I’ve spent the week working my way through the copy-edited manuscript of my new book, The Paris Novel, which will come out next year. Coming to the end is bittersweet: I love these characters, have enjoyed every minute I’ve spent with them, and find that I’m very sorry to let them go.
For some reason it made me go back to my first memoir, Tender at the Bone. And as I read the passage below I began thinking about my first restaurant job.
In the book I called the place where I learned to be a waitress “L’Escargot.” But in real life it was, La Seine, and it was one of the most extraordinary restaurants I’ve ever encountered.
It was a dream of a place, intent on offering the best of everything to a city unprepared to dine on Limoges or drink wine from Baccarat goblets (which all broke in the first month). As I remember it – can this be true?- the silver chandelier had once belonged to the Prince of Wales. The chef was, as the owner proudly announced, “a real Frenchman” who had worked with the legendary Henri Charpentier (the inventor of crepes Suzettes and author of a wonderful autobiography, Life a la Henri). The grill man, another pro, came from Detroit’s London Chop House. The minimum wage at the time was $1 an hour (which is what I earned at my other job shelving books in the University library), but I took home $35 from every 5-hour shift at La Seine. No wonder I fell in love with restaurants.
Here’s the menu: that Dover Sole at $6.25, by the way, was the real thing. An entire fish, which we boned at the table. We also mixed the “salad Caesar for two” at the table and set the Cherries Jubilee alarmingly on fire. (I once managed to torch the curtains.)
