Читать книгу A Long and Messy Business - Rowley Leigh - Страница 19

Still on the Menu

Ham Hock with Lentils

I resolve to go to Paris more often. Every time I do go I

wonder why I have left it so long. Even more than Rome,

it is home from home.

It was not always thus. My first visit, with no money and

stuck in a huge, army-style Auberge de Jeunesse

somewhere in the Southern suburbs, was not auspicious.

It was probably another ten years before I returned. Even

then, I did not quite feel comfortable for a day or two: if

you go to the wrong restaurants, queue interminably for

the Louvre and look to the Parisians for a friendly word

of advice, you can have a pretty rough time of it in Paris.

The second time I was still on a tight budget and things

weren’t going too well, until we happened upon the

Brasserie de l’Isle St-Louis.

It is a place that has little right to be any good. Just

over the small bridge that links the Île de la Cité (and

Notre Dame) and the more sedate and civilised Île

St-Louis, there are tourists everywhere and many of the

cheap geegaws that bedevil any such destination. And yet

countless visitors to Paris have christened their stay in the

city with a modest meal at this brasserie and not regretted

it. The food is remarkably consistent and the menu today

reads almost exactly as it did in 1978. I suspect that it has

not changed ownership, and therefore no one has felt the

need to ‘improve’ upon it.

Resistance to change can, of course, be as dangerous as

an excessive enthusiasm for progress. Just across the river

from the Île St-Louis, Bofinger has a menu that would have

been largely unrecognisable thirty years ago. True, the

oysters and coquillages are still there, as is the choucroute,

and the desserts are a symphony of sugar and cream, with

a rum baba the size of a football and containing enough

rum to inebriate the first team of Paris St-Germain.

However, the main courses are no longer brasserie fare

but positively gastronomic, and my veal with salsify, black

truffles and creamed potatoes was expertly done.

Meanwhile, across the river, I am happy to say that

the jarret de porc aux lentilles is still on the menu at the

Brasserie de l’Isle. It costs a bit more than the six francs

I paid in 1978 but it is still a huge chunk of meat adorned

by nothing more than a thin gravy, some firm green lentils

and a pot of mustard.

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