On Rue Tatin: The Simple Pleasures of Life in a Small French Town. Susan Loomis
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layered vegetable terrines to classic oeufs Florentine. I discovered that the lady across the street, Madame Dancerne, had a huge herb garden, raised lettuces, rabbits and chickens. She became my supermarket, and I got plenty of good cooking lessons from her into the bargain. Everyone called me Suzanne and I became something of a novelty.
For the first two weeks at Edith and Bernard’s I was physically present at the dinner table, but the conversation rolled on too rapidly for me to participate, and I would find myself battling sleep halfway through the meal. No one had any mercy, least of all Edith, who spoke like a mitraillette, or machine gun. About the middle of the third week I responded to something someone at the table had said. Bernard and Edith looked at me and laughed. ‘It’s coming, Suzanne, it’s coming,’ they said.
As the end of my stay approached my spirits drooped. I had come to love the family and this turbulent, fun life. They too were loath to see it end, and offered me a room if I wanted to stay on, and the price of a commuter ticket to Paris. I was tempted, but the train schedule didn’t match my long hours, and besides, I was ready to return to the city.
We said tearful goodbyes – I was part of the family by now, and couldn’t quite imagine how their life would proceed without me. Bernard was relatively mobile in his wheelchair and was now going to the office, which was in the village centre within walking distance. The children would be starting school so Edith would have some time to work. I would re-enter my five-and-a-half-day a week routine.
They made me promise to come visit often.
I was delighted to be back in Paris, in yet another chambre de bonne in the seventeenth arrondissement just over the border from the chic huitieme. It was small but had a tiny balcony. The family who rented it to me were sweet and gave me free use of their shower. School was beginning anew and it was good to see all the stagiaires, each of whom had gone in a separate direction for August.
I stunned everyone with my French. Now the chefs couldn’t tease me because I understood them. I was capable of translating, and couldn’t wait to do it. From living with Edith and Bernard I had picked up a very casual, current French, so that my repartie was rapid, and I felt perfectly comfortable. I knew I could avoid even the worst pitfall. And it came my way during my first translation. One of the students asked about preservatives in food. I turned to the chef to translate, and was just about to ask him about preservatifs, when I caught myself – a preservatif is a condom; produit chimique is the term used to describe food additives, and I remembered it just in time!
That fall a reporter for the New York Times who lived in Paris came to speak at La Varenne. She decided later to do a piece on young Americans who cooked for their living in Paris, and I fell into the category. She arranged a time to meet with all of us at a café, and we had a wonderful time. Later she called me to see if I would like to work for her. Her name was Patricia Wells, and I became her assistant.
I would race to her apartment after work whenever I had a free evening, and do whatever job she’d left for me. My favourite one, and the one she and I still laugh about, was testing a cake called the marjolaine, a stunningly rich confection of layered hazelnut and almond meringue with pastry cream and ganache. I would spend the evening making it in Patricia and her husband Walter’s apartment while they were out to dinner, then leave the finished product on the kitchen counter before going home to fall into bed. Patricia would taste it, make some comments, and I would go back to the drawing board. I think I tested it four times over the course of a couple of weeks. Finally one day Patricia called me. ‘These cakes you leave us are gorgeous – why don’t you ever take a piece for yourself?’
It had never occurred to me to do that. I loved leaving a pristine, perfectly frosted cake in the middle of a clean kitchen. I had sampled all the elements as I cooked, so I knew the flavours. And I honestly had no appetite. I had spent almost a year eating more food than most people eat in ten years, and when my work day was done, my appetite was gone.
The year at La Varenne came smoothly to a close. I passed my final exam – consommé with a garnish of brunoise (vegetables cut in tiny dice), roast beef with watercress, mille-feuille for dessert, all made under the piercingly critical gaze of head chef Fernand Chambrette – and earned my grand diplôme. I was ready to move on, but hated the thought of leaving France. By now, I was a regular visitor at Edith and Bernard’s, I had gotten to know Paris well, I had my favourite markets, bakers, restaurants and pastry shops, where I would do day-long stages, or visits, whenever I could. I couldn’t quite imagine returning to the US, but I couldn’t simply stay on, either. Most of the other stagiaires were leaving, so my base of acquaintances would soon disperse.
I got a call from a woman who was looking for someone to open and cook for a salon de thé. It was to be part of an English-language bookstore, and she wanted the food to be American. I went to be interviewed and landed the job. Whew. I could stay on for at least another year. I had a month before the job began so I went back to the US to visit my family. While there I met my future husband, Michael Loomis.
Tall, lean and achingly handsome, he had been invited to a party to meet my older sister, and I knew that so I stayed clear. But circumstances were such that we couldn’t seem to avoid each other. Before our first date I checked in with my sister who waved her hand and said go for it. Within a month, Michael and I were engaged.
I returned to Paris to begin my job. My bosses – two Parisiennes who had lived in the US for extended periods – showed me the café-bookstore, which was a raw space in the sixth arrondissement, a piece of which was destined to become a kitchen. One of my employers, Odile, turned to me and said, ‘It’s yours, do what you want with it.’
That started a month of hunting out the best appliances and fixtures I could find. It was July and burning hot – my memories of that time are infused with a bright heat, exacerbated by the heat generated by arguing to get everything I needed as I learned the French rules of commerce.
Buying an electric mixer stands out as one of my most memorable lessons. I walked into a kitchen supply store and saw the mixer I wanted, which at that time was hard to find in Paris, high upon a shelf. I asked the vendeuse for it by name, and she said they didn’t carry them. I told her they did, and pointed to it on the shelf. Without turning to look, she said, ‘Ça n’existepas ici’ – ‘That doesn’t exist here.’ I was dumbfounded. I pointed to the shelf again, but she wouldn’t look. I wanted to grab her head and swivel it around, but instead, feeling my face get very hot, I raised my voice and said, ‘Madame, j’insiste. Je veux cette machine, vous l’avez, donnez la moi’ – ‘I insist. I want that machine, you have it, give it to me.’
Startled, she turned, climbed up a ladder, got the machine, and hefted it onto the counter. I examined it, paid for it, and walked out with it under my arm. ‘Au revoir, Madame,’ said the vendeuse with her musical accent. ‘Not likely,’ I thought, but went on my way, hot, drenched and still angry. But victorious. Or at least I felt victorious. I had gotten what I wanted. She undoubtedly felt victorious too. After all, she’d made me suffer. It took me a while to cool off. But when I plugged in my mixer back at the salon de the and made my first batch of brownies I forgot it all, and put the lesson I had learned to good use. I wasn’t raised to argue, raise my voice or object. Doing business in France taught me to do all three.
After choosing ovens and mixers, cook tops and sinks, and watching them be installed, I was ready. I tested my recipes and fed them to my employers and their families. Finally, in early September, we were ready to open. Tout Paris had been invited. I had prepared pans of my mother’s sticky brownies, chocolate chip cookies, spice breads, molasses cookies and other traditional American foods which, at that time, were novelties in Paris.
Opening night was a stunning success, and it began an intensely busy year, as my weeks sped away in a flurry of early-morning shopping at the nearby Marche Saint-Germain, where I became friends with the chicken lady and her pâté-making husband. She delivered chickens, heads, pin feathers and feet attached, whenever I had chicken salad or stew on the menu, and she was always giving and