The essential egg

by David Benjamin

“And it is not necessary to have great things to do. I turn my little omelette in the pan for the love of God.”

— Brother Lawrence

MADISON, Wis. — We left Paris last year just as the pandemic was starting and we haven’t been able to return. But when we go back, we’ll resort to routine: arrive in the morning, climb to our loft, take a short jet-lag nap and then, venturing back to stake our place in the City of Light, we’ll have an omelette.

Where we choose to eat our eggs isn’t a big deal. In Paris, it’s impossible to get a desultory omelette. Finding an outright bad one would require a task force and citywide dragnet. For example, one of our nearest omelettiers is Le Hibou (“The Owl”), a panoramic bar-restaurant in the Carrefour de l’Odeon. The Owl people serve a picturesque golden omelette, absent any brown on the surface, accompanied by an entire head of butterhead lettuce. 

When we go there, I notice that my eggs, although perfectly prepared and beautiful, seem a little overwhelmed by the salad’s immensity. I think of a slim volume by the great, late comic artist, B. Kliban, entitled Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head. 

If we decide to venture farther, my sentimental omelette choice requires a hike to the Right Bank, where place de la Madeleine meets rue Tronchet. The Cafe Madeleine is the rare venue where tourists and Parisians mingle without friction. I owe this uncommon harmony to the waiters, who are brusque, efficient and scrupulously egalitarian. At lunch, in non-plague years, this elegant eatery is a churn of organized pandemonium.

I must digress here. The omelette in France is rarely, if ever, breakfast food. In the morning, as a rule, Parisians prefer a simpler repast, composed of bread (a criossant, pain au chocolat, tartine au beurre or, in an onset of madcap excess, a nice palmier) and a cup of café crème. The omelette cones later in the day. Typically sidekicked by salad or frites (referred to vulgarly in the U.S.A. as “French fries”), it’s a heartier dish that reigns at the center of a mid- or late-day meal. American tourists — even those who dress appropriately and speak serviceable menu-French — give themselves away by ordering eggs for breakfast and looking perplexed when the omelette comes without bacon, butter, white toast and strawberry jam.

Let’s venture into the Cafe Madeleine at one p.m., when the noon-lunch Americans are ceding their tables to guidebook tourists from Japan, as business Parisians pour into the joint and bee-line to any available two-top. The lookout waiters at the doors gently steer the traffic. Hotlips (my wife) and I use eye-contact with one of the trail bosses to indicate our desire to manger and quickly snag two appropriate seats. There’s a menu but — as demi-Parisians — we skip that formality and simply say, “Deux omelettes mixtes,” along with a carafe of water (which is free) and two glasses of red, (which isn’t free). “Mixte” means that gruyere cheese and little squares of sliced ham will be folded inside the omelette. There will be bread, sliced chunks of baguette, in a basket.

This is vital. The ideal three-egg omelette, as one chef put it, arrives medium rare. Cut into it and it will bleed a puddle of yellow ambrosia. As he tucks into the egg and its contents, the gourmand sops up the spillage with bread that was baked that morning at a boulangerie that ’s likely visible from the cafe window.

Another digression. Once, at a cafe on the tourist-infested rue de Rivoli (kitty-corner from the Louvre), I was subsiding near a pair of American women of a certain age. Waiting on them was one of those long-suffering serveurs who’d been sentenced to constant contact with the trampling hordes from far far away. Despite a daily torrent of ignorance and discourtesy, he had miraculously retained a patient air of bonhomie. One of the women ordered an omelette, which seemed to please the waiter, but then raised her voice to a near-scream. “Raw!” she roared. “I don’t want it RAW!” Alas, the waiter didn’t understand this particular English expletive. “Roi?” he said, puzzled. Which king — France has had so many of them — could compel this harridan to protest so passionately? Their dialog, punctuated by another dozen china-rattling repetitions of the mystery syllable, “RAW!,” went on long enough that I was tempted to intervene. But the woman eventually went into a coughing fit, and I left the joint before her omelette arrived and sent her into as fresh frenzy.

Her point was that she wanted her omelette not tender, supple and deliciously leaky, but Wisconsin-style, brown, dry, leathery and flavorlessly “well-done,” like a ruined rib-eye at Ponderosa.

The unappreciative woman eventually received an omelette that was — I’m absolutely sure — irreproachable. The French do many things badly, but not eggs. Every short-order cook in every cafe, tabac, brasserie and bar in France must be a master of the omelette or else won’t be long on the job. Among Paris’ blue-collar egg-beaters, styles vary but their skills are remarkably uniform, and rarely does an omelette reach the table that has been burned, mangled, ill-folded, soiled or treated indifferently. 

Hence, Hotlips and I don’t sweat the particular place where we seek our homecoming omelette. There are, of course, a few joints that specialize in eggy treats like quiche and omelettes. Unless we’ve missed a better place, the best omelettes in Paris, in profligate variety, can be found at a nondescript Left Bank storefront on rue Verneuil. I know its name. It merits an entry our voluminous Restaurant List (Hotlips is a foodie). But I’m not telling. Better you should wait out the pandemic, fly to Paris and explore rue Verneuil, which is a buried treasure of Parisian subtleties that most visitors will never see. If you find the omelette place, you won’t get in. Natives know about it. You’ll need a reservation, even for lunch.

But if you get turned away? There’s always the Cafe Madeleine, the Owl people or any no-name tabac on the next block. Paris is an embarrassment of omelettes.

Which brings me around to Big Night, the best food movie ever — or at least our favorite. It’s about two brothers (Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub) somewhere on the East Coast struggling to succeed as purveyors of gourmet Italian dining in a world of spaghetti and meatballs. Toward the end, brothers Primo and Segundo  explode into a quarrel that escalates into violence and threatens to rupture the bond that has knit them together all their lives. 

In the final scene, Primo, Segundo and a young sous chef return silent and anguished to the kitchen of their dying enterprise. No one speaks as Primo (Tucci), finds a skillet and a handful of eggs. As the others slump at the table, Primo melts butter, beats the eggs and delicately, effortlessly fashions a perfect omelette. He has done this a thousand times.

Primo finishes. Deftly, he divides and shares the simplest of meals, the essential egg. They eat in peace together. Their hopes have been shattered but the sun is coming up.