Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh by Unknown (rm book recommendations .TXT) 📕

Paris in 1956, what event had brought about such a cosmic alteration. He explained that several years ago the curtains came down to be washed, and hundreds of potential customers suddenly took notice of the new restaurant in the neighborhood.

For me, Le Paris has always been irresistible, and it has become more so over the years. Its cuisine, which was already out of fashion in the seventies, returned briefly as “comfort food” a few years ago, but it may well be slipping from popularity again. Automatically, we ordered celery remoulade, mayonnaisey food that nobody asks for anymore. When I asked Françoise to remind me why we had, she replied, correctly,

“You eat it to remember, not because you like it. It’s a forgotten food.” In that spirit, we began with a wine called Pisse-Dru—it translates literally as “piss hard”—a thin and acidic Beaujolais that I have never seen anywhere but in Montreal. We recalled that it was equally thin and acidic twenty years ago. I suggested to Françoise that we quaff something more agreeable with our main courses.

“Anything you wish!” she exclaimed. Clearly, the years had soft-ened her.

From the small wine list, I selected a Guigal Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

“No,” she protested. “It’s too much a slap in the face.” As always I let her choose the wine.

My pot-au-feu—boiled beef with turnips, potatoes, and cabbage—

was savory and properly accompanied by sour little cornichons and mustard so good it should be in ballparks everywhere. Françoise selected calves’ brains, though I begged her not to. I abhor looking at brains while I’m eating. Nonetheless, she had brains. Reluctantly, I tried them, and they tasted like capers and lemon juice floating on cotton candy.

This meal, as well as Le Paris itself, evoked the motto of Quebec, 1 3 8

A L A N R I C H M A N

the one that is stamped on every provincial license plate (perhaps by English-speaking prison inmates jailed for running afoul of the province’s ludicrous language laws): Je me souviens (“I remember”). The slogan can be thought of as sinister, fraught with political nuances and the promise of social unrest, but a gentler interpretation is also possible. That’s what I prefer. To me the glory of Quebec and the wonder of Montreal is that they are both of a particular time.

By the 1970s, New York City already boasted the Four Seasons, Lutèce, La Côte Basque, La Grenouille, and La Caravelle. Today it is clearly the preeminent restaurant city in North America, but to my taste Montreal had the better dining twenty years ago. The restaurants were more egalitarian, more economical, and more French than those in New York, and back then French was the only serious way to dine.

Montreal’s most esteemed establishment was Chez Bardet, which was absurdly located at the end of a subway line and served (as did all the finest Montreal restaurants) a menu of items punctuated by a sur-feit of proper nouns. At Chez Bardet, there were quenelles de brochet Nantua and gratin de volaille à la Bardet—the latter, I believe, was ham, cheese, and roast chicken. There was Dover sole Waleska at Chez Delmo, rabbit Archiduc at Chez la Mere Michel, lobster tails Saint Denis (as well as a trio of strolling violinists) at Le Castillon, snails Château d’If at Le Mas des Oliviers, and, my absolute favorite verbiage, coeur du charolais soufflé aux splendeurs du Perigord at the Beaver Club, in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

To recall these places is to remember a Montreal that was filled with promise, a city that then-mayor Jean Drapeau, part visionary and part megalomaniac, boasted was “on its way to becoming the greatest city in the world. I can hear it as clearly as a composer hears a symphony.” What he should have heard was a note of caution, as he nearly bankrupted the city with his arrogant and grandiose schemes, particularly the ruinous 1976 Olympic Games. In the seventies, however, fiscal reality was still a few years away, and the restaurant culture was so energetic it seemed invulnerable.

F O R K I T O V E R

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Even if the food served in many of my favorites is now out-of-date (it seemed that every dish was layered with cheese, finished with cream, and brought to the table in flames), it was perfect for the times. Nouvelle cuisine had not yet overturned classic French, and Montreal restaurants were fashionable as well as admirable.

The impending decline did not, for the most part, emanate from the kitchens. The chefs were not to blame. It came about as a consequence of Drapeau’s mistakes and the policies of a new political order.

Quebec (which started out as New France) is about 80 percent French-speaking. That means 5 to 6 million Quebecers are living on a continent where hundreds of millions of neighbors don’t understand a word they’re saying. For decades, Quebec’s English-speaking minority dominated the province, both culturally and economically. Then in 1960, in an attempt to reverse this situation, the so-called Quiet Revolution began. This reform movement turned into an independence movement, and the outcome was the Parti Québécois (PQ), which today rules the province and is committed to the separation of Quebec from Canada.

While the idea of secession might seem abhorrent to Americans schooled in the lessons of the Civil War, it’s not nearly so bothersome to Canadians, because the federal government recognizes the right of Quebec to separate. It just doesn’t want it to happen.

In 1980, when the first separatist referendum lost by a few percentage points, the late and beloved PQ leader René Lévesque stood before his weeping acolytes, many of them draped in Quebec flags, and said,

“If I understand you well, you said, ‘Wait until next time.’ ” That time came last year, when separatism lost again, by a much closer vote, and the Parti Québécois suggested that they’d get it right the next time.

Michael Boone, a former sportswriting colleague of mine on the Star who now writes a column for the