LA BRASSIERE LIPP
On New Year’s Day.
At the Brasserie Lipp,
a temple of tradition,
there’s no use phoning for a table,
they won’t reserve one.
You’ll have to wait like everyone else,
It’s part of the Lipp ritual.
Smoking a pipe, cigar
or using a cell phone is forbidden.
Lipp is a place to converse,
to read and even to write.
Hemingway’s favorite lunch spot,
where he wrote his pre-war dispatches.
Lipp was frequented by poets
Paul Verlaine and Guillaume Apollinaire.
Marc Chagall, Albert Camus, Jean Genet,
Michèle Morgan, Françoise Sagan,
Simone Signoret with Yves Montand
were all regular habitués.
Must one dress formal for breakfast
in Paris on New Year’s day morning?
There is Brasserie Lipp,
151 Boulevard Saint-Germain,
with modest prices, where the waiters
wear stiffly starched shirts
and carefully pressed tuxedos
of black and satin,
sense that we are American.
One pulls out a small table
with great fanfare,
so we may sit
with our backs against the wall,
though it would be better if I sat facing her,
so that I could watch her every expression.
There was another underdressed couple
in from the snow at 11 o’clock,
sitting on the wall in the corner
talking quietly,
the couple who earlier
walked about on the abandoned street
under storm-clouds releasing snow,
the Boulevard St. Germaine,
where the snow collected
only an hour ago.
On the corner
of Rue du Bac,
empty wine bottles
were piled 12-feet high,
to be collected tomorrow.
Established in 1880,
Le Lipp, its art deco interior,
Belle Epoque ceramics
complemented by mosaic panels
and decorative mirrors,
slightly slanted so that the patrons
can see what was happening
in every part of the main room.
Elements of the Gothic
and fin de siècle,
create an art deco assemblage
decorated with tiled murals,
Veronese-style painted ceilings,
and purple moleskin seating.
From hushed tones,
I discover the other couple in the room
are Americans too.
Who else would be out in such poor weather
in Paris? Certainly not Parisians.
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“Chicago,” he answers.
“And you?”
“But of course,
we’re from California.”
They were walking in the noiseless snow
this morning and found the only restaurant
open on New Year’s morning.
The Lipp menu
lists Alsatian specialties:
Cervelat remoulade, Choucroute Lipp,
served with ‘blond’ beer,
a rustic dish of sauerkraut
with sausages, pork and ham.
Preferred dishes include:
Cervelas sausage and potato salad,
(pommes a l’huile),
Hareng Bismark (pickled Baltic herring)
Pied de Porc Farci Grillé
(grilled pigs trotters),
for desert an exquisite Millefeuille,
made up of three layers of puff pastry
(pâte feuilletée), alternating
with two layers of pastry cream
(crème pâtissière).
She wants to return to their hotel by cab,
the romance of being alone together
walking the streets of Paris has faded.
We ordered oeuves de salmon for breakfast.
He works for Homeland Security,
of the new government in America.
She attends a nameless Community College,
that causes her embarrassment.
A former military man, he told me,
brought a compass with him to find his way back.
Even I knew that north
was always at the top of the page.
Poetry by Stephen Barile
Stephen Barile is an award-winning poet from Fresno, California, Pushcart Prize nominee, and former member of the Fresno Poet’s Association. He attended Fresno Pacific University, and CSU Fresno. His poems have been anthologized, published in numerous journals, both print and on-line. He taught writing at Madera College, and CSU Fresno.
