Americans and English are the mainstay of the Ritz, save during the tea hour, when the crowd becomes cosmopolitan. At the Café Paillard one finds the diners of the Madrid a clique aristocratic, mondain, and chiefly French. The Café de Paris repeats the story of Armenonville, though without the picturesque woodland setting and the attractive al fresco features. The two cafés have the same clientèle, the same atmosphere,—even the same proprietor. He is a subject for congratulation, this proprietor. The famous old Café Foyot, under the shadow of the Luxembourg, is his too, and the Café de Paris of Trouville, and the Helder at Nice,—all, save the Foyot, tremendously popular with the crowd vowed to extravagance and folly, and, as a result of that popularity, all phenomenally successful from a financial point of view. The Foyot also has a success, but of a different kind.
Naturally, the man who manages these restaurants is rich. His private establishments are handsome, he spends money lavishly, but—and here is the secret of his success—he is first of all a restaurateur, eternally vigilant, neglecting no detail, proud of his metier, glorying in his triumphs. He could buy, twice over, many of his patrons, yet one will see him moving about among his hurrying waiters, suggesting, prompting, reprimanding, seeing all things, adjusting all difficulties, pouring oil on all troubled waters.
He stops for a moment beside an old patron.
"Ah, Comte X——, bon soir."
His eyes rest upon the fish that has been placed before the count, and his face clouds. A motion of his hand brings an alarmed waiter.
"You serve the sole so, to Monsieur le Comte? You think perhaps that the sole au vin blanc should have that air? Take it away."
"Pardon, M'sieu. You understand,—a moment more or less and a sauce is spoiled. I am grieved that you should wait, but one dines well or one has not dined at all. In a moment you shall have a fish that will be as it should be. You have always the same burgundy, yes? I, too, am of your opinion. It is the best in our cellars."
He hurries away, soft-stepping, alert, diplomatic, napkin over arm, bowing deferentially here and there. A millionaire they say—but certainly a restaurant-keeper who knows his business, such a one as France can produce and Paris can appreciate.
There is another restaurateur in Paris whose name should not be left out of any discussion of Parisian dining. A few years ago he would have had no right to a place in this frivolous chapter, for though his restaurant was famous it was not smart. The gourmet might dine there—or rather lunch there—but the woman of fashion never found her way down to the little old building whose battered sign of a silver tower proclaimed that here was the Tour d'Argent, the café over which presided the inimitable Frederic, Roi des Canards, last of the old school of French cooks and hosts.
Even now the modish Parisienne does not go to the Tour d'Argent, but Americans have taken up the old café, and pretty women and elegant frocks are now no strangers in the Tour d'Argent, though one could not call the place fashionable.