MAISON BEAULIEUAB ÉDITIONS · CUISINE & LETTRESMAISON BEAULIEUAB ÉDITIONS · CUISINE & LETTRESFirst known as the Café de Chartres beneath the arcades of the Palais-Royal, still quivering with the fervor of revolutionary clubs. There Napoleon wooed Josephine, Hugo dined, and Colette kept her private banquette. The Directoire woodwork and painted mirrors have not stirred an inch: it remains the oldest grand table of Paris still standing.
On a feverish winter’s evening beneath the arcades of the Palais-Royal, a famished young general courts destiny and Josephine between rich, truffled reductions.
Beneath the timbered arcades of the Palais-Royal lingered a heady vapor in which spent gunpowder, the amber perfumes of courtesans, and the sovereign fumes of roasting hearths mingled into one. In this month of Brumaire in the Year IV, Paris wept no longer for the Terror; the city was dancing upon a volcano of worthless paper currency, ravenous for ferocious pleasures, tender flesh, and deep, unctuous sauces. A mere pace from the gambling dens where loaded dice rattled, and from hoarse tribunes still haranguing disillusioned sans-culottes, the Café de Chartres erected its painted mirrors like a rampart against the tumult of the age. There, behind heavy draperies of crimson velvet that muffled the clatter of the cobblestones, shimmered a dreamworld of fine gold, stuccoed wainscoting, and crystal chandeliers cut like rough-hewn diamonds.
To cross the swinging doors of this ante-chamber of taste was to step into a well-mannered furnace. The air was laden with intricate aromas: hazelnut butter singing in polished copper, the gamy scent of hung pheasants served on toast, tarragon vinegar whisked into warm sauces, and the musk-scented skin of Directoire ladies, draped in translucent muslins that defied the winter’s bite. Officers wearing briquet sabers rubbed shoulders with newly enriched army contractors, each seeking upon the plate an opulent oblivion or the confirmation of his sudden fortune. Men did not sup here merely for sustenance; they plotted the destiny of Europe between two mouthfuls of veal sweetbreads braised in Madeira.
At the far corner table—the one that commanded an unbroken view of the entire room while remaining sheltered beneath a cornice carved with neoclassical garlands—sat a young man, his back as straight as a steel blade. He wore a dark blue coat frayed at the armholes, boots spattered with mud from the Rue de Beaujolais, and limp, ink-black hair that fell unpowdered and unadorned against his temples. His sallow olive complexion betrayed the lingering fevers of the siege of Toulon and the humiliations of ministerial waiting rooms. It was General Napoleon Bonaparte. Before him, a modest carafe of common red wine and a loaf of white bread with a golden crust lay virtually untouched. His grey eyes, possessing the unwavering fixity of an eagle, never strayed from the cold, mist-shrouded vestibule.
Suddenly, the velvet portière was swept aside in a rustle of imperial fabric. Marie-Josèphe-Rose de Tascher de La Pagerie, whom all Paris already called the widow Beauharnais, made her entrance. A discreet murmur rippled along the button-tufted banquettes. She wore an amaranth cashmere shawl casually draped over a bare shoulder, bearing that languid island smile capable of disarming the most ferocious regicides. As she glided toward the young Corsican officer’s table, her perfume of sandalwood and crushed carnations instantly banished the foul odor of tallow candles. Bonaparte rose in a single bound, his military awkwardness eclipsed by a consuming ardour. In the reverse-painted mirrors adorned with mythological figures, their reflections melted into one: Creole grace had just forged an alliance with absolute ambition.
The maître d’hôtel, sensing by instinct that this singular couple carried the seeds of a historic tempest, signaled his army of white-aproned waiters to join battle. That evening, no republican frugality would sully the damask linen. First came a terrine of young partridge studded with wild pistachios, sealed beneath an amber jelly that trembled in the candlelight, accompanied by warm rolls of rye sourdough. Bonaparte ate with that feverish voracity that so alarmed his companions, slicing his meat with clean, almost surgical strokes, while Josephine nibbled delicately with the tip of her silver fork, listening to him discourse on the tactical placement of artillery pieces with the cadence of a visionary poet.
Then appeared the crown of the supper, a masterpiece of balance coaxed from the embers of the subterranean kitchens: an oxtail slowly stewed in a rich liquor of carrots and old wine, pulled from the bone with the tip of a knife, layered beneath a downy purée of Ratte potatoes and sweet butter, and buried beneath a generous fall of fresh black Périgord truffles. With every forkful, the musk of the black diamond unfurled beneath the vaults, marrying the robust reduction of caramelized juices. Josephine sighed in blissful indulgence, inhaling the velvety Saint-Émilion that the sommelier poured into twist-fluted crystal goblets. The wine’s noble tannins, softened by the limestone slopes of their origin, swathed the wild potency of the braise. “You command armies, General,” she murmured through half-closed eyes, “yet it is this sauce that commands our souls.”
As darkness thickened over the deserted gardens of the Palais-Royal, where falling snow began to dust the statue of Apollo, their confidences fell to a whisper. Between a warm tartlet of caramelized pears and a Marc de Bourgogne served in miniature chalices, Bonaparte placed his dry, sinewy hand over Josephine’s slender fingers. Italy was still only a dream traced upon crumpled staff maps in his coat pocket, yet victory already possessed the flavor of this heady banquet. Nothing, it seemed, could withstand a man capable of planning campaigns as Carême designed his pièces montées: with geometric rigor harnessed to a sensory vertigo.
A few decades later, Jean Véfour would purchase this sanctuary, bestowing upon it his immortal name and its gold-leaf Empire woodwork, yet the spirit of that fateful night would never depart the Beaujolais arcade. George Sand would smoke her cigars leaning against these very wainscots; Victor Hugo would devour his mutton while dreaming of Les Misérables; Colette, descending from her apartment overlooking the galleries, would take her reserved banquette every noon to enjoy a boned pigeon washed down with a venerable vintage. Regimes crumble, thrones fall, and currencies decay, yet beneath the coffered ceilings of Le Grand Véfour, the grand theater of palate and intellect continues to enact the same immortal scene: that of Paris, seated before its culinary genius, sovereignly choosing to reinvent the world.