Brasserie Lipp

[Jonathan Day]

I'm guessing that the issue for Lipp is less "salad vs meat" than the size of the minimum order they will countenance. If you walked in and ordered nothing but a dish of oeufs en gelée (8 euros, if I read that menu correctly) and a glass of wine, you are occupying a table that might otherwise consume a main course; you're getting bread and butter and waiter service; etc. It's not a "salad" as such, but it's not giving them the revenue they want.

I've sometimes wondered what would happen in one of the 3-star gastronomic temples if a customer simply ordered a dish of asparagus from the carte, a cup of coffee and nothing else. How many amuse-gueules, friandises and mignardises would be served? How much bread and butter? My guess is that, at most of them, your asparagus and coffee would be served with aplomb, but you would be charged the price of a set menu.

[Jonathan Day]

In the Eastern suburb of Saint-Maur, I even know a café that refuses to serve a glass of cold water on demand. Now they do get away with it and they never serve a glass of water, but they're not supposed to do it.

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Interesting. Our 3 children consume a great deal of water in the course of a meal -- either drinking it or spilling it. At restaurants from simple cafés to 3-stars, all across France, we've asked for a pitcher of tap water (eau du robinet). We've never been turned down. We'll avoid cafés in St Maur from henceforth!

[bleudauvergne]

Good lord, the salads on that menu are pricey already! I cannot imagine not being able to order a 16€ salad (for example the salade de crabe et faiselle), especially for lunch! They're pushing the limits!

[Ptipois]

Perhaps, but to whom? With all due respect to diner and public accommodation access that was a feature of the civil rights movement here in the US not that long ago in history, how many of us are eager to patronize a restaurant that doesn't want us when there are other options? The thought of going to a restaurant looking for a fight doesn't sit well with my needs when I choose to eat out.

Well, it all depends on when the start fights and how much you have been warned.

I was mentioning the legal check in an abstract way. Just like you, my choice is not to patronize restaurants of that sort. There are so many others. If more people did the same thing, the situation would be much nicer. I never go to Lipp, for instance. Once they served me a stale sole meunière with mushy potatoes and the waiter was looking at me down his nose, and that was it for ever. The trouble with Lipp is that it's horribly hyped, for ages it has been patronized by politicians, journalists, public persons obsessed about what seat exactly they were going to get in order to check their popularity level and how remote they were from common mortals. This usually doesn't go with good eating. Some simple troquets in the 12e or 15e serve better fare. If I want to eat at a nice shiny brasserie I prefer Balzar, La Lorraine, L'Européen, but to me Lipp is the epitome of vulgarity. I just avoid it.

I'm glad to have a Parisian confirm my sense of the evolution in salads in France. I've often felt betrayed. For a long time, I was a stauch francophile who believed the French could do no wrong at the table. I stood with my back literally and figuratively to California and sought to style my tastes to those of the French who in turn double crossed me by adapting the chef's salad of greens, meats and cheese to their own lunch. Perhaps I forgot to mention that in the thread about French insular attitudes towards food. 

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Well, I do understand your situation. But francophilia, as any philia is bound to be, is a sure way to be disappointed someday. Being French, but having spent lots of time away from France, I consider myself a "francophile" too. It takes some courage to be able to love French culture in spite of all its flaws once you get to know it deep down, but isn't it the same with every other country in the world?

One word still: French brasserie and cafés owners are a distinct breed with their own special character. I wouldn't depict them as typical of the French character (fortunately!), though they are so much associated with the "couleur locale". There is a paradox here, and one should be aware of it.

[Ptipois]

Interesting.  Our 3 children consume a great deal of water in the course of a meal -- either drinking it or spilling it.  At restaurants from simple cafés to 3-stars, all across France, we've asked for a pitcher of tap water (eau du robinet).  We've never been turned down. We'll avoid cafés in St Maur from henceforth!

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You're very unlikely to be ever turned down. I was only mentioning a very ancient French law: the obligation, in a café, to give a glass of water for free to anyone who asks for it. It is not only a law, it is a tradition linked to hospitality. So you can imagine how it feels like for a French person to see that sign "Pas de verre d'eau". It's just like reading "We're big fat jerks and proud of it too" signs pasted all over the café.

It's only one café in Saint-Maur, but I sure remember it. I was just about to order coffee there and refrained from it as soon as I read the sign, not only one sign, but six or seven of them pasted here and there. I said nothing and walked out.

[Ptipois]

I'm guessing that the issue for Lipp is less "salad vs meat" than the size of the minimum order they will countenance.  If you walked in and ordered nothing but a dish of oeufs en gelée (8 euros, if I read that menu correctly) and a glass of wine, you are occupying a table that might otherwise consume a main course; you're getting bread and butter and waiter service; etc.  It's

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Restaurant customers have, or should have, a spontaneous notion of how little they can order, and it usually works fine that way. The kind of restaurant or café they're sitting in provides all the visual codes: you don't order the same way in a café, a brasserie, a bar, a restaurant, a bistrot, etc. It is quite common to lunch in company and beggingly turn to your waiter, explaining that you have a migraine or a hangover or whatever, and they will let you get away with even a tiny green salad. It's all in the protocol.

This is why I mentioned the kind of salad as an important element: if Lipp serves only one kind of salad, i.e. a few leaves of lettuce with dressing, meant to go with steak-frites or tartare or before the cheese course, then it is perfectly understandable that they won't let anyone, in a normal situation, order it as a meal. But if they do serve "salades composées", that are a much more substantial affair, their requirement doesn't make much sense. This time it's not in the protocol, it's in the context.

[bleudauvergne]

Interesting.  Our 3 children consume a great deal of water in the course of a meal -- either drinking it or spilling it.  At restaurants from simple cafés to 3-stars, all across France, we've asked for a pitcher of tap water (eau du robinet).  We've never been turned down. We'll avoid cafés in St Maur from henceforth!

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You're very unlikely to be ever turned down. I was only mentioning a very ancient French law: the obligation, in a café, to give a glass of water for free to anyone who asks for it. It is not only a law, it is a tradition linked to hospitality. So you can imagine how it feels like for a French person to see that sign "Pas de verre d'eau". It's just like reading "We're big fat jerks and proud of it too" signs pasted all over the café.

It's only one café in Saint-Maur, but I sure remember it. I was just about to order coffee there and refrained from it as soon as I read the sign, not only one sign, but six or seven of them pasted here and there. I said nothing and walked out.

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This is very interesting because it confirms something in my mind. My French in-laws, during our visit to the US this summer, their first time, made it a point to mention that they loved the nice tall glass of water presented in most restaurants once we were seated. I now have a bit more insight about why they were so pleased by that.

Is it legal after all to say 'no salad as a meal'?

[Ptipois]

Is it legal after all to say 'no salad as a meal'?

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Honestly, I don't know, I just suspect it. But again, the type of salad involved is the most meaningful aspect. It would, I believe, be perfectly legal to refuse to serve a small green salad as a meal because it is considered a side dish. I do not believe it would be legal to refuse to serve a salade composée as a meal, or as the main element of a meal. So I think the matter can be discussed, but at least the snappy way the interdiction is formulated sure leads to confusion.

[Bux]

Well, it all depends on when the start fights and how much you have been warned.

. . . .

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Nothing more more subjective than when to pick one's battles or how to wage their wars. Even more to the point is the relativity of it all. You're on target when you say the "trouble with Lipp is that it's horribly hyped." The way and extent to which we reject a place we stumbled into by accident is unlike the scorn we heap on the place that came too highly recommended, but you really set my thinking in a totally different direction when you go on to say "for ages it has been patronized by politicians, journalists, public persons obsessed about what seat exactly they were going to get in order to check their popularity level and how remote they were from common mortals." Were I a food or restaurant critic, which I'm not, I'd be tempted to heap some scorn on such a place and perhaps urge and expect gastronomes to avoid it. However, if I were a gastronomic journalist or historian, I might have an interest in visiting such an esptablishment and even documenting its place. Having dismissed Lipp unconsciously for precisely the reasons you mention, I now find myself curious to collect the memory of having eaten in such a place as if I recognize there's a gap in my knowledge base. Sometimes the reason for eating is more than a good meal. Sometimes it is less. Lipp may be the epitome of vulgarity, but vulgarity, at times, is like a train wreck.

Neither France or the French are likely to disappoint me someday, although of course they already disappoint me from time to time. I used to say "I love France, but not the French," somewhat facetiously. Of course I love the myth. The reality of a nation is far too changing in nature to ever commit to on a lifelong basis and the French people are far too diverse to love or loathe as a group, but I have my private heros and villains to pull out when I need to make a point. Are cafe and brasserie owners/waiters a breed in France, or just Paris? I think of them as not so unrelated to NY luncheonette owners, workers and countermen of a certain vintage. Thanks for a post that made me reflect and think.

[molto e]

Had their message been also in French this would not have been as offensive, but I do wish to state again the food served to us was good bistro food. I can not say that about the food at Ze Kitchen Gallerie which was offensive and I shall post about that now

[bleudauvergne]

From the photos it struck me as pretty honest food. When it's well done, what more can you ask?

[Ptipois]

Were I a food or restaurant critic, which I'm not, I'd be tempted to heap some scorn on such a place and perhaps urge and expect gastronomes to avoid it.

Right, but there are stuffy snobs amongst restaurant critics too, which explains why the truth about Lipp will be relatively seldom printed. That does happen, though.

However, if I were a gastronomic journalist or historian, I might have an interest in visiting such an esptablishment and even documenting its place. Having dismissed Lipp unconsciously for precisely the reasons you mention, I now find myself curious to collect the memory of having eaten in such a place as if I recognize there's a gap in my knowledge base. Sometimes the reason for eating is more than a good meal. Sometimes it is less. Lipp may be the epitome of vulgarity, but vulgarity, at times, is like a train wreck.

Perfectly right you are. Lipp's interest is mostly anthropological.

Are cafe and brasserie owners/waiters a breed in France, or just Paris? I think of them as not so unrelated to NY luncheonette owners, workers and countermen of a certain vintage. Thanks for a post that made me reflect and think.

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You're very welcome.

As for the café and brasserie owners, I am not going to go into more anthropological speculation. (The Auvergnats or rather the Rouergats coming up to Paris in the XIXth century at the beginning of "exode rural" and creating the framework of Paris cafés; the Rouergats, being more successful at keeping money, did better than the Auvergnats seemingly, anyway most of the remaining cafés in Paris belong to people of Rouergat origin, the Costes being the most famous. Brasseries were rather Alsatian domain. There, I went into it.) It is just that yes, there is a particular frame of mind associated with the café owners, and it doesn't often evoke smiles, welcoming gestures, generosity and benevolence. Parisians know it instinctly and just don't tickle the sleeping dog. It is part of our national folklore as frites and the Mannekenpis are part of Brussel's. It is not exactly a breed, of course, I'd rather describe it at an ethnic group holding a very definite field of activity, with all the cultural and human aspects associated to that.

[Ptipois]

Had their message been also in French this would not have been as offensive, but I do wish to state again the food served to us was good bistro food. I can not say that about the food at Ze Kitchen Gallerie which was  offensive and I shall post about that now

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One can perfectly have a nice meal at Lipp's, it's just that the place has many flaws, including unreliable quality. I'm glad you had good bistrot food there. I'll add, it had better be good...

I am very interested by your experience at Ze Kitchen Gallery. I have been disappointed more than once there. There were definite touches of trying too hard.

Edited August 29, 2005 by Ptipois (log)