because Michel, 59 years old, and his beloved wife Marie-Pierre had two sons, César 30 years old and Léo 25 years old, who chose the cooking profession.” [RAB 17] Indeed, although in the center of a central gourmet place, the Troisgros family felt the need for a shift, a change of geographical scale, an “elsewhere”: “In 1996, Michel and his wife, Marie-Pierre, were responsible for maintaining the prestige of the three stars. People always came from Japan, England and Belgium to experience the thrill, but something it was no longer there… ‘We had to face the facts: this historic site had become restrictive,’ says Marie-Pierre Troisgros. ‘We were only tenants, because we could never buy the walls and there were not many trains passing through the station… We had the reflex to fall back. It was time to take a breather and find ourselves a new project elsewhere.’” [GAU 17]

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Designed by architect Patrick Bouchain, the new restaurant, called Le Bois sans feuilles, and built around a 100-year-old oak tree, plays with the surrounding nature. Between inside and outside, the room, which is largely glazed, visually lets in the wooded landscape, and the folded steel pillars that give it its rhythm constitute a continuity: “Le Bois sans feuilles seems mysterious as soon as you enter from a distance: a kind of enchanted wood? Appearances, disappearances, when we enter them, their play becomes clearer along the path that leads us to our place. Around a 100-year-old oak tree, the dining room develops between a field of grasses and undergrowth, as an extension of the latter. The tables, scattered between the barrels, can be seen, sheltering at the foot of the folded steel pillars that support the roof.”33 Indeed, the restaurant’s new decor is a refocusing on the diner’s experience of nature and gastronomy: “A few steps then lead to the heart of the system: a radically contemporary dining room, constructed like an illusion floating around a centuries-old oak tree. Its lightweight, airy glass walls seem to blur any boundaries between the outside and the inside. Rising from a parquet floor set with 200-year-old oak beams recovered from a farm in Mâcon, 73 folded steel pillars spin the metaphor of a forest of trunks. Comfort with the soft duck egg blue armchairs – the iconic Tulip, by Pierre Paulin – and solid wood tables covered with custommade handcrafted paper sets.” [GAU 17, author’s translation] Lighting contributes to this refocusing. It consists of magical lamps, made of a metallic fabric, which cover each table with light: “In the evening, dozens of bright flickers illuminate the room, like fireflies going out of the night to accompany the guests”. The new hotel is a financial challenge: “The place where we are today is detrimental to our hotel offer, especially since the owners – Parisians in disagreement with joint ownership NDLR – were not willing to sell and therefore allow us to undertake the necessary transformations. We have taken into account the new expectations of our customers, who will be sensitive to a relaxing environment and infrastructure: a very beautiful Florentine style building, century-old oaks, outbuildings in the form of a small village, a 17 ha park, a 4 ha pond, a swimming pool, a spa, etc.

33 troisgros.fr, consulted on August 23, 2018.

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This choice was dictated by the hotel concern, which is so crucial to the economic model of our establishments. We will start with 12 rooms and will serve the same number of people as today: a maximum of sixty per day.” [LAF 14, author’s translation] For François Simon, with the move, the kitchen was rearranged: “In the passage, the Troisgros kitchen moved, it moved further down. We forget that it was forged in a succession that was not obvious. The thurifers Peter and John (father and uncle) did not spare Michel, the heir. Paradoxically, this galvanized his cuisine, emancipated him in a more distinct way…. In this distinguished world, the trip to Ouches is part of these authentic culinary experiences. No drum rolls or pumped-up showmanship, just the movement of the lines that move, in a peaceful, diminishing setting, reinventing a poetic rurality.” [SIM 17, author’s translation] One of the first dishes created in Ouches was “Cosa croccante” (Figure 7.2) which consists of fried carrot strips, garlic chips, minced raw sorrel, gray shrimp, capers, hazelnut oil and pepper paste.

Figure 7.2. Cosa croccante (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

The establishment of the hotel and restaurant changed the tourist qualities of the village of Ouches. It moved tourist centrality from Roanne to Ouches. Thus, Ouches is now a tourist attraction. Thanks to the new restaurant, Ouches is known throughout the world for its gastronomy and tourism. The restaurant globalizes

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Ouches as a tourist destination, where discourses and gastronomic and tourist imaginations are infused and diffused. This example of a restaurant for tourism reveals that it is the Troisgros family that is more central than the place (Roanne or Ouches). When Alexandre and Céline Couillon moved to the port of L’Herbaudière in 1999, they took over the family establishment, which had been run for several years and was only open in July and August: “July and August are very strong months from a tourist point of view. By the end of August, there are no tourists left”, says Alexandre Couillon34. Quickly, the chef wondered about the means to move from “a seasonal restaurant to a full restaurant, all year round”35. Journalist Paule Masson explains: “In Noirmoutier, the season starts with summer. Alexandre Couillon’s parents – who lived in France and Senegal, where his father was a fisherman – bought a café at the port of Herbaudière in Noirmoutier, opposite the auction house in the 1980s. Open in July and August, they feed tourists with tourist food, like everyone else on the island […]. The young couple set out, took over the restaurant in 1999, laid tablecloths on the tables, adopted fresh products, simply cooked, fish soup, sea mussels. But anyway in Alexandre Couillon’s own words: ‘We weren’t taken seriously. We didn’t stick to the holidaymaker label in a hurry, ready to go to the cash drawer to go faster to the beach.’ He then had to resist pressure from wholesalers, carelessly placing samples of frozen food on a corner of the table […]. In 2007, the first star came – an opening to dare to invest, become an owner, keep the bistro that became La Table d’Élise, buy the building next door, open La Marine, right in front of the auction house, serve a cuisine based on the sea, taken from the land, without influence, almost instantaneous, for 20 people […]. The second star came in 2013.” [MAS 18] At the same time, Alexandre Couillon poses the observation of a negative geographical situation for a wider opening. On the one hand, Noirmoutier is an island (a peninsula) that is not easily accessible, despite the Gois passage and the bridge that connects it to the mainland. On the other hand, the restaurant is located at the north-western tip of Noirmoutier: diners must therefore cross the island entirely from south to north, from the tip of the Fosse (arrival by the bridge) or the polder of Sébastopol (arrival by the passage) to the tip of L’Herbaudière. The chef concludes that he needed to change his culinary orientation: “We had to propose a new style of 34 Interview with Alexandre Couillon, July 23, 2018. 35 Ibid.

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cuisine. To have a restaurant open all year round, you don’t need an ordinary cuisine, even a good one, you need a cuisine that is fixed”36. In other words, Alexandre Couillon gradually created a cuisine that was not noirmoutrine, but island-based, insular, in other words, geographical. He has shaped a cuisine directly associated with trips, (tourist) mobility, travel: “I want customers to experience the journey. The attraction of remoteness is a local and creative cuisine. The remoteness forces us to build solidly. We are not in the ephemeral.”37 A meal at La Marine then becomes a discovery of taste, geography and tourism: “At first, I was doing a mixed cuisine. Little by little, I made a more local cuisine. I wanted to put myself in the travellers’ shoes. What kind of cuisine are they looking for?”38 Thibaut Danancher describes this initiatory journey: “The crossing by car is a wonderful adventure! Riding from the mainland to Beauvoir-sur-Mer along the Passage du Gois is always as magical. Twice a day, a 4.125 km stretch of asphalt appears in the middle of the Atlantic at low tide to reach the island of Noirmoutier. All that remains is to pass Barbâtre, La Guérinière, l’Épine, to finally reach the promised land. You have arrived at the tip of the ocean at the port of L’Herbaudière, where there is a floating feeling of the end of the world. Between the souvenir shops, bars and brasseries hides an intimate address: La Marine.” [DAN 15, author’s translation] The integration of Alexandre Couillon’s creative cuisine took place on three geographical scales. At each of these scalar levels, the chef developed geographical and professional proximity. First, at the scale of the port of L’Herbaudière, which is described in the tourist map of the island of Noirmoutier as follows: “On this northern coast of the island, a marina and a fishing port coexist. The latter has about a hundred boats registered in the maritime affairs district. They proudly display the letters NO, which so often designate the island of Noirmoutier. Auctions are daily, the great French tables have not been mistaken, and while L’Herbaudière 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid.

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is a port famous for sole and sea bass, other fish are also brought ashore: mullets, sea bream, lobsters and crabs.”39 Located at 5, rue Marie-Lemonnier, the restaurant faces the port of L’Herbaudière. “The boats and the port of L’Herbaudière are very important”40, says Alexandre Couillon. La Marine is now the mirror of it. “I like the room to tell the customers: you see this whiting on your plate, now look out the window, it was caught by the little red boat in the harbor”. Alexandre Couillon has established links with the auction house. The vast majority of fish and shellfish come from it. “With the auction, I tried to give them a boost. I encourage the protection of species and the fight against overfishing. I have also participated in the development of the sale of live fish”41. Indeed, many fish still arrive alive at the restaurant where Alexandre Couillon practices the ikejime42 technique he learned in Japan with the multi-Michel-star chef Toru Okuda. “More spectacularly, its fish have barely left the water, almost alive: it is sometimes ‘slaughtered’ on the spot, at La Marine, with compassion for the animal, according to a Japanese ritual. The diaphanous flesh is then grilled,” says Pierre Carrey [CAR 16, author’s translation]. However, the chef does not only get his supplies from the auction house, but also tries to supply the whole island: “I want to make work for everyone. For seafood products, I buy at the auction house, from fishermen and also from the fishmonger Benjamin Gallais. For salt, I get my supplies from the cooperative and also from the Bonne Pogne salt marshes in La Guérinière from Philippe Petitgas. We put all our craftsmen in the spotlight.”43 Second, we wish to highlight the geographical scale of the island. Since 2015, Alexandre Couillon has been cultivating a 1,800 m2 garden in the agricultural plain of Noirmoutier. Paule Masson explains: “So, the chef bought a piece of land, 1,800 square meters of desert land, immersed himself in books, reflected, observed, learned the basic rules of permaculture in the idea of creating a productive, 39 Tourist office of the island of Noirmoutier. Tourist map of August 2018. 40 Interview with Alexandre Couillon, July 23, 2018. 41 Ibid. 42 France Ikejime website, consulted on July 23, 2018: “Ikejime is a method of slaughtering fish that has been practiced in Japan for several centuries. It has no ritual or religious dimension. Ikejime is just common sense! This empirical technique was developed at a time when there was no fridge or fast transport. It has been found that if the fish’s nervous system is neutralized and drained of blood, it gains in quality and keeps better. Ikejime enhances the organoleptic qualities of fish and significantly extends its shelf life.” 43 Interview with Alexandre Couillon, July 23, 2018.

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resilient and organic ecosystem. For months, he spent every day with the restaurant closed, Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday evening, testing combinations to produce vegetables without chemicals, bulbs with thyme and lemon, tomatoes with basil […]. Since then, everything has been set up, gradually. Crops are alternated for the rest of the earth, egg shells arranged to stop slugs, chickens released to scrape what lies around, bees flown away to pollinate flowers, caterpillars removed one by one by one by hand…” [MAS 18, author’s translation] “For me, to make a garden is to go back to the roots. I have just bought a new plot of land that will increase my garden from 1,800 to 3,500 m2 with a source. I would like to do an educational project for the children of the island”44. The construction of the geographical relationship to the island of Noirmoutier also involves the landscape dimension. According to Jacky Durand: “Everything on the chef’s plates at La Marine reminds us of a stroll in the dunes of Luzéronde beach or on a path in the Bois des Éloux, a walk on the side of the passage du Gois or a walk in the Sébastopol polder where myriads of birds come to rest at dusk.” [COU 16, author’s translation] The dessert entitled Balade dans le bois de la Chaize (a walk in the Chaize wood) (see Figure 7.3) is an emblematic example.

Figure 7.3. Balade dans le bois de la Chaize at the restaurant La Marine in Noirmoutier (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

44 Ibid.

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The woods, a major tourist destination, is described by the tourist map at the Noirmoutier tourist office: “In the heart of the Bois de la Chaize, about a hundred ‘chalets and villas’ from the end of the century bear witness to the first hours of tourism on the island. At the time, Pornic’s steamboat left the bourgeois families from the Pays de la Loire and its capital for the day. In 1850, these first summer visitors enjoyed sea baths, the ladies changed in the cabins, the children enjoyed donkey rides offered by the Noirmoutier natives, while the gentlemen ‘discussed business’ in front of absinthe, on the open-air terrace.”45 “I wanted a sweet dessert based around vegetables. I tried to transcribe the ecosystem in a visual way”46. Jacky Durand proposes a construction of the esthetic relationship between desserts and landscape: “Take the bois de la Chaize, whose holm oaks and maritime pines outline the Les Dames beach, dotted with a string of white and blue bathing cabins. Here it is, a dessert where ice cream with pine sap, green tea biscuit and chocolate cream make up a sweet, resinous, sparkling and crunchy grove like an undergrowth by the ocean.” [COU 16, author’s translation] In the same, but radically different way, the Huître noire Erika tells the story of the geography of the oil disaster that occurred the very year Alexandre and Céline Couillon settled in the port of L’Herbaudière. Jacky Durand confirms: “It was the oil spill caused by the sinking of the oil tanker Erika on 11 December 1999 that inspired the ‘Huître noire’. Let’s say a fleshy mollusc, ebony in color, cooked in a bouillon of fat and squid where the tapioca in cuttlefish ink imitates the oil slick, encircled with a dried bacon powder and a mysterious mother-of-pearl.” [COU 16, author’s translation] This geographical anchoring to the island of Noirmoutier finally involves the reappropriation of conservation techniques that Alexandre Couillon adapts to his cuisine and applies to many agricultural food products. These are salting, brining

45 Tourist office of the island of Noirmoutier. Tourist map from August 2018. 46 Interview with Alexandre Couillon, July 23, 2018.

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and smoking techniques. Estérelle Payany explores the palette of smoking valued by the chef: “A mullet smoked with pine cone in an old bread oven, served on its own roasted bones like a pagan ceremony, a lobster blanched on a Japanese barbecue: the flame and fire seem to fascinate Alexandre Couillon. ‘Even when you’re a kid, the flame on the fireplace attracts you. From Dakar, where I lived until I was 6 years old, I still have the smell of ebony chips burned by sculptors, and the smell of peanut nougatine made in the street. Here, we smoke fish, vegetables too, on a plate of coarse salt, over an extinguished fire. The other interest is to combine cooking: a poached guinea fowl, then roasted and grilled gains in strength in cooking the skin.’ Of sand and fire, Alexandre Couillon’s cuisine is as clear as glass. And just like Michel Bras and Régis Marcon, who came from areas that were said to be remote and arid, it is by revealing to the eyes of the world the richness of his horizon that Couillon has made a name for himself.” [PAY 16, author’s translation] Alexandre Couillon also smokes the milk with which he will make his dessert entitled Crème glacée on the fireplace and serve with a salted butter caramel with Noirmoutier fleur de sel and a bean flour straw (Figure 7.4).

Figure 7.4. Smoked ice cream at the restaurant La Marine in Noirmoutier (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

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Third, the chef adds culinary value to the Vendée region, particularly for poultry. The chickens are raised by Frédéric Grondin at the Couartière farm in Bois-de-Céné. The dish entitled Poulet à la Mue de Vendée & Condiment du jardin (dinner from July 22, 2018) emphasizes the technique of finishing poultry during the moulting season redeployed by the farmer: chickens reared at least 15 weeks in the open air and fed cereals end their days with a diet composed of bread dipped in cow’s milk during the last two weeks. The ducks come from the breeding of the famous Burgaud family in Challans. Similarly, the flour is bought from Richard Billet at the Moulin de Rairé in Sallertaine. The “cuisine of the living and the time directly from our garden and boats” is nowadays an accessible cuisine thanks to the journey, the crossing of the island from south to north in particular, necessary for its tasting in all its nuances and its esthetic understanding. The journey allows a real and ideal appropriation of the place (territorialization) and an impregnation by the landscapes. “It’s important to make the traveller understand where he’s coming from and create emotions”47, says Alexandre Couillon. The culinary orientation with a qualitative objective and the geographical integration, even on a “popular waterfront”48, allow the creation of the necessary conditions for the seasonal adjustment of tourist numbers. “We are booked several weeks in advance even in winter. In winter, customers leaving the restaurant make purchases, especially in front of ‘La Compagnie de la Mer’”49, he adds. Of course, the media coverage of Alexandre Couillon (documentary portrail on Netflix and publication of the book Marine et Végétale by Éditions de l’Épure in 2016, issue Carnets de Julie devoted to Vendée cuisine in 2018 in which Alexandre Couillon presents the recipe Shellfish and cooked vegetables … on an island) and its legitimation by the gastronomic guides (elected Chef of the year 2017 by Gault & Millau) participate, through word of mouth, in changing the views and practices of tourists who are increasingly knowledgeable, demanding and curious. Thus, the diners who frequent the restaurant all year round book accommodation, frequent other restaurants, visit other shops and use services that boost seasonal business in terms of the island’s tourist activity. In 2013, the restaurant La Vague d’Or, Cheval Blanc Saint-Tropez won its third Michelin star. Since then, even more than before, chef Arnaud Donckele and restaurant manager Thierry Di Tullio have contributed to changing the gastronomic and tourist image of Saint-Tropez through a very demanding supply of food products, landscape cuisine and refined gastronomic discourses and imaginations. Together, since 2008, they have radically transformed Cheval Blanc Saint-Tropez’s

47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid.

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restaurant offer by integrating it on a local–regional scale and giving it a historical– artistic content. Indeed, Charlotte Cieslinski underlines: “Recipes that the chef has developed, drawn and labelled in notebooks by immersing himself in the old local recipes, so dear to Jean Giono or Frédéric Mistral. Stories of dishes, abandoned or disowned… like the leerfish for example, an ‘exceptional little fish’ that swims with tuna, and that Arnaud Donckele discovered while talking to a 78-year-old fisherman. The man showed him how he cooked it, on the grill, and the chef adopted it, inspired by the recipe of a pre-war food critic from Provence, Victor Petit.” [CIE 18, author’s translation] “The objective is to tell a story,” says Thierry Di Tullio50. The approach to catering has been renewed: “This is not a hotel catering business and the service is being modernized”. La Vague d’Or’s culinary and gastronomic offer is based on a detailed knowledge and subtle understanding of the geographical environment in terms of food production, recipes and local taste preferences. Just like La borgne contemporaine: a Jean Giono delicacy to start as a tribute, saffron cod petals as he liked to offer it to the house of Manosque (1st plate), red ocher rock fish soup wrapped in decorated poached egg, wrasse, capon and bellowfish (2nd plate) (Figure 7.5).

Figure 7.5. La borgne contemporaine (2nd plate) at Cheval-Blanc Saint-Tropez (source: Olivier Etcheverria); the plate is a post-bouillebaisse dish in which the fish are ground; it is garnished with an egg 50 Interview with Thierry Di Tullio, May 10, 2018.

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“We have a qualitative philosophy”51, says Thierry Di Tullio. Through numerous renewed meetings with local producers, Arnaud Donckele and Thierry Di Tullio are fighting against the “agricultural impoverishment of the Hyères basin”52. They encourage “a new generation of farmer children who have a new perspective on working the land”53. The qualitative objective orientation leads to a shared definition of “a quality that goes beyond labels, a quality that seeks a lifestyle”54. The chef insists that “his approach can benefit other chefs”55. They both attach great importance to the “role of listening and sharing about family heritage”56. Indeed, Arnaud Donckele is enriched by the family culinary culture and the localized gastronomic knowledge of Thierry Di Tullio, born in Hyères. Moreover, he is inspired by the surrounding landscape “between land and sea”: “Pines are the bucolic side, the moors the natural and the wild side, the sea the salt side and the sand the sensuality, for example in a sauce”. For the chef, who takes a “new look at Provençal cuisine”, the “construction of a dish is based on local heritage”: “I want to make the landscape encountered understood on the plate”. Indeed, Arnaud Donckele has adopted Jean Giono’s phrasing: “Cooking makes the landscape known. The landscape is used to understand the cuisine”. The description of Emmanuel Tresmontant’s gastronomic experience attests to this: “In the evening, sitting under a huge Lebanese pine tree planted there 250 years ago, it is paradise: the sea is full of oil, with its mysterious scent of sea urchins and watermelons, and we find this unique grain of light that the painter Signac, who loved Saint-Tropez at the end of the 19th Century, was able to reproduce in his paintings. In the past, this divine place was frequented by fishermen in the port who caught tuna with traps, a net carried by buoys […]. The tastes born of his imagination are all marked and powerful like the scent of the scrubland after the storm: those of fennel, grilled leerfish on the fireplace (a fish caught in Corsica, close to swordfish), smoked anchovies, melon, sea urchin coral, citronella and macaroni gratin with artichoke cream…” [TRE 17, author’s translation] At the same time, Arnaud Donckele and Thierry Di Tullio play an exemplary role in the “rise in quality” of Saint-Tropez. In terms of the restaurant industry, it is thus visible in the qualitative reorientation of practices related to the supply and culinary production of many other restaurants on the one hand and the development

51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Interview with Arnaud Donckele, May 10, 2018. 56 Ibid.

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of culinary advice provided by leading chefs (Alain Ducasse at Byblos, Éric Fréchon at La Petite Plage, for example) on the other hand. In the same way, Nikki Beach Saint-Tropez organized “Michelin star lunches” in the summer of 2018: July 24 with Gilles Goujon (Auberge du Vieux Puits in Fontjoncouse, 3 Michelin stars), July 31 with Jean-François Piège (Le Grand Restaurant in Paris, 2 Michelin stars), August 7 with Régis Marcon (Restaurant Régis & Jacques Marcon in Saint Bonnet-le-Froid, 3 Michelin stars) and August 21 with Emmanuel Renaut (Flocons de Sel in Megève, 3 Michelin stars). Arnaud Donckele mentioned the example of Club 55 where Patrick de Colmont gets his supplies from the same market gardener, Yann Ménard in Cogolin, and serves wild fish. In Arnaud Donckele’s opinion, today, “Saint-Tropez is at a turning point: less bling-bling and a search for quality/price”57. Thus, and contrary to the assumptions, “Saint-Tropez has the best restaurants in the port of France”58. Finally, according to Arnaud Donckele, the arrival of the third Michelin star at Christophe Bacquié restaurant in Le Castellet in 2018 is revealing of the fact that the qualitative orientation of Michelin’s 3-star restaurants plays a role in the quality of tourism that can be captured in the outline of a “new gastronomic route to the south”59. To what extent do these interdependent relationships lead to the characterization of a role for the restaurant in the emergence of food tourism?

57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. A new virtual gastronomic route along the Mediterranean Sea, linking six n 3-star Michelin restaurants (from Fontjoncouse to Menton, via Marseille, Le Castellet, Saint-Tropez and Monte-Carlo) and also several 2-star Michelin restaurants. A new “diagonal gourmet”?

8 The Restaurant, a Tool for Gourmet Tourism

Gourmet tourism is difficult to define in relation to the confusion and percolation of the fields involved (food, cooking, gastronomy, wine-growing, agriculture, etc.) on the one hand and the industry’s variations (wine/enotourism, truffle/truffle tourism, olive oil/olive oil tourism, fish/fish tourism, spirits/spirit tourism, etc.) on the other hand. Jean-Pierre Lemasson observes a cultural difference: “In the United States and Canada, the concept of culinary tourism is widely used. In Europe, the notion of gastronomic tourism is sometimes used, while more often, the specific interest in a product, such as wine, is referred to as ‘viti-vini-tourisme’ in France or ‘enoturismo’ in Italy. In several countries, agrotourism is the only reference mentioned, although, as is the case in England, some stakeholders speak of ‘tasting tourism.’” [LEM 06, author’s translation] Therefore, he proposes: “In these conditions, only the notion of gourmet tourism seemed relevant to us to reconcile both the interest of a holistic vision and the perspectives that ultimately only make sense through the diner’s pleasure. This dimension is fundamental to recall, as the economic motivations, those associated with the offer of products and services, obscure all the other dimensions of the analysis.” [LEM 06, author’s translation]

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Focused on the diner, gourmet tourism makes it possible to place gourmet delicacies at the heart of tourist practices, on the one hand, and to identify discovery by taste as one of the motivations for tourists’ mobility practices. It also makes it possible to combine the solid and liquid parts of tasting in a beneficial way. For the past 20 years or so, the gourmet dimension of tourism has been affirmed, refined and, finally, empowered [LEM 06, CSE 08, CSE 16]. Tourists’ gourmet practices are increasingly demanding, motivated, desirous, therefore choosy and discriminating. At the heart of the recreational project, taste becomes a tool and the restaurant a privileged place to meet the Other in its Otherworldliness. According to Gérard Beaudet, gourmet tourism is “cross-country”: “Nothing in this designation suggests any geographical affiliation, unlike other products, such as coastal or mountain tourism or agrotourism. Gourmet tourism seems to be practiced in a great restaurant in a capital city as well as on the farm, in a village inn or in a vineyard, or even in a basic shelter on the top of a mountain or on a barge.” [BEA 06, author’s translation] More frequently, the restaurant plays a central role in the emergence of forms of gourmet tourism. It finds a position at the interface between agricultural and gastronomic stakeholders and tourism stakeholders, including tourists. It thus facilitates the capture by tourists of the agricultural and gastronomic contents of the place. It creates complementarities between food and drink and convergences between gourmet and other tourist practices. It combines these practices with the provision of accommodation and local cultural activities. Through the shaping and dissemination of gastronomic and tourist discourses and imaginations, it contributes to the construction of a gourmet reputation and to the tourist influence and attractiveness of the place. 8.1. Cavaillon In Cavaillon, the Maison Prévôt restaurant plays an essential role in melon tourism and, correlatively, Cavaillon. Cavaillon is closely associated with the melon and the melon is geographically linked to Cavaillon. At Maison Prévôt, the melon has become the restaurant’s emblem and the restaurant is a showcase for the product and the place of production. Jean-Jacques Prévôt’s gastronomic project around the melon meets the recreational project of (food loving) tourists in Cavaillon. Thus, it is

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possible to discover several dimensions (culinary, gustatory, historical–geographical, esthetic, socio-cultural, even identity) of the melon. Combined with other tourist practices, this discovery contributes to the emergence of melon tourism: “A house founded in 1866 at the entrance to the city, this former melon bar was transformed into a restaurant by the Prévôt family in 1981. The setting is immaculate and colorful, thanks to the numerous paintings of the master of the premises. The melon, the lucky fruit of the chef and Cavaillon, obviously finds its place there through a unique and rare collection of decorative objects.”1 (see Figure 8.1)

Figure 8.1. Dining room at the Maison Prévôt restaurant in Cavaillon in which diners observe with good humor the dozens of melon-themed decorative objects (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

From 1978 onwards, Jean-Jacques Prévôt physically and symbolically appropriated his living and professional space in St Pierre and took over the place’s gourmet identity, actively participating in the revival of production both quantitatively and qualitatively and thematizing his cuisine and restaurant. In 1981, he created an all-melon menu:

1 www.maisonprevot.com, accessed August 29, 2018.

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“The melon menu is very original. It is not possible to find it elsewhere. I’ve domesticated the melon. The menu is now very well mastered. In each dish, I associate the melon with another product. The melon menu has become the signature of the house. Thanks to this menu, the Michelin star is protected.”2 2018 melon menu Tataki/melon tuna, cucumber, lemon/avocado cream, poppy condiment Caramelized pork pluma/melon, celery, fennel, oregano/rocket purée The chef’s signature dish. Lobster and melon casserole: melon topped with a lobster bouillabaisse/slow-cooked for 20 minutes Fresh Luberon goat’s cheese/pistachio/candied melon peels Melon baba/kalamansi/vervain liqueur Box 8.1. 2018 melon menu from Maison Prévôt in Cavaillon

The chef gradually developed real expertise on melons: “I choose all melons one by one. I recognize the origin of melons by their shape, color and skin: smooth, marked, half marked. I’m the only one who does that”3. He owns a two-hectare melon field and a melon garden behind his restaurant. He selects the seeds. In addition, he is engaged in a qualitatively oriented production and supports the application file for a Cavaillon melon IGP4. Therefore, Jean-Jacques Prévôt developed some signature recipes such as lobster and melon casserole (see Figure 8.2): “It took me ten years to master the recipe, to find the right balance of spices. I mix melon and lobster. This allows the melon to be bestowed as a top-of-the-range product. I use 850 kilos of melon and 400 kilos of lobster per year.”5

2 Interview with Jean-Jacques Prévôt, August 29, 2018. 3 Ibid. 4 See Catherine Inacio, “On reparle de l’IGP melon de Cavaillon chez Prévôt”, La Provence, July 7, 2018. 5 Interview with Jean-Jacques Prévôt, August 29, 2018.

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Figure 8.2. Lobster and melon casserole at Maison Prévôt restaurant in Cavaillon (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

When a McDonald’s opened near Maison Prévôt, the chef decided to launch the Mc Melon (now Mc Prévôt), a hamburger combining melon and fried foie gras: “The first Mc Prévôt was created by Jean-Jacques Prévôt in 2001 when a large fast-food chain set up 800 meters from the restaurant. In a nod to this ‘competitor’ from the Americas, Mc Melon (its original name) was created on the restaurant’s menu in the summer of the same year. It was in 2010 that Mc Prévôt made its appearance with a new recipe!”6 Jean-Jacques Prévôt explains the success by the fact that: “People like sweet and savoury together”7. To do this, he created ketchup made from melon seeds: “We don’t throw anything away from the melon”8, he says. In addition to the Mc Prévôt d’été (summer Mc Prévôt) with melon from Cavaillon, there are also the Mc Prévôt d’automne (fall Mc Prévôt) with mushrooms, the Mc Prévôt d’hiver (winter Mc Prévôt) with black truffle and the Mc Prévôt de printemps (spring Mc Prévôt) with asparagus: “Available in four seasons with limited editions, such as lobster for the Christmas and New Year holidays, this burger is to be enjoyed on site or to 6 www.maisonprevot.com, accessed August 29, 2018. 7 Interview with Jean-Jacques Prévôt, August 29, 2018. 8 Ibid.

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take away”9. Jean-Jacques Prévôt concludes: “The Mc Prévôt burgers are doing very well”10. Driven by his passion for melons, the chef invented Mélanis: “By creating Mélanis, Jean-Jacques Prévôt has combined his favorite fruit, melon, with the aniseed flavor of badian, while retaining the subtlety, sweetness and freshness of a typically southern aperitif. This alcoholic beverage has become a symbol of the Maison Prévôt and has even replaced champagne at the beginning of the meal.”11 Similarly, he developed the “Calisson de Cavaillon”: “Soft and tasty, it is composed of 37% candied melon combined with almond […]. Its originality is its personalized glazing reproducing the colors of chef Jean-Jacques Prévôt’s paintings from the ‘Melonnisme’ collection and the company’s logo.”12 Indeed, author of the Petite anthologie de la cuisine provençale au melon in 1999, Jean-Jacques Prévôt was at the origin of an artistic movement, Melonnisme, arising in 2014: “Melonnisme is the art of everything that revolves around the melon. It’s mostly painting. There are codes. I draw, let it dry and scratch with a melon seed to bring out the colors. They are luminous paintings”13. He also uses melon juice as an artistic material and draws esthetic forms and pictorial subjects from the morphology of the melon, its colors and surface irregularities. His paintings complete his collection with about 600 melon-themed objects that decorate the restaurant. The restaurant, which was completely renovated in 2012 with melon-like colors, hosts contemporary art exhibitions that are renewed every three months. The exhibition “Melonnisme, de la cuisine à la peinture” was hung in May 2014 in the chapel of the Grand Couvent in Cavaillon. The 1-star restaurant in the Michelin Guide since 1990 offered a tourist deal in the summer of 2018 with the Hôtel du Parc: “Melon de Cavaillon Hôtel du Parc & Maison Prévôt”. This special “gourmet stay” offer invited you to “meet two passionate families”: “Just a few steps from the Maison Prévôt, push the doors of the Hôtel du Parc and discover an authentic 19th Century mansion. 9 www.maisonprevot.com, accessed August 29, 2018. 10 Interview with Jean-Jacques Prévôt, August 29, 2018. 11 www.maisonprevot.com, accessed August 29, 2018. 12 Ibid. 13 Interview with Jean-Jacques Prévôt, August 29, 2018.

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The Nowacki family, owner of the establishment, transports you to its universe. Carefully decorated in an antique style, a warm and friendly atmosphere will accompany you throughout your stay.”14 The offer (€236 for two people) valid from June 25 to September 25, 2018 composed of: – one night in a room, breakfast included, for two people at the Hôtel du Parc; – a lunch or dinner 2018 melon menu (excluding drinks) at Maison Prévôt. For gourmet tourism, the catering offer is thus advantageously complemented by a hotel offer. At the same time, the Maison Prévôt maintains links with the Hôtel d’Agar, a private museum in Cavaillon (collections, curiosity cabinets). For gourmet tourism, culinary art thus resonates with decorative and pictorial art. In addition, Jean-Jacques Prévôt promotes gourmet shopping tourism practices within his own establishment and with other Cavaillon businesses: “Customers ask to visit producers. I also direct them to the stores that sell melons, the U store”15. Finally, the chef is the person who shapes and disseminates gastronomic discourses and ideas about melons as a link between place and tourism. French tourists represent 38% of the clientele, and international tourists 20%. 8.2. Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade At Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, Château La Coste, owned by Irish art collector Patrick McKillen, is also a gourmet tourist destination that combines gastronomy and contemporary art. It is also a gourmet tourist proposal in which the wide range of restaurants complements the wine on offer. The estate consists of more than 200 hectares, including about 120 hectares of vines. The philosophy of the establishment is presented on the website: “Adhering to biodynamic principles, Château La Coste strives to preserve the terroir, protecting its fertility, safeguarding the essence of the soil. The alchemy of blending lives on in a state of the art ‘cuverie’ designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and inaugurated

14 maisonprevot.com, consulted on August 29, 2018. 15 Interview with Jean-Jacques Prévôt, August 29, 2018.

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with the grape harvest of 2008. This latest technology ensures the natural expression of the wine and brings new life to a long tradition. In 2009 our wines were given the French organic label ‘AB’ in recognition of the respect shown to the land along with the methods used which are in perfect harmony with nature.”16 The winemaking cellar (see Figure 8.3) has a place in the artistic and architectural project of Château La Coste: “Since 2008, the two vast contemporary buildings conceived by French architect Jean Nouvel have welcomed the grape harvest and housed the machinery and technical elements necessary for the ageing process of the wine as well as the bottling plant. Their spherical form and position in the vineyard recall the greenhouses and agricultural warehouses of old that can still be seen in farms across the southern regions of France. Each building is 10 meters high and is made of corrugated aluminium. One, smaller in volume and open on one side, shelters the reception of the fruit, the manual sorting and three large grape pressers. The larger building, whose front façade is veiled by a series of sun-visors, opens its door to reveal the bottling plant and the stock of bottled wine. Seventeen meters below ground is found the vast, state of the art chamber containing the vats.”17

Figure 8.3. Château La Coste’s wine cellar designed by Jean Nouvel (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip 16 www.chateau-la-coste.com/en/our-philosophy/, accessed January 28, 2020. 17 www.chateau-la-coste.com/en/le-chai/, accessed January 28, 2020.

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The complex consists of a hotel and spa with 28 villas suites and 4 restaurants: – Restaurant à la Villa La Coste; – Francis Mallmann Restaurant; – Restaurant de Tadao Ando, in the Art Center designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando; – La Terrasse, a summer café located in the heart of the old estate (serving salads, soups, pies and ripened cheeses, with organic delicatessen counters). An organic vegetable garden designed by Louis Benech supplies some of the restaurants. The complex is dotted with works of art and buildings by architects: the Tadao Ando Art Center, which houses a bookshop where works presenting the artists and architects involved in the Château La Coste tourist project are sold; the music pavilion of Franck O. Gehry; the pavilion dedicated to photography designed by Renzo Piano; etc. An “Art & Architecture” walk is available. The journalist Franck Demaury explains the complementarity between art and gastronomy: “Using elements typical of the Japanese architect, the structure invites light to penetrate into living spaces. While one of the wings of this ‘V’ houses the reception area and the bookshop, the second wing includes the restaurant along the waterfront while facing the vineyards. With this place with concrete walls dotted with conical hallmarks, organized in the same proportions as the Japanese tatamis, Tadao Ando affirms: ‘What I have tried to achieve here, because of Cézanne’s presence in Aix, is to create a new work close to nature. I wanted to capture the same humble spirit of Cézanne’s paintings.’ […] The experience would not be complete if gastronomy was not invited to this place of culture and pleasure.” [DEM 17, author’s translation] The project is to create a new tourist destination around the articulation of drinking, eating and art: “Lovers of the Aix hills and contemporary art already know the address well. Since 2004, on the edge of the small Cride road, Paddy McKillen, Irish billionaire, supported by his sister Mara, passionate about Provence, have built a wine-growing estate and a contemporary art center on a European scale. But the owner of the premises, who came from commercial and business real estate, did not want to stop at these two projects, which would have satisfied many people. Sure of the attraction of its little corner of Provence, Paddy McKillen has had a small and luxurious hotel complex built there, which, from a

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distance, can hardly be seen, as it integrates into the slopes of La Coste like a restanque. This is the work of architect Christopher Green, from the Marseille firm Tangram, who finds himself in prestigious company there, in the middle of buildings or installations designed by Jean Nouvel, Tadao Ando, Franck O. Gehry… […] ‘We have created a destination between Aix and Luberon,’ says PierreAlexandre Francin, advisor to the owners of La Coste. The customers we’ve already had here wouldn’t necessarily have spent the night in the Aix region otherwise.’” [LEM 17, author’s translation] The Francis Mallmann restaurant opened in the spring of 2018 (see Figure 8.4). The Argentinean chef offers the art of fire: cooking in the oven, in the dome flame, on the barbecue, on the grill/parrilla, under the ashes (rescoldo): “To complete the picture, the maestro of wood-fired cooking Francis Mallmann, a megastar in Latin America, whose culinary prowess is admired in ‘Chef’s Table’ on Netflix, also chose La Coste to open his first European establishment. In his bistro, in the middle of the vineyards, the beets cook under the ashes, the patient ox hangs over the plancha for twelve hours while the lamb roasts gently next to the embers. ‘As a child, I grew up in Patagonia, in a house that lived to the rhythm of the flames. It’s a very primitive language.’ A culinary language that seduced the wealthy Patrick McKillen when he came to taste his meats in his restaurant in Mendoza.” [VIG 18, author’s translation]

Figure 8.4. Francis Mallmann restaurant: terrace with a view of the kitchen and a work by Daniel Buren (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

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8.3. Megève In Megève, at the Flocons de sel restaurant, Emmanuel Renaut invites you to discover the “taste of the mountains” through tourism. On a culinary scale, this taste is expressed in particular by the smoked foods. Along with curing, smoking is a conservation technique particularly developed in the mountains, mainly for pork and fish. Beyond that, several more unusual products are smoked by Emmanuel Renaut to mark this mountain taste preference: eggs (smoked hen’s yolk, Savoie mushrooms with coffee), milk (smoked milk fritter, served as an aperitif), potatoes (which accompany roasted Scottish ptarmigan, a fine mousseline of black trumpet mushrooms and a sauce of juices from the carcass with red cabbage and juniper) and chocolate (warm smoked chocolate pie, ice cream with mountain wood) (see Figure 8.5). (a)

(b)

Figure 8.5. a) Warm smoked chocolate pie; b) Ice cream with wood from our mountains at the Flocons de Sel restaurant in Megève (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

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In this signature dessert, permanently inscribed on the restaurant’s menu, smoked food is associated with woody ingredients: oak bark is infused into the preparation used to make ice cream. This form is escorted by meringue biscuits, also smoked. In the same spirit, Emmanuel Renaut distils fir branches to flavor a sauce or dessert (hot soufflé flavored with mint and fir tree, lemon sorbet orange blossoms). In addition, it enhances the value of alpine hay for cooking or infusing. Aromatic herbs and mountain flowers are omnipresent: cow parsnip (Fera cooked in lightly smoked salt in thin slices with cow parsnip juice) and meadowsweet (quenelle of roach and crayfish, served with an onion jus and a crayfish foam with meadowsweet), for example. Finally, the mushrooms bring their notes of earth and undergrowth (under two millimeters of polenta, wild mushrooms and hazelnuts). Gastronomically, Emmanuel Renaut spreads discourses and ideas that affirm and claim the “taste of the mountains”. He is the president of Toquicimes, the mountain cuisine events. The first edition was held from 19 to 21 October 2018 in Megève, presented as the “capital of mountain gastronomy”18. The gourmet festival has four objectives: (1) to promote the know-how of mountain cuisine; (2) to promote the excellence of mountain products; (3) to strengthen the attractiveness of the mountain by highlighting the values of generosity, sharing and the high quality of service of mountain people; and (4) to share exceptional moments, debates, conferences19, cooking moments, flavor markets, trade fairs, training areas, competitions, tastings, events, etc.20. The official photograph of the festival is a dish by Emmanuel Renaut: Cardon épineux de Plainpalais – like a risotto with black melanosporum truffle (see Figure 8.6). The chef promotes the Geneva cardoon or cardon épineux genevois, which obtained AOP status in 2003. The characterization of the “taste of the mountains” is the expression of Emmanuel Renaut’s awareness of the stakes of a touristic discovery of the mountains through taste. It can also be enjoyed at the Flocons Village restaurant in the center of Megève and at Chalet Le Forestier, a high-altitude restaurant in the heart of the Rochebrune massif slopes. The restaurant is therefore a tool for gourmet tourism. To what extent can it be a gourmet tourist destination?

18 toquicimes.com, accessed January 23, 2019. 19 Emmanuel Renaut participated with René Meilleur (restaurant La Bouitte in Saint-Martinde-Belleville), Pierre Lachenal and Olivier Etcheverria in a conference entitled “La cuisine paysanne de montagne est-elle vivante?” hosted by Alexis-Olivier Sbriglio, on October 21, 2018. 20 toquicimes.com, accessed January 23, 2019.

The Restaurant, a Tool for Gourmet Tourism

Figure 8.6. Cardon épineux de Plainpalais: at the Flocons de Sel restaurant in Megève (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

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A few restaurants are becoming gourmet tourist destinations alone. Their real and ideal intrinsic qualities then form the basis of the motivation for tourist travel. They enjoy a gastronomic and tourist reputation on national and international scales. This includes 3-star restaurants that are “Worth the trip!” according to the Michelin Guide. 9.1. The gourmet tourist destination: from the 3-star Michelin restaurant… Eugénie-les-Bains is a rural commune in France (447 inhabitants in 2015 – INSEE) where Michel Guérard settled in 1974. He elaborates his “slender” Grande Cuisine and his “natural” Grande Cuisine by being part of the dynamics of the Nouvelle Cuisine. Soon, they encountered a craze legitimized by the Michelin Guide: 1 star in 1975, 2 stars in 1976 and 3 stars in 1977. The Gault & Millau guide presents the restaurant Les Prés d’Eugénie-Michel Guérard today as follows: “Okay, it’s Michel Guérard, his company has been at the top for decades, he’s surrounded by MOFs1 with long experience and he has completed mastered the classic exercises – a puff pastry, a soufflé, beurre monté2 or any other emulsion – for which he seems to have

1 Meilleur Ouvrier de France. Is a title awarded to categories of professional trades in France. It is a unique and prestigious award, which can be translated into English as the “best French worker”. 2 This is butter that remains emulsified, even at temperatures when butter usually melts. It can be a sauce.

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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reinvented the process every time. And yet, in front of each plate, we still ask ourselves the question today: how do we achieve so much taste, so much accuracy, so much freshness, in short how, after having created such and such, having shaken up so much and enacted new codes, can we every day want to be even better, while so many of our contemporaries are fishing. Take a basic like foie gras: the chef has chosen goose, for the finesse, the character of the pretty hint of bitterness. On the plate, the slice, and three jellies of pure happiness – verjuice, duck consommé, mushroom – of such sharpness, such perfection, that one almost cries with happiness by crunching in the ‘tastou’, a kind of very fine toast sandwich grilled with truffle and mushrooms, which accompanies this simple and yet unsurpassable dish. Similar sensations are to be expected with the unique power and precision of the crayfish and sea urchin bouillon, the Gillardeau oyster under its green coffee emulsion, the Saint-Jean-de-Luz tuna and its swimming praslin corn. And when he takes on his farmer’s role, Michel Guérard is perfectly in his element to deliver five rustic chef’s hats, with pig’s feet-duck liver and shrimp-smoked eel salad and cream of parsley or the ‘opulent’ guinea fowl and its cornucopia from which comes a salpicon of lamb sweetbreads, morels, of truffled dumplings… The time of delicacy and enjoyment does not stop before dessert, with this wonderful peach (you have to go to Guérard’s to find a peach like no other grocer’s gives you) and its vervain liqueur ice cream (a perfect texture, dreamed of in fact…) or the chocolate palet biscuit coffee with moving puff pastry. The service is adapted to the almost family spirit of this unique restaurant, a large colonial-style villa in the middle of a magnificent park, a large house-sized cellar with many rows of claret red wines, at prices that will appeal to the connoisseur, able to find the bottle of his dreams at a desired price.” The restaurant Les Prés d’Eugénie-Michel Guérard is the reason for the mobility project and enables the implementation of the recreational project. The unique culinary and gastronomic offer requires travel. Its frequentation is a way of experiencing the place in a tourist way. It is a motivated, envisaged, chosen, desired and dreamed-about restaurant where the realization of the dream is possible. According to Boualem Kadri, Mohamed Reda Khomsi and Maria Bondarenko, the destination “evokes both a place to see, the object of a desire or a dream, and an organization capable of fulfilling that dream.” [KAD 11, author’s translation] The Michelin Guide evokes a total experience: “Some chefs owe their reputation as much to their work in the kitchen as to their human qualities: Michel Guérard is one of them. Three stars since 1977, considered one of the pioneers of the Nouvelle Cuisine,

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admired by his peers all over the world, he continues to work with the same passion, the same love of the profession, the same dedication: a true example. Stopping in Les Prés d’Eugénie (named after Empress Eugénie, patron of the town), is a total experience: an enchanting setting – a magnificent residence in the heart of a green park – attentive service to the smallest detail, luxurious rooms but all in sobriety… and above all, an exceptional cuisine in every respect. We find on the plate all the heritage of Chef Guérard: naturalistic, of course, a lightness never taken for granted, and this ability to combine the most diverse flavors with precision, in the style of the orchestra’s instruments […].” (Author’s translation) Allowing diners to be welcomed into off-day practices and into the extraordinary, the restaurant Les Prés d’Eugénie-Michel Guérard is a gourmet tourist destination insofar as it presents, in a gourmet way, the motivations of the tourist trip: rest (tasting practices allowing the body and mind to be restored in a soothing environment, sit-down meal practices promoting calm feelings, relaxation and a feeling of well-being), discovery by taste (a chef’s food, a cuisine, signature dishes, a local gourmet culture, external gustatory influences, a team’s work, other diners’ choices, one’s own choices, etc.), play (making agreements between food and drinks, understanding uses and ways of eating, learning and acquiring gastronomic skills, cooking courses and training in cooking and healthy patisserie baking at the Institut Michel Guérard), shopping (gift purchases and souvenir purchases) and strengthening and diversifying social ties. The restaurant Les Prés d’Eugénie-Michel Guérard is part of a 7.6 hectare estate whose attractive features and charms reinforce the gourmet tourist destination. It is composed of: – the Grande Maison: “The estate’s main building. Its late 19th Century architecture is inspired by colonial houses, with lace wood, banana trees and giant bonsai trees. Under its roof nestle the reception, Michel Guérard’s gourmet restaurant and 23 rooms and suites”; – the Couvent des Herbes: “Former 18th Century convent, in operation until 1961, this poetic Petit Trianon hides within its whitewashed walls 8 rooms and suites, some of which open wide onto the priest’s garden, the main vegetable garden of the Prés d’Eugénie.” (1989);

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– the Logis des Grives: “In a garden of roses and fruit trees, this former 18th Century coaching inn plays with the country refinement with its four deluxe rooms and suites. Breakfast is served together in the chocolate factory”; – the Ferme aux Grives: “Taking the concept of dwellings further, the Ferme aux Grives welcomes all visitors, in the colorful setting of an old-fashioned inn. Roasted suckling pig in the huge fireplace, juicy chickens in the drip pan and cep mushroom pasta gratins for the food lovers” (1993); – the Ferme Thermale: “Behind the Grande Maison, located in the vast meadow of the estate, this former 18th Century Landes farmhouse spreads over 1,000 m2 its thermal spa buildings. Whether in search of a course of treatment or a few hours of relaxation, its 21 individual treatment rooms, lounges and boutique guarantee a pleasant time” (1996); – the Maison Rose: “In the spirit of a guest house, Maison Rose offers five apartments with a view of the Logis des Grives. Service is friendly, and breakfast is served in the dining room”; – the Empress’ Wing: “It was under this roof that Empress Eugenie took shelter during her first visit to our town. Built in 1808, under the First Empire, this wing, connected to the Grande Maison, houses the Loulou’s Lounge Bar and Lord and Ladies’ sitting rooms, as well as five royal and imperial suites” (2009); – the Café Mère Poule and the cooking school: “The latest born of the ‘Guérard reign’. Overlooking both the village’s main street and the estate’s park, Café Mère Poule is a magnificent rustic setting that delights food lovers with bread and homemade cakes. The cooking school hosts, in its sublime laboratory, professional training and cooking courses (2013).”3

3 Michelguerard.com, accessed August 15, 2018.

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There are also swimming pools, tennis courts, a fitness studio, a fleet of bicycles and shops (Café Mère Poule shop and Ferme Thermale shop). Around the 3-star restaurant, Michel and Christine Guérard have gradually organized: “A bucolic estate straight out of a magical setting populated by birds, wild animals, fragrant gardens, a dancing procession of flowers, gushing water, a swimming pool, a vegetable garden and meadows […]. For more than forty years, the whole world has travelled to Eugénie-les-Bains to savor the timeless naturalist cuisine of the oven maestro, an estate which has seen Alain Ducasse, Michel Troisgros, Sébastien Bras, Gérald Passédat, Arnaud Donckele, Arnaud Lallement…” [DAN 17, author’s translation] According to Philippe Violier: “The tourist destination can be defined both as a representation and as a reality about which tourists are variously informed. As a representation, it cannot be viewed objectively as a place or territory, but only on the basis of a dynamic image, since it evolves, in particular, through the practices that tourists adopt. The management of tourist destinations takes into account four key success factors and acts on them. Two of them concern the relationship of the tourist place or space with the World, they are the combination of the tourist’s intention/quality of the place and the connection. The other two are related to the governance of the place or territory. The tourism strategy will be all the more successful if it is shared by the inhabitants and supported by entrepreneurs.” [VIO 09, p. 36, author’s translation] 9.2. … to a network of restaurants The example of the restaurant Les Prés d’Eugénie-Michel Guérard raises the question of the geographical scale of the construction of the gourmet tourist destination. Indeed, thanks to the culinary offer broadcast through the network Chaîne thermale du Soleil resorts, the gourmet tourist destination is being transformed from a restaurant to a network of restaurants. The “slender” Grande Cuisine and “natural” Grande Cuisine are available in several spas in the chain that offer a Health-Nature Cuisine.

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Figure 9.1. Restaurant Le Pavillon Bleu in Cambo-les-Bains (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

This is the case of the restaurant Le Pavillon Bleu at the Cambo-les-Bains spa, which reopened in 2009 (see Figure 9.1): “What a beautiful place! The arrival in this wooded park in the heart of an exceptional estate with this amazing string of palm trees is magical, as is the arrival at the Cambo thermal baths around these elegant buildings and the famous pergola with a Chinese spirit in which you will dine. On site, you will have the choice between two categories of cuisine. Light, creative and rich in nutritional principles, the HealthNature Cuisine strives, with a beautiful originality, however, to present ‘in terms of diet, correct dishes to help you quickly recover your energy and vitality’, it is clarified. Alongside this, the Appetite Cuisine is willing to make you discover local dishes perfectly revisited by the chef, with this little something that makes the difference, especially a few small touches from elsewhere, smoked Banka trout on a bed of leaves, a blini of potatoes and herring caviar, roasted monkfish with bacon, potatoes roasted in half-salted butter, Pyrenean suckling lamb roasted for a long time in the oven… and for dessert, why not ‘real profiteroles, vanilla ice cream and whipped cream with armagnac’. A tip, for a guaranteed change of scenery and a quality gastronomic break, dare to walk through the doors of this restaurant, which is of course open to everyone and remember to book!”4

4 Petit Futé guide 2019.

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The Healthy-Nature Cuisine is thus characterized: “More than 30 years ago, Michel Guérard revolutionized the culinary arts and dietetics by creating a healthy, slimming and tasty cuisine. Always concerned about combining health and delicacies, during training, he continued his research by developing the Health-Nature Cuisine, a healthy, fresh, harmonious and cheerful cuisine. Light, creative and rich in nutritional principles, this Cuisine offers a selection of 126 recipes, pleasure and flavor, while remaining dietetically correct to restore your energy and vitality very quickly. Its principles? Selected and very fresh foods, combining saturated fatty acids (the famous omega 3s), dried vegetables, rich in vegetable proteins, raw fruits and vegetables combined with cereals for their natural and vitamin antioxidant content. Detoxifying effect guaranteed from the 2nd day, rebalancing effect after one week and ‘true inner therapy’ effect after three weeks. This Health-Nature Cuisine has been successfully set up in the restaurants of our Eugénie, Molitg, Amélie and Gréoux resorts: 4 superb sites where you can carry out a classic treatment or a specific ‘balanced diet’ staying at full board. A novelty that makes you want to sit down to eat happily, while following your spa treatment.”5 Audrey Riotte, who has been in charge of Le Pavillon Bleu restaurant since 2011, says that about 60% of the restaurant’s visitors (70% spa visitors and 30% external diners) know Michel Guérard and his “slender”/“natural” cuisine; 70% of customers choose the Health-Nature menu (this is the menu offered to spa visitors). Concerning the 30% of diners from outside the spa, it is word of mouth that conveys the reputation of Le Pavillon Bleu6. In a reticular logic, Michel Guérard’s HealthNature Cuisine is now offered in 6 of the 20 establishments of the thermale du Soleil chain (Cambo-les-Bains, Eugénie-les-Bains, Gréoux-les-Bains, La Preste-les-Bains, Molitg-les-Bains and Barbotan-les-Thermes). In this way, the gourmet tourist destination can be understood as a network of restaurants shaped, organized, energized and promoted from a tourist point of view by Michel Guérard. The gourmet tourist destination raises the question of the place of the restaurant on the one hand and the role of (food loving) tourists on the other hand in creating the conditions necessary for local development. 5 Argumentation of the Health-Nature Cuisine at the Cambo-les-Bains thermal baths, catalogue “Votre cure 2009, Chaîne thermale du Soleil : la santé active par l’eau thermale, cette médecine naturelle”. 6 Questionnaire presented to Audrey Riotte, September 18, 2018.

PART 4

The Restaurant as a Tool for Local Development

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Introduction to Part 4

The restaurant is a geographical object that has an impact on its location. It is then possible to talk about local development. DEFINITION.– The locale is the “smallest scale space characterized by the existence of a complete society. Locale is a widespread word in geographical literature and in many other social sciences, as well as in expert and technological knowledge. Its apparent semantic clarity actually conceals the ambiguity of what it refers to, which is not easy to endow with content that goes beyond common sense or pure and simple ideology. 1. Etymologically, locale comes from the lower Latin ‘localis’ which means ‘that has a connection to a place’. In this acceptance, any phenomenon that can be localized, i.e. referred to a ‘discrete’ place, a point in a range, in a clearly identifiable ‘t’ time, is local […]. An idea becomes local when it is enunciated by a speaker located at a given point and time […]. 2. With the development of territorial paradigms, the locale has tended to become substantial and to become a common name defining one of the essential attributes of human territoriality. This neolocalism, which is very present in French geography, became at the same time one of the tools for political and cultural demands in the context of the implementation of decentralization, even before the laws of 1982–1983. It required defining as a local phenomenon everything that escapes the manifestations of overhanging general logic, particularly when it comes from official bodies and State institutions. The locale becomes a refuge space of a cultural and social singularity, an identity, or even a specific mode of organization of the endogenous production of wealth […]. The locale is consubstantially ‘the scale of the territory’, which is considered as an appropriate social and cultural space, intrinsically carrying ‘values’ of belonging and reference: that of the locale precisely […]. The locality was once a repository, it is becoming a heritage resource to be mobilized by local actors. The local level is indeed designed as a space for the ‘synergistic’ mobilization of actors. To the old political mores of clienteles and submission to established institutions, the ideology of the locale promotes a partnership concept of action and a social vision based on

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the idea of a ‘network’: society is above all a freely consented network of individuals with converging objectives. This mobilization is carried out around the ‘local project’ […]. This local project must be crystallized into an appropriate common ‘image’ and local action is always in this sense an image policy. The locale must be conceived both as a discreet, singular entity and at the same time connect to local territories to form a ‘myriad of network territories’ replacing the ‘mosaic of juxtaposed territories’. This is an expression of French MP, Jean-Pierre Balligand, who in the 1980s was one of the advocates of local development.” [LUS 03, pp. 572–574, author’s translation]. DEFINITION.– Local development is a “multidimensional and multi-actor dynamic within a local society consisting of the construction and implementation of a selfcentered and endogenous development project of that society. The idea of development has been defined since the 18th Century in France, as the process of change, of blossoming […]. The notion of development was then defined in terms of self-centered, global, endogenous and integrated processes, ‘oriented towards the implementation of the populations themselves through techniques tailored to their needs and with the aim of obtaining locally what is necessary for subsistence, without disrupting customs and traditions’. This thought, led in particular by François Perroux, involved the initiative at the local level […]. Local development is first of all flexibility as opposed to the rigidity of traditional forms of organization, a strategy of diversification and enrichment of activities in a given territory based on the mobilization of its resources and energies in opposition to centralized spatial planning strategies. This concept expresses the idea of a flexible economy, capable of adapting to changing data, and constitutes an alternative to the establishment of large units. Local development policy also involves financing and training strategies, and involves the decentralization of political, economic and financial decisionmaking levels. In this sense, the local development approach can be generalized to different scales, regional or even national. The question of local development is linked to the more general question of the solidarity economy. The aim is to seek synergies, networks of services and knowledge associated with an idea of well-being for the population, in systems alongside those of the financial and monetary economy, to (re)value exchanges in kind and microcredit, hitherto condemned as forms of the underground economy. Finally, the notion of local development is currently linked to that of ‘sustainable development’. At the beginning of the 21st Century, it was also a question of juggling between the local and the global, between the short and the long term, by combining the economic and the ecological, the social and the political.” [PLE 03, pp. 251–253, author’s translation]. Local development is a polysemic concept whose meanings have evolved. How far can chefs enlighten us on the development of the place, on local development? What can the restaurant teach us about the reality and ideal nature of local development?

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In a specific spatial context, chefs are individuals who undertake actions. Their individual entrepreneurial strategies have collective effects. What are these effects on places? How do they spread? Are they the same in urban and rural areas? Are there any specificities to local development based on restaurants? Questioning the restaurant’s place in local development leads to the question of defining the geographical scale of the place considered relevant, on the one hand, and characterizing the qualities of the locale on the other.

10 Restaurants and Local Development in Urban Areas

In urban areas, two scalar levels seem to reveal operational relevance from the point of view of local development: the street level and the neighborhood level. 10.1. At street level In Paris, the rue du Nil, in the 2nd arrondissement, has been animated, for the past 10 years, by a remarkable dynamic of local development based on restaurants (and food shops) (see Figure 10.1). At the end of the 2000s, rue du Nil, starting on rue Damiette and ending on rue des Petits-Carreaux and a few dozen meters long, was a narrow, dark, pedestrianized but not busy street, with no shops. On April 1, 2009, chef Grégory Marchand opened the restaurant Frenchie (5, rue du Nil): “I was discovering Paris after spending 10 years abroad. Thanks to a real estate agent, I learned that there was a space available on rue du Nil. It was then a black paved street, like a dark alley. The premises were warehouses for the storage of fabric rolls. With a bit of naivety and against the advice of bank advisors, I accepted. I wanted to make a neighborhood restaurant, a neighbourhood canteen.”1

1 Interview with Grégory Marchand, February 21, 2019.

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Figure 10.1. Map of the location of restaurants and food shops on rue du Nil in Paris (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

As soon as the restaurant opened, the challenge was to make it known and attract diners to this little-used street: “At the very beginning, I organized a friends and family meeting. Then, word of mouth was effective. The restaurant was then quickly noticed by the ‘Fooding’ guide who thought something was going on here. It was the time of the democratization of bistronomy in Paris. I was in the right place at the right time with the right offer.”2

2 Ibid.

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Building on its success, both in Paris and internationally, it gradually completed its gourmet offer with the opening in 2011 of the Frenchie Bar à Vins (6, rue du Nil) and in 2013 of the FTG Frenchie Fastgood (9, rue du Nil) (see Figure 10.2): “Gregory Marchand opened his first restaurant in the heart of the Sentier neighborhood, on rue du Nil, still untouched by any trade, in April 2009. Named Frenchie, in memory of the nickname given to him by the highly famous Jamie Oliver at Fifteen (London), the 72 m2 space used by decorator Émilie Bonaventure occupies two small rooms, mixing beams with the ceiling, brick and white stone walls, and industrial lighting. Greg offers ‘carte blanche’ menus, in four stages at lunchtime and five in the evening, centered around seasonal products and worked in a graphic way on classic bases with international references […]. Inaugurated on the opposite sidewalk two years after the restaurant, the wine bar (also decorated with stones, beams and bricks) allows you to taste Greg Marchand’s cuisine in a more relaxed and free way. We sit on high stools, with trendy music in the background, to share, around a sharp wine list (including about 15 suggestions by the glass), neat little plates, which change according to the market […]. Two years after the wine bar, here is the ‘street food’ canteen open for breakfast (scones, Eggs Benedict, granola) at the snack bar […]. To be enjoyed on site (about 10 places on high tables behind the bay window) or to take away […]. Probably the best fast-food restaurant in Paris.” [BOS 18, author’s translation] According to Grégory Marchand, “development has been organic, by opportunity. It is the recreation of a shopping street”3. On April 16, 2010, a graduate chef from the Blue Elephant School in Bangkok opened the Thaïsil restaurant (3, rue du Nil), which received the rare “Thai Select” quality label awarded by the Thai government in 2013. And: “Then there was the establishment of Terroirs d’Avenir. It is a historical supplier to Frenchie. The establishment of Terroirs d’Avenir rue du Nil worked, thanks to Frenchie and Frenchie developed thanks to the presence of Terroirs d’Avenir. This relationship in the middle of Paris is magical.”4

3 Ibid. 4 Ibid.

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Figure 10.2. Fish & chips (beer battered hake, mushy peas, tartar sauce) at FTG Frenchie Fastgood (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

In 2012, Alexandre Drouard and Samuel Nahon, who run the Terroirs d’Avenir company, decided to settle on the street. Initially, Terroirs d’Avenir is a distributor of agricultural food products for catering professionals, which aims to make the link between the agricultural world and the world of gastronomy: “At the inception of Terroirs d’Avenir, there was the somewhat crazy dream of Alexandre Drouard and Samuel Nahon: to invent an innovative entrepreneurial model to unite their two passions, gastronomy and sustainable agriculture. It was therefore in 2008, at the end of their studies in economics and commerce, that the company was founded: Terroirs d’Avenir was created.”5 Their establishment on rue du Nil reflects the strategic desire to become a retailer for individuals: the triple opening of a grocery store – fruit and vegetable shop – creamery (7, rue du Nil), a butcher’s shop (6, rue du Nil) and a fishmonger’s (8, rue du Nil). These three gourmet places were completed by a bakery in 2015 (3, rue du Nil) (see Figure 10.3).

5 www.terroirs-avenir.fr, accessed August 13, 2018.

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Figure 10.3. Rue du Nil, seen from the Terroirs d’Avenir bakery (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Samuel Nahon traces the development: “Our move to Rue du Nil was linked to an opportunity. We were looking for an office for our team. And we knew that there was a consumer appetite for our products. Grégory Marchand, who is one of our clients, mentioned the existence of an empty room on two floors on rue du Nil. We set up the office on the second floor and opened the grocery store on the first floor. Then, we were solicited by the owners for a butcher’s and a fishmonger’s.”6 The two co-founders gradually acquired the skills related to these food shops. As with the Frenchie restaurant, Terroirs d’Avenir’s communication is based on word of mouth and the publication of articles in the press. In addition, Terroirs d’Avenir has benefitted from the advertising distributed by restaurant customers who inform diners about the opening of shops. Grégory Marchand points out that, slowly, the clientele of the Frenchie restaurant changed: “At first, especially at lunchtime, the clientele was made up of people from the neighborhood. In this neighborhood, there are offices and daytime traffic. Then, little by little, there was a change in clientele. 6 Interview with Samuel Nahon, co-founder of Terroirs d’Avenir, on December 27, 2018.

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Many American food tourists came. New York chef Anthony Bourdain came to film the 100th episode of ‘No Reservations’ at the Frenchie rue du Nil. The documentary still has an impact on restaurant visits today.”7 In 2012, the Asian cuisine workshop establishment since the end of 2008 at the corner of rue Damiette (entrance 3, rue Damiette) and rue du Nil transformed into a restaurant (Foodi Jia-Ba-Buay), open only for lunch at first and then for lunch and dinner from 2015 onwards “to enjoy Frenchie’s dynamics”8. In 2013, Hippolyte Courty, an expert in specialty coffees, opened the L’Arbre à Café boutique (10, rue du Nil). Finally, Grégory Marchand opened Frenchie Caviste (9, rue du Nil) in 2015: “In association with sommelier Aurélien Massé, the chef has opened a wine cellar that not only refers to the bottles served in the restaurant and wine bar, but also to a selection of winegrowers who respect the codes of their own agriculture and winemaking. You can find wines from all over the world at all prices […]. Tasting workshops are organized on site (from €42 to €120).” [BOS 18, author’s translation] At the Frenchie restaurant: “Today, there is a great international clientele, a varied international clientele. Still a lot of Americans, a lot of New Yorkers. And Asians, Japanese and Koreans. Israelis too. This clientele places rue du Nil on the international map. It’s planet food.”9 The clientele is also Parisian: “At FTG, on weekends, the clientele is very Parisian. Parisians come to Terroirs d’Avenir in the morning to do their shopping and then have lunch at FTG. During the week, it’s more mixed. Parisians and tourists. The place is buzzing all day long. Breakfast, with coffee and a bacon scone, for a snack. At the Bar à vins, the clientele is mixed. In the early evening of tourists and in the late evening of Parisians.”10

7 Interview with Grégory Marchand, February 21, 2019. 8 Interview with Virginia Chuang, April 15, 2019. Cooking classes continue, however, on Mondays in the evening and Saturdays in the day. 9 Interview with Grégory Marchand, February 21, 2019. 10 Ibid.

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The two enterprises Frenchie and Terroirs d’Avenir are developing on a joint scale. Samuel Nahon underlines: “Frenchie is a major customer for us. The teams of the two companies know each other well and are in contact with each other. There are human, family and daily exchanges. There are also technical exchanges: we give technical advice on cutting meat to Grégory Marchand and Grégory Marchand gives us advice on how to use the cheap cuts, pastrami breast, for example. It’s an ecosystem. We are the pantry, Frenchie’s back kitchen.”11 He insists on the proximity, geographical of course, but also on a professional and cultural level between the two enterprises: “We have many common customers. Success is linked to the complementarity of the institutions. Frenchie also benefits from the values we embody, gustatory values and environmental values”12. In 10 years, the Frenchie company has seen significant growth in terms of jobs: “Today, I have 70 employees, with Frenchie in London. We went from 2 to 70”13. The restaurant is a tool for urban requalification. Rue du Nil reflects a dual dynamic of gastronomy and touristification based on a commercial strategy of diversification: “Once a Parisian cut-throat area, the little rue du Nil has now become highly gastronomic. Once the gateway to the slum districts of Paris, the narrow, paved alleyway has established itself in the kingdom of foodistas, with a concentration of products and talents that drives every self-respecting gastronome crazy, as it is so full of the right numbers […] ‘I see them as one restaurant on the same street,’ says the chef. Before specifying: ‘I never wanted to expand, I preferred to diversify […]. My DNA is four years in France for the bases, and about 10 years between New York, Hong Kong, the Costa del Sol and London.’” [BRI 18, author’s translation] For Gregory Marchand: “The restaurant has been an accelerator of gentrification. In rue du Nil, traffic has been generated and notoriety has developed. Today, there are more and more companies. This creates development. With Terroirs d’Avenir, there is a restaurant offer and a crossover shop offer. It creates a village feeling.” 11 Interview with Samuel Nahon, December 27, 2018. 12 Ibid. 13 Interview with Grégory Marchand, February 21, 2019.

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It is an economic development based on the logic of proximity and complementarity. However, it reveals effects as far as London (where the chef has a second restaurant, Frenchie Covent Garden, Henrietta Street): “I always have stuff to take from one restaurant to another! From Paris, I bring citrus fruits from Michel Bachès, truffles when it is the season, and then set-up boxes, I prefer French ones to British ones… For Culoiseau poultry, I converted other London restaurateurs there, and by working together, we can now import them. From London, I bring back rhubarb, especially forced rhubarb from Yorkshire, very fine and fluorescent pink, produced between Leeds, Wakefield and Bradford. And then there are cheeses: Keen’s Cheddar, slightly acidic thanks to being matured in cloth, which gives it something that you will never find in a French hard cheese; Mrs Kirkham’s Lancashire with raw milk, a little spicy… This Ashkenazi Jewish specialty [pastrami] that I discovered in a New York deli, I wasn’t really aware that by bringing it in Paris, we would make it so popular! Longhorn beef breasts, raised on grass in Yorkshire, are marinated in spices, smoked and served as a sandwich in Frenchie To Go. And then, while tasting Lucullus beef tongue at Benoît’s [restaurant on rue SaintMartin in Paris], a kind of millefeuille of tongue and foie gras, a specialty from northern France, I had the idea of pastrami Lucullus, which is now served in Frenchie. It’s the Lower East Side meeting Valenciennes!” [PAY 17a, author’s translation] The process of gastronomization (and touristification) of rue du Nil continues. The Plaq chocolate factory is scheduled to open in summer 2019 in place of the kitchen and bathroom furniture company Rifra, located at 4 rue du Nil. It is a chocolate factory “bean to bar from bean (cacao) to plate (chocolate)”. The gourmand local development of rue du Nil leads to a specialization of new restaurants (and food shops) that have opened in the neighboring streets and that some would describe as “trendy”: La Cantine des Mama’s, Écho, Daily K, Boneshaker Doughnuts and Jean Hwang Carrant rue d’Aboukir; Hoppy Corner and Liife rue des Petits-Carreaux; Kapunka Vegan rue Damiette, for example. Tourists play a role in the local development of Rue du Nil. They have quickly deployed gourmet tourist practices there. They are there in the morning for breakfast, either at the FTG Frenchie Fastgood where different formulas are offered with Hippolyte Romain cafés or at the Terroirs d’Avenir bakery to taste pastries and pieces of pie. “Tourists come to Frenchie restaurants that appear in tourist guides.

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They take pictures of themselves in front of the grocery store, and buy pastries and pastries at the bakery”14, says Samuel Nahon. Since 15 January 21, 2019, the Frenchie restaurant has been awarded one Michelin star. “It’s nice to have a star on rue du Nil. This is important for the French dimension of the restaurant. It allows you to escape the Parisian microcosm. The restaurant is now visible in the provinces.” Thus, the first Michelin star induces a relative geographical repositioning of the restaurant, between the Parisian and global scales, on a French scale. In addition, “the Michelin star has an impact on the other two establishments, the Bar à vins and the FTG Frenchie Fastgood. It allows a new perception. At FTG Frenchie Fastgood, they are no longer just sandwiches, but sandwiches made by a Michelin starred chef16. More generally, food guides have played a significant role: ‘Fooding’ and ‘Omnivore’ have helped us to make ourselves known, to get a message across and to show what we do”17. However, the gourmand local development of rue du Nil leads to the re-emergence of the materiality of the place, of the physically urban place, with its constraints. As a result, development is showing weaknesses: “There are problems related to deliveries. We have waste management difficulties. Buildings are not intended for waste storage. And there are the noises generated by food shops. We are listening. But each m2 has become very valuable.”18 Finally, for several years now, a street Festival has been organized at the beginning of July, bringing together permanent and temporary residents. “It provides visibility and a common voice through the creation of the trader’s association Association des commerçants de la rue du Nil”19. It reveals the strong attachment to the street.

14 Interview with Samuel Nahon, December 27, 2018. 15 Interview with Grégory Marchand, February 21, 2019. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

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The Terroirs d’Avenir website thus presents the properties of rue du Nil today: “Mysterious and exciting, a few meters from the pedestrianized rue Montorgueil and rue Réaumur, rue du Nil is evolving and renewing itself. Not as a commercial space to be conquered but, rather, as a crossroads of encountering and sharing between the countryside and the city.”20 Local development, initially based on an individual strategy (on the scale of Gregory Marchand) and then gradually collective (on the street level), resulting in the creation of the Association des commerçants de la rue du Nil, involves the construction of a network of complementary and interdependent catering establishments and professions that leads to economies of scale and a domino effect on the socio-economic level. This is a reticular dynamic. Voluntarily or involuntarily, consciously or unconsciously, a convergence of the various private actors’ local objectives has been achieved. It is the sum of coherent and consistent individual strategies that leads to a collective dimensioning. 10.2. At neighborhood level The restaurant offer of the trio Serge Trigano, Cyril Aouizerate and Philippe Starck, which was launched in September 2008 at 109, rue de Bagnolet, created the necessary conditions for local development on a geographical scale in the SaintBlaise district, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris (Porte de Bagnolet). Near the ring road, the restaurant of the Mama Shelter Paris East hotel is a remarkable success and has even become a brand [LEB 13]. Constance Assor thus presents this success which she describes as incredible: “In the 1950s, Gilbert Trigano took millions of holiday makers to Club Med’s paradise villages thanks to a revolutionary formula: ‘all inclusive’. Half a century later, son and grandson Trigano repeated the feat with Mama Shelter. Thought of as ‘urban kibbutz’, their trendy sanctuaries play on the contrasts between unfamiliar addresses and stylish design, top-of-the-range services and democratic prices. The wager is bold, but the success is incredible. A little more than seven years after the opening of the very first Mama, six addresses were created and many establishments replicated the concept of a multisales place inviting tourists and natives to visit without sleeping around the clock.” [ASS 16] 20 www.terroirs-avenir.fr, accessed August 13, 2018.

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When a journalist asked Serge Trigano to present the philosophy of the Mama Shelter, he replied: “It’s a restaurant with rooms above.” [ASS 16, author’s translation] Indeed, on the ground floor of the 172-room hotel decorated by designer Philippe Starck, the restaurant offers a trendy cuisine supervised by the Michelin star chef Guy Savoy (Alain Senderens at the beginning): “Today, Mama entrusts her stoves to Guy Savoy, one of the most talented chefs of his generation. Because it is the mix of genres that makes Mama’s success so successful, and because relaxation does not prevent rigor and excellence, the three-star chef joins the Mama adventure by signing a new menu: spontaneous, generous and always accessible. Combining the terroir with a touch of exoticism, Mama’s emblematic recipes with some of his signature ones. Only one constraint: to remain affordable! Discover a menu that ranges from France to Asia, which takes into account the change in our taste buds as well as vegetarian cuisine.”21 Guy Savoy admits to having been seduced “by the esthetics of the place, by the esthetics of Starck. There is an atmosphere”22. For the chef, Mama Shelter restaurant combines the “there essential dimensions of a restaurant: esthetics, atmosphere and generosity. The generosity on the plate is a signature of Mama Shelter and also mine”23. The culinary and beverage offer is particularly dense (several menus), varied, hypermodern and eclectic24: popular and country dishes such as lentil salad, soft-boiled egg, herb dressing; Japanese dishes such as steamed salmon breadcrumbs, green vegetables and umeboshi plum vinaigrette; Mama recipes such as shellfish casserole, Móstoles ham and soft-boiled egg; globalized dishes such as Greek poké bowl (Japanese rice, Greek-style mushrooms, feta, olive, avocado, tzatziki) and Japanese poké bowl (Japanese rice, salmon, pink ginger, soya sprouts, coriander, lime, black radish pickles, edamame); signature dishes such as scallops à la plancha, celery mousseline, beetroot chips, bistro dishes such as “Black Angus” American pepper sauce, homemade fries or stuffed sausage, buttered mashed potatoes, mustard jus and regressive desserts such as chocolate cake, Carambar heart. The menu also features dishes and desserts to share, such as the unstructured pissaladière (a provençal onion tart), “Bellota Bellota” sardines, homemade pita

21 mamashelter.com/fr/guy-savoy, accessed on July 9, 2018. 22 Interview with Guy Savoy, October 19, 2018. 23 Ibid. 24 See François Ascher, Le mangeur hypermoderne. Une figure de l’individu éclectique, [ASC 05].

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bread, onion stew, Taggiasche olives and the great baba. There is also a menu with about 15 pizzas25 (see Figure 10.4). For Guy Savoy, this gourmet offer reflects “a complicity with the Mama Shelter teams” on the one hand and “generosity and diversity”, on the other. He also emphasizes the “role of the chef in all forms of food”26. At the opening, the choice of location was surprising. To the question: “Rightly, you surprised us by focusing on urban tourism. How do you choose your locations?,” Serge Trigano answered again: “The 21st Century is the century of urban tourism and short stays. To choose the cities, we go where we want to spend time. As far as the neighborhood is concerned, people want to feel the vibrations of the city and not feel like tourists. Holidaymakers, businesspeople and natives must mix.” [ASS 16, author’s translation]

Figure 10.4. Pizza Chèvre de Monsieur Fabre (charcoal dough, goat’s cheese, cream of gorgonzola, mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, rocket, oregano) at Mama Shelter Paris East (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

25 www.mamashelter.com, accessed March 6, 2019. 26 Interview with Guy Savoy, October 19, 2018.

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This is one of the reasons for success. Another one is put forward by Valérie Leboucq: “The recipe? A marriage of style and accessibility. ‘Coolness’ and good old fashioned simplicity […]. On arrival, the promise of a real social mix is kept. ‘We are like our customers who come by metro or drive their Porsche,’ observes Serge Trigano.” [LEB 13, author’s translation] Gradually, the Mama Shelter Paris East establishment, the differentiated catering (and hotel) offers, the energizing company of temporary and permanent residents and the new perspectives, discourses and imaginations that enhance the establishment have all transformed the neighborhood’s qualities. Guy Savoy specifies: “I was one of the first guests at the restaurant. I’ve seen the development of the neighborhood over the past 10 years. There is a gourmand development with the development of economic activities and the new real estate value. The neighborhood will become a gourmet center, enabling more social cohesion and more harmony between work and entertainment.”27 In terms of the restaurant industry, Mama Shelter Paris East has made it possible to maintain certain establishments (Brasserie Saint Germain), change the perception of popular and ethnic restaurants (Chez Huang des Pyrénées, for example) and open new restaurants on rue de Bagnolet (Lou Tiap, Tomato Bistro, Given, for example), place Saint-Blaise (Blaise and Basile) and rue Saint-Blaise (Sadarnac, Sushi 14, for example). Located in the heart of an old butcher’s shop dating back to 1892, LeDiez by Amzo restaurant offers its African specialities right in front of the hotel and restaurant. Mama Shelter Paris East is a central player which illuminates, shines and attracts at the scale of the neighborhood, of this neighborhood of “countryside in Paris”28. It plays a role in organizing and revitalizing it, particularly in terms of food. It is a real dynamic. Mama Shelter Paris East contributes directly to the construction of an economically solid place and the formation of localized temporary collectives. It stimulates the intensification of social relations and what brings people together (the desire to be together). It articulates the socio-economic dynamics linked to the

27 Interview with Guy Savoy, October 19, 2018. 28 A “Histoire de Paris” sign indicates that rue Saint-Blaise, formerly known as “grande rue Saint-Germain”, was “the main street of the former village of Charonne, attached to Paris in 1860”.

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hotel and restaurant with the living, permanent and temporary work, tourism and leisure practices deployed there. At both street level (network of restaurants) and neighborhood level (central restaurant), these two forms of local development can be linked to the theory of local economy. According to Jean-Pierre Gilly and André Torre, it is based on logics of physical proximity (“separation in space and links in terms of distance”) and organizational proximity (“economic separation in space and links in terms of production organization”) [GIL 00, pp. 12–13]. Organizational proximity is based on logics of “similarity” and “belonging” [GIL 00]. Olivier Bouba-Olga and Michel Grossetti characterize a “socio-economic” proximity: “of resources” (material and cognitive) and “of coordination” (relational and of mediation) [BOU 08]. Indeed, according to the two authors: “Two ways of assessing what brings two individuals together can be distinguished. The first is based on an analysis of their individual characteristics, regardless of the possibilities for coordination at their disposal: the extent to which they are similar or complementary, in terms of their activities or resources, will then be assessed. The second way to assess what brings individuals closer together is to analyze the facilities or obstacles to their coordination, regardless of individual characteristics: the analysis will then focus on the networks or devices that structure coordination.” [BOU 08, author’s translation] They can also be linked to the notion of embeddedness developed by Mark Granovetter: “Individual actors do not behave or decide as atoms outside a social context. Nor do they adhere slavishly to a script written for them by the particular intersection of social categories that they happen to occupy. Their attempts at purposive action are instead embedded in concrete, ongoing systems of social relations.” [GRA 85] In his “Note sur la notion d’encastrement”, Michel Grossetti explains that: “Mark Granovetter opposes the level of interpersonal relationships and the networks they constitute, networks that are for him the fundamental social structure. For individuals, these networks are resources as well as constraints, which is what the metaphor of embeddedness refers to. Embeddedness is neither a dissolution nor a determinism, it is a dependence.” [GRO 15, author’s translation]

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In urban areas, restaurants produce new, dynamic, attractive, specialized (gourmet) and open places. They boost the permanent (entrepreneurial, residential) and also temporary (tourist) attractiveness. They transform the qualities, attractive features and charms, i.e. the brand of the street and the neighborhood. Through tourist visits, they globalize the street and the neighborhood. Indeed, the entrepreneurial and strategic skills of local development actors reveal their ability to mobilize the place (the locale) to make it a world-class reality. In doing so, they reaffirm the urban character of a street or neighborhood: living, dense and diverse, commercial and lively places in the evening. Hospitable, pleasant and friendly places. The village notion is mobilized. It would be a place where gastronomes practice, people who share a common palate, a common delicacy, a common curiosity of mouth, as well as the desire and pleasure to move from one gourmet place to another in a free, chosen and motivated way. The sense of local development based on restaurants in urban areas is where the body feels good.

11 Restaurant and Local Development in Rural Areas

Cécile Clergeau and Olivier Etcheverria have shown a form of local development based on restaurants (Georges Blanc restaurant) in rural areas (in Vonnas, a commune in eastern France) through the scale of the gastronomic atmosphere (Village Blanc), which is defined as: “the local accumulation of knowledge, practices, discourses and gastronomic and taste-related imaginations that promotes the learning and acquisition of skills by the protagonists in the co-construction of the tasting experience.” [CLE 13, p. 53, author’s translation] The notion of gastronomic atmosphere can be linked to that of industrial atmosphere developed by Alfred Marshall at the end of the 19th Century. In the 1970s, Giacomo Becattini brought the concept back by applying it to the industrial world of the Third Italy, characterized by the concentration of small companies specialized in the same branch of activity and efficient in exports. He proposed the following definition of the industrial district: “A socio-territorial entity characterized by the active association, within a circumscribed and historically determined territorial area, of a community of people and a population of industrial enterprises. In the district, unlike what happens in other settings, such as the manufacturing city, the community and businesses tend, so to speak, to commingle.” The industrial atmosphere is then “the set of conditions that underpin social cohesion and the local population’s community of values and the set of relationships between the territorial actors, which make collective learning possible”.

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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The gastronomic atmosphere encourages experiences, learning and the acquisition of gastronomic skills for both permanent and temporary residents. Indeed, it is dramatized for and by tourists. Deploying their tourist practices, they immerse themselves in this gastronomic atmosphere; they truly and ideally incorporate it. In doing so, through their presence, their glances, their discourses and their imaginations, their feedback, they transform the gastronomic atmosphere, they nourish and enrich it. They make it even more gastronomic and touristic. Thus, tourists are joint producers of the gastronomic atmosphere and actors of local development [CLE 13, author’s translation]. Like in Vonnas, the shaping of the gastronomic atmosphere is reflected in the creation of a place within a place, a village within the village: the White Village [CLE 13]. The meaning of local development is the microcosm. This village is specialized, gourmet. It is dense and diversified in terms of both the catering offer and the hotel and tourist offer. The model is family-based [CLE 13], as in SaintBonnet-le-Froid [MAR 11] and Cancale [ETC 14], for example. Local development is based on the reputation and effectiveness of a family name. What are the other forms of local development based on restaurants in rural areas? 11.1. On the scale of the plateau Michel Bras has developed an entrepreneurial strategy with a qualitative objective and has become an advocate, in Laguiole and, more broadly, on the Aubrac plateau, of an identity quality1 that explains the restaurant’s local reputation and its place in local development: “The Aubrac plateau was a deprived and deserted plateau, I brought it up to date. We took another look at the plateau, a look of contemplation. We have a fascination for deserts. Aubrac is a green desert, a place inhabited by light.”2 The qualitative and identity orientation is strongly rooted in the Aubrac plateau, through the construction of a gourmet relationship with landscapes, on the one hand,

1 See Cécile Clergeau and Olivier Etcheverria, “The identity quality of restaurants: An affordance to the tourist ecumene? The example of the Christopher Coutanceau restaurant in La Rochelle”, see Nicola Bellini, Cécile Clergeau and Olivier Etcheverria (eds.), Gastronomy and Local Development. The Quality of Products, Places and Experiences, Routledge, 2018, pp. 11–25 [CLE 19]. 2 Interview with Michel Bras, March 19, 2019.

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and an estheticization of taste on the other. Michel Bras has actively participated in the construction of gastronomic and geographical discourses and imaginations that will change the way people look at the plateau and the practices of both permanent and temporary residents. “I have a creative soul. We wanted to exist, to be fulfilled,”3emphasizes Michel Bras, whose local commitment leads him to “get involved in the associative movements” and at the same time to participate, “in the creation of a heart that has supported the village”4. Moving the family restaurant located in the center of the village of Laguiole (see Figure 11.1) to the top of the puech du Suquet 6 kilometers away (see Figures 11.2 and 11.3) raises challenges in terms of local development, based on restaurants on a plateau scale (ETC 11). Michel Bras explains: “In terms of knives, La Forge de Laguiole was built at the same time as the restaurant”5.

Figure 11.1. Postcard depicting the Lou Mazuc restaurant (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid.

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Figure 11.2. Map of the hotel-restaurant Bras at the puech du Suquet (source: Michel Bras)

Figure 11.3. View of the hotel-restaurant Bras at Puech du Suquet (source: Michel Bras)

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Arriving at the restaurant, being welcomed into the salon and then into the dining room, which are largely open to the outside world, and the experience of visual tasting, are a journey through the landscape: “Le Suquet stands out above the landscape. The building seems perched between land and sky, defying the elements. This living space, originally conceived by Ginette and Michel Bras and today occupied by Véronique and Sébastien Bras was designed and constructed in a spirit of total harmony with nature. It was designed in 1992, in conjunction with the architects Éric Raffy and Philippe Villeroux, and recently revamped with Thierry Chalaux. A space infused with light, where only the distant horizon interrupts one’s views, where the granite and slate are reminiscent of the local ‘burons’, it reveals its nature discreetly, just like the countryside in which it is set. Thus, the ‘draille’– a former cattle drove – which bisects the buildings leads the eye towards the village of Laguiole in the distance, as if seen through a crack. Everything about this building was conceived around the central concept of the discovery and revelation of Aubrac. The architecture, austere like the countryside, reflects its codes and materials – the light, the vegetal and the mineral – interpreting them in a pure, contemporary style. Conceived to bridge several generations, Sébastien and Véronique Bras have gradually made small changes, with the determination of this family of eternal builders. They have dug, renovated, adapted, enlarged and enhanced. Here, by reducing the window frame structures in order to offer unobstructed views of the countryside, there by making the reception area of the hotel more welcoming or simply allowing more light in by redesigning the interior of the building.”6 (see Figure 11.3) For Michel Bras, the plateau and its landscapes are a source of inspiration and culinary and gustatory creation. Plates then represent his sensory and esthetic relationship with the plateau through a flat-plateau resemblance. One of the most representative dishes of this identity relationship with the plateau is: today “classic”,

6 https://www.bras.fr/en/page-article/en-panoramic-aubrac, accessed August 14, 2018.

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the Gargouillou of young vegetables, herbs and sprouted seeds, old Rodez biscuit and oil seeds7. The Gargouillou of young vegetables came about in June 1980 following a glance upon a piece of flowery landscape on the Aubrac plateau: “From Aubrac, this place inhabited by silence, saturated with light, I nourish myself with unchanging cycles, tirelessly renewed, I nourish myself with this relationship of taking every moment to wonder. Sounds, colors, good smells, where everything is beautiful and good. Using these moments, I discover, I welcome, I gather, a multitude of visions. The ‘gargouillou’ appeared during one of these ‘internal journeys’. Imagined one June, when the pastures were flooded with a myriad of flowers and fragrances. When a light breeze from the North animated it with sounds and fragrances in the surrounding area. When the structure of flowers, stems, fruits and branch sculptures touched the imagination. This creation was the result of the maturity of humanity and the chef. I designed it as a piece of bravery with which I am totally in step, from my most intimate to my most acute sense of taste. But just as everyone has their own writing, everyone can have their own reading of this Aubrac pasture. Thus the ‘gargouillou’, a veritable firework display which evolves constantly as the seasons unfold. At the same time: assortments of vegetables, flowers, seeds punctuated by ‘niacs’; a piece of music, punctuated by tempo; painting of colors, structures… A mix full of freedom that is captured with the eye, gathered, crunched, melted… A hymn to the season. With its vegetables that are neither denatured nor disfigured, with its vital components, the ‘gargouillou’ breathes life. Traditionally, the name ‘gargouillou’, from Auvergne’s heritage, meant a dish of potatoes, soaked in water and adjusted with a slice of cured ham. The singing of this appellation, my love of the vegetable garden, my fascination for nature guided me towards this interpretation.” [BRA 02, author’s translation] (see Figure 11.4)

7 Menu from November 2018.

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Figure 11.4. The gargouillou of young vegetables (source: [BRA 02]). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

Resembling the flat-plateau is achieved through the articulation of “beauty and goodness”. Today: “Sébastien Bras reinvents his cuisine every day. A cuisine of the moment, the fruit of constantly simmering ideas as much of formalised creative thought processes, nourished by an image, a memory from a trip, a stroll in the garden at Lagardelle, an encounter with an enthusiast or quite simply an Aubrac landscape.”8 Michel Bras specifies: “The good and the beautiful, I get from my parents, it’s in my parents’ DNA, it’s in my DNA, in the local DNA. I got the beauty from my father who was a blacksmith. I got the good one from my mother who knows how to surprise with appropriate seasoning.”9 Some plates reveal local sources, like: De chez Yannick, comice pear poached in walnut wine syrup, praline with walnuts from the area and light chicory cream, crispy bread and sorbet with matured pear and pure-bred Aubrac beef, a piece of

8 https://www.bras.fr/en/en-the-cuisine/dishes-and-menus, accessed August 14, 2018. 9 Interview with Michel Bras, March 19, 2019.

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beef fried with butter from the area with vegetables of the day; a jus with black truffles from Comprégnac. The butter here is a whey butter: “He recently developed a special butter. Rather than using milk cream to make butter, he had the idea of replacing it with whey cream recovered after the Laguiole cheeses were pressed by the Coopérative Jeune Montagne. A butter with a strong character was born for the tables of Le Suquet. The slices of bread just have to keep firm.”10 In a deep-rooted connection to the surrounding area, an in situ taste emerges, whose discovery requires displacement [ETC 04]. Thus, Michel Bras and, today, his son Sébastien have radically changed the way we look at and relate to the Aubrac plateau. By creating an esthetic (beautiful) and gourmet (good) inner (identity) relationship with the plateau, they create the endogenous conditions necessary for local development, in which they involve the temporary inhabitants through the characterization of an in situ taste. Augustin Berque defines the environment as a relationship, the relationship of a society to space and nature: “The environment is not an isolated object in itself. It is a relationship: the medial, or mesological, relationship in which a subject necessarily intervenes” [BER 87, author’s translation]. The environment is intersected by a milieu, both an ecological and symbolic meaning of an environment: “The analysis of milieu cannot therefore avoid returning to the question of the subject’s coupling with the object, from the subjective metaphor to objective causality” [BER 87, author’s translation]. According to Augustin Berque, the environments are trajectories: “That is, they result from a process (a trajectory) of combining and surpassing the physical and the phenomenal, objective facts and subjective representations. Trajectory is a historical and geographical process (throughout history and in the field of an environment, society tends to represent its environment according to the arrangements it makes of it, and it tends reciprocally to arrange it according to the representations it makes of it), but it is also a process that works at all times, playing on the perception and action of each individual.” [BER 87, author’s translation] Michel Bras has played a central role in the trajectories of the Aubrac plateau. To do this, he has mobilized the landscape. For Augustin Berque, the landscape is a “predominantly visual trajectory, expressing locally a milieu.” [BER 87, author’s translation] 10 www.bras.fr, accessed August 14, 2018.

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The role of the Bras family’s restaurant in local development on the scale of the Aubrac plateau can be explained by the fact that it constitutes a “medial catch”: “Of these medial (or mesological) catches that we have in regards to reality, through the structuring of our environment by a landscape motivation (where the imaginary plays among others)” [BER 87, author’s translation]. Through the restaurant as a “medial outlet”, Michel Bras has promoted the construction of a new relationship with the Aubrac plateau and, correlatively, initiated the reassessment of its resources, constraints and potential. For Bernard Hubert and Nicole Mathieu: “‘Potentials’ express the possibilities of exploiting resources according to certain constraints, which implies both teleonomy and contingency. Indeed, ‘potentials’ are defined in relation to a given objective, but this can change; ‘resources’ only exist in relation to a use that can evolve, transform, or even appear ‘de novo’; ‘constraints’ are only recognized for certain purposes, they no longer exist in relation to others; moreover they depend on the means that exist to overcome them, they can even become ‘potentialities.’” [HUB 92, author’s translation] Thus, Michel Bras perceived resources that were not perceived by other actors as well endogenous as exogenous and valued them on an esthetic and gourmet level. He did so with a full awareness of the constraints. Gradually, he has promoted the spread of this perception, enabling the creation of the conditions necessary for local development. On the Aubrac plateau, local restaurant-based development is deeply rooted in the place (the locale) and reveals spatially diffuse effects, both intangible and tangible. It resonates with the question of identity, the love of the place and those who inhabit it. The quality of identity also affects the cutlery industry through the revival of the Forge de Laguiole. The meaning of local development is to live here (here and not elsewhere). 11.2. Across the country Twelve years ago, at the Auberge Basque in Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle, southwestern France, Cédric Béchade made the strategic choice of a “100% local producer supply, even for secondary products such as oil and flour”11. The restaurant’s supply is now “between 90 and 95% local and 100% direct and ethical”12. Cédric Béchade explains: “Back in the Basque Country, I wanted to find meaning in my job. I wanted to understand the development and cycles of products. I didn’t understand the meaning of intermediaries”13. The chef then engaged in building relationships 11 Interview with Cédric Béchade, April 4, 2019. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

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loaded with values and respect with local producers: “I am getting closer to the values of producers. I want to know the specifications they impose on themselves. It is a human question above all. I am looking for commitment and responsibility14 from producers”. L’Auberge Basque’s kitchen staff now cooks with artisanal cooking oils produced by the Nouste Ekilili cooperative in Gabat. The 15 members grouped together since 2009 produce sunflower and rapeseed oils according to a peasant farming method: “Nouste Ekilili”15. It is a “Basque-Béarnaise farmer oil” as highlighted by the cooperative’s16 advertising hook. Oilseed crops are grown on a farm from sowing to the final product, from seed to bottle: “These crops have very often replaced the corn crop and have allowed us to acquire more protein autonomy (replacing soybean meal)17. The oil obtained after crushing was initially considered a by-product and used on our farms as fuel or sold as such. Today, we consider it as a noble product that we want to promote.”18 The seeds are crushed in three farms in Gabat, Sait-Pée-sur-Nivelle and Sus (near Navarrenx). The production is about 40,000 liters per year19. These oils are now marketed to private individuals (directly and in local shops), commercial caterers (restaurants, including L’Auberge Basque) as well as collective caterers (high schools, retirement homes). Nouste Ekilili is committed to the “organic and local food, labels and terroir” approach developed by the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department and is supported by associations such as Euskal Herriko Laborantza Ganbara (an association that promotes concerted local development in the Basque Country based on boosting farming agriculture and enhancing farming heritage) and the Association béarnaise de développement de l’emploi agricole (alongside the Confédération paysanne du Béarn). Cédric Béchade and his restaurant team highlight Basque farm ciders and food pairings20. Since 2001, the wine growers Pascale and Bixintxo Aphaule of the Bordatto estate in Jaxu have been producing organic ciders (Txalaparta, Basandere, Basajaun, 14 Ibid. 15 “Nouste” means “our” in Béarnese and “ekilili” means “sunflower” in Basque. 16 Noustekilili.jimdo.com, accessed on January 24, 2019. 17 Indeed, sunflower and rapeseed cattle cakes are intended for animal feed for local livestock (ewes, cows, poultry and pigs). Rich in fat, they are a source of non-GMO and local proteins: “[...] which allows us to improve the food autonomy of our farms” (Nouste Ekilili website, consulted on January 24, 2019). 18 Nousteekilili.jimdo.com, accessed on January 24, 2019. 19 1 hectare of sunflower or rapeseed produces 700–900 liters of oil. Each year, 40–45 hectares of sunflower and 5–10 hectares of rapeseed are cultivated. 20 See Olivier Etcheverria, “Les accords mets-vins au Pays basque. Entre pratiques et imaginaires gastronomiques”, in Jean-Robert Pitte (ed.), Les accords mets et vins. Un art français, Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2017, pp. 411–422.

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Kilimiliklik), apple juices (Sagar Lore) and sweet and dry “apple wines” (Bihotz, Mokofin and Oreka)21. In doing so, it contributes to the preservation of the rich Basque cider heritage by cultivating some 20 varieties of local apples (apez sagarra, eztika, mamula, eri sagarra, anisa, jinkoa, gehesia gorria, errezila, koko xuria, bordelesa, minxuri, gordin xuri, burdinga, negu sagarra, peatxa, ondo motxa, gezamina etc.)22. At breakfast, yoghurts from GAEC Agerrea in Arbonne are served. These are yoghurts flavored with natural infusions of flowers and aromatic herbs (meadowsweet, elderberry, rose, fragrant verbena). Olivier Doyhenard and Olivier Gervais, partners since 2016, raise about 30 cows outdoors which feed on fresh grass (in spring), hay and silage from corn and grass produced on the farm. The animals are treated using homeopathy and aromatherapy. No chemical inputs are used. One-third of milk production is sold raw directly to private individuals, pastry chefs and ice-cream makers, restaurateurs and caterers, and retailers on the Basque coast; the remaining two-thirds is processed into yoghurt, butter, cream and cheese. All products are from organic farming23. Olivier Doyhenard and Olivier Gervais are members of the Coopérative laitière du Pays basque (Les Aldudes) and the Association des producteurs fermiers du Pays basque Idoki, which “helps to maintain farmer employment and the smallest farms in the Basque Country”24. The suckling lambs (see Figure 11.5) come from Jean-Bernard Maitia’s farm. He has a herd of 300 black-head Manech Basque sheep that graze in winter on the plain in Aincille and in summer in Urkulu in Saint-Michel, at an altitude of 1,400 meters. Manech black-headed suckling lamb is a Slow Food sentinel: “The black-head Manech sheep is the hardiest of the three sheep breeds present in the Atlantic Pyrenees and has been an integral part of the landscape of the Aldudes Valley for centuries […]. While it is raised mainly for its milk, the sale of lambs serves as a supplement to income mainly for small farms in the Garazi-Baigorri, IholdiOztibarre and Soule regions. Lambs that feed only on mother’s milk and live in a preserved environment represent gastronomic excellence typical of the region […]. The production of suckling lambs is an essential source of income for farmers of this breed, although they are not fairly remunerated. The black-head Manech is a declining breed because, although it is perfectly adapted to summer and able to graze outdoors all year round, it remains less productive than other breeds. There were 220,000 in the 1980s, compared to about 85,000 today. To 21 Pascale and Bixintxo Aphaule also produce AOC/AOP Irouléguy wines, a 100% tannat grape variety (1 hectare of vines). They cultivate 3.5 hectares of apple orchards. 22 Domainebordatto.com, accessed on January 24, 2019. 23 ferme-agerrea.jimdo.com, consulted on January 24, 2019. 24 www.producteurs-fermiers-pays-basques.fr, accessed January 24, 2019.

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safeguard the breed, it is necessary to ensure safer, i.e. local, trade opportunities and more remunerative prices.”25

Figure 11.5. Lamb from shepherd Jean-Bernard Maïtia seasoned to the taste of the ocean (seasoned with Getaria anchovies) (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Cédric Béchade thus participates in the preservation of this local sheep breed. It was during a visit to the farm and a meeting with the breeder Jean-Bernard Maïtia that he was inspired by the observation of natural pastures, rich in scented flowers and aromatic herbs, in the recipe for braised suckling lamb with meadow milk (see Figure 11.6).

Figure 11.6. Jean-Bernard Maïtia’s suckling lamb braised with meadow milk (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

25 “Manech Black Head Lamb” slowfood.fr website, consulted on February 3, 2018.

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COMMENT ON FIGURE 11.6. – This is a piece of lamb cooked in sheep’s milk flavored with a mixture of hay, breckland thyme, elderflower, meadowsweet and hawthorn. The sauce is tied to the ripened sheep’s cheese for 15 months. On the plate, the dish is sprinkled with a seasoning composed of grilled corn, breckland thyme leaves and elderflower, reduced to powder. In Verlus, the Bastelica family produces, in La Vallée des Deux Sources, vegetables and aromatic plants, some edible fruits and flowers: “Founded in 1978 in organic agriculture (Nature & Progress, nearly 37 years ago), our production sites are protected by an important forest massif, their location on hillsides, pastures and lakes. Two remarkable springs irrigate its slopes, a ferric spring and a sodium spring, two signs of generosity emerge from the bowels of the Earth.”26 The Bastelica family carries and disseminates agricultural values: “We have implemented soft techniques to advance our business. We believe that performance can only be achieved by combining, within a continuous and coherent whole: the generosity of the earth, the hand of the sower, the hand of the picker, the tastes, the emotion and the design of the plates.”27 The family then reaffirms the nourishing role of agriculture. The discourse presented on the website emphasizes the nutritional links maintained with chefs (including Michel Guérard): “The history of the the Vallée de Deux Sources is the story of discovery and encounters. The discovery of an enchanted space, the earth and its inhabitants, and the meeting of men and women who have dedicated themselves to food, to the mouth, to taste and to esthetics, in fact, to the happiness of others: the world of cuisine and its chefs.”28

26 Valdessources.com, accessed April 4, 2019. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid.

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These links have allowed radical changes in agricultural production processes: “Opting by its origin in Organic Agriculture, for a policy of quality of the products obtained, preservation of the environment and a reflection on the methods of cultivation and their possible technical mutations today, the Vallée des Deux Sources, resolutely turned towards the future, was thus a pioneer in the research and development of new farming techniques (for example integrated biological control since 1978) protecting nature of course, eliminating many polluting phytosanitary treatments as well as weed control techniques but also considerably improving human working conditions in terms of safety and comfort. The search for a good relationship with our business partners has enabled them to understand who we are and to help us in the challenges we have faced, and we thank them here.” In 2015, the Bastelica family joined the Collège culinaire de France (an artisanal quality producer). Cédric Béchade pays particular attention to the taste of culinary products: “My products have a different taste, a real taste. They are therefore easier to cook. The chef’s role is to enhance the taste of the product. A dish must stay in the mouth for a long time.”29 Strict respect for the seasons is therefore essential. “I have a 100% seasonal menu. The season is sometimes very short, two to three weeks. Seasonality is what the product says. It is based on nature and the producer”30. The chef’s approach must be related to the social demand of nature (especially urban dwellers): “I listen to customers, I am in the dining room and in the kitchen. I take into account the needs of customers. There is a need for nature and a willingness to remove industrial products”31. The restaurant’s clientele is mainly composed of Basque natives from the Coast, Parisians, those from Bordeaux and Toulouse and tourists from Great Britain, the United States, Northern Europe and Asia, “even if I can now attract Basque natives from within”32. In 2019, the chef offered “culinary walks with chef Cédric Béchade”: “The culinary walks are the

29 Interview with Cédric Béchade, April 4, 2019. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid.

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continuation of the direction chosen 12 years ago. They allow you to visit two to three producers. I want to share a proximity with customers”33. Thus, “the artisanal hike” proposes: “After waking up in front of the Nivelle valley, Cédric Béchade will take you to meet Joël Cazaux, a ceramicist for six generations with whom he has worked to perfect the tasting experience. Together, they create authentic and personalized table art. After discovering this know-how and unique creations, you will head towards a mill (Plazako Errota) that has spanned the centuries and whose history Jean Bruno Etcheverry will tell you with passion. He will also explain the artisanal production of flour that his grandmother continued until 1972. Finally, the chef will take you to the chilli workshop where Ramuntxo and his passionate team will reveal the steps involved in the production of the famous Espelette chilli pepper, from the seed to the chilli powder.”34 Like his producers, Cédric Béchade is thus a committed and respectful chef, who activates and reactivates a “locavorism”. His supply approach presents local challenges in terms of structuring localized agricultural chains, shaping original, specific and particularly tasty food products, creating short commercial trips, emerging traceability logic and, finally, local development. Edgar Pisani and the Seillac Group explain: “Not only for ethical reasons, although they are sufficient, but also for reasons related to changing mentalities and attitudes: yesterday’s consumers paid little attention to the way food arriving on their plates was produced; this is and will continue to be the case less and less so; farmers must be convinced of this: organoleptic but also biological quality will count more year after year.” [PIS 94, author’s translation] The chef thus participates in the dynamization-redynamization of a local “market and domestic” agriculture: “They have knowingly forgotten and you have forgotten that, until a certain time, in the end quite recent, any agricultural operation was ‘naturally’ commercial and domestic, producing and gardening. It is the opening of markets, but above all the explosion of techniques and practices that have upset this balance.” [PIS 94, author’s translation]

33 Ibid. 34 Aubergebasque.com, accessed April 4, 2019.

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Cédric Béchade weaves with his producers links of mutual knowledge, trust, solidarity and familiarity. These relationships leave producers responsible for the quality of their products, the quantities produced and the seasonality of production. The products thus have unique and specific characteristics: “They [specific products] occupy an increasingly large place on markets and consumer tables. They still do so today despite the crisis. They become one of the symbols of the development of societies. They are infinitely diverse and it would be useless to try to list them. There are some old products such as some wines or cheeses. There are others that have developed into sought-after products when they were… by-products. Some are put on the market in good condition and others are only sold after having been in the cellar or kitchen.” [PIS 94, author’s translation] The restaurant thus ensures the commercial vitality of a local market, structured jointly on the basis of common specifications and shared values. In order to complete his approach, Cédric Béchade now wishes to start “working with a seed seller to find old varieties of seeds”35. Local development based on restaurants on a national scale, in the sense of a supply area and the affirmation of cultivation and cultural choices (particularly tasty agricultural products, a taste of the country), results in the creation of strong links between local society and local development. The meaning of local development is a local management of diversity. 11.3. At the village level Gilles Goujon saved his village. This is how the chef of the restaurant L’Auberge du Vieux Puits in Fontjoncouse, in the department of Aude, winner of three Michelin stars, is presented in an article in the daily newspaper Le Parisien, dated Wednesday August 22, 2018 [GOU 18], as well as in a report broadcast in September 2018 on France 336. The tagline of the article “Gilles Goujon prepares his miracle recipe in Fontjoncouse” is explicit: “The arrival of the three-starred chief literally resurrected the small village of Les Corbières, but it also generated the happiness of producers throughout the region” [GOU 18]. Gilles Goujon and his wife Marie-Christine

35 Interview with Cédric Béchade, April 4, 2019. 36 “Aude : le village 3 étoiles de Fontjoncouse”, 9 September 2018, France 3. In France, the population of certain villages is diminishing. However, in the Corbières, the opposite is taking place. Fontjoncouse (Aude) is renowned throughout the world thanks to its 3-star chef.

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opened L’Auberge du Vieux Puits on June 12, 1992. Solicited by the Town Hall, they bought the village inn for which the former owners had to file for bankruptcy three times. Originally from Bourges, Gilles Goujon completed his culinary apprenticeship in Béziers (La Compagnie du Midi – former restaurant at Béziers station – and Le Ragueneau by the Rouquette brothers) then in Mougins (Roger Vergé’s Moulin de Mougins), in Marseille (Le Petit Nice by Jean-Paul Passédat), Carry-le-Rouet (L’Escale by Gérard Clor), Saint-Père-sous-Vézelay (L’Espérance by Marc Meneau) and, finally, Narbonne (Le Réverbère by Claude Giraud). Based on essentially local and exclusively fresh products that he carefully selects, Gilles Goujon offers a personal cuisine37. Éric Brissot, Mayor of Fontjoncouse, insists on the originality of the cuisine: “It is a local high-tech cuisine. Gilles Goujon uses products that everyone knows but that are cooked like no one could imagine”38. However, the first five years were very tough. The objective of making oneself known to food critics, particularly those in the Michelin Guide, and to local gourmets, especially those in nearby cities, took a long time to be achieved. Although only 30 kilometers from Narbonne, the village, on the way to desertification, was difficult to access. There were no other businesses or companies. Thus, services without coverage were not uncommon. However, despite the financial difficulties, the couple persevered and the chef refined his cuisine. Éric Brissot points out: “Desire and perseverance were very important. The choice of high quality also39. Gilles Goujon has never made any concessions on quality”. In 1996, Gilles Goujon won the “MOF” competition. He is gradually becoming known and mainly at weekends, attracts, thanks to his technicality and creativity, people from Narbonne, Carcassonne and Montpellier who walk along the rural roads winding through the garrigue and the vineyards and alleys of the villages of the Cathar country to come and taste the farmer’s hen eggs, the farmer’s black pig, Lézignan onion and the enchanted wild mushrooms. The restaurant was awarded its first star in the Michelin Guide in 1997, the second star in 2001 and finally, the third star in 2010. Its signature dish is rotten Carrus hen egg with melanosporum truffle, served in a mushroom purée, warm briochine and cappuccino to drink (Figure 11.7). In 2001, eight rooms were created, then six additional rooms in La Maison des Chefs, 300 meters from the restaurant. The company’s team has gradually grown to 48 employees.

37 “Ma table se veut à mon image, instinctive, authentique et ludique”, press kit 2018. 38 Interview with Éric Brissot, April 15, 2019. 39 Ibid.

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(a)

(b)

Figure 11.7. a) Rotten Carrus hen egg with melanosporum truffle served in a mushroom purée; b) warm briochine and cappuccino to drink (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

Fontjoncouse is now known for its gourmet cuisine at national and international levels and is permanently (permanent residents) and, even more so, temporarily (tourists, especially at weekends, says Éric Brissot) attractive. In the village, seven houses are occupied by restaurant employees40. The restaurant welcomes between

40 Five to six other municipalities in the canton of Durban are also affected by the arrival of employees of L’Auberge du Vieux Puits (interview with Éric Brissot, April 15, 2019).

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15,000 and 20,000 diners annually. Thus, new commercial activities have opened: two tasting cellars (four to five cellars are planned in the short term, according to Éric Brissot), a honey house and cottages and guest rooms. With the 14 rooms of the hotel and restaurant, there are about 30 beds that can be hired. Éric Brissot insists on the fact that “some clients come back on vacation and others decide to buy second homes”41. He gives the example of an old cellar that has been renovated into a house. At village level, the restaurant has led to a redistribution of the population and activities and a regeneration of the socio-economic structure. It has made it possible to break with the relative geographical isolation and desertification of Fontjoncouse, which rose from 92 inhabitants in 1990 to 152 in 2018. According to Éric Brissot, Gilles Goujon has thus played a role in “the repopulation of the commune thanks to the arrival of working people almost exclusively, and no longer retirees. The restaurant has become an argument used by real estate agents”42. The economic spinoffs are also significant for craft businesses in relation to the layout and decor of the restaurant and the two hotels. In 2015, the decor of the room was modernized: “The new elegant room creates a world of softness and light desired by the Goujon couple. It is warm, modern and offers comfort, atmosphere and character: octopus-shaped chandeliers, white leaves on the walls in a nod to the mistral, large photos representing the gestures of the trade, tables made to measure by a cabinetmaker with notches to lay the knives… a tribute to Gilles Goujon’s grandfather who placed his knife in the table.”43 As the article in the daily newspaper Le Parisien points out, the restaurant also has an impact on agricultural development. Gilles Goujon has disseminated his qualitative practices. It has indeed encouraged local producers to move towards agriculture with qualitative objectives. Pierre Bories of the Ollieux-Romanis wine estate insists as follows: “He showed us a way in the requirement that perhaps naturally we didn’t have”44. For Jean-Baptiste Gaschard, from the Carrus farm in Mayronnes, Gilles Goujon is the biggest and almost the only customer. The farmer sells him 700 eggs a week as well as goat’s cheese. In addition, Gilles Goujon attends the Lézignan-Corbières market every Wednesday morning,

41 Ibid. 42 Ibid, April 15, 2019. 43 Press kit 2018. 44 Report from France 3.

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where producers benefit directly and indirectly from the reputation and demands of the chef: “In everyone’s eyes, we can see complicity and admiration for this third Michelin star won eight years ago. The chef is certainly charismatic, warm, jovial, but also terribly demanding on the quality of the products he transforms into divine food, with his talent and his team.” [GOU 18, author’s translation] The chef describes the gourmet atmosphere of the market as follows: “During your Wednesday walks, go to Lézignan-Corbières, an impressive market awaits you there. A must for producers where apples, green and white asparagus and rice from the Marseillette pond, potatoes from the Sault region, Lucca olives and Bize oil, sweet onions from Citou, chestnuts, mushrooms and a few salted meats from the Black Mountain (feche dry liver sausage, Aude blood sausage, liver sausage, etc.) are mixed together according to the season. Here, small rosé wines are picked up by a grandpa and sold on the sly, there, a basket filled with black truffles or Saint-Jean ones. Further along, a goatherd, fresh or ripened cheeses, but also sheep’s cheeses, Tomme cheeses, Brousse cheeses, curds… some cow’s cheese from the Corbières, flowered rind or volume.”45 In the same way, Gilles Goujon plays an essential and widely recognized role in the real and ideal quality of the wines of the Corbières appellation46. At Le Crès, Pierre Bories spoke about diners visiting at the end of their meal47: “In his cellar, he discovered with amusement the concept of the 5pm guests who, leaving the inn located 7 km away, came to buy his wine discovered at the table three hours earlier. If necessary, Mathieu, the restaurant’s reception manager, will draw the route on a map.” [GOU 18, author’s translation] Jérôme Villaret, General Delegate of the Comité interprofessionnel des vins du Languedoc, also emphasizes: “Gilles’ inn is a wonderful embassy for our wines. He always highlights the regional producers he knows better than anyone else.” [GOU 18, author’s translation]

45 Press kit 2018. 46 This role was highlighted by Guy Savoy during the October 2018 interview. 47 Report from France 3.

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Indeed, Éric Brissot insists on the fact that: “The restaurant invites you to discover Corbières. Gilles Goujon has a strong attachment to Corbières. He has played a role in the development of responsible Corbières producers and highlights them. Local customers are very sensitive to this attachment. Corbières natives are very proud of their region.”48 He also underlines the chef’s investment in the village: “He takes care of the hunting association’s food. Every year, he organizes a banquet to which the whole village is invited”49. In addition, Gilles Goujon is politically involved: he is the 2nd deputy mayor. “The municipal team was jointly set up in 2008”50 says Éric Brissot. The restaurant shows benefits that translate into work, jobs and income. Indeed, the operation and development of the restaurant (and the two hotels) imply theoretical and real labor needs; it is the technically necessary population [MAT 95]. At village level, the restaurant has ensured that jobs and income are locally integrated. It promotes the creation of density and diversity of socio-economic realities. It encourages the foundation of gatherings, the reconstruction of neighborhood and familial relationships. It creates a community consciousness in the place. The sense of local development is the common ground (common good and common responsibility). This form of local development can be related to the theory of local residential economy. According to Laurent Davezies, there are indeed four types of local economy: productive, public, residential and socio-medical [DAV 09]: “The residential economy refers to the non-productive, public or social ‘territorial supply’ (income of commuters, pensioners and tourists), measured in monetary amounts. The in-place economy refers rather to ‘effective demand’ in the territory, to consumption (in a way, to the local propensity to consume) and makes it possible to approach a measure of the transformation of local incomes into domestic jobs.”51 [DAV 09, author’s translation] 48 Interview with Éric Brissot, April 15, 2019. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Laurent Davezies states that: “The notion of ‘presence’ was introduced by Christophe Terrier when he was head of the research department of the French Ministry of Tourism [...]. The ‘presence’ measured offers, for the first time, a ‘net tourism’ indicator taking into account both the capacity of the territories to attract tourists and the retention of their resident populations.” [DAV 09, author’s translation]

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In rural areas, the forms of local development based on restaurants are more varied. Development shows economic effects and also a socio-cultural and identity depth. In addition, it activates a relationship dimension between the physics of the place (agricultural soils, water, fauna and flora, etc.), and the permanent and temporary inhabitants. In both urban and rural areas, restaurants therefore have a place in local development. Local development based on restaurants is never above ground, whether it is urban or rural. It is an original and specialized local development. It is a local development by the food lover. This gourmet local development, through its deep integration with the locale, its dimension of sensory relationship with places, makes it possible to define and redefine what is urban and rural. It promotes interactions with places and environments. It creates a place where there are encounters, anonymous and unexpected encounters. In town and in the countryside, the restaurant shows the astonishing capacity to transform “deserts” (“urban desert” – rue du Nil – or “rural deserts” – the Aubrac plateau and the village of Fontjoncouse) and to create pleasant and friendly places to stay. It saves these places from complacency or indifference. Indirectly or directly, remotely or in situ, the restaurant systematically plays a role in agricultural dynamics, in terms of quality and diversity of production, diversification and innovation of agricultural holdings, reaffirmation of the nutritional function of agriculture, structuring of short commercial trips, traceability and rediscovery of local taste preferences. Chefs play a role in local development. They have an effect on places, on their qualities, their structures and their dynamics. Indeed, they make location choices, demonstrate strategic entrepreneurial skills, disseminate qualitative practices, create conditions for their economic development and promote their transition from the individual to the collective. There are several forms and meanings of local development that chefs understand. This influence of restaurants on the definition, qualification and specialization of environments and places leads to the question of the characterization of the restaurant as a form of heritage.

PART 5

The Restaurant: What Heritage?

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Introduction to Part 5

The inscription of the “Gastronomic Meal of the French” on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on November 16, 2010, as something which can be enjoyed in restaurants leads to the activation– reactivation of the restaurant’s memory characteristics and the characterization of the restaurant as heritage. DEFINITION.– Heritage is: “What is supposed to be worth passing on from the past, to find value in the present. Heritage is a set of attributes, representations and practices fixed on a non-contemporary object (a thing, a work, an idea, a testimony, a building, a site, a landscape, a practice) whose present importance is collectively decreed intrinsic (meaning what this object represents as a legitimate history of the objects of society) and extrinsic (what this object contains supports values of a collective memory), which requires that it be preserved and transmitted. As we have understood, heritage is not a given, but a constructed heritage. The identification of a place as heritage and its inclusion in heritage (patrimonialization) are indeed the result of an intellectual, mental and social operation that involves sorting, choices and therefore omissions: what to preserve? According to what criteria? […] The heritage of a place is indeed an operation of ‘social magic’, which is often based as much on legend as on strict historical science. Most often presented as a work to preserve a ‘given’ past, it has a strong social and even political component, often implicit.” [LAZ 03, pp. 692–693, author’s translation]. To what extent is the restaurant a heritage? What are the practicable intersections between restaurants and intangible cultural heritage? Who makes the restaurant a form of heritage? Is it possible to recognize bouillons as heritage?

12 The Restaurant: From Monument to Heritage

12.1. The restaurant as a historical monument Some restaurants are designated as monuments. Monuments ensure memory: “In French, the original meaning of the term is that of the Latin monumentum, itself derived from monere (to inform, to remind), which challenges memory.” [CHO 96, p. 14, author’s translation] According to the French Ministry of Culture: “A historic monument is a building or movable object receiving a special legal status intended to protect it, because of its historical, artistic, architectural, but also technical or scientific interest. The status of ‘historic monument’ is a recognition by the Nation of a property’s heritage value. This protection implies a shared responsibility between the owners and the national community for its conservation and transmission to future generations.”1 As a historical monument, the restaurant is protected: “Protection under historic monuments is not a label, but a public utility based on a property’s heritage interest, which is assessed by examining a set of historical, artistic, scientific and technical criteria.

1 Ministère de la culture et de la Communication website https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Sitesthematiques/Monuments-historiques-Sites-patrimoniaux-remarquables/Presentation/Lesmonuments-historiques, accessed February 17, 2019.

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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The notions of rarity, exemplarity, authenticity and integrity of the properties are taken into account.”2 The French Ministry of Culture website states that the legislation distinguishes between listed and classified buildings: listed historic monuments (in whole or in part) are “buildings which, without justifying an immediate request for classification as historic monuments, have a historical or artistic interest sufficient to make their preservation desirable”, and classified historic monuments (in whole or in part) are “buildings whose conservation is in the public interest from the historical or artistic point of view”. In the case of restaurants, the notions of rarity and exemplarity correspond to the historical and artistic qualities of the decor of rooms (or parts of rooms), facades, glass roofs, etc., restaurants that allow their protection as Historical Monuments by inscription or classification. It is a monumental memory [LAZ 12]. Registered or classified restaurants embody and inspire memory. The monumentalization process corresponds to a designation “by scientists” [LAZ 12, p. 29]. Monumentalized restaurants are inventoried in the Mérimée database, created in 1978 by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication (Architecture and Heritage Department). About 50 restaurants are listed or classified as Historical Monuments. They are mainly located in the city, mainly in Paris. In the birthplace of the Palais-Royal, the entrance, the two ground-floor rooms with their decor and painted ceiling and the two painted panels mounted in the mezzanine room of the restaurant Le Grand Véfour are protected as Historical Monuments by registration by decree of December 9, 1983. Within the Gare de Lyon, the restaurant Le Train Bleu (golden lounge or small lounge, large room or the “grande salle”, Tunisian and Algerian lounges and passages with their decor) is protected as a Historical Monument by decree dated September 28, 1972. The Gare de Lyon Buffet (renamed Le Train Bleu in 1963) was opened in 1900 by the Compagnie du chemin de fer Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée, a French railway company. Gare de Lyon is part of the urban development program linked to the Universal Exhibition (Grand Palais, Petit Palais, Alexandre III bridge). The work is being carried out by the architect Marius Toudoire. The Belle Époque style decoration consists of paintings, sculptures and gilding (see Figure 12.1).

2 Ibid.

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Figure 12.1. The main dining room at the restaurant Le Train Bleu (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

The 41 paintings evoke the cities served by the railway line and the events of the opening year. In the main room (salle Réjane), the allegorical ceiling of Paris was painted by François Flameng, the allegorical ceiling of Lyon by Guillaume Dubufe and finally the allegorical ceiling of Marseille by the Nîmes-native artist Gaston Casimir Saint-Pierre. Albert Maignan created the view of the théâtre d’Orange (see Figure 12.2), a painted canvas on which appear the portraits of PLM President Stephane-Adolphe Dervillé, Director General Gustave Noblemaire, actresses Sarah Bernhardt and Gabrielle Réjane, singer Jean Bartet and writer Edmond Rostand, who used to frequent the restaurant. The paintings in the Golden Room are painted by Jean-Baptiste Olive from Marseille (Saint-Honorat and Marseille, le Vieux Port). The ceiling of the Golden Room depicts a painting by Henri Gervex: Nice, la bataille des Fleurs. Thus: “All these paintings continue to provide, as the creators of this setting wished, an exact and luminous evocation of the multiple landscapes of the network. They plunge the visitor into an optimistic and happy atmosphere, which some may find a little too exuberant, but to the charm of which all passers-by, tourists or Parisians, fall in love, before returning to the streets.”3

3 Presentation document of the restaurant Le Train Bleu.

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Figure 12.2. “Orange painting” in the restaurant Le Train Bleu (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

René Billotte’s painting above the entrance staircase depicts the Alexander III Bridge and the palaces of the 1900 Exhibition. Architect Jean-Marie Duthilleul sums up the geography lesson represented by these mounted canvases as follows: “To show these images is to make people dream of another place.” Le Train Bleu was like a Mediterranean port in Paris, and the trains on the loading docks like ships leaving for dream stations”4. The scenes of several films were shot in the restaurant (Nikita by Luc Besson in 1990, Place Vendôme by Nicole Garcia in 1998, Anthony Zimmer by Jérôme Salle in 2005, etc.). In addition, Le Train Bleu still offers the Foyot veal chop on its menu today (see Figure 12.3). This is a speciality of Nicolas Foyot, Louis-Philippe’s chef, who opened a restaurant after the fall of the French king in 1848, in front of the Senate, at the corner of the streets of Vaugirard and Tournon. The rib steak is covered with a crust of breadcrumbs and grated parmesan cheese, and cooked on a bed of shallots. Similarly, the continued serving of cuts of meat and flambé methods (see Figure 12.4) in the room ensures the continuation of a staging and the perpetuation of these arts of service.

4 www.le-train-bleu.com, accessed February 17, 2019.

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Figure 12.3. Foyot veal chop, sour jus, girolle mushrooms, cabbage and chestnuts; Michel Rostang’s version at Le Train Bleu restaurant (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Figure 12.4. A Norwegian omelette being flambéed (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

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On rue Montorgueil, two restaurants are protected as Historical Monuments: Au Rocher de Cancale (see Figure 12.5) and L’Escargot Montorgueil (see Figure 12.6).

Figure 12.5. External view of the restaurant Au Rocher de Cancale, rue Montorgueil (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Figure 12.6. External view of the restaurant L’Escargot Montorgueil, rue Montorgueil (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

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The two street frontages and the corresponding roof slopes, the front with its corner sign and the apartment located on the first floor of the restaurant Au Rocher de Cancale, are protected by classification by decree of March 3, 1997. The informational content of the Merimée database indicates: “The first establishment of this name was opened at the beginning of the 19th Century and closed in 1846. The current restaurant opened immediately after: the setting of this period inside a 17th Century building. A wood and plaster facade, painted lounge panels attributed to Gavarni. Considered as one of the oldest restaurants in Paris with the Grand Véfour and Ledoyen.”5 The “first” restaurant opened at 59, rue Montorgueil. Matthieu Aussudre explains: “Established at the corner of rue Montorgueil and rue Mandar, a few cable lengths from the fish market and in the same street as the oyster market, Balaine thus had privileged access to supply its restaurant […]. Rue Montorgueil was also the place where oysters were unloaded from cars, considered fresher and more delicate than those coming from boats (less than five days’ travel compared to two weeks or more). They came mostly from Cancale, Dieppe and more difficultly from Marennes and Ostend.” [AUS 19, author’s translation] As its name suggests, Au Rocher de Cancale specializes in the sale of oysters from Cancale. The name is also a landscape allusion to the emblematic rock of the oyster-farming area. Matthieu Aussudre underlines: “Beyond the shells and the name of the restaurant, Balaine is pushing its specialization in the maritime sector by giving fish a large place on the menu. In Honoré Blanc’s ‘Le Guide des dînurs’, Rocher de Cancale has nearly 30% of its salted dishes made from fish, shellfish and crustaceans.” [AUS 19, author’s translation] The Langlais chef is said to have created Norman sole (or Dieppe sole) in 1837. In 1846, the restaurant was closed. Two “Histoire de Paris” signs (see Figures 12.7 and 12.8) commemorate and mark the monumentalization of the restaurant.

5 https://monumentum.fr/ancien-restaurant-rocher-cancale-pa00125451.html, consulted on February 17, 2019.

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Figure 12.7. “Histoire de Paris” sign concerning Le Rocher de Cancale (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

The Restaurant: From Monument to Heritage

Figure 12.8. “Histoire de Paris” sign concerning Le second Rocher de Cancale (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

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According to Matthieu Aussudre, Au Rocher de Cancale was the first fish restaurant: “A restaurant with a higher proportion of fish and seafood dishes than its competitors, built as a market argument, and finally recognized as such by critics. According to this definition, Rocher de Cancale is the first of its kind.” [AUS 19, author’s translation] Today, the “second” restaurant, at 78 rue Montorgueil is still attractive. Similarly, the rooms on the first floor, the front and its decorations of L’Escargot Montorgueil are protected by inscription by order of June 12, 1998. The informational content of the Mérimée database presents: “The restaurant L’Escargot opened its doors in 1875 with the tenants Mignard and Bourreau, wine merchants. Oysters appeared on the menu 15 years later. From 1900 onwards, Théodore Lecomte, a new tenant, undertook many works, which are reflected in most of the decoration visible today. André Terrail bought the restaurant in 1919 and operated it with the chef Lespinasse. He had a new entrance fitted out, which he decorated with a ceiling painted by G. Clairin for the Sarah Bernhardt dining room and recovered in the auction room. More recently, his daughter undertook an expansion of the rooms towards rue Étienne-Marcel, which would soon disappear. Consisting of a panelled entrance with a rostrum, a room separated in two by a half wall with an interior staircase leading upstairs, the restaurant offers an early 20th century décor (acid-engraved glass, painted metal spiral staircase, awning) and a remnant of decoration that was executed at the opening in 1875 (coffer ceiling, wooden panels depicting the diamond-shaped frontage, snail sculptures in the round). The entire decor has been altered in recent years.”6 The restaurant specializes in snails. It was frequented by Sarah Bernhardt, Marcel Proust, Sacha Guitry, Georges Feydeau, Salvador Dalí and, more recently, Yves Saint-Laurent. The restaurant’s website highlights: “More than a signature, a legend. L’escargot Montorgueil works to the delight of food lovers in the heart of the Les Halles district. The restaurant is endowed with the vitality of a young man. Immortalized by a Clairin canvas, the street stretches from Saint-Eustache church to the Sentier, magnetizing the Parisian, fascinating the tourist in search 6 https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/merimee/PA75010006, accessed February 17, 2019.

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of emotions. Today, the beautiful institution is the guarantor of the eponymous influence of the district.”7 It is now possible to taste snails in parsley with garlic butter according to the “1832 cult recipe”, truffled butter, duck foie gras, three flavors (garlic, curry, roquefort) or golden snails “strong mussels” (“burgundy shells, well-dosed parsley”), as well as meat and some fish. With these two monuments, and thanks to the permanence of its density, the diversity of restaurants and shops, and its attendance, rue Montorgueil may constitute, as a whole, a “monument”. Another “Histoire de Paris” sign recalls the memory of the gourmet street (see Figure 12.9). The Stohrer patisserie also retains its original decor. In Mémoires du restaurant, François-Régis Gaudry evokes the glory of the Philippe restaurant: “Montorgueil Street could be proud of Philippe, which Jean-Paul Aron considers to be ‘the greatest restaurant of the Second Empire’. From 1864 onwards, it was run by Pascal, former chef at the Jockey Club (renowned above all for his matelote and Norman sole) and welcomed the twelve members of the Club des grands estomacs every Saturday. In other words, fine mouths that feast on Crécy soup, turbot sauce with capers, turtle soup (!), Indian kari with six chickens, deer chops with chilli, artichokes with Java pepper, puddings with rum, all drizzled with a few prestigious wines such as Château-Yquem from 1847 and Clos-Vougeot from 1846.” [GAU 06, p. 55, author’s translation] Some restaurants are not protected as Historical Monuments, but are most often referred to by critics and journalists as “institutions”, “temples” or “myths”. A majestic building located on Quai de la Tournelle, which intersects the Seine and Notre-Dame-de-Paris Cathedral, La Tour d’Argent (The Silver Tower) reveals exceptional historical depth and geographical integration. Thus begins its presentation in the press kit: “Each Tower has its own legend, as we know, and ours is not lacking in it. For almost a century now, through the vicissitudes of history, it has maintained a tradition and an honor, almost a form of worship”8. On the banks of the Seine, it was in 1582 an establishment “between a wine merchant and a hotel”9. Its name would be linked to a tower of Philippe Auguste’s enclosure, built with a stone rich in mica flakes 7 escargotmontorgueil.com, consulted on August 14, 2018. 8 Press release communicated by the restaurant. 9 Interview with André Terrail, February 20, 2019.

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that shone with silvery reflections. Henri IV, who came to taste the African hen or the wood eel or even large slices of heron pâté, used the fork for the first time in France. After a meal organized by the Duke of Richelieu (during which beef was prepared in 30 ways) coffee cups appeared. At the beginning of the 19th Century, the restaurant was rebuilt by Lecoq, Napoleon’s personal chef. Former maître d’ of the restaurant La Maison Dorée, Frédéric Delair bought the restaurant in 1888. He wrote the scenario for the service of the blood duck cut in the dining room and numbered from 1890 onwards (see Figure 12.10). The sauce is prepared in front of the customers from the juice of the bird extracted using a duck press.

Figure 12.9. “Histoire de Paris” sign concerning rue Montorgueil (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

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Figure 12.10. Duck menu no. 952,851 (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

COMMENT ON FIGURE 12.10.– The vignette shows Frédéric Delair (in the center, serviette under his right arm) preparing a duck: the thighs are separated (small bowl on the left), then roasted for a second serving, the fillets are cut and kept warm on a stove (immediately to the right of the duck) while the bones of the carcass are placed in a duck press (far right) to extract blood and juices that will be mixed with duck bouillon and liver. The sauce is then seasoned with lemon juice, cognac and madeira and placed in a gravy boat (in front of the stove and duck press). The dish is served with pommes souflées, a variety of French fried potato. The restaurant was bought by André Terrail in 1911. He introduced the recipes of the chef Adolphe Dugléré and the bottles from the cellar of the Café Anglais: “He [André Terrail] – by marrying the daughter of Claudius Burdel, then owner of the Café Anglais – brought together the gastronomic heritage of Frédéric [Delair] and that of the no less illustrious Adolphe Dugléré, chef of the Café Anglais. [It was] nothing less than the most popular of Parisian establishments during the Second Empire.”10

10 Press kit.

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La Tour d’Argent was one of the first restaurants to be awarded three Michelin stars in 1933. In 1936, André Terrail developed the building by adding two floors and established the restaurant on the sixth floor, with a unique view of the Seine and Notre-Dame-de-Paris cathedral: “It was first an open terrace, which was then closed with tarpaulins, then by huge windows. The Tower gradually took over the structure it had maintained: the second room was opened, the kitchens were transported to the sixth floor and an elevator was installed a little wider than the old one.”11 In 1947, André Terrail handed over the restaurant to his son Claude, who came mark La Tour d’Argent with his presence and style: “A distinguished giant, a man of the world and polo player, a great seducer, a blue carnation on the lapel, a deep voice and a charm to be cherished.” [BEA 09, author’s translation] Since 2006, his son André Terrail has been updating the restaurant: “La Tour d’Argent, which has been in purgatory for a long time, is back in the spotlight. And we can applaud the show again. Because dinner at La Tour is about choosing a Grand Siècle evening. André, the son of dear Claude Terrail, dusted off the place and gave it back the lustre of great evenings. Here, we are served: the butlers are not dish carriers, they are the actors of a successful play, where the arrival of each composition is a show. The ‘gueridon’ service, facing the illuminated Notre-Dame and the Seine, has regained its nobility. We carve, water, burn, complete the work of the kitchen. The Tower is a real theater. What a delight! Recently, a star of the kitchens has taken the lead role: Philippe Labbé. This time, André Terrail made the right choice. Magic once again haunts this exceptional and world-famous place. Because La Tour is a monument: the arrival at Quai de la Tournelle, the lounge that leads to the bar, the famous elevator where Ava Gardner, Charlie Chaplin, the presidents of the whole world climbed, everything is unique. Up there, on the 6th floor, André Terrail is waiting for his guests. Just like Claude, his father, did. The protocol has not changed. And we ask for more. Old France with a modern taste, it’s heartwarming.” [BEA 16, author’s translation]

11 Press kit.

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Indeed, since May 2016, Philippe Labbé has been in charge of translating classic dishes and creating new ones: “The emotion must be as intense in my dishes as when watching Paris and Notre-Dame from the restaurant”12. André Terrail underlines: “Our challenge is to reinterpret La Tour d’Argent to be current, while respecting the regular clientele. We propose reinterpretations of quenelle and duck. We use artists such as Jean Jullien and Léa Maupetit. There is a rejuvenation of the clientele via social media. We seek to make ourselves accessible and friendly. This young clientele is touched by the story we are telling.”13 La Tour d’Argent is one of the most famous restaurants in France and around the world. It is a restaurant that is continuously desired and frequented: “‘Someday I’ll eat at the La Tour d’Argent!’ How many young social climbers have ‘climbed’ to Paris from their native province to ‘succeed’ did they say these words as they dragged their rags along the banks of the Seine? Like the Sorbonne and the Louvre, La Tour d’Argent is a symbol of Paris, and dining there from the rooftops gives a feeling of omnipotence… La Tour d’Argent therefore remains more current and alive than ever. On May 9 and 10, a historic sale will take place at Artcurial, the famous auction house on the Champs-Élysées, under the direction of the young auctioneer Stéphane Aubert: 10,000 items belonging to the Tour d’Argent and the Terrail family will be put up for auction. For weeks now, collectors all over the world have been on their toes. In Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai, Moscow, London and New York, online purchase orders will be placed by phone, live […]. The distribution of all these wonders hurts the heart, but it is the symbol of a turning point and an entry into the 21st Century.” [TRE 16, author’s translation] André Terrail thus invites us to a renewed experience: “Boosted by a successful auction, a new graphic identity and the arrival of Michelin star chef Philippe Labbé, the Tour d’Argent wants to revive its vocation: to make the whole world salivate […]. ‘There’s enough of the myth of the tired institution! La Tour d’Argent continues to inspire dreams all over the world. She is certainly

12 Press kit. 13 Interview with André Terrail, February 20, 2019.

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concerned about her heritage, but she is constantly modernizing herself,’ says Virginie Guyonnet, the group’s head of communication. And to bring it about, by dragging us between the tables of this impressive promontory plunging into the Seine, the remedies of a cure of youth. The yellow urine-colored tablecloths were exchanged for bright white linen. The new menus covered in duck blue leather are now illustrated by Jean Jullien, an artist with half a million followers on Instagram. And while the restaurant has disposed of some of its antiques, it is to buy silverware and glassware with its new logo.” [GAU 16, author’s translation] André Terrail points out: “What has changed the least is the human relations in the restaurant”14. He insists on the tradition of the numbered duck: “The ducks have come from Maison Burgaud since 1947. It is a mark of loyalty over time. For a long time, La Tour d’Argent was the only client. The Burgaud ducks are the ducks of the Tour d’Argent. These are eight-week-old ducklings that are not bled.”15 The numbered duck is still the subject of press articles today16. Always present on the restaurant’s menu, it is available in three versions. Two “Heritage” preparations Frederic Delair Duckling 1st course: roasted breast with blood sauce, red & polar berry chutney from the Tarja Terrail garden 2nd course: braised leg with candied sweet turnips, pomegranate juice, shredded duck foie gras Mazarine duckling with orange sauce 1st course: roasted breast in sour cream with spices, orange parsley chips, endives braised with David Duband’s Chambolle-Musigny and saffron, Medjool dates, juniper & orange purée 2nd course: braised leg fat with Gold Ball turnips, Timut pepper, bitter orange jam and mustard leaves 14 Interview with André Terrail, February 20, 2019. 15 Ibid. 16 See in particular: Stéphane Davet, “Un million de canetons Tour d’Argent”, Le Monde, December 27, 2012 [DAV 12], and Stéphane Davet, “À la Tour d’Argent, tout est bon dans le caneton!”, Le Monde, December 27, 2018 [DAV 18].

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There is also the following formula. About Liliane Burgaud’s duckling Foredish: Candied tongue with pea juice & fresh anchovy oil, peas with horseradish cream 1st course: Filet mignon, thinly sliced with wild herbs, spicy wasabi mustard 2nd course: Duck egg, covered with asparagus, hop spray, grass shoots, Frédéric Poupard’s white asparagus tips, musk chervil, fragrant asparagus butter 3rd course: Heart & marrow, grilled with lovage salt, daikon salad & tender turnip leaves, fine crostini 4th course: Patterned fillet & wild abalone, spring garlic cream, sea herbs, umami bouillon 5th course: Duck leg, candied & crumbled with yarrow & blueberry petal from pasture, carcase oil with a spicy jus Dessert Box 12.1. Variations on the numbered duck at La Tour d’Argent restaurant

Similarly, it is possible to find in the “Heritage”: – a quenelle paying tribute to a grandfather, wild pike from the gravel pits of Vétheuil, gratin with truffle and spinach flower sauce17; – foie gras from the Three Emperors, Strasbourg goose served with a spoon, delicate jelly, warm brioche. This last dish reminds us that La Tour d’Argent transmits the memory of the Café Anglais (see Figure 12.11).

17 See Marie-Christine Morosi and Thibaut Danancher, “Un chef, un produit. Le pichet, ce ‘mythe confoutant’”, Le Point, March 11, 2017: “With the blood duck, the quenelle is La Tour d’Argent’s other signature dish. I make it with wild pike received alive after being caught in the old gravel pits of Vétheuil in the Val-d’Oise. It is so pleasant to buy local with this treasure from the Île-de-France region. Each season, I make this essential part of the menu evolve by presenting it in a cylindrical or rectangular shape. For this winter, I named my creation based on egg white and cream, but without breadcrumbs: ‘Vision of a quenelle gratinée of the 21st century, homage to the grandfather, marbled with black truffles, red crayfish, purple oxalys’. What a joy to revive this confusing myth of French cuisine, reminiscent of the history of Lyon’s mothers”. See also DOMA, “Les classiques français raconontent leur histoire”, part two: “La quenelle André Terrail”, July 9, 2018, website www.domapress.com, accessed February 20, 2019.

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Figure 12.11. Front of the Café Anglais (source: André Terrail – La Tour d’Argent)

Lepetit opened a café in 1789 on Boulevard du Petit-Coblentz (which became Boulevard du Gand and then Boulevard des Italiens). In 1795, he sold it to Mésenge who transformed it into a restaurant under the name of Café Anglais. Indeed, after the Treaty of Amiens was signed in 1802, the new restaurant attracted English customers who used to frequent London’s taverns. The location of the restaurant was ideal: “We no longer go to the Boulevard, we ‘do the Boulevards’”18. Wine tastings – organized by Buret, a wine broker – combined with the food served in the establishment, were the foundation of his reputation. Café Anglais was taken over by

18 Documentation provided by André Terrail.

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Paul Chevreuil: “The 22 lounges overflow, we fight to hold a table, even in a dark corner or under a staircase. The insiders join the cellar, as well as the linen closet”19. Among the rooms, the Grand Seize (see Figure 12.12) is the most well-known and coveted: “Over the years, it was the ‘Grand Seize’ salon that won all the votes because, at the corner of Boulevard des Italiens and Rue Marivaux, it was the best placed to dive into all of Paris with lions and dandies, beautiful theater and gallantry.”20

Figure 12.12. View of the Grand Seize (source: André Terrail – La Tour d’Argent)

Adolphe Dugléré left the restaurant Les Trois Frères Provençaux to join the Café Anglais. On June 7, 1867, the famous “Three Emperors’ Dinner” was held in the Grand Seize, which brought together Kaiser William I of Hohenzollern, King of Prussia and Emperor in 1871, Tsar Alexander II, Tsar of all Russia, with his son the Tsarevitch, future Alexander III and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who came to visit the World Fair.

19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.

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Hors-d’ouevre Soups Impératrice et Fontanges Soufflés à la Reine Relevés21 Venetian style sole fillets Turbot cutlets with a cheese topping Saddle of purée Breton lamb Entrées Portuguese style chicken Hot quail pâté Parisian style lobsters Wine sorbets Roasts Rouen style ducklings Ortolans canapés Entremets22 Spanish style eggplants Asparagus Princesse casserole dish Ice pastry Dessert Chosen by the sommelier Claudius Burdel, the dishes were sprinkled with: Madeira wine from India 1810 Sherry from India 1821 Château d’Yquem wine 1847 21 A term that has now fallen out of favor, but had a similar meaning to “entrée”. 22 Historically, a term that referred to small dishes served between courses but in modern times more commonly refers to a type of dessert.

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Champagne Roederer frappé Chambertin 1846 Château Margaux 1847 Château Latour 1847 Château Lafite 1848 Box 12.2. The “Three Emperors’ dinner at Café Anglais

Indeed, “the menu was not everything. Claudius Burdel had chosen the wines so well that following this dinner, he was appointed official wine buyer of the three major European courts. The list was no less impressive than the dishes”23. At the end of the dinner, Tsar Alexander II was surprised not to have tasted foie gras. The following fall, the restaurateur had some delivered to him: the foie gras of the Three Emperors (composed of whole goose liver marinated in Port wine and spices, 5% truffled, and cooked for 2 hours at 80°C). Adolphe Dugléré’s reputation was also due to the fact that he used to give certain dishes the name of the diner who inspired him: pommes Anna (apples) for the courtesan Anna Deslions, potage Germiny (soup) for Count Germiny, Governor of the Banque de France, culotte de bœuf Salomon (beef rump) (for Salomon de Rothschild, fattened chicken dedicated to the Duke of Albufera, for example. The Dugléré-style brill was poached in a tomato fish stock with parsley, onion and shallot bound with butter. The Dugléré rounds of beef were served on an Anna apple with the head of a cep mushroom in tomato fondue, served with a sauce based on veal stock and white wine in butter. Claudius Burdel succeeded Delhomme: “Courteous but firm, more reserved than Delhomme, with a bushy eyebrow, he refined everything. He selected the wines, dishes and … the guests. His eye was everywhere; his team in the dining room or in the kitchen were as perfectly trained and experienced as an elite commando. He knew everything about his hosts whom he welcomed in person, nuancing the cut and color of his frock coat to the tastes he knew, if not their moods. Enhancing Dugléré’s talents, who gave free rein to his imagination, the master of the Café Anglais left no one in charge of the cellar. He quickly established himself as one of the greatest wine connoisseurs in Europe.”24

23 Ibid. 24 Ibid.

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Café Anglais was demolished in 1913. After moving to Café Anglais in 1900, André Terrail bought La Tour d’Argent in 1911 and married Augusta Burdel, Claudius Burdel’s daughter, on 29 June 1914 at Pré Catelan. He saved the cellar and decorative elements of the Café Anglais. For André Terrail, the desire to preserve and transmit this memory was linked “to the Parisian history of the Café Anglais, to a period in history when Paris was the center of Europe. It was the Paris of celebration, a festive and crazy time that I would like to bring back to La Tour d’Argent.”25 Lola Gonzalez-Quijano reminds us: “During the Second Empire, the regular suppers of the Grand Seize, a vast private practice of the Café Anglais had the honor of panoramic literature and the Parisian press: the Prince of Orange, the Duke of Gramont-Caderousse, Victor Masséna, Prince Auguste d’Arenberg, Basile Nariskine and Galitizine, Daniel Wilson, Aurélien Scholl, Alexandre Duval, Arsène Houssaye, Anna Deslions, Cora Pearl, Esther Guimond, Adèle Courtois, Blanche d’Antigny or Giulia Barucci, among others. This elitist and socialite attendance played a definite role in the success of the great Parisian restaurants and more generally in French gastronomy. At the end of the 19th Century, the guide ‘Paris-Parisien’, designed for bourgeois tourists concerned with social customs and codes, described the Café Anglais as follows: ‘Old reputation; aristocratic clientele: at lunch, many financiers. – Second Empire cuisine. – A famous large room (No. 16) in which all the rulers of Europe dined or had supper.” [GON 13, author’s translation] La Tour d’Argent kept the table, chandelier and pieces of woodwork from the Grand Seize, as well as pieces of tableware from Café Anglais. Today, André Terrail wishes to preserve “the prestige and timelessness of the Tour d’Argent” by activating the purpose: “To be ambassadors of Parisian elegance, representatives of emotion between our customers and our craftsmen, the heirs of a gastronomic heritage and a French art of entertaining”26. In 2007, for the film Ratatouille from the American studios Pixar, director Brad Bird was inspired by the Tour d’Argent. Indeed, there are similarities between Chez Gusteau in the film and the restaurant on the Quai de la Tournelle.

25 Ibid. 26 Ibid.

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In connection with the monumental memory, these restaurants are material traces, signals. They promote artistic and architectural styles. They are historical testimonies. According to Olivier Lazzarotti, we have gone from a monumental memory to a heritage memory [LAZ 12]. For the geographer, heritage is “memory recognized by others” [LAZ 12, p. 81, author’s translation]. This is a recognition that requires attendance, especially tourism [LAZ 12]. 12.2. The restaurant as a showcase for intangible cultural heritage At its 32nd session, at the end of 2003, UNESCO created the new category of intangible cultural heritage: “The ‘intangible cultural heritage’ means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge – as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.”27 Through their attendance, some restaurants are recognized, especially by tourists, as showcases of the gourmet intangible cultural heritage. 12.2.1. The repertoire restaurant In Illhausern, L’Auberge de l’Ill makes visible the dishes designed by Paul Haeberlin that constitute both the family and French culinary repertoire: “Let’s face it, the Auberge of the 1960s and ‘90s owes all its glory to Paul Haeberlin, he is the ‘deus machina’, the genius of the place. Here is a huge chef, of an angelic sweetness, who had the sacred fire thanks to an extraordinary apprenticeship with Edouard Weber, who lived nearby in Ribeauvillé. He was a former chef at the court of the tsars and at the

27 Article 2 of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, UNESCO website.

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royal court of Greece: a high-level apprenticeship extended at the Perigord rotisserie at Pocardi in Paris […]. A range of famous dishes enhanced the reputation of the Auberge: Paul Haeberlin brought the repertoire from traditional cuisine to a world-class score, in Maxim’s, Tour d’Argent and Lasserre style.” [RAB 13, author’s translation] These dishes are still present today on the restaurant’s menu: the soufflé salmon “Auberge de l’Ill” (see Figure 12.13), the frog mouseeline “Paul Haeberlin” (see Figure 12.14) and the Haeberlin fish (see Figure 12.15).

Figure 12.13. Auberge de l’Ill Salmon soufflé (source: Olivier Etcheverria); A piece of salmon covered with a pike mousse. The pinkness of the salmon occurs thanks to the mousse that covers it28

These are dishes that are emblematic of classic cuisine. Marc Haeberlin points out: “twenty percent of our customers order these signature plates”29. According to the chef: “These dishes are legendary and patrimonial. They are the DNA of the Auberge de l’Ill. But they have also left their mark on French gastronomy. When we talk about the legendary dishes of French cuisine, we are talking about Bocuse’s VGE soup, Troisgros sorrel salmon and my father’s frog mousseline! A form of heritage and an eternal source of inspiration.”30

28 Exchange with Marc Haeberlin, April 6, 2019. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid.

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Figure 12.14. “Paul Haeberlin” frog moussseline (source: Olivier Etcheverria). Preparation composed of a pike-perch mousseline coating a fricassee of frog legs served with a creamy Riesling sauce, made with the bones of the frogs

Figure 12.15. Haeberlin peach (source: Olivier Etcheverria); whole peach poached with vanilla, topped with a Champagne sabayon and accompanied by a pistachio ice quenelle

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These dishes are heritage dishes insofar as they are continuously recognized, requested and tasted by diners: “Some customers do not even open the menu and have been choosing them for years. That’s why these dishes are the hardest to make. You have to remain faithful to the memories and not disappoint”31. Marc Haeberlin points out: “It even seems that frog mousseline helped my father and uncle to obtain their third Michelin star in 1967”32! Similarly, at the restaurant L’Ambroisie, place des Vosges – the most easterly Michelin 3-star restaurant in Paris – some dishes continuously offered à la carte are part of the classic culinary repertoire. The tag line of Claire Cosson’s article “Un ‘amour’ de cuisinier” (“A ‘love’ of the chef” underlines: “Cuisine gave him a ‘mother’, Eugénie Brazier, and a ‘father’, Claude Peyrot. A family full of truth whose ‘son’ transcends heritage.” [COS 00, author’s translation] Indeed, Bernard Pacaud completed part of his professional apprenticeship with Mère Brazier, as she was known, at the Col de la Luère: “Mother taught me what cooking was like, but far beyond the basic techniques. She passed on to me this desire to feed others that only women have in their guts, in the depths of their being…” [COS 00, author’s translation]. He continued his professional apprenticeship at Le Vivarois restaurant with Claude Peyrot: “Thanks to his experience, his rigor and his love of customers, he taught me the job of a chef.” [COS 00, author’s translation] Bernard Pacaud’s dishes reflect both a personal and French culinary style: “My cuisine is both classic and modern. Classic because it is based on traditional techniques, modern because it is stripped back”33. So, next to the Feuillantine of langoustines with sesame seeds, curry sauce and Escalopines with artichoke slices, reduced nage with golden caviar, fine shortbread pie with bitter cocoa, Bourbon vanilla ice cream (see Figure 12.16) is marked by an exemplary recognition. Indeed, this “cultissimo”, “legendary”, “emblematic” pastry preparation, which consists of a chocolate ganache sabayon baked in the oven on a short crust pastry base, is at the same time unforgettable, unavoidable and frequently reproduced.

31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Les 3 étoiles du Guide Michelin. Le tour du Monde des tables d’exception, Éditions Michelin, 2009, p. 23.

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Figure 12.16. Fine shortbread tart with bitter cocoa, Bourbon vanilla ice cream at L’Ambroisie restaurant (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

12.2.2. The haven restaurant Eugénie Brazier or Mère Brazier (1895–1977) is a representative figure of Lyon’s cuisine and gastronomy. Therefore, the restaurant on rue Royale is a haven of signs of a culinary trend and its figures. In 2008, chef Mathieu Viannay bought the restaurant: “A Lyon house whose name still resonates and which is an integral part of the history of local gastronomy. The famous Mère Brazier is of course the famous Eugénie. Undoubtedly the most famous of the ‘Lyon mothers’, [she is] the first woman to obtain 3 stars in a red guide and a woman of character who trained another great gentleman of Lyon cuisine, Paul Bocuse […]. “First of all, there was the successful renovation of the premises, which have managed to preserve some traces of their glorious past, such as these earthenware pieces, a mixture of modernity and tradition. Then, there was another success, that of the ‘Brazier spirit’ which still seems to live in the kitchen when a modern chef. With his assistant Olivier Reverdy he recomposes memories and signature dishes made from the best products, like this unmissable truffled fat chicken brought up to

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date […]. A great name that continues to be part of the city’s gourmet heritage.”34 Eugénie Brazier was born on June 12, 1895, in La Tranclière in the Ain department, about 10 kilometers from Bourg-en-Bresse. Trained by Mère Fillioux, at the age of 26, she moved to 12 rue Royale in Lyon on April 19, 1921. She took over an estaminet that was a draftsman’s workshop: “Rue Royale was not chosen by chance. In the Croix-Paquet district, rue Royale was the street of the silk manufacturers. It was first the rue des soieries and then the textile design workshops. It was a very hardworking street. In this street which was linked to the silk industry, there were many bosses. It was a restaurant where we were going to do business.”35 Indeed, Eugénie Brazier immediately proposed a top-of-the-range culinary offer with luxurious products: “She targeted the wealthy and even the middle-class clientele. It was a socially wise choice”36. On the peninsula, the restaurant was located in: “The downtown district, near City Hall, the Célestins theater, the Chamber of Commerce and the banks. Behind Place Bellecour, there is the large bourgeois family district. Around Place Bellecour, there were many doctors and leading medical professors.”37 The restaurant’s success can therefore be linked to the gourmet practices of the bourgeois and industrial worlds. Those of the political world too. Indeed, the attendance of Édouard Herriot, Mayor of Lyon, directly contributed to the reputation of the restaurant, which was located “on the path of Édouard Herriot, between the town hall on Place des Terreaux and his home on Cours d’Herbouville. It was Edouard Herriot’s canteen”38. He would also say: “She does more for the city’s reputation than I do”39. Rue Royale was a very lively street with “many bars and

34 Petit Futé guide 2019. 35 Interview with Catherine Simon, February 26, 2019. Catherine Simon is the author of Mangées. Une histoire des mères lyonnaises [SIM 18]. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 halles-de-lyon-paulbocuse.com, accessed February 26, 2019.

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traffic jams where the bosses would come to slum it”40. She was the first woman to obtain 3 Michelin stars in 1933, with Marie Bourgeois in Priay, and even to obtain 3 stars twice with her second restaurant located at Col de la Luère, in Pollionnay. Its emblematic dishes were artichoke stock with foie gras, quenelle au gratin, truffled poultry, chicken liver and rabbit cake, galette bressane, chabraninof, etc. Mère Brazier is one of Lyon’s most famous mothers, thanks in particular to the restaurant bearing her name, which is still open and frequented. In her article “Les ‘mères lyonnaises’, pionnières de la gastronomie française”, Anne-Laure Mignon recalls the history of the emergence of this culinary trend: “These chefs of modest origin made a success during the inter-war years after having served large bourgeois families. ‘At the time, many men died in battle, including many chefs,’ says Michèle Barrière, a gastronomy historian. Not to mention the chaotic economic conditions of this period, marked by the 1929 [stock market] crash – the biggest stock market crisis of the 20th Century, which forced many families to separate from their domestic staff. These women, the historian continues, gradually set up their own businesses and opened their own ‘bouchons’, inns where the cuisine was initially generous and popular before becoming more refined as it became more successful.” [MIG 17] The restaurant’s website highlights: “After becoming enchanted by such a unique eatery, he [Mathieu Viannay] was eager to retain the original décor, which is steeped in the history of the place. At the same time, thanks to the decorators Alain and Dominique Vavro, he undertook major development work. Rather than seek to alter the soul of the establishment, he decided to return to the roots. So the decor was preserved, hence the 1930s faiences are from that era, along with the finish flooring and bay windows. New features have been added to the upstairs rooms and lounges, such as velvet curtains and Knoll tables. Visual souvenirs of the legendary founding cook have been added in the form of black and white prints.” Mathieu Viannay reinterprets certain dishes such as artichoke and foie gras No. 12; crispy pike bread, lobster and small vegetables, shell jus and Bresse chicken, mushrooms under the skin, asparagus and morels in vin jaune.

40 Interview with Catherine Simon, February 26, 2019.

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12.2.3. The observatory restaurant In Saint-Martin-de-Belleville, the 3-star Michelin restaurant La Bouitte is a Savoyard gustatory observatory, especially for milk (and more generally dairy products). Indeed, it is an expressive form of internal milk relations, of a local taste preference for milk. Thus, the restaurant promotes a Savoyard “heritage” cuisine: “René and Maxime Meilleur are nourished by family memories shared in Saint-Martin-de-Belleville. They cultivate this living heritage to pass it on to their guests. Their playground? La Bouitte, a house embodying the essence of Savoy, where each object has been kneaded by their hands or by local artisans.”41 In Savoie, milk is essential: “For us, milk is our primary food. Savoy natives drink milk morning, noon and evening. All our cooking is based on milk. It is our mountain heritage. Milk is also cheese. To make a very good Beaufort, you need a very good milk. We were fed with milk and cheese. It was also with milk that the calves and lambs were fed. To feed the pigs, we gave whey. Milk was everywhere.”42 So, on the tables of La Bouitte: “The raclette becomes airy […], the milk-based jelly cooked in a cauldron by grandmother Gisèle and the goat’s cheese yoghurt from Saint-Martin join the Michelin star dessert ‘Le lait dans tous ses états’ [milk in all its forms]… An ode to the mountain roots magnified on each plate.”43 Indeed, the signature desert “Le lait dans tous ses états”, cookie, mousse, frosted cookie, jelly (see Figure 12.17) is presented as a dense and diverse composition of milks.

41 La-bouitte.com, accessed February 8, 2019. 42 Interview with René Meilleur, April 12, 2019. 43 La-bouitte.com, accessed February 8, 2019.

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Figure 12.17. “Le lait dans tous ses états”, cookie, mousse, frosted cookie, jelly at the restaurant La Bouitte (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

René Meilleur emphasizes: “Milk dessert is very important to us. It is a white dessert, a reference to the white of milk and the white of snow”44. “Le lait dans tous ses états” is thus presented as a “hymn to Savoy”: “We plunge into a symphony of airy milk, between Skimmed and semi-skimmed cow’s milk, sheep’s and goat’s yoghurt, milk powder in the meringue, farm butter, and – to top it all off – milk jelly (also cow’s milk elly, microfiltered whole, for more flavor).”45 Cow’s milk is associated with sheep’s and goat’s milk: “We use three milks, i.e. three flavors. We seek a balance between sweetness, acidity and bitterness. Sweet notes are brought by milk jelly and hazelnuts. Milk is naturally sweet”46. René Meilleur specifies its origin: “As a child, we had so much milk, we made it into milk jelly, that we ate greedily with a spoon. For this dessert, we combined cow’s milk

44 Interview with René Meilleur, April 12, 2019. 45 Press kit, online, la-bouitte.com, accessed on February 8, 2019. 46 Interview with René Meilleur, April 12, 2019.

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with sheep’s milk to bring a touch of acidity. And we naturally associated it with hazelnuts, which we collected it in front of our house.” [GOG 19, author’s translation] Tasting this dessert is an experience that combines consistencies, textures and tastes and allows a multi-sensory learning of milks: “This dish is a game of textures between the crunch of the cookies and the meringue, and the smoothness and tenderness of mousse and sorbet. It is discovered in small touches, with a succession of fleeting sensations”47. In his article, Stéphane Durand-Souffland describes sensually: “‘Le lait dans tous ses états’” is a declaration of love for the nourishing fluid, a white construction with an overwhelming balance, an impeccable application of technique that is obvious. First there is this frosted disc, an ice cream to which goat’s milk (or sheep’s milk, depending on the season) gives an irresistible sour note. On top, three small milky meringues. Below, a mousse of infinite finesse that contains a barely sweet sorbet. The whole thing rests upon a crunchy milk cookie like a praline, and a slightly amber-colored garland of liquid milk jelly gives the enchantment its fullness. This dessert is a return to childhood, the concentrated milk that we used to drink directly from the tube (for the better taste), a tasteful shade made of progressive shifts towards an absolute gourmet pleasure.” [DUR 15, author’s translation] In the same way, three worked butters are presented on each table: melted butter mixing fresh butter and hazelnut butter – a reproduction of a local farming butter conservation method – (in ramekins), fresh butter decorated with sheep’s serac (in candy boxes) and butter infused with sweet vernal grass (in bundles). René Meilleur emphasizes: “Butter is important. It is a farmer’s product. Butter was sold to survive. It is a commercial product”48. In the same way, cheeses play an essential role in the development of a meal at La Bouitte: “Every farmer has his own cheese. We highlight the producers and their beautiful products. We choose cheese producers who do not play by the rules, who have the most natural products possible. There is no

47 Press kit, online, la-bouitte.com, accessed on February 8, 2019. 48 Interview with René Meilleur, April 12, 2019.

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meal without cheese. Always try a small piece of cheese at the end of the meal.”49 In addition, one of the treatments offered at the Nature de Montagne spa is “Le bain de Marie”: “Milk and honey bath from our mountains. Milk is an ideal element to soften the skin, moisturize it thanks to the vitamins and minerals it contains. It is the noblest product that the mountain offers us, a source of well-being and gives the skin a special glow.”50

12.2.4. The conservatory restaurant Widely open to the marine horizon and overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Le Petit Nice, a 3-star Michelin restaurant in Marseille, is a conservatory of the Mediterranean fisheries (see Figure 12.18). Gérald Passédat‘s culinary creativity is at his service: “The sailor Passédat, so respectful of the ecosystem, never uses ice – which has been criticized by the administration – an exception in haute cuisine. Hence in Petit Nice the tastes and flavors are so fine and deep at the same time, with marine preparations embellished with fillings, vegetables, bouillons, mixtures, bergamot peels.” [RAB 10, author’s translation] Le Petit Nice first of all reveals the extraordinary diversity of Mediterranean fish species: “In the heart of the sea, season after season, more than 65 Mediterranean fishes are paraded in the kitchens: denti, sea bream, Atlantic bonito, whiting, comber, common seabreem, moray eel… The day’s catch, fresher than fresh, due to being brought directly from their boat by passionate fishermen, is cooked without delay.”51

49 Ibid. 50 La-bouitte.com, accessed February 8, 2019. 51 www.passedat.fr, accessed August 16, 2018.

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a)

b)

Figure 12.18. a) “Fish following the arrival of fennel. From my aunt, I broke a long secret of braising for this jus. The fish is just grilled and then slowly cooked. Intensity of juices and flesh. Thanks to Alain’s fishing”; b) it is served with a gomasio from Provence made from Alpilles pollen, Camargue salt and wild fennel seeds (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

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Then, Gérald Passédat seeks to enhance the culinary value of little-known and neglected fish: “Some fish have been forgotten, others unloved: you have to find the preparation that will magnify them to preserve the liveliness of their taste, in order to let all their facets express themselves. The flavors of the Mediterranean Sea, very different from those of the Atlantic Ocean, are concentrated here in a unique gastronomic experience.”52 Similarly, the Marseille native chef is looking for a different and personal culinary translation of non-noble fish, like rock fish, generally used in bouillabaisse. This research is expressed in the dish which combines five rock fish (sargo, verdaou, weever, rascasse and roucaou) marinated in carpaccio and seasoned with sea fennel, seaweed, wild fennel and garum. At the same time, Gérald Passédat highlights remarkable products such as sea anemones: the clownfish. In three courses with caviar, breadcrumbs, then doughnut. They are so rare to discover, a dish for enlightened amateurs. All thanks to Dominique’s fishing. In Petit Nice, conservation and culinary enhancement require the recognition of fishermen whose first names are mentioned in the title of each dish. This is because the restaurant is the tool for maintaining about 15 small fishermen who practice artisanal and local fishing, while respecting the season and the marine environment. It thus ensures the diversity and vitality of the trades and specific know-how of Mediterranean fisheries. The restaurant is also a conservatory of Mediterranean tastes. Gérald Passédat has indeed reinvented the Greco-Roman garum: “For this dish, I had fun associating it with garum, the fermented fish sauce used by the Romans and predecessor of nuoc-mâm, which is found in Italy in the form of ‘colatura di alici’. A modernized Mediterranean tradition using dried fish bones macerated for a long time in white wine.”53 For a few weeks now, there has been a Parisian duplication of this conservatory: the Brasserie du Lutétia (21, rue de Sèvres) where Gérald Passédat offers, for example, an octopus pie (see Figure 12.19).

52 www.passedat.fr, accessed August 16, 2018. 53 www.passedat.fr, blog of the chef, accessed August 16, 2018.

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Figure 12.19. Octopus pie at Brasserie Lutétia in Paris (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Still with regard to the intangible cultural heritage, some restaurants bear the label “Entreprise du patrimoine vivant”. Awarded by the French Ministry of Economy and Finance, the EPV label distinguishes French companies with excellent artisan and industrial know-how: “The State label ‘Entreprise du patrimoine vivant’ (EPV) rewards French excellence. In particular, it offers better visibility to artisan, industry and gastronomy activities using rare, advanced or traditional know-how. In 2005, in an effort to preserve the very high quality products made in France, the State created a dedicated label, clearly identifying an invaluable economic and human heritage […]. The EPV label underlines the requirement and passion that underpin the professions of gastronomy in order to bring together the ‘good’ and the ‘beautiful.’”54 The Relais Bernard Loiseau in Saulieu is a telling example: “The Hôtel de la Côte d’Or in Saulieu is a legendary establishment, located on the famous Roman road that became Nationale 6. Between the 1930s and 1960s, Alexandre Dumaine made its reputation with already 3 stars in the Michelin Guide. After taking over the establishment in 1975, Bernard Loiseau quickly won 2 stars. Then the 54 Patrimoine-vivant.com, consulted on March 5, 2019.

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third in 1991 […]. Dominique Loiseau has always favored the noble and typical materials of Burgundy, such as French ceilings and oldfashioned oak staircases. The entrance and the corner of the reception have been preserved, and especially the dining room dating from 1904 which has always been carefully preserved: recently listed as a Historical Monument, it is open to visitors. The restaurant of Relais Bernard Loiseau favors Burgundian products: Charolais meat (Charolais AOP beef from Charolles), Morvan meat (guinea fowl, pigeons), Morvan charcuterie, freshwater fish, vegetables, herbs, local jellies, cazette du Morvan, cassis (blackcurrant bud pepper, nectar, blackcurrant cream and liqueurs)… Not to mention the exceptional Burgundy wine list. In terms of cuisine, the know-how is characterized by a rigorous selection of the best raw materials and oven cooking and traditional techniques; it is distinguished by Bernard Loiseau’s style and famous recipes (purified recipes, ice water, fat-free cooking).”55 (see Figures 12.20 and 12.21)

Figure 12.20. Frogs’ legs with garlic puree and parsley juice, a famous recipe by Bernard Loiseau (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

55 patrimoine-vivant.com, consulted on March 5, 2019.

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Figure 12.21. Desert rote with pure chocolate ice cream and candied orange coulis, a famous recipe by Bernard Loiseau (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

12.3. The restaurant in heritage Sometimes, the restaurant finds a privileged location in a historic place. A dialogue then takes place between the restaurant and the historic place. The restaurant allows visitors to witness the heritage and to take a different look at it. The heritage gives a unique flavor to the restaurant, the act of integration and the practice of tasting. Le Coquillage, a 2-star Michelin restaurant, has been open since 1992 at Château Richeux in Saint-Méloir-des-Ondes, in the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel: “Le Coquillage offers a timeless moment that takes place at the whim of the procession of actors in this 1920s villa with its sweet atmosphere. The windows of the dining room are real paintings that frame an ever-changing landscape, that of the skies of the bay and the outlines of the foreshore.”56

56 maisons-de-bricourt.com, accessed on April 7, 2019.

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The residence known as Château Richeux is included in the Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Brittany: “This important residence, known as Château Richeux – built by the Malouin architect Yves Hémar for Mrs Shaki around 1925 – is a remarkable example of the renewal of the elite resort after the 1914 war. The building was constructed on the site of a castle built in the 16th Century. The building, in ruins in the 17th Century, was replaced by a guard house and a battery, built in the 18th Century. In the 19th Century, nothing appeared on the Napoleonic land registry except the mentioned Fort Richeux.”57 The first building was built around 1030 on the Roman road linking Avranches to Alet by Lord Richer, ancestor of du Duguesclin. The modern building, with the appearance of a ‘Sleeping Beauty’ castle, overlooks the bay of Cancale and the Dol marsh. Léon Blum is said to have stayed there: hence, the locals still call it the “House of the President”. Jane and Olivier Roellinger acquired the castle in March 1992 and began to welcome food lovers in September of the same year. In his article “Les mille vies de Château Richeux”, Pierrick Jégu describes Château Richeux as an “institution”: “Institution – the word is dropped in and must be handled delicately, because it is quickly associated with ‘old’ or ‘dusty’. Like these establishments which, lagging behind at the time, weave a bond on the only thread of nostalgia. Far from this outdated image, Château Richeux, the flagship of the Roellinger family, is a healthy institution.” [JEG 18, author’s translation] The 3-hectare park consists of a garden, a Celtic vegetable garden and a conservatory of table apples (26 local varieties). At the entrance is a bread oven and a wooden fish smoker: “The bread served in the houses of Bricourt is kneaded and baked in the wood bakery located at the entrance to Château Richeux. Our baker works with old, local and organic flours with a natural sourdough. Walking in the park of Château Richeux, which heads towards the pebble beach, is an opportunity to dream or play hide and seek or to walk between the raised stones of the Celtic vegetable garden where the aromatic herbs grow. The flowers of 26 ancient apple varieties are

57 patrimoine.bzh, accessed February 7, 2019.

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collected by bees whose hives are adjacent to the orchard. Sheep, cows, donkeys and frogs give life to this extraordinary garden.”58 The cuisine offered by Hugo and Olivier Roellinger puts value on seafood and vegetables, seasoned with the flavors and aromas of local aromatic plants, seaweed and spices from afar: “The products of this garden, the raw materials provided by local fishermen, craftsmen and farmers, the spices – a great family specialty – from the four corners of the world… Hugo feeds on all this, and on his passion for seaweed – he prepares a cellar to dry and refine them – to play a score of a natural, pure and disarming sensitivity.” [JEG 18, author’s translation] Many restaurants allow people to witness the heritage within the Relais & Châteaux voluntary chain: “For 60 years, Relais & Châteaux has elevated art de vivre (the art of living) to a 10th art! Our chefs and Maîtres de Maison are delighted to welcome you to a world shaped by their personalities and passion. We aim, along with men and women skilled in the subtle art of refined hospitality, to place you, our guests, centre stage. Our restaurants lie at the heart of our art of living: our chefs and their teams, but also local producers, farmers, cheese makers, fishermen, winegrowers and indeed everyone who contributes to making the shared experience of a meal a veritable feast for the senses.”59 The restaurant enables an approach to heritage through the experience of hospitality. In this sense, the voluntary chain presented to UNESCO on November 18, 2014, a manifesto to “make the world a better place through food and hospitality”. The restaurant allows us to witness heritage. It allows us to live in it, temporarily, i.e. touristically.

58 maisons-de-bricourt.com, accessed February 7, 2019. 59 Relaischateaux.com, “Le mot du président Philippe Gombert”, accessed February 7, 2019.

13 Tourists as Actors in the Process of Adding Cultural Heritage to Restaurants

Tourists appreciate carrying out their non-daily activities in spaces considered as out of the ordinary, especially in restaurants. Tourist traffic is transforming restaurants. Thanks to their enlightening outside views, their extraordinary practices, their stimulating discourses and imaginations, tourists participate in the process of adding cultural heritage to restaurants. Tourists are reciprocally transformed by attending these restaurants for memory purposes. Several researchers have shown the stakes of tourist attractiveness by food lovers adding cultural heritage [BES 01, CSE 08, AND 13, CLE 13, CLE 14, ETC 14, CSE 16, CLE 19, ETC 19]. Others have demonstrated the joint construction of heritage and tourism by insisting, in particular, on the fact that heritage is an invention for mobile individuals [LAZ 07, LAZ 11, LAZ 12]. 13.1. Parisian brasseries The Office du tourisme and the Congrès de Paris describe the heritage of Parisian brasseries as follows: “With tradition charm, the brasserie is a kind of big sister to the bistro. At its origins it was simply a brewery, making beer that could be consumed on the premises… As time went on, the word came to designate large, typically Parisian bistros with an inimitable charm where you can dine on traditional French dishes, including onion soup, ‘coq au vin’ and ‘pot au feau’. There is even a typical brasserie

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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atmosphere, as they are often glamorous places with remarkable decor, temples to art deco. The finest ones are to be found in the Montparnasse area, in the Place Clichy and around the main stations. Everybody who is anybody in Paris heads there, go and join them!”1 At the corner of avenue des Champs-Élysées and avenue George V, a must-see tourist destination in Paris, Le Fouquet’s, was opened in 1899 by Louis Fouquet. The Criterion-Fouquet’s Bar was transformed into a luxury brasserie in 1913 by Léopold Mourier. After Louis Barraya and Maurice Drouant, the restaurateur Maurice Casanova, who acquired Le Fouquet’s in 1976, joined forces with producer Georges Cravenne to organize events related to cinema and theater: “An outstanding amphitryon and a man of culture, he arrived from the left bank and took in his wake a whole world of artists and actors. Among them, a certain Caesar, famous for his metal compresses. ‘For him, the restoration was not just about cooking. It was a show’, says his son Charles, who took over the reins from 1993 to 1998, before selling the business to the current owner, the Lucien Barrière group.” [GON 15, author’s translation] Since 1977, the restaurant has hosted the gala dinner for the César awards. The first floor room, the mezzanine room and lounges with their decoration are protected as historical monuments by inscription by decree of December 10, 1990: “A bar created in 1899 by Louis Fouquet, a lemonade maker, in place of a coachman’s estaminet located on the first floor of a building dating from 1863. In keeping with the prevailing trend in Americanism, the bar was launched under the name The CriterionFouquet’s Bar; the Escadrille bar, at the back of the first floor hall, was opened in 1906 by Brazilian aeronaut Alberto Santos-Dumont. The restaurant was opened at the mezzanine in 1913 by Léopold Mourier, Fouquet’s successor. The decor was completely renovated in 1958 by the decorator Jean Royère. The establishment is the last witness of the great cafés on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and a place of memory associated with literary and cinematographic life.”2

1 https://en.parisinfo.com/where-to-eat-in-paris/french-food/brasseries, accessed February 17, 2019. 2 Base Mérimée, https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/merimee/PA00088881, accessed February 21, 2019.

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Diane Barrière-Desseigne bought the restaurant in 1998. It was completely renovated in 2017. Chef Pierre Gagnaire has been in charge of the menu since 20153: “3-Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gagnaire finds the fuel for his art in the very roots of the French culinary heritage… At the top of the Champs-Élysées, the chef is the master of the menu of Le Fouquet’s. This lover of painting and jazz takes small steps that respect the tempo and the sacred rules of brasserie culture […]. The chef admits to being slightly nervous every time he passes through one of his restaurants, such is his desire to amaze and delight. The César Awards Dinner, the highlight of Le Fouquet’s gala evenings and concocted by Pierre Gagnaire, brings together everybody who is anybody in Paris.”4 The process of heritage development localizes the restaurant on two geographical scales: that of the Champs-Élysées, as specified in the information content of the Mérimée database of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, and that of Paris, as François Simon points out: “Fouquet’s has so much to say. It could talk for hours on its own. There would be Paris in every sentence. There are these Harcourt looks scattered all over the restaurant walls” [SIM 16, author’s translation]. Similarly, Philippe Couderc points out, in the tag line of his article “La vérité sur le Fouquet’s” (The truth about Fouquet’s): “In a century, a thousand lives have passed through Le Fouquet’s, a thousand stories have been tied up there. A chic or bling-bling den of everyone and anyone in Paris, it perpetuates luxury on the Champs-Élysées.” [COU 11, author’s translation].5 3 See Athénaïs Keller, “César 2018 : dans les coulisses du Fouquet’s avec Pierre Gagnaire”, Le Figaro Lifestyle, March 5, 2018. Exclusive video, online, played on February 21, 2019. See Alice Bosio, “Le menu des César 2019 signé Pierre Gagnaire pour le Fouquet’s”, Le Figaro Lifestyle, February 18, 2019: tuna tataki, avocado guacamole with coconut milk, black rice, yellow mango, green apple, Williams pear with calamansi vinegar/roasted bass stew, leeks and treviso with parmesan sauce/rum baba topped with pineapple caramel, pumpkin seeds, fruit marmalade. 4 https://www.groupebarriere.com/en/our-signature/flavors-and-innovation/pierre-gagnaire-aman-of-taste.html, “Pierre Gagnaire, a man of taste(s)”, accessed February 21, 2019. Pierre Gagnaire’s 3-star restaurant in the Michelin Guide is located 300 meters from Fouquet’s, 6, rue Balzac. 5 The journalist recalls that Nicolas Sarkozy came to celebrate his election as President of the French Republic on the evening of May 6, 2007, starting his article with the following words: “What if we went to the local bistro to celebrate? When you are President of the Republic, on the evening of your election, there is nothing shocking about such a proposal. But there’s a local bistro and a local bistro. Located at the corner of the Champs-Élysées and avenue George V, the very luxurious Fouquet’s is one of them: not quite like the others, I agree. A lot has been said about this choice. But, after all, at Fouquet’s, we have been celebrating Césars for a long time: why not Presidents of the Republic? As for the immediate proximity of the Champs-Élysées… hasn’t mythology made, for eternity, a path for the most virtuous?” [COU 11].

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Near the station, the Montparnasse district is home to several large brasseries recognized by tourists, including La Coupole, La Rotonde and Le Dôme. From its opening, 102, boulevard du Montparnasse, La Coupole is the symbol of the frenzy and extravagance of the Roaring Twenties. Inaugurated on December 20, 1927 by the Auvergne restaurateurs Ernest Fraux and René Lafon, who wanted to make it the largest brasserie in Paris with a surface area of 1,000 m2, La Coupole is linked to the artists, painters and art critics who were its privileged customers. Designed by the architects Barillet and Le Bouc, instead of a former wood and coal depot, it shows on its pillars and pilasters the works of various painters from the district. The room and the interior decoration are protected as historical monuments by inscription by decree of January 12, 1988. The brasserie is famous for its Indian lamb curry served à la carte since 1927: “During the Roaring Twenties, La Coupole appeared as a window to the world that allowed guests to discover the Indian-style lamb curry served by an Indian in a sumptuous costume”, says the website. Thus La Coupole is considered by Le Bonbon magazine as one of the “6 absolutely legendary restaurants in Paris”6. Similarly, the cosmopolitan district of Les Halles is home to a significant number of brasseries frequented by tourists (sometimes during the day and sometimes at night). The brasserie’s website thus presents Jean-François Piège’s takeover project: “By taking over La Poule au Pot, a real institution in Paris’ Les Halles district, Jean-François Piège is fulfilling a childhood dream. That of slipping into the history of a legendary French address and developing dishes inspired by bourgeois cuisine. The third owner of this establishment, which has been open for more than 80 years, the chef has created a menu that is part of this French culinary heritage that he loves so much. Frogs’ legs in parsley, blanquette de veau in the traditional way, minced veal, minced meat, beef or snails in shells – it is the identity of French cuisine that is expressed here, all the generosity of bourgeois cuisine that is manifested in these dishes. Emblematic of French know-how from the 19th Century until the 1950s, the latter gives pride of place to pleasure and comfort, but also, and essentially, to cooking, far from the assembly. An almost familial gastronomy where meat with sauces, stewed or au gratin put taste first.”7

6 “La Rédac”, Le Bonbon, June 2018. With La Tour d’Argent, Le Procope, Le Bouillon Chartier, Lapérouse and La Closerie des Lilas. 7 jeanfrancoispiege.com, accessed August 14, 2018.

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The menu from August 12, 2018 included duck galantine, full-bodied jelly, Colbert fried whiting, tartar sauce (see Figure 13.1) and a platter of tarts that brought me back to childhood, served with vervain liqueur ice cream. Since January 21, 2019, La Poule au Pot has earned 1 Michelin star.

Figure 13.1. Colbert whiting and tartar sauce at La Poule au Pot brasserie (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Since 1947, the brasserie Au Pied de Cochon has been open 7 days a week and 24 hours a day to the rhythm of the Les Halles district (see Figures 13.2 and 13.3).

Figure 13.2. Front of the brasserie Au Pied de Cochon (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

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Figure 13.3. Handle in the shape of a pig’s foot at the entrance door to the Au Pied de Cochon brasserie (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

The district (the market of Les Halles) invented the brasserie Au Pied de Cochon which reinvents itself according to the developments and transformations of the district and the area’s popularity among tourists. Its location was directly linked to the presence of the Les Halles butchers which supplied the raw ingredients (in particular the pig’s feet) and were part of its clientele. The brasserie was the place where financial transactions between sellers and buyers took place. In addition, the building housed municipal employees responsible for security, placement and tax collection. It participated, and still does today, in the socio-economic and cultural life of Les Halles. The dishes reflect the changes and diversification in diners who frequent the district, particularly following the disappearance of the market. While keeping on its menu the Béarnaise grilled pig’s trotters (ordered by one out of five customers) and a pig’s head, la tête de Monsieur Cochon, the brasserie offers a wide variety of dishes (oysters, shellfish, crustaceans, etc.). Of course, the specialities are based on pork, but they also specialize in roasted cod, ham and pasta shells and crispy bellies, for example (see Figure 13.4).

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Figure 13.4. Roasted cod, ham and pasta shells with crispy belly (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

The home page of the brasserie’s website emphasizes its “legendary” aspect: “The real beating heart of the capital, Au Pied de Cochon is the first institution to offer, from its opening in 1947, a continuous service 24/7. This legendary brasserie welcomes guests in a very friendly atmosphere revolving around beautiful French traditional cuisine. The chef offers specialities such as the Périgourdine-style stuffed pig’s trotter, the ‘temptation of Saint-Antoine’ or the double rib of Ibaïama pork to share, Éric Ospital style.”8 In addition, diners appreciate the joyful decoration of frescoes with little hidden pigs and the “piggy” theme of the brasserie (see Figure 13.5).

Figure 13.5. “Piggy” meringues from the Au Pied de Cochon brasserie (source: Olivier Etcheverria) 8 pieddecochon.com, accessed April 8, 2019.

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Like Au Pied de Cochon, the heritage of Parisian brasseries is reflected in the use of their terraces on which tourists can rest, discover and allow temporary forms of sociability flourish in an easy and pleasant way. They make it possible to satisfy the taste of eating (and drinking) outside and, if desired, in the Sun. The rattan chairs of the Gatti and Drucker houses are emblematic. These are chairs with woven rattan straps that provide a comfortable seat and differentiate the brasseries. 13.2. Lyon’s bouchons Bouchons are places that allow tourists to discover Lyon from a gourmet perspective. Their attendance anchors the tourist discovery: “It is not easy to clearly define what a bouchon actually is. In a nutshell, it is a restaurant where people enjoy Lyon specialities, washed down with a pitcher of regional wine, in a warm and welcome atmosphere. The word bouchon allegedly comes from the tree branches that cabaret owners tied to their door to signal the type of establishment.”9 During the inter-war period, the economic context led the cooks of bourgeois houses to set up their own businesses. These multiple openings of bouchons were part of a context of growing interest in regional cuisines, which must be seen in the context of the development of travel by car and the rising respect of the Michelin Guide. Bouchons are linked to the Croix-Rousse district and the canuts (silk workers): “The first bouchons opened in Croix-Rousse, the district of the canuts (silk workers), who were their principal customers. While his wife took care of the cooking, the man was in charge of the wine cellar and the customers in the dining room. The dishes were essentially made from the leftovers from the day before to avoid waste […]. Lyon’s bouchons also specialize in offal. Liver, snout or head, nothing is wasted!”10 Bouchons are presented as an expressive form of the “Lyon culinary and cultural exception”: “No visit to Lyon would be complete without eating in a bouchon, where you will discover part of the city’s heritage. Bouchons are an

9 Lesbouchonslyonnais.org, accessed April 8, 2019. 10 Ibid.

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essential part of Lyon’s notoriety. These unique places have no equivalent anywhere in the world. The bouchon has existed for centuries and is a genuine pillar of Lyon’s history. It is an integral part of Lyon’s cultural heritage. It is very important to the city’s economy.”11 Created in November 2012 at the initiative of the Lyon Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with OnlyLyon Tourism and Congress, the association Les Bouchons Lyonnais: “[…] brings together restaurateurs eager to preserve their heritage and their city’s traditions, i.e. Lyon’s cuisine. To do this, it has created the Bouchons Lyonnais certification […]. This association brings together people with the same vision of Lyon’s cuisine, striving to restore and promote the authenticity of the bouchon Lyonnais. It provides quality services while respecting Lyon’s tradition. The Bouchons Lyonnais association guarantees the quality of this type of cuisine as well as transparency for customers […]. The objectives of the Bouchons Lyonnais association are to: promote the economic development of Lyon’s bouchons by offering a deeply rooted, quality culinary tradition in a unique and historic location; promote, safeguard and sustain this tradition specific to Lyon and preserve all its characteristics; promote Lyon’s internationally renowned culinary specialities; respond to the expectations of national and international customers in search of a genuine Lyon bouchon; contribute to the Lyon region’s attractiveness as a tourist destination.”12 The label therefore guarantees: “Respect for a Lyon culinary tradition, and also the quality and origin of local products, a homemade family cuisine made on site, a warm welcome, and a typical Lyon atmosphere in a historical setting.”13 Between 20 and 25 bouchons have been given this label in Lyon and Paris. As its president Benoît Josserand points out, the association aims: “[…] to highlight a tangible heritage, historical sites in most cases, with scenery, and an intangible heritage, the soul specific to the atmosphere of the place and what each person puts into it, in recipes. Being able to introduce tourists to restaurants that have a history.”14

11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Interview with Benoît Josserand, April 26, 2019.

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Benoît Josserand runs the Café du Jura with his mother, which opened in 1867 and is decorated with 1930s woodwork: “It is a family establishment which produces an affect. I attach importance to the setting because I feel it is a part of me. The decor has not changed because it has been maintained.”15 The bouchon specializes in offal such as the tête de veau with Hélène Neveu sauce (recipe unchanged since 1930), in tribute to the bouchon’s former owner. “For the andouillette (coarse-grained pork sausage), we have had the same supplier for more than 70 years; it’s the same product, the same recipe”16: true andouillette beaujolaise (with fraise de veau [calf ’s ruffle]!) white wine sauce or red wine from Braillon. The Petit Futé guide presents the Café du Jura in this way: “Every morning, with her wicker basket, Brigitte Josserand goes to the quai Saint-Antoine market where she meets her producers. She, who only selects the best seasonal products, can afford some variation, as she has 300 recipes ‘in reserve’ […]. With her son Benoît, she ensures that this beautiful tradition of hospitality continues in a place where a cheerful and respectful atmosphere prevails, in a place where this tradition is preserved for a cuisine that is at the same time an emblem of family, generosity and gastronomy… Stories, big and small, are not lacking in these places full of memories, but the most beautiful are written every day when three generations of customers find themselves sitting next to tourists who come to savor the house’s specialities […]. Eating in the Jura is much more than enjoying a quality ‘artisanal’ cuisine, it is also an act of ‘lyonnitude’ – the creation of a link between the past and the present; a human and gourmet link.” Having tourists visit the bouchons is particularly important. According to Benoît Josserand, it is to be linked to the “Lyon tourist explosion”17: “there is an increase from year to year in tourists in general and foreign tourists in particular. This increase in foreign tourists is linked to the introduction of airlines including AsiaPacific.”18 For the Café du Jura, foreign tourists represent between 6 and 12% over the year and 40–60% in August19. Benoît Josserand points out: “For some bouchons, the tourist clientele represents up to 100% of the clientele.” He specifies: “there is a difference between a bouchon and the idea of a bouchon. Tourists mainly ask for Lyon salad, hot sausage and quenelle.”20

15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.

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13.3. La Mère Poulard restaurant in Mont-Saint-Michel The restaurant La Mère Poulard, in Mont-Saint-Michel, demonstrates the role of tourists in the heritage development process of a restaurant. Since 1888, tourists, through their practices, discourses, gourmet imaginations and feedback, have ensured the permanence and transmission of this restaurant, thus characterized by the Petit Futé guide: “This is certainly one of the most incredible French successes, exported even to Japan. Originally, a woman, Anne Boutiaut, who married the son of the Mont’s baker, a certain Victor Poulard, who opened an inn. In the 19th Century, the rising level of tourism made word-of-mouth essential to the couple’s establishment, mainly for the unique flavor of their omelettes. Thus Georges Clemenceau, the king of the Belgians Leopold III and many historical figures dined at Mère Poulard’s table, who died in 1931. Since then, the tradition has continued and, while the restaurant offers masterpieces of Norman gastronomy (meat, fish, desserts…), it is indeed the omelette that holds the top spot. At the entrance, there is quite a spectacle: the eggs are constantly beaten by hand by the chefs. This famous technique, which can be appreciated from the street, gives a foretaste of the place: original. While the authenticity has obviously disappeared completely, while the prices may seem a little prohibitive, while we have the necessary means [to make our own omelettes], the experience deserves to be tried… at least once. Reservation is strongly recommended.”21 The restaurant, which was initially called À l’omelette renommée de la Mère Poulard (which loosely translates as: renowned omelettes à la Mère Poulard), is famous throughout the world for its incomparable and unmissable puffed omelettes made with fresh eggs from hens raised outdoors by the same Delaunay family in Pontorson since 1888. In his book Les carnets de cuisine de La Mère Poulard, Éric Vannier, owner of the restaurant since 1986, evokes the poultry business in heritage terms, echoing the restaurant: “Jean-Paul Delaunay is part of one of those families who pass on their know-how from grandmothers to grandsons on their farm in the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel […]. His grandmother managed their backyard and produced butter and eggs, as did her own mother before her. It was the latter who introduced him to La Mère Poulard. A story of trust and

21 Petit Futé guide 2019.

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friendship quickly developed between Mrs. Dardennes and Annette Poulard, one providing wicker baskets filled with eggs and the other using them to make her famous omelette, beloved by all […]. Today, the farm has been equipped with modern and adapted equipment, and the chickens move freely on a three-hectare course from 11 am to dusk […]. Jean-Paul Delaunay passed on his know-how and passion to his son, and it is with pride that they continue to deliver fresh eggs to the Auberge de La Mère Poulard.” [VAN 18, p. 96] The omelettes are prepared in the Omelette room where the eggs are beaten rhythmically to obtain a foamy and airy texture. The omelette is then cooked over a wood fire in the large 19th-Century fireplace in the same room. Visible from the street, the room arouses the interest of many tourists who, loving the “theater” of it all easily succumb to the desire to take photographs. One of the secrets of the omelette’s delicacy lies in the threshing technique. In her article “La Mère Poulard, 130 ans d’auberge et d’omelette” (meaning; La Mère Poulard, 130 years of innkeeping and omelettes), Hélène Borderies traces the origin of the restaurant: “It was in 1888 that the inn of La Mère Poulard was founded. Its concept revolutionized the inns of the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel by offering individual tables, whereas at that time seating only took place at large common tables” [BOR 18, author’s translation]. The omelette was a welcome dish for pilgrims. It became an à la carte dish for tourists. Today, the Mont-Saint-Michel restaurant and its omelette are known worldwide by tourists thanks in particular to butter biscuits exported to more than 70 countries and offered to passengers on Air France flights (sweet snack) and franchized restaurants open in Japan (Tokyo) and the Philippines (Manila)22. The discourse conveyed by the restaurant’s website emphasizes the “Mère Poulard’s tradition of hospitality” and the attendance of the restaurant by famous tourists (crowned heads, financiers, industrialists, presidents and ministers, artists, etc.). Hélène Borderies specifies: “After she arrived on the small island at 21, Mère Poulard never left it. She chose to travel through her visitors. Very quickly, she got into the habit of asking them to leave a picture, a note or a drawing. Among the collection that makes the place so special, we find quotes, dedications from famous personalities such as Edward VII, Coco Chanel, Pablo Picasso and Foujita. A rich collection.” [BOR 18, author’s translation]

22 On this subject, see Philippe Legueltel, “La Mère Poulard veut développer ses restaurants à l’international”, Les Échos, September 1, 2015, and Lomig Guillo, “Mont-Saint-Michel : La Mère Poulard a eu les yeux plus gros que le ventre !”, Capital, September 19, 2017.

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13.4. What about the bouillons? Bouillons are the origin and essence of the restaurant. In the 1860s, thanks to Pierre-Louis Duval, butcher in Les Halles, bouillons were reborn for the first time. There is now a second rebirth of bouillons which can be understood as a recognition of heritage. Historical bouillons are now renewed. At 7, rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, Bouillon Chartier (see Figure 13.6), which has been open continuously since 1896, is presented as “legendary”: “A restaurant doesn’t become a legend by accident, and it certainly can’t stay that way by resting on its laurels. Chartier is over 100 years old and still in the very prime of life. The restaurant is dear to native Parisians, which might explain why it is just as beloved by tourists from all over the world. In 1896, the Bouillon Chartier was born out of a very simple concept – to provide a decent meal at a reasonable price and give customers good service in order to earn their loyalty. 50 million meals, and only four owners later, the recipe is still every bit as much a success. This place has known and been touched by all those, the many famous and anonymous faces, who have dined there, on romantic dates, as a family or with friends. It has developed more than a personality; they have given it a soul. Enter the large, legendary, historically listed dining room. Have a seat at a table and take time to admire the famous sideboards where regulars kept their own, personal napkins and the painting by Germont, who gave it to the establishment as payment for his debt there. Watch the elegant to and fro of servers dressed in black vests and white aprons, unmatched for their efficiency. And then get ready to delight your taste buds! The dishes are traditional but there is a wide range of choices at frankly unbeatable prices. Enjoy leek vinaigrette, hard-boiled eggs with mayonnaise, vegetable soup or snails for starters; meat, fish or stews simmered to perfection come next. The menu is a long one, the meals are authentic and the mains are around €10. You can be sure what you’re getting is of high quality too, as their suppliers are consistent and always among the best. For dessert, treat yourself to the famous home-made Chantilly cream; you won’t find it anywhere else. In fact, no matter what you’re seeking at Chartier, you probably won’t find it anywhere else… because there’s only one Paris, only one 9th arrondissement and only one Bouillon Chartier.”23

23 Bouillon-chartier.com, accessed April 8, 2019.

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Figure 13.6. Entrance to the Bouillon Chartier in Montmartre (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

The interior decor of the dining room is protected as a historical monument by inscription by decree of April 13, 1989. The very moderate prices and the ritual of noting the order and adding the bill on the paper tablecloths explain the perennial attraction to the timeless bouillon. The Petit Futé guide underlines this: “We understand the queue that invariably forms at each service and in which we find neighbors, regulars and tourists who all want to eat at least once in their lives at this

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elder of Parisian restaurants”24. The 1939 song Félicie by Fernandel reinforces the memory of the Bouillon Chartier: “[…] Je l’emmenai dîner chez Chartier/Comme elle est fine et délicate/Elle prit un pied d’cochon grillé/Et pendant qu’elle mangeait le sien/J’lui fis du pied avec le mien/J’pris un homard sauce tomate/Il avait du poil aux pattes/Félicie aussi/Puis une sorte de plat aux nouilles/On aurait dit une andouille/Félicie aussi/Je m’offris une gibelotte/Elle embaumait l’échalote/Félicie aussi/Puis une poire et des gaufrettes/Seulement la poire était blette/Félicie aussi.” “[…] I took her to dinner at the Chartier/Oh how she is fine and delicate/She ordered a grilled pig’s trotter/And while she was eating hers/I played footsie/I ordered a lobster with tomato sauce/It had hair on its claws/Félicie too/And then a kind of noodle dish/One would have thought it was andouille/Félicie too/I allowed myself a rabbit stew/It flavored the shallot/Félicie too/And then a pear and wafers/Except the pear was overripe/Félicie too […].” (author’s translation) In the same way, some film scenes were shot there. Bouillon Chartier can have up to 1,800 covers per day. The front and interior decoration of the Bouillon Racine, 3, rue Racine, are protected as historical monuments by order of October 12, 1995. Information on the Merimée database indicates: “Restaurant of the ‘bouillon’ type belonging in 1905 to the Chartier family. In 1907, Camille Chartier had the restaurant fitted out by the architect J.-M. Bouvier, who created a decor strongly inspired by Art Nouveau, with glass paste panels signed by the decorator Louis Trézel, from Levallois-Perret (92). Long abandoned, the restaurant was completely renovated in 1996 for Belgian brasserie-owners. The woodwork has turned Java green and the establishment has been renamed Bouillon Racine.”25 The “Formule Midi 1906” (1906 set Menu) at €17.50 consists of a starter and a main course or a main course and dessert or a main course and coffee. For example, on Thursday, December 27, 2018, the entrée du jour (starter of the day) was: parsnip cream soup and haddock brandade (see Figure 13.7).

24 Petit Futé guide 2019. 25 Base Mérimée, consulted on February 7, 2019.

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Figure 13.7. Haddock brandade at the Bouillon Racine (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

At Bouillon Julien, 16, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, all the spaces forming the restaurant are protected as historical monuments by decree of October 21, 1997 (see Figure 13.8). The street front of the building, including the restaurant front and the corresponding roof, is also protected by inscription by decree of October 21, 1997 (see Figure 13.9): “Located in Faubourg Saint-Denis, on the site of a restaurant registered in 1850, the current Julien restaurant dates from a redevelopment carried out from 1902 to 1905 by Édouard Fournier, both architect and engineer and the owner. The restaurant, whose first name was Gandon-Fournier, has a very rich Art Nouveau decoration, characterized by decorative moldings of plants, made from staff, and panels painted on pâte de verre, from Louis Trézel’s workshops in Levallois-Perret. Four of these panels symbolize the seasons, drawing inspiration directly from the works of Alfonso Mucha. Other panels, representing peacocks, are signed A. Segaud. The mahogany bar near the entrance is attributed to Nancy cabinet maker Louis Majorelle. The restaurant was renamed Chez Julien in 1938 after having been a bouillon Chartier.”26

26 Ibid.

Tourists Adding Cultural Heritage to Restaurants

Figure 13.8. Bouillon Julien (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

Figure 13.9. Front of Bouillon Julien (source: Olivier Etcheverria)

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Édouard Fournier’s motto, always highlighted, is: “Ici, tout est beau, bon, pas cher”, meaning “Everything here is beautiful, good and cheap”. Bouillon Julien was recently taken over by Jean-Noël Dron and renovated by British designer John Whelan and the Saint-Luc guild. Its original celadon green color has been rediscovered. Near the station, at 59, boulevard du Montparnasse, the Montparnasse 1900 brasserie, taken over in 2003 by the Joulie group, has recently been renovated and renamed Bouillon Chartier Montparnasse (reopened on February 1, 2019). Created in 1858, the restaurant was bought by Édouard Chartier in 1903. The Art Nouveau decor was created in 1906. Sold in 1923, it became the Bouillon Rougeot until 1977. The room with its decor is protected as a historical monument by inscription by decree of July 16, 1984: “The restaurant (bouillon Chartier) was established in 1903 in the former shop of an oil merchant; decor realized at that time with woodwork and mirrors in the Art Nouveau style. The ceramic coverings, with floral designs, punctuated with landscapes of France, are signed by the ceramist Louis Trézel, from Levallois-Perret (92). The restaurant, taken over in 1923 by Rougeot, former director of the Vagenende restaurant, is now the Bistro de la gare.”27 The bouillon can have up to 600 covers per day. The new menu is similar to that of Bouillon Chartier Montmartre. The bouillons were also reinvented at Bouillon Pigalle, 22 boulevard de Clichy, which opened at the end of 2017. It was an immediate success, visible in the queue along the sidewalk (tourists representing 20% of the clientele). Arranged on two floors, the bouillon has 250 indoor covers and 100 covers under a covered balcony. Prices are very moderate: beef bouillon, vermicelli at €1.80 (see Figure 13.10), cod brandade at €9.20 (see Figure 13.11) and fresh milk ice cream at €3.60. The two most expensive dishes, at €13.50, are salmon with sorrel, pilau rice and bouchée à la reine sweetbread. The bouillon brings about simplicity and the memory of comforting cuisine.

27 Ibid.

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Figure 13.10. Beef broth, vermicelli at Bouillon Pigalle (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

Figure 13.11. Cod brandade at Bouillon Pigalle (source: Olivier Etcheverria). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/etcheverria/restaurant.zip

Drinks (Vittel, Coca-Cola, orange juice, Silver lager, Luberon AOC red wine, for example) are available “per pour”: quarter (25 cl), half (50 cl), bottle (75 cl), liter (1 l), magnum (1.5 l) or jéroboam (3 l). It was opened by Guillaume and Pierre

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Moussié. In his article “Bouillon Pigalle, le Paris retrouvé” (meaning “Bouillon Pigalle, Paris refound”), François-Régis Gaudry insists on 100% homemade cuisine and on the Parisian character of this new bouillon: “Attracted by the hashtag #bouillonpigalle that ignites social media, 30-something year old Londoners, discouraged by the twenty-minute wait on the sidewalk, finally give up, snacking on their Saint-Nectaire cheese (€2.90): ‘This is Paris!’ What if Bouillon Pigalle proves them right?” [GAU 17, author’s translation] Chef Clément Chicard won the 2019 World Egg Mayonnaise Champion title awarded by the Association de sauvegarde de l’oeuf mayonnaise (ASOM – Association for the preservation of egg mayonnaise). It costs €1.90. Jade Simon, in an article dated March 25, 2019 entitled “Un nouveau Bouillon Pigalle va ouvrir ses portes à République” (meaning: “A new Bouillon Pigalle will open its doors to the Republic”), announced the upcoming opening of a Bouillon République: “Faced with its immense success, its fine team, led by Pierre and Guillaume Moussié (L’hôtel Providence, La Brasserie Barbès, Chez Jeannette…), [Bouillon Pigalle] has decided to open a new restaurant in the République district of Paris. In the place of Chez Jenny brasserie, this new address should be opened in 2020.” [SIM 19, author’s translation] Similarly, in the Les Halles district, the Norman specialty restaurant Le Pharamond recently became Le Petit Bouillon Pharamond. The restaurant À la Petite Normande was opened in 1879 at 24, rue de la Grande-Truanderie by Alexandre Pharamond, who offered Caen-style tripe. The interior decoration, composed of ceramics, mirrors and pâte de verre, is protected as a historical monument by inscription by decree of July 4, 1989. The restaurant therefore makes it possible to discuss the role of tourists in heritage development processes. Restaurants are heritage objects because they are visited. Restaurants as heritage only exist if they are visited. And their rate of attendance by tourists is particularly significant. Olivier Lazzarotti insists on the importance of the external gaze, of the gaze of the Other in the heritage development process, especially that of tourists: “The gaze of others is not only that of tourists, but tourists constitute an important element, both quantitatively, economically and symbolically” [LAZ 12, p. 101, author’s translation]. Through their eyes, therefore,

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through their presence, discourses and imaginations, practices and feedback, tourists contribute to the heritage of restaurants. Olivier Lazzarotti specifies: “In fact, through their presence on the premises, tourists, those on vacation, play a decisive role in their heritage qualification. Moreover, and in all cases, official heritage recognition of the place and tourist attendance are linked. Where there are few tourists – again and for how long? – tourism is one of the arguments for inscribing a property. Where places are already visited by tourists, the increased notoriety effect leads to an often significant increase in the number of tourists.” [LAZ 12, p. 105, author’s translation] Indeed, through their presence, tourists shed light on restaurants as forms of heritage. In doing so, they transform them and are transformed. Olivier Lazzarotti reminds us: “Through their presence, tourists bring life to the places they inhabit in terms of heritage, in other words for memories. They pass through them, look at them and, in doing so, also shed light on them. They thus contribute to making them visible to others who will visit them in turn, maintaining the vitality of memory where appropriate. At the same time, and vice versa, tourists learn about heritage places. Even in a scattered and incomplete way, they perceive the information, even if it means interpreting it according to their knowledge and tastes. This is how the memory is made, at the time and by means of its transmission.” [LAZ 12, p. 109, author’s translation] By frequenting heritage restaurants, tourists choose to nourish their bodies as much as their minds. This attendance by tourists is sometimes ridiculed. Restaurants are sometimes criticized for the random and/or irregular quality of food and service and can be described as “tourist traps”. However, tourists also visit them for the memory that is inscribed, for their emotional and cognitive content. And Olivier Lazzarotti concludes about “heritage memory”: “Further, visitors are not passive spectators, but rather the constituent, central elements of it. To think that they can participate in its destruction is, therefore, a misinterpretation: the absence and invisibility of the inhabitants in places do much more for their disappearance than the physical wear and tear of the tourists. Conversely, the visit also changes the visitors: this is the very reason for the transmission, which takes the double scope of the emotional experience of the place and its learning. In all cases, therefore, there is enrichment, even if it does not necessarily correspond to the criteria of excellence of learning. In their own way,

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and using increasingly proven and, no doubt, effective techniques, heritage memories have an educational impact. Of course, they can be criticized… But the fact is that, before all possible judgments are made, practicing is learning, especially when it comes to heritage places.” [LAZ 12, p. 126, author’s translation] The heritage aspect of restaurants strengthens their location. The heritage value linked to the strength of tourist numbers leads us to consider expanding the category of restaurants that can be identified as gourmet tourist destinations. Alongside 3-star Michelin restaurants, can’t bouillons, brasseries and bouchons, the territorial emblems of the two tourist metropolises of Paris and Lyon, be considered as gourmet tourist destinations?

Conclusion

Invented for urban diners in the form of bouillons, restaurants came from an urban idea, to nourish and feed the urban population and produce the urban population. Restaurants are located in the center of cities because the density and diversity of socio-economic and cultural realities are at their highest, and the actual and potential reciprocal effects of density and diversity are the most intense. Restaurants benefit from the consequences of the polarization of city centers. They use the city as a hub: they benefit from the centripetal forces, they value and participate in the reinforcement of accumulations and concentrations. The geographical spread of restaurants is achieved through cities organized in networks. Restaurants play on the qualitative differences of a place. The logic of location must be linked to the search for proximity, the possibilities of accessibility, the enhancement of landscape amenities and the implementation of assimilation strategies. They participate in the qualification and prioritization of cities. Restaurants live to the rhythms of cities. They have thus become fully-fledged elements of the urban character of the places. However, restaurants can also be located in the countryside. They are often located in direct connection with a vegetable garden. They then play a role in changing the real and ideal qualities of the place and contribute to its attractiveness. In both urban and rural areas, restaurants are deeply rooted in the places and spaces where they are located. There are dialogical relationships between the restaurant and tourism. Tourist attendance, in connection with the recreation project, benefits restaurants. Restaurants are privileged places for the deployment of tourist practices. They participate in the diversion and tourist discovery of the places visited, and play a role in the development of tourism in the area. Restaurants and tourism reveal reciprocal

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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effects. They are tools for the emergence of forms of food tourism. Some restaurants can even be gourmet tourist destinations. Restaurants play an original role in local development. Chefs are effective on site. They are individual entrepreneurs and disseminators of qualitative practices. Restaurants are transforming places or even making new ones. Restaurants are both interfaces and forms of support. Indeed, they facilitate exchanges, complementarities and convergences between the actors of the agricultural sectors on the one hand and the tourist actors on the other hand. Moreover, after having created the necessary conditions for their economic development, they are driving forces when they make the transition from an individual to a collective logic. Local development based on restaurants is specialized, gourmet in fact. Restaurants are sometimes referred to as monuments, and can be protected as historical monuments. They are also recognized as heritage elements, as showcases of food lovers’ intangible cultural heritage. Sometimes these elements are located in the heritage, thus allowing a resonance. Tourists are actors in the heritage development process of restaurants. Indeed, their views, their presence, their practices, their discourses and imaginations and their feedback promote heritage recognition. All these elements show how a geographical approach to restaurants makes it possible to approach a certain number of concepts and notions of the discipline from an unusual and promising angle.

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Index

A, B, C

accessibility, 60 Alain Ducasse at Plaza Athénée, 104 Arpège, 100 Arraditz, 74 assimilation, 73 Au Rocher de Cancale, 216 Aubrac plateau, 186 axes, 29 Beauvilliers, 7 Béchade, Cédric, 193 Belleville, 80 bouillon, 5, 263 Bouillon Chartier, 263 Bouillon Julien, 266 Bouillon Pigalle, 268 Bouillon Racine, 265 boulevards, 29 Bras, Michel, 186 businessmen clientele, 52 Café Anglais, 31 Café du Jura, 260 Cambo-les-Bains, 160 Cap é Tôt, 75 Castellet, 119

Cavaillon, 142 Chartres, 88 Château Richeux, 248 Choisy Triangle, 80 Christophe Bacquié, 119 Courchevel, 117 Cuisine montoise Créativité mer & marais, 123 D, E, F

density, 15 Di Tullio, Thierry, 136 diagonal gourmet, 113 diversity, 15 Donckele, Arnaud, 136 Ducasse, Alain, 56 Ducassou, David, 75 Entreprise du patrimoine vivant, 246 Espace Saint-Quentin shopping mall, 93 Eugénie-les-Bains, 155 Fontjoncouse, 200 Frenchie, 169

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach: From Invention to Gourmet Tourist Destinations, First Edition. Olivier Etcheverria. © ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

286

The Restaurant, A Geographical Approach

G, H, I, J

Gagnaire, Pierre, 253 gastronomic atmosphere, 185 Goujon, Gilles, 200 gourmet tourist destination, 155 Guérard, Michel , 155 Haeberlin, Marc, 234 Haeberlin, Paul, 233 Herbaudière port, 130 historical monument, 211 Illhausern, 233 intangible cultural heritage, 233 Josserand, Benoît, 259 L, M, N

L’Ambroisie, 236 L’Auberge basque, 193 L’Auberge de l’Ill, 233 L’Auberge du Vieux Puits, 200 L’Escargot Montorgueil, 216 La Bouitte, 240 La Coupole, 254 La Marine, 131 La Mère Poulard, 261 La Tour d’Argent, 221 La Vague d’Or, 136 Laguiole, 186 landscape charm, 66 Le Bois sans feuilles, 128 Le Coquillage, 248 Le Fouquet’s, 252 Le Garde Champêtre, 98 Le Grand Véfour, 26 Le Pavillon Bleu, 160 Le Petit Nice, 243 Le Train Bleu, 61, 212

Les Prés d’Eugénie-Michel Guérard, 155 Les Trois Frères Provencaux, 20 Lescar, 74 local development, 165 logic, 16 Loiseau, Bernard, 246 Loiseau, Dominique, 247 Lyon bouchons, 258 mothers, 237 Maison Prévôt, 142 Mama Shelter Paris East, 178 Marchand, Grégory, 169 markets, 58 Meilleur, Maxime, 240 Meilleur, René, 240 melon tourism, 142 Méot, 24 Mère Brazier, 237 Morlanne, 75 nature in the city, 104 Nicolau, Olivier, 74 Noirmoutier, 130 O, P, R

Ouches, 127 Pacaud, Bernard, 236 Palais-Royal, 17 Parisian brasseries, 251 Passage des Panoramas, 70 Passard, Alain, 100 Passédat, Gérald, 245 place des Vosges, 236 places of supply, 58

Index

proximity, 51 Reims, 90 Relais Bernard Loiseau, 246 relationship between cities and the countryside, 97 restaurant(s) Greek, 76 in the city, 87 in the countryside, 98 Portuguese, 85 Roellinger, Hugo, 250 Roellinger, Olivier, 250 Roze de Chantoiseau, Mathurin, 7 rue des Poulies, 5 du Nil, 171 Montorgueil, 216 Royale, 238 Sainte-Anne, 78

287

S, T, U, V

Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle, 193 Saint-Tropez, 136 Savoy, Guy, 56, 181 Société publique locale (SPL) Océan Marais de Monts Tourisme, 123 station, 42 café, 60 suburban cuisine, 91 Terrail, André, 225 Terroirs d’Avenir, 171 tourisme, 110 gourmet, 141 trade, 49 Troisgros, 127 urban center, 15 vegetable garden, 98 Versailles, 85 Véry, 16 Viannay, Mathieu, 239 Villeneuve-lès-Maguelonne beach, 116

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