_______________
Following is a excerpt from WHERE PARIS DINES
by Julian Street ©1929. This is from the chapter titled "Six
Restaurants Beyond Compare", describing the top six restaurants of 1929
Paris.
"When I first knew the Tour D'Argent it was a plain place with a wooden
floor covered with sawdust, but it was none the less a temple of gastronomy,
for it was presided over by old Frédéric Delair who, with his high bald
forehead, his steel-rimmed spectacles, and his whiskers, resembled Ibsen or
Thackeray, and who, like Ibsen and Thackeray, was an artist, though in a
different field.
Frédéric's
fame grew principally out of the caneton pressé he used to serve, though
other specialties, such as his bisque of crawfish, were almost as celebrated.
For many years before his death, which occurred in 1910, when he was 70,
Frédéric was well known to countless American and English travelers who
went to the Tour d'Argent not only to eat the famous pressed duck, but also
to watch the ritual preparation. Frédéric himself used always to
perform the rites, and people at the tables put down knives and forks and
stared, fascinated, as, with waiters grouped round him in devout attitudes,
he deftly carved the bird, placed the carcass in the silver press, mixed the
savoury brown sauce, and with it anointed the tender slices.
We are told that duck as a specialty was introduced at the Tour d'Argent by
one Lecoq, a former Imperial Chef, who was proprietor of the restaurant in
the last days of Napoleon III, but the custom of numbering the ducks and
giving each guest a card bearing the number of the duck of which he has
partaken was introduced by Frédéric, and has been continued since by
Monsieur André Terrail, the present proprietor. The numbers now (in
1929) run well above one hundred thousand." (Click
here to view the caneton recipe.)
_______________
DINING IN PARIS
