At the ultrahip Cafe des Delices in Paris, talented chef Gilles Choukroun serves up tasty–but bizarre–plates bearing little resemblance to bistro favorites of the past. Dinner, recently, turned out to be a collection of five or six large tasting spoons, each cradling a delicious morsel of… something. A helpful waitress lined them up in the chef’s recommended order. Though each was wonderfully yummy, it felt less like having a meal than taking my meds. As for the new L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon, the superstar chef of the ’80s and ’90s, it has a distinctly L.A. vibe: open kitchen, seats at the counter, long waits, high prices and lots of little dishes for splitting and sharing.
Splitting and sharing? What is this–Pizza Hut? Where’s the starchy maitre d’ and the silent battalion of waiters and stewards? The soft clickety-clink of Christofle against Villeroy & Boch? The smooth gurgle of Bordeaux filling a balloon glass with inky redness? The turned carrots and pommes duchesse, the poached turbot and the carre d’agneau avec morilles on a bed of mache? And while we’re at it, where’s my freakin’ roast chicken?
Years ago, at one of my first experiences of French haute cuisine, I remember the hot stare of the waiter as my friends and I, eyes glazed in delirium, passed little bites of our dishes back and forth, trying to sample everything at the table. “I’m sorry,” I told the glowering garcon, “it’s just that… we want to try everything.” Go to a swank Parisian restaurant today, and you’re expected to share. Waiters, in fact, get snooty if you do not. It’s as if the French, exhausted from their reflexive anti-Americanism, have decided to embrace (of all things) our restaurant culture. At my next meal in Paris, I half expect to slip into my banquette and hear the waiter intone, “Hi, my name is Jean-Francois and I’ll be your server tonight. Can I bring you a basket of our killer breadsticks?”
You almost can’t blame them. It must be irritating to be seen as the world’s Museum of Food and Dining, as if France were a black-and-white movie experience, with foie gras and Sauternes rather than popcorn. And whenever they try to update the old standbys, some joker’s whining about his roast chicken. The problem, though, is that when the French decide to shake things up, they rarely know when to stop. Louis XIV couldn’t just build a palace; it had to be Versailles. During their Revolution, the French couldn’t just ditch their Marie Antoinette. They had to have Robespierre and the guillotine. And when the philosophes of the ’60s got depressed, they couldn’t just put on their pajamas and eat ice cream, like the rest of us. They invented existentialism.
As a symbol of why this is all so worrisome, for those who love French cooking, look to Johnny Hallyday, the iconic French rocker. At sixtysomething, he’s still performing all over the Francophone world. Hallyday is the classic Roast Chicken of French rockers, and lots of us like it that way. So what were we to think about that recent photo in Paris Match. There he was, all decked out in Von Dutch logo clothing, sitting at an outdoor cafe in… Los Angeles. And he looked so old. Not because he is, really, but because he was trying so hard to look young.
What’s this have to do with roast chicken? Only this. On the underside of a chicken, right where the thigh meets the backbone, there’s a small nugget of tender meat. In English, we call this the “oyster” because of its oval shape. The French call it the sot-l’y-laisse, roughly translated as “only an idiot leaves this.” It’s marvelously succulent, a classic part of a classic dish–and only a fool would forget it. At bottom, the real trick to staying modern is knowing what you’re good at.
