~aventures du louchette flâneurse: 41ème~

December 25th, 2009

A very extravagant Christmas Eve spent on the Rive Gauche at La Coupole, a brasserie that opened in Montparnasse in 1927. The mood was lovely, humming and old-school. A birthday was righteously celebrated with singing and sparklers, our waiter took my camera and photographed the entire restaurant for us, and when someone dropped a large pile of dishes, the room broke out in applause. Incredible Deco mosaic floor, and lobster, crab, mussels, escargot, prawn, and oysters (discovered a new food love).

Apparently Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre were such regulars that when de Beauvoir died, the waitstaff here “formed an honor guard along the street, their white napkins thrown over their left arms.” Fitzgerald, Picasso, Henry Miller, de Beauvoir, Sartre, and Josephine Baker danced in the basement.

As La Coupole was a favorite haunt of Hemingway (and mentioned in A Moveable Feast, I believe), it was only appropriate that we finished the evening at the cozy Bar Hemingway (apparently also often visited by Joyce, Greene, and Sartre) at the astoundingly tacky Ritz Hotel. I can’t say what a cocktail cost, but mine came with a whole tulip dangling from the rim.