First came the Romans

First came the Romans
by David Benjamin

“I like Chinese,/ They only come up to your knees./ Yet they’re wise, and they’re witty, and they’re ready to please…”
— Monty Python

PARIS — First, after the war, it was the Americans. Flush and cocky, they invaded, brandishing their “Europe on Five Dollars a Day” manuals, demanding butter with their baguettes and directions to the Moulin Rouge.

In successive waves after came the nouvelle bourgeois from six continents. Germans were early adaptors. The Japanese swept through, turning the Louis Vuitton store into a sort of Shinto/Buddhist shrine of Confucian consumption. In their footsteps came Koreans, Russians and oily Arabs in flowing robes who rented whole floors in British-run hotels. Aussies are a trickle, but boisterous. The flow of Spaniards and Italians is steady, the latter loath to travel in groups smaller than thirty-two. The Irish, who rarely venture outside of pubs, stay under the radar. The Brits, of course, have always been here, lurking in brasserie bars, calling red wine “claret,” complaining about the snotty French and buying up the terroir.

Now, more overwhelming than any previous tourist tsunami, it’s the Chinese.

But wait. Yes, they’re countless, but they’re not so bad. They study before they arrive. They dress much better than Americans and Italians but not as spiffy as the Japanese and Koreans. They’re not exactly polite but they’re not obnoxious. They’re quite obedient, and — most important in a city that has prospered on tourism since the Belle Epoque — they spread money wherever they go.

Hotlips and I hit the Great Wall of Chinese unexpectedly last weekend near Les Halles in one of our traditional refuges, a delicatessen bistro called Le Comptoir de la Gastronomie. For years, we cherished this hideaway for its mystic power to calm our jangled nerves after ducking inside from the crowds and jackhammers on the rue Montmartre. The light inside was muted, the woodwork dark, the mood cool and leisurely, the wine sublime and the menu a smorgasbord of the cheeses, fruits, meats, jams and luxurious patés that filled the windows and drew you in from the hurly-burly. The waitresses, invariably tall and slender, moved sylphishly, smiled benevolently and read your mind. I could picture each one on the cover of Vogue.

Last Saturday, when Hotlips called ahead, a voice on the phone at Le Comptoir de la Gastronomie declined our reservation. Just come, she said. When we came, a distracted gardienne in a logo smock halted us at the threshold, refused our admittance — even to sit at the bar — and dispatched us Over There, behind the barrier, in a queue, on the sidewalk, under the sun, amongst a whole bunch of meek Chinese.

“It’s changed here,” quoth Hotlips.

Even the terrasse — outdoor dining on the sidewalk slabs— had been transformed to allow for twice as many tables. The awning that once shielded patrons who wished to linger longer over lunch, was but a memory. The July sun melted butter, heated water, curdled sauce, wilted salad and rushed customers through their victuals, driving them elsewhere, anywhere, in search of shade.

We got inside after ten minutes or so, where renovations meant no more dark wood and no space between tables. Plastic-coated furniture is cheaper and easier to swab than the varnished maple of yore. The lighting had the air of an operating room. The wait staff was capable, but frazzled, green, amateur and transient.

In Paris, when your waiter’s not a grownup, you know you’ve picked a nag.

They seated us beside the serving station, where shouted orders and plate-clatter were our serenade. Our waitress scurried over. We asked for our ritual A.J. Liebling sequence of aperitif, starter and plat, with a bottle of Sancerre and café in prospect. This all arrived erratically, on the fly, as our waitress sprinted by, hurdling the odd backpack and roaring at the barkeep.

We sublimated our trauma and watched it all.

The Chinese caused all this, but innocently. The chinafication of Le Comptoir required the complicity of the philistines who bought it from the people who had created, once upon a time, a secret grotto for long, lazy, late lunches.

The new owners had arranged write-ups in Chinese media, planted reviews on China’s version of Yelp and altered the style of Le Comptoir radically to cater to the millions who are flocking now from Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen to the Eiffel Tower, the gargoyles of Notre Dame and the cobbled alleys around Les Halles.

While we dawdled over two courses plus fluids, the four-top beside us filled three times with Chinese patrons. The pattern didn’t vary. They were in and out in 15 minutes. Once equipped with menus, they plunged into mobile phones, clicking, clicking, doggedly translating foie gras and agneau, concombres, cabillaud and poulpe. Each ordered a single dish. They ate in silence, emptying their plates voraciously. They drank nothing but free tap water — no wine, no coffee or tea, no Perrier. They paid with plastic, left no tip. They bolted out the door, hurrying to the next box on the checklist, surrendering the table to four more joyless Communists staring at their Huaweis.

Le Comptoir is losing oodles of revenue on wine, booze and fizzy water that the Chinese won’t touch. But the scheme is to make up the difference with raw volume. A French group — or Hotlips and me — might hog a table for two hours eating, imbibing, talking and laughing. In that same two hours, Le Comptoir can fill the same top eight times with Chinese patrons who eat and, literally, run.

This phenomenon isn’t really a Chinese thing, though. It’s a tourist thing. There are dozens of eateries in Paris catering to the sort of visitor whose phone has no translation for la gastronomie. In service to tourist haste and tourist taste, they dry out their omelettes, burn their steaks and then (I hope) stand in the kitchen door lamenting their customers’ incapacity to stop, s’il vous plait, and smell, stir, savor the espresso — and nibble the Speculos that comes in the saucer.

Fortunately, the joints that have forsaken the culinary faith concentrate in those vortices where sightseers flock and mill, pose, snap and then, suddenly, split for the next red circle on the map.

Le Comptoir de la Gastronomie used to be — decidedly — not one of the sellouts. Now it is. I’m scratching it off our list.