“Send him to L’ami Louis” came the retort from chef patron Marc Renzland a quarter of a century ago. I was in the basement of his pistachio green and stellar restaurant, Chez Max, off the Fulham Road after a busy lunch service.
Chez Max served the best French bourgeois cooking in London at that time… and quite possibly since.
Both restaurant and chef are tragically no longer with us, but my goodness they burnt super nova bright and they will always sparkle in my gustatory memory.
Marc was the co-owner of this establishment with his twin sibling and my great friend, noshanista and towering taster Max Renzland.
I was off to Paris for a few autumnal days R&R on my tod, and wanted a few “special recommendations” to try.“Special “ was certainly what I got from L’ami Louis
Rue de Vertbois is a narrow, nondescript street sandwiched between Rue Turbigo and Place de la République.
I know Baron Haussmann did a lot for the Right Bank, but his coffee mug must have covered this bit of Paris on his map and he forgot to do anything with it.
Towards the end of the street, on the left hand side, is a brown painted restaurant squeezed in between a couple of run-down buildings. Red and white gingham curtains hang in the window and above, a sign proclaiming the name L’ami Louis in faded gold paint.
On squeezing through tiny swing doors and entering a room no wider than a slam door train carriage, you are immediately transported to Paris of the 1930’s & 40’s.
Not in a Ernest Hemingway’s, Scott Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker dancing on the table glamorous and decadent old way. No, this was far humbler and more workmanlike.
You could have heard Piaf or Charles Trenet crooning on a crystal wireless set and Maigret should have been drawing on his pipe in the corner. Jack-booted occupiers could have come in anytime to ask for “your papers! “
The dark brown leathery walls had been varnished and re-varnished to seal in the nicotine smoke from a half century of gauloise, gitanes and pipe tobacco. I was later to realise that it was more likely to have been Monte Cristo cigar smoke than proletariat fags.
The slender compartment was lit with barely shaded tungsten bulbs which gave the whole room the dramatic feel of a Cartier-Bresson photograph.
Dark wooden luggage racks ran along the walls on both sides further adding to the train carriage feel, and the walls were punctuated with faded and patinated reflection-less mirrors. Any one of them would not have looked out of place in Miss Havisham’s downstairs loo. A Black and white Geometric patterned mosaic floor, chipped and scuffed from years of footfall completed the look. It was too classy be the cafe in ‘Allo ‘Allo and too old school French not to be.
A polite “bonsoir” came from one of the older, white-jacketed waiters. He took my coat and threw it with indifference on the luggage rack above my head. Insouciance is the name of the game here.
L’ami Louis plays the same trick on one’s perceptions that Harry’s Bar in Venice does. To maximise a tiny space, all furniture is approximately 20% smaller than standard furniture. The tables are narrower, the chairs shorter, Paris goblets look like Burgunders and intimacy with strangers is inevitable. One feels larger than normal and being cramped comes as standard.
A pre-war Godin cast iron stove serves to keep the room hot and does nothing to stop you feeling that you may just be in a Jean Renoir film. Crisp napery and a magnificent piece monte of fruits exotic and local acted as a wall of colour and titillation at the far (we’ll not that far given the Lilliputian dimensions of this carriage) end. This was far more luxe than I had initially realised.
A menu arrived, hand written in a uniquely Gallic script, with a just a few dishes listed for each course.
I like short menus. They almost always imply the freshest and best ingredients and they also diminish excessive choice. I have always found choice overrated. It’s confusing and increases the chance of eliciting regret at not choosing something else.
The food here is quite something else. The dimensions of the restaurant may be bijou, but the food is gargantuan in size and quality. Foie Gras cut to the dimensions of London Stock brick. Three bricks as a starter. With a Jenga arrangement of crispy baguette batons. A dozen snails that look as if they’d been on steroid therapy for 6 months, sizzling as if retrieved from a Colebrookdale blast furnace.
Quails, confit de canard, chops of mutton or veal are also in the hit parade of treats.
A two man team lug a cote de boef whilst a fork lift truck should, for health and safety reasons, be employed to transport a perfectly roasted Poulet des Landes to table.
Inverted cones of pommes allumettes, the height of a small child arrive swaddled in starched napkin cones. You might just munch your way through the summit of this chip mountain, when they are whisked away and a fresh, hot cone is bought to you.
Their pommes béarnaise is a wedding cake of my beloved tuber with confetti of a bulb of garlic and a small holding’s annual crop of parsley . Not that size is at the expense of the sublimest and draw dropping quality. Only the best ingredients are selected and then whittled down to the best of those best ingredients.
There is no restaurant that I have been to where the chef has the confidence or chutzpah to serve a copper of girolles, turned in a little butter as a starter.
I have never eaten just a saucepan of peas, then asked for another whilst ignoring the brace of pigeons it came with.
For the brave or foolhardy willing to take in a dessert, the freshest pile of fruits and a milkmaid’s pale of the creamiest cru cream is bought to table. One has to be careful here. This is not man v food, though it may feel like it. It’s not a greed fest. The point of this is the sheer celebration of perfect raw ingredients cooked as simply as possible on or in a wood fired stove, in a kitchen smaller than most students’ bedsits. Generosity comes as standard.
A wine list is always an indication of clientele financial firepower. The tome bought to me was impressive. Page after page of 1st growth clarets, Grand Cru Burgundies, noble wines from Rhône and Alsace… and so the roll call of vinous treats went on… and on.
Hidden in plain sight was the clientele of L’ami Louise and on closer inspection it dawned on me that of course it was the very, very well heeled.
But the staff don’t care much if you are a president, movie mogul or your 8 figure inheritance had just come through. They treat everyone with detached professionalism. €1000 Euro bottles of wine are served in Paris goblets. No Riedel or Zalto here. Just thick rimmed glasses from the cash ‘n carry.
To date I’ve never seen a decanter at L’ami Louis, nor will I ever.The bill for this food fest is as gargantuan as the portion size and for this reason alone some people don’t “get” this place. “For the same money I could eat at any 3 star restaurant”. And indeed you could, but whilst over-refined, over-worked food bearing no resemblance to its source ingredients and tweezered onto or into smoking vessels has a place (I think), if you wish to savour “France profonde”,then I can think of no better place to do it.
My children love it. They have shared many portions of “chicken ‘n Chips” here while their fat spattered father grins over a piece of game on countless occasions.
L’ami Louis is more famous than when I went all those years ago. It is foodie heaven to a certain type of eater, and the insouciant waiters get more and more indifferent as the price for eating here gets larger and larger. My children love it. They have shared many portions of “chicken ‘n Chips” here while their fat spattered father grins over a piece of game on countless occasions.
I suppose you pays yer money and you takes yer choice. To misquote Henry Newbolt: “pay up, pay up and eat the game”.
The Francophile Gourmand 