CHAPTER VI
THE FINE ART OF DINING
Paris is full of restaurants, but the list of those at which one may enjoy both a supremely chic fashion exhibit and a dinner worthy to be associated with the clothes are comparatively few. Indeed, where the frocks are up to an epicurean standard the food is sometimes far below, and there are cafés in Paris where a gourmet will find possibilities of ecstatic moments, but where no swish of petticoats will break in upon his rapt silences.
Not that the average viveur of Paris objects to association of pâté and petticoat. Far from it. He will follow the petticoat even to the Ritz where the pâté is fairly sure to be poor,—but he will occupy his leisure intervals by enjoying a meal at the Café Voisin, or testing the famous cellars at the Café Anglais.
As for Madame,—she is a bit of a gourmande, of course. One does not live in Paris for years without learning the proper attitude toward a dinner, and the Parisienne thinks more about her food than is consistent with traditions of the fragile and ethereal feminine. When a poetic vision in vaporous mousseline and lace knits her beautiful brows and pouts her curving lips and waxes vastly indignant because an entrée has not the right flavour or because a wine is not of the vintage indicated by the label on the bottle, there is an uneasy stirring in the mental pigeonhole where the observer keeps his illusions; but, after all, the Parisienne, though knowing in matters gastronomic, does not allow that knowledge to destroy her sense of proportion. She may like a good sauce and a good wine, but she insists first of all that a dinner shall be well seasoned with gaiety. She wants to dine where she may wear her smartest frock and see the smartest frock of her dearest foe, where she may see and be seen. She is coquette before she is gourmande, and the restaurants where she can combine both rôles are those to which she accords most enthusiastic favour.
Go out to the Bois on a fine night in June, if pâtés and petticoats divide your allegiance, and eat your dinner in the courtyard of the Château de Madrid or on the terrace at Armenonville. If you are a stranger in Paris the latter will probably be your choice. The fame of Armenonville has travelled far, and it stands for all that Paris means to the visitor who has gained his knowledge of the sorceress city from reading and hearsay. It is in the Bois, this famous restaurant where all the mad, merry world of Europe has dined at one time or another, and, though rivals have come and gone, though restaurants more elaborate and cuisines more perfect have wooed the luxury-loving crowd, Armenonville has held its own, has kept its place as the most brilliantly popular café of Paris—and the most cosmopolitan.
The latest Plaything of the Duchesse d'Uzes