L’épitaphe d’Au Chai de l’Abbaye

“Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different.” 

— C.S. Lewis

 

PARIS — We’ve lost an oasis.

We had a pretty faithful routine. Each time we’ve flown into Paris, we climb to our aerie atop the Fifth Arrondissement, settle in and take an afternoon anti-jet lag nap. In the evening, we mosey over to the somewhat fashionable quarter centered on rue de Buci, and we find a table at our go-to wine bar, Au Chai de l’Abbaye.

Despite a locale bustling with sightseers, Au Chai de l’Abbaye has always been a neighborhood hangout, thronged with Parisians and a few aliens, like us, who more or less know Paris. It has long been the province of “regulars.” One of them, for years, was an elderly gent, always impeccable in suit, tie and fedora whose best friend was a chestnut-colored boxer bitch. The human half of the couple always took the same table. He would settle on the banquette and pat the space beside him. The dog, obedient and lissom, leapt to his side and sat, facing the bar’s clientele and conveying an air of entitlement that no competent Paris waiter would ever challenge. The master sipped his red. The lovely, stoic bitch took no food or drink save what was offered by hand from her doting companion.

Perhaps our most typical—and memorable—experience at Au Chai de l’Abbaye was a wee-hours visit on New Year’s Day 2000. Hotlips and I had just witnessed the millenium fireworks at the Eiffel Tower from the crowded, festive Pont des Arts. As the New Year’s Eve revelers dispersed, we decided to dispel the chill with cups of chocolat chaud at Au Chai de l’Abbaye.

When we arrived, the place was deserted. We placed our order with a familiar waiter, a dervish who could weave his way—carrying a loaded tray in one hand—around corners, through doors, amongst tables, chairs and expressive barflies without spilling a drop or dislodging an olive. As we sipped our warmth, the place began to fill… and fill. Within an hour, the bar and two salons were elbow-to-elbow, coats and hats were piled on a central table, our waiter—and his fellow serveurs—were slithering and dodging merrily through the throng delivering New Year’s cheer. And then the brass band arrived. The most riotous musicmakers on the Left Bank are a mulligatawny of professors and students, doctors, nurses, a few itinerant ne’er-do-wells and one or two actual professional musicians. They roam the streets on holidays and fêtes and call themselves the Fanfare des Beaux Arts.

By the time they had reached Au Chai de l’Abbaye that night, the Fanfare were already well oiled. There were a dozen of them and no room for them to play—especially the trombones. But everyone shoved over an inch or two, and there was, voila!, concert space. The band played, bombastically, deafeningly. The audience cheered and toasted. In honor of the concert, the bartender broke out bubbly and gave it away free. The band drank as they played, until too tipsy to blow. A sousaphonist fell asleep on the coat pile. The sax player squeezed in beside us and reminisced about his days in Minnesota, as a surgeon at the Mayo Clinic. 

Now, Au Chai de l’Abbaye is gone.

Oh, there’s still a “bar,” of sorts, on the corner of rue de Buci and rue de l’Abbaye. Now, it’s called a “brasserie restaurant” with a new name: “Le Chai.” This means “cellar,” which refers to wine, but it’s not a wine bar anymore. (Sigh.) The new name is the lame brainstorm of new owners, according to our waitress.

Waitress? Yes. Surprise! Until the “new owners,” no female had ever served these tables. This is one change we did not mind. She’s a nice girl.

But before we met her, and before we were aware of the revolution, we had encountered a male waiter who refused when I asked for our usual drink, un pot (a refillable bottle) de Brouilly (a light, fruity red). He retorted that this bar serves no Brouilly in any vessel, much less a pot or pichet.

At this refusal, we said what many of the joint’s regulars have been saying for two or three months, just before they get up and leave: “What the hell?”

After the scales fell from our eyes, Hotlips and I looked around. We had found a table on the terrasse easily. Too easily! We were surrounded by empty tables. We had never before beheld such spaciousness, Before, on a warm Thursday evening at 6:30—the drinking hour in Paris—this tightly serried row of tables on rue de l’Abbaye was invariably jammed with Parisians, babbling and arguing in French, pouring wine from pots and pichets, spreading rillettes and eating tartines, swilling beer and ignoring the violinist.

Where had all the natives gone? Why did these new owners take rillettes, and sardines off the menu—and that terrific Cantal chicken. Where did that go? Why did they remove all the blackboards listing the vin du moment, the vin du mois and daily specials that hardly ever changed? All that stuff was yummy and comfortable? Why take it away from us? It was all there for thirty years. It never changed because we, the customers, wanted it, ordered it, paid for it.

Where we will go now? 

Somewhere else, because “Le Chai” only serves its snooty wine in overpriced portions in fancy glasses, or in bottles that cost as much as they would at a “brasserie restaurant” that hires a sommelier, puts on airs, lays down tablecloths and expects you to call up and reserve ahead of time.

Au Chai de l’Abbaye used to be a refuge from that sort of joint. Now, what the hell?

Of course, we have options. But to find a wine bar as congenial, boisterous and authentic as Au Chai de l’Abbaye was, and never will be again—is a challenge both unfair and unnecessary. The new owners could have just left it be. They should have. They might have, if they had just sat down, ordered a pot and talked with a few regulars.

Forsaken by locals and now hell-bent on tourists, “Le Chai” has lost traffic. As we watched, our charming waitress was actually sent out to the sidewalk—like a carnival shill—to buttonhole passersby. This is a low to which no self-respecting serveur should ever have to stoop. It’s the sort of “Hi, sailor” come-on that only occurs in a couscous-and-fondue tourist vortex. 

Yes, much of rue de Buci is, in fact, a tourist vortex. However, a factor that the new owners neither researched nor grasped is that tourist vortices have rigid, immutable borders across which very few tourists—who are scared of Parisians—will ever set foot. Tourists enter a vortex by a prescribed route and leave in the same direction, never risking expedition into the fringes. The red line of the Buci vortex is a half-block—as good as a mile—away from “Le Chai.” Au Chai de la’Abbaye was always resolutely local because it stood 200 feet beyond the range of tourist imagination. On rue de l’Abbaye, just around the corner, tourists are almost unheard of. Even when they appear, they pass hurriedly.

Once, I recall, Hotlips and I spied a young woman on rue de l’Abbaye. She froze our attention: long legs that went all the way up into her tiny, busy shorts, a bare midriff inexplicably concave, the tails of her silky blouse tied in a bow, a mane of ebony hair that tickled her tuchis, a scarlet blossom for a mouth and makeup that might have been applied personally by Coco Chanel. Girls like her frequent the neighborhood. Sometimes, we’d see them nearby on the terrasse at Au Chai de l’Abbaye. But they’re not tourists. They live here. They are Paris.

Le Chai is new and spiffy. It’s English-speaking, overpriced and spotless, even friendly—custom-made for the timid tourist trade. Simply put, it’s no fun. It’s not Paris.