An oasis of culinary discourse

by David Benjamin

“… It is aways advisable to remember that Paris is a city of brilliant light, and corresponding shadow which cloaks many strange things.”
— Netley Lucas, Criminal Paris

PARIS — In the early 1920s, a reformed British crook named Netley Lucas undertook a perilous tour through the underworld of Paris, guided — and occasionally protected — by an “international crook” named Etienne Gaspard. The result of this research was an extraordinary book, Criminal Paris, that freezes in time a lost period when the boulevards, back streets, cellars and dives of the elegant city teemed with thieves and blackmailers, whores, addicts, white slavers and the “wild, lawless hooligans” who were known as apaches.

Lucas was captivated by the apache demimonde, especially by its women. He wrote, “For cool independence, untamed ferocity and licentiousness. there is no woman criminal to be compared with the apache women and girls of Paris… Here is the real, full-blooded apache girl, a dashing brunette with full red lips, and sinuous body which has never felt the restraint of a corset, dressed in a red jersey and short skirt, black silk stockings and shoes with outrageously high heels…”

Of course, all the apaches are barely a memory. Gone, as well, are their haunts in Montmartre, around Pigalle and up the rue Faubourg St. Denis. A whole culture — both criminal and legit — that once seethed within the edges of Paris has been developed and modernized out of existence. Luc Santé, in his lyrical history of the city’s underbelly, The Other Paris, quotes Alexander Privat d’Anglemont on the transformation of Paris into a safer, cleaner, blander destination for suburbanites and sightseers: “Civilization has acted here as in North America; in moving forward it has cast out all the savages in its path.”

Privat d’Anglemont was writing in the 1850s, even before Baron Haussmann bulldozed away most of the twisted alleys and narrow streets that had made Paris a city where neighborly familiarity and dark shadows coexisted intimately.

Today, it’s a struggle to find remnants of pre-Haussmann Paris. Hotlips and I occupy one of those rare, unflattened nooks, on rue St. Séverin (now a tourist trap). We shop for provender in one of the city’s subtle throwbacks to days when jewel thieves crept silently the eaves of mansions in the Sixteenth and apaches hijacked limousine weaving homeward from the Moulin Rouge. In those days, every neighborhood had a cluster of shops where every element of the evening meal was available by hopping from door to door with a string bag and a handful of francs.

Those market oases have largely disappeared. Place Maubert, where once the Reign of Terror operated a guillotine, is a thriving survivor. In a space no broader than forty meters located not far (but disregarded by all but the city’s denizens) from the tourist vortex at Notre Dame, all lined up in a ragged row, Maubert provides to the household chef (from left to right) a greengrocer — whose produce’s freshness we distrust — a poissonerie (fish), a butcher shop, a charcuterie (delicatessen), an award-winning cheese, dairy and egg purveyor (Laurent Dubois), a boulangerie with reputedly the best croissant in all of France, a wine shop and, on the end of the block, a cozy, busy café, Le Village Ronsard. Just around the far corner is a traiteur selling Italian delicacies and, a minute away, another deli sells Greek specialties. For wine, Hotlips and I prefer to cross the boulevard St.-Germain to Le Vin Qui Parle (The Wine That Speaks), which was launched about ten years ago by an amiable young Breton named Loic who has since opened a branch store, gotten married and had (at last count) two beautiful children. There was until recently a brulerie beside the Greek deli. When it closed a while ago. it was replaced almost immediately by a new coffee seller just up St.-Germain where, when you step inside, you can remember the aroma of an A&P Store in days when every check-out line included a coffee grinder.

Place Maubert is an oasis of culinary discourse and victual reality. Nothing needed for tonight’s dinner is absent from its little row of shops. Moreover, if you tell the butcher the nature of the stew you’re planning to cook, or the rabbit you plan to roast, he’ll recommend the best cut of meat for the dish and will cut the bunny appropriate to your recipe. Nearby, at the fromagerie, an aproned hostess will suggest a tomme, a chevre, or perhaps a St. Felicien suited to your menu.

On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, the dull asphalt square in place Maubert becomes a labyrinth of aluminum struts, which long before dawn support a sprawl of tents and and awnings under which the marché, the farmer’s market, sets up shop. Three days a week, besides the meat, fish, cheese, fruit and veggie carts, you can buy flowers both cut and potted, or foie gras and rillettes in cans to carry anywhere in the world, or a new wallet, a scarf, a hat, a table cloth and silverware, a knife or a fake African sculpture, a used book, a candelabra, a statue of the Virgin or a whole string-bag full of miscellaneous tchotchkes.

Since I began to frequent Paris thirty years ago, the hubbub of place Maubert has become commonplace for me. But, one Tuesday morning last week, I settled into a table at Le Village Ronsard for my second cup of coffee. As usual, I waited the obligatory five minutes for the harried serveur to take note of my presence and mutter the standard promise: “J’arrive.” Five minutes later, he did actually arrive to take my order and, in another five minutes, delivered. Over that span, I lifted my head from my newspaper and took in the scene with fresh appreciation.

The foot traffic through the marché is difficult because obstructing the course of the housewife rushing to fill her cart, there’s typically a mendicant crouched by the Métro entrance, or a couple just moseying along, wondering what to cook for dinner, which veggie stall to visit for their salade and perhaps a betterave or that strange new America squash, le butternut. The hurrying shopper navigates in fits and starts and often stops suddenly herself, blocking someone else, altering her menu because — look! — the coquilles St. Jacques are finally in season, or the price of girolles is irresistible!

From my glassed-in vantage at Le Village Ronsard, I spot a young couple queuing at the baker’s, she effortlessly beautiful, his good looks making me think of Tab Hunter. (My God, who remembers Tab Hunter? Or was I thinking of Troy Donahue?). I look down the way at our favorite veggie guy, who always has eight or nine shoppers lined up. He works opposite a fellow greengrocer. Both know us, expect us to buy something from each, and scold us when we don’t.

There’s a queue also at Laurent Dubois, which I love to pass because there is no aroma on earth like a gentle breeze wafting off the Camembert.

By and by, amidst the ebb, flow and fresh-fig shouts from the closest fruit barker, my curiosity settles on two girls at a nearby table, high-school age, pretty and tellingly overdressed. They’re talking excitedly, pausing to gaze now and then out the window. They’re ignoring their portable phones. When the waiter gets to them, they order café au lait, confirming my guess that they’re not Parisian but from a probably little town outside the peripherique. If they were denizens, like me, they would have asked for café creme, a locution unique to Paris.

As the girls gush, I eavesdrop on their safari plans and, vicariously, feel their excitement. I wish, for a moment, that Paris were as new to me as it is to them.

Later, on the way home, I felt a little sorry, or cheated, because we — the two girls, the beautiful young breadbuyers, the veggie sellers, the butchers, the hat lady, Loic and his kids, Hotlips and me — had missed so much. All around us, invisible, ghostly but almost palpable, there was a filthy, magnificent, sinister and voluptuous Paris that had slipped into history, never again to be seen, lived, feared and enjoyed — lost and lamented before we ever set foot here.