M. Delouche attempted to defend his position, but his voice was mostly inaudible. All you could make out was “logic,” “safeguard,” “continuity.”
“But what about the staff?” Lorenzo demanded. “What of their continuity?”
“Les serveurs! Les serveurs!” The cry went up from around the room as we pounded the tables and hit cutlery against glasses. The waiters, their eyes fixed studiously on the floor or on the tables, continued to serve.
“Why can’t this place be different from other places bought by Flo?” another protester said, rising to his feet. “We all know what Flo does. How many people here are former clients of La Coupole?”
“Anciens! Anciens!” we chanted in unison, pounding the tables some more, meaning that we used to go to La Coupole and didn’t anymore.
We were building up to an impressive pitch of indignation, but at that point the waiters began to serve the dinners that we had ordered while we were waiting to begin our protest, and this weakened the revolutionary spirit a little. There was, I sensed, a flaw in our strategy: If you take over a restaurant as an act of protest and then order dinner at the restaurant, what you have actually done is gone to the restaurant and had dinner, since a restaurant is, by definition, always occupied, by its diners. Having come to say that you just won’t take it anymore, you have to add sheepishly that you will take it, au point and with bearnaise sauce. It was as if at the Boston Tea Party the patriots had boarded the ship, bought up all the boxes of tea, and then brewed them.
Nonetheless we carried on. We loudly criticized the fish; we angrily demanded a meeting with Bucher; we rose and offered memories of the Balzar, and vowed that we would fight for the Balzar yet to be.
We were hoping for a little mediatisation, and we got it. Pieces about the protest appeared in the magazine Marianne and in Le Figaro. Then, unfortunately, Jean-Pierre Quelin, the food critic of Le Monde, who is a kind of Jonathan Yardley of French restaurant writing, weighed in, announcing that the food at the Balzar had always been terrible—but that he had eaten there since the Flo Group took over, and now it was even worse, so to hell with everybody. Lorenzo thought that this might actually be a useful article for our cause: By defining the Balzar radical fringe, Quelin was allowing us to occupy the rational center.
To the surprise of my American self, Bucher sent back word that he would be delighted to meet with our association, to have breakfast with what amounted to our Directorate at the Balzar itself. At nine on a Saturday morning we assembled at the Cafe Sorbon, across the street and then trooped over to meet the enemy. Bucher turned out to be a simple round Alsatian, wearing an open shirt, and he spoke with the guttural accent of Alsace. We all shook hands—he had a couple of his PR people sitting behind him at a second table—and then Lorenzo Valentin, with quiet dignity, began his speech.
“We are here,” he said, “as representatives of our association, to argue that your regime is not compatible with the spirit of the Balzar. This is not meant to be offensive to you—”
“Not at all,” Bucher said politely.
“But without denying your right of property, we claim for ourselves a kind of right of usage.” And from that premise Valentin carefully outlined our thesis that what mattered was the esprit of the Balzar and that the esprit of the Flo Group was, on the evidence, not compatible with that esprit we were defending. We asked him to keep the Balzar an autonomous brasserie, outside the Flo Group proper, and to make no changes in the staff, in the decor, or in the spirit of the place. After stating these demands, Lorenzo looked at him squarely.
I don’t think any of us were prepared for what happened next. Bucher looked us over, up and down the table. “No problem,” he said, a friendly, gap-toothed smile creasing his face. “No problem. Tell me, my friends, why would I want to change something that is working so well right now, something that works so effectively? I bought the Balzar because it’s the crown jewel of Parisian brasseries. I bought the Balzar because I love it. What motive would I have to want it to be different? I’m here because if I weren’t, McDonald’s would be—and that would be too bad. I sincerely think that we are defending the same thing.”
Our committee exchanged glances. Lorenzo pressed his point. “It’s not just the cuisine,” he said. “It’s something more. A certain relaxation, the feeling of time suspended, the spirit of a place. You see, five hundred and fifty people have already joined Les Amis du Balzar.”
Bucher nodded emphatically. “I know. You are to be congratulated,” he said. “What an accomplishment!” After some more conversation about the cooking—he had brought out the chef de cuisine, who was understandably upset about the piece in Le Monde—he said, “I am sixty years old. I give you a guarantee that I will keep the Balzar as it is. This wasn’t a good buy for me. My accountants advised against it. My analysts advised against it. My heart and my soul told me to do it, and they’re with you. A restaurant this small—it makes no sense for my chain. A hundred covers. It makes no sense for me except as the jewel in the crown of my Parisian brasseries, whose quality and values I’m going to defend.”
We mumbled something and, after more handshaking, withdrew to the sidewalk. We had not anticipated the strategic advantage to Bucher of total, enthusiastic assent. We wanted to save the steak au poivre on the oval plate and the waiter serving it, but you couldn’t argue with the man when he pointed to the steak, the plate, and the waiter and said nothings changed. (Thierry, when he heard of our breakfast with Bucher, said, “It is the old technique of the kings of France: Treat your worst enemy like your best friend.”)
I did not doubt that Bucher was being perfectly sincere, as far as it went, and that in his case as-far-as-it-went went as far it could. The Balzar would stay the same until it changed. The waiters seem encouraged by our actions. When I go to the Balzar now, Thierry, bringing a coupe champagne, slips by and, under his breath, makes a toast: “A la sante de I’association—to the health of the association!” We repeat the toast, under our breaths. It is like being in the resistance. (But when M. Delouche comes over, we shake his hand too. Perhaps that is also like being in the resistance.)
Les Amis du Balzar has sent an eloquent new letter to Bucher, written by Lorenzo Valentin, and describing the objet de nos preoccupations: that no dish will come from a centralized kitchen and that there will be real autonomy for the staff, and real autonomy in the management. My Parisian self is prepared to defend the Balzar to the end, whatever it takes. My American self suspects that the Balzar will stay the same, and then it will change, and that we will love it as long as we can.
Alice in Paris
Not long ago, in the brown dawn light of the western Paris suburbs, three Americans could be seen taking a mildly illicit walk through the Rungis wholesale food market. The three Americans—the California chef Alice Waters, the vegetable scholar Antoine Jacobsohn, and I—all had something on their minds, and all were in a heightened emotional state that had its origins in something more than the very early hour and the very chilly weather.