After Haute Cuisine
Before arriving in Paris, I wrote to one of my instructors at Le Cordon Bleu and asked a very practical question: where should I eat?
I had spent enough time learning French cooking to become curious about what professional chefs themselves considered worth eating. Not the restaurants tourists were told to visit, not necessarily the places with the longest tasting menus or the most elaborate plates. I wanted to know where a chef would send someone who genuinely loved food.
He gave me two recommendations. One was a bistro. The other was a bouillon.
The bistro was closed for the weekend, which settled the matter.
So, for my last meal in Paris, we went to Bouillon Chartier.
A bouillon is a very different creature from the formal French restaurant many visitors imagine when they think of dining in Paris. The tradition began as inexpensive places serving straightforward food to working people. No ceremony was required. You came to eat.
Chartier had been doing exactly that since the nineteenth century.
I knew it did not take reservations, so my instinct told me to arrive early. The Paris Marathon was taking place that day and several roads were closed. By the time we reached the restaurant, it was already noon.
From the street, things looked surprisingly quiet.
Too quiet.
There were barriers outside and markings on the pavement that seemed to indicate where people were supposed to line up. I followed them around the corner and discovered that the real entrance was at the end of a side passage.
That was when I realized the quiet street frontage had been misleading.
Inside, the dining room was already full.
My husband was still outside paying the taxi driver, but experience has taught me that when a popular restaurant appears to have one table left, philosophical patience is not necessarily a virtue. I went in first.
The room looked as though it had been preserved from another Paris. High ceilings, closely packed tables, waiters moving quickly through the noise in black vests and white aprons. Beside us was a long table where twelve elderly French diners sat in a row, apparently ready for a serious lunch.
A tall waiter said something to me in French and disappeared. I assumed it meant, “Madam, wait here,” although it could equally have meant something completely different.
Eventually another man came over, asked what I presumed was the size of our party, and reluctantly gave us a nearby table once I convinced him that the missing second person really did exist and was on his way in.
Then came the menu.
French only.
We stared at it for a while, pretending that determination might somehow improve our vocabulary. Just as we were about to enlist our phones, the waiter looked at us and smiled.
“English?”
We nodded.
An English menu appeared.
Suddenly everything looked delicious.
As usual, we ordered too much.
The waiter made no attempt to save us from ourselves. He simply wrote our order directly on the paper covering the table. Later I realized that the same scribbled record would also become our bill.
The food arrived quickly. The portions were modest, enough for one person, and there was very little attempt to make anything look important.
No architectural plating. No mysterious dots of sauce. No ingredient placed at an angle because someone had decided horizontal food was no longer fashionable.
Just food.
Simple French food, cooked properly and put on the table.
And it was very good.
When the bill arrived, the average was about €33 per person. After spending time around fine dining in Paris, I had to look twice.
By the time we left, the mystery of the barriers outside had also been solved. The empty-looking area I had seen when we arrived was now holding a queue that folded back on itself several times.
Walking away, I kept thinking about my instructor’s recommendation.
This was not the first time it had happened. In Florence, a chef who had spent years working in Michelin-starred restaurants had also pointed me toward a place that was much simpler than I expected.
Why?
I had gone to culinary school partly because I wanted to understand what happened behind restaurant doors. There I learned to pay attention to precision: the size of a cut, the temperature of a pan, the consistency of a sauce, the timing of each component on a plate. In Paris, that precision could be taken to astonishing levels. A plate might contain very little food and an enormous amount of work.
I admired the skill.
But sitting in Chartier, surrounded by noise, paper tablecloths and plates that made no effort to impress me, I began to wonder whether skill and complexity were really the same thing.
Perhaps the more you know how to do, the less you need to prove that you can do it.
That thought stayed with me.
There is a stage in learning when complexity is exciting. You discover techniques you did not know existed and naturally want to use them. In cooking, you learn another sauce, another method, another way to transform an ingredient. In other parts of life, we do much the same. We accumulate knowledge, vocabulary, experience and methods.
Then, if we keep going, something curious can happen.
We begin taking things away.
Not because we know less, but because we know enough to recognize what is unnecessary.
A simple plate is not necessarily simple to make. There is nowhere for a badly cooked ingredient to hide. A straightforward dish does not have twenty other elements competing for attention. If the food is good, it has to stand on its own.
Perhaps that was what those chefs appreciated.
Not simplicity as the opposite of sophistication, but simplicity that comes after sophistication.
I thought back to some of the elaborate meals I had eaten and some of the techniques I had practised at Le Cordon Bleu. I still loved the craft, the discipline and the imagination behind them. Learning how difficult cooking could be had only increased my respect for good chefs.
But that lunch in Paris added something else.
Technique matters.
So does knowing when to leave it alone.
The next morning, we left Paris early for a long train journey toward Prague. At Gare de l’Est, the city was already awake but not yet in a hurry.
I had arrived in Paris wanting to learn more about cooking.
I left thinking about simplicity.
Perhaps that, too, is part of learning a craft: first discovering everything that can be done, and then slowly discovering what does not need to be.
法國巴黎・烹調人生
網站修訂版
來歐洲之前，我特意問藍帶老師：
如果在巴黎吃飯，有甚麼餐廳值得去︖
在藍帶學了一段時間之後，我已經不太滿足於「哪一家好吃」這種答案。我更好奇的是，一個真正懂法國菜的廚師，自己會去甚麼地方吃。
老師推薦了兩家。
一家是 Bistro，另一家是 Bouillon。
前者週末不營業，於是巴黎最後一頓飯，就落在百年食堂Bouillon Chartier。
我很好奇。
學了那麼多講究刀工、火候、醬汁和擺盤的法國菜，老師最後為甚麼會推薦一家大眾食堂︖
Bouillon 原本就是給普通人吃飯的地方。沒有甚麼隆重儀式，也不需要正襟危坐地吃幾個小時。Chartier 從十九世紀營業至今，主打的仍然是價格平實的傳統法國菜，而且不接受訂座。
我的直覺告訴我：早去為妙。
偏偏當天遇上巴黎馬拉松，很多道路封閉，折騰到中午十二點才到。
遠遠看見大街上的門面沒甚麼人，我還鬆了一又氣。再走近一看，怎麼門前擺著一堆圍欄，地上還畫著排隊路線︖
沿著路線走下去，才發現真正的入又藏在旁邊小巷的盡頭。
我馬上知道不妙。
肥豬還在外面付的士錢，我已經一個箭步跑進去。
餐廳裡早就坐滿了人。
樓底很高，桌子密密麻麻，穿著黑背心、白圍裙的侍應在人群中穿梭。旁邊一張長桌，十二位法國老人整整齊齊坐著，準備開飯。
一位高大的侍應用法文跟我說了幾句，轉身就走。
我猜他的意思大概是：「女士，等一會兒。」
當然，他到底說甚麼，我也不知道。
過了一會兒，另一位像領班的男士走過來，又用法文問了一輪。我靠手指比劃，表示兩位，另外一位真的存在，只是還在外面付車費。
他勉為其難地給了我一張桌子。
接下來，菜單來了。
法文。
研究了半天，仍然沒有甚麼進展，正準備掏出手機翻譯，侍應看著我們笑了一下：
「Anglais︖」
我們立即點頭。
英文菜單送上來之後，忽然甚麼都想吃。
結果跟往常一樣，點多了。
侍應完全沒有阻止我們，只把點的東西直接寫在桌面的紙枱布上。後來才知道，那些潦草的字最後也是我們的帳單。
菜很快就上來了。
每一盤的份量不大，剛好一個人吃。沒有花俏的擺盤，沒有刻意告訴你這道菜有多厲害，就是一道一道很樸實的法國菜。
但是很好吃。
結帳的時候，平均每人三十三歐羅。
剛剛在巴黎看過、吃過那麼多高級料理，看到這個價錢，我也愣了一下。
吃完走出去，才終於明白門又那些圍欄是做甚麼的。剛才還空空的大街，已經排了幾圈人龍。
我一路走，一路在想：
為甚麼藍帶老師會推薦這裡︖
而且這已經不是第一次。
在佛羅倫斯，曾經在米其林餐廳工作多年的廚師，給我的也是類似的答案——不是最華麗、最複雜的餐廳，而是一些看起來很簡單的地方。
為甚麼︖
在藍帶學廚，首先學到的是精準。
一塊蔬菜切多大，鍋子要多少度，醬汁應該去到甚麼濃度，幾種材料甚麼時候放進去，最後怎樣讓一道菜在正確的時間、正確的狀態下出現在客人面前。
到了巴黎，那種精準可以發展得非常華麗。
一個盤子裡也許沒有多少食物，背後卻用了很多工夫。
我很欣賞這些手藝。
正因為自己學過，才知道做到那個程度有多難。
可是坐在 Chartier，看著眼前那些完全沒有打算炫耀自己的菜，我忽然想到另一件事：
懂得很多，是不是就一定要全部做出來︖
人在剛開始學習的時候，很自然會想做「加法」。
多學一種醬汁，就想用︔多學一種技法，也想試。會的東西愈來愈多，盤子裡可以放的東西也愈來愈多。
不只廚藝如此。
我們學知識、學方法、累積經驗，也很容易把「我會甚麼」一樣一樣加上去。
可是再走下去，也許會開始做另一件事：
減。
不是因為懂得少了，而是慢慢知道哪些東西其實不需要。
一道只有幾樣材料的菜，並不一定比較容易。恰恰因為東西少，食材不好、火候不對、調味失準，都沒有地方可以躲。
所以簡單有很多種。
甚麼都不會，可以很簡單。
甚麼都會一點，卻忍不住全部放上去，也很常見。
而有些簡單，是走過複雜之後才回來的。
我想，這大概也是為甚麼那些真正懂廚藝的人，反而會欣賞一盤看起來沒有甚麼了不起的食物。
不是因為技巧不重要。
正好相反。
也許正因為技巧已經在那裡，所以不需要每一次都拿出來證明。
第二天清晨，我們從巴黎東站出發，準備坐近十二個小時的火車去布拉格。
來巴黎的時候，我還在想高級廚藝。
離開的時候，腦子裡留下的，反而是那頓三十三歐羅的午餐。
學一門手藝，最初是知道自己還可以做甚麼。
再往後，也許是慢慢知道，甚麼可以不做。