CHAMPAGNE AND FOIE GRAS
My very first taste of Foie Gras
copyright Michael Safdiah 2000

My first important visit to Europe was with ‘The Pierres’ a.k.a. ‘Pierre Deux’. For the information of those of you who may not know, Peter Levec and Pierre Moulin. They were an openly gay couple who partnered four decades ago, always seemed to be in love, sold the highest quality antiques, and created a beautiful, dignified Provençal world of fashion and style. They were also my friends.

They were famous and at the top of their field. Everything they did was done with a quiet and elegant country French manner. They had shops all around the country, and were well known in the best circles, excuse the expression. I learned a lot from them in the early days of The Black Sheep.

They lived as a couple, had befriended me and decided that I should experience part of my first major visit to France with them. That was a once in a lifetime offer. I bought the seat on Air France the very next day, and made my arrangements. We planned to travel together for awhile, and then I would take off on my own to revisit Burgundy and the south.

Our first stop was Paris. The plane had arrived very early in the morning, and I was in no mood to sleep. I’d had some red wine when we took off and found four seats across so I could stretch out. I slept, so was well rested when we landed. It was a sunny morning, very light haze in the sky. Wide awake, I took a walk, found a café where I bought some of their version of morning coffee, and a slab of bread smeared with sweet rich creamy butter, called a ‘tartine’ because the tarts of Paris used to eat them as snacks. It was as though I’d never had butter before. My odyssey had begun. I took a bag of fresh croissants from a boulangerie with me and went walking. The city was still just waking up, my favorite time of day here in New York, too.

Here was a city where every morning the streets belched water from the river to rinse down the gutters and let the pigeons wash and play. The first time you see this it’s startling, especially if you aren’t prepared for it. Bursting from every corner around these pale stone buildings were red and yellow flowers in bloom. I saw workmen painstakingly repairing the intricate mosaic of cobblestones on the streets to hide any repairs. At home we have pot holes. Voila.

At night everywhere the city put on a new face, the lights so artistically placed so as to show every intricate detail of a landmark or square. ‘City of light’ they call it. It sure was. You could feel the energy of its coming back to life after the winter.

Paris was ready for this country boy, I knew she’d had years to prepare for little me, years of tourists, conquerors and travelers, and I was prepared to be impressed, but not easily. In fact I was bowled over, I really was.

I wasn’t ready for the intricate decorations on so many of the buildings, the ordered almost uniformity of the architecture, so unlike the willy-nilly of New York. I saw at once that it’s a city that is organized to preserve itself, and to take care of its treasures, unlike my home, which is always touting itself as ‘the best’. I wonder if we don’t shout it too much. I’ll take New Yorkers over the Parisians, however. Much more real.

The April weather had settled on the city and the boys were two completely transformed people when I imagine them back in New York. They seemed lighter, more youthful and Pete definitely had some more mischief in him. Boys indeed, and it felt good to see them this way. We'd go out for a drink, and when I needed to relieve myself, no pissoir in sight, Pierre, always dignified normally, suggested the curb, with a wink, assuring me it was a la mode to do that here in Paris. So this is what they mean by ‘Paris in the Springtime’.

Thrilled to be able to show off the city they loved, and at having a youthful novice to show it off to, they took me to see the sights, the Saturday morning flea market, Bois du Bologne, the Louvre, the bistros at Les Halles, sidewalk café’s and one very special evening at Le Bernardin, then a Michelin two-star, where I had the best poached turbot I ever had in my life. I still keep trying to duplicate it. It was the era when everyone was using beurre blanc sauces and this was the best I’d ever had. Little did I realize at the time that I was in the presence of culinary greatness, but that was the way it was with The Pierres, they lived comfortably in that world, and took it in stride. They were so at home in Paris, I wondered why they’d ever bother with New York. As my mentors, they determined that some of it would rub off on me.

They allowed me inside of a very private part of The World of Pierre Deux. They were indeed business partners, sharing decisions jointly, and they were also a loving couple. They would scrap sometimes, of course, but always supportive. In them, I also saw my parents, over half a century together, and still so much in love, and yet still keeping one another going through lovingly irritating one another. Saturday morning at the flea market it was Peter's turn to be slow, and to have difficulty walking and keeping up, and Pierre would have none of it, urging him, impatiently, to keep up and not lag behind. It was the following day, however, that I recall especially. Madame Sylvie was a very old widow with a large apartment on the Avenue Saxe. She had invited us to dinner and it was understood that the boys wanted to buy some of her very rare and excellent pieces of furniture from her collection, She had fallen on hard times, needed money and was selling off her possessions, a little at a time. It was sad. I see this survival strategy in many friends of mine who have become ill, and now in my own life too. At that time I still had no clue that I’d been infected.

We picked up some Champagne at a local food shop, a cluttered affair packed with all kinds of fascinating edibles, and walked through the brisk, fragrant spring evening to arrive at her apartment in time to find her in her tiny immaculate blue and white tiled kitchen, preparing our dinner. She was painstakingly toasting bread slices, bending her frail frame over a tiny Beaux Arts gas-fired black iron toaster.

I had a chance to look around. There were large dark pieces - armoires, beautifully carved. These were the treasures The Pierres had come to evaluate, and hopefully to buy one or two. There was a dry, musky scent to the air, and the scale of her cramped dim apartment contrasted with the furniture, as though they had been moved to here from a larger more generously proportioned place.

Doilies and cloths covered many of the surfaces, there was the faint scent of furniture wax. The boys had mentioned that she was ‘tombe’ - fallen. It was clear she had lived a better life than she now was enduring, but Sylvie was all class.

The champagne was served, and I was already starving, as we hadn’t had the time to stop off at a charcuiterie for me to get a snack before dinner. Previously filling that empty hole in my stomach was a habit I developed which always made it easier for me to have better table manners and to not eat too much when I was the guest at dinner. The exception was the great dinners and wine tastings back in New York. I learned to line my stomach and not let the incredible wines they served distort my good judgment. My love of fine Burgundy and my collection of grand cru Bordeaux are a result of my having been privileged to be on those guest lists.

When Mme. Sylvie brought the tray of warm toasts, she also smilingly offered us a large ‘bloc’ of perfect Foie Gras. It was the real thing, I knew it was a treasure. It’s the liver of a specially raised and over-fed goose, poached gently, pressed in a mold, and sliced. It costs a fortune and it ranks high on the list of very rare and fine French foods. While she was out of the room, I protested to Pierre that I couldn’t eat that -- it was inhumane to treat those poor animals thusly, and I would NOT be a party to such an atrocity. Up on my Animal Rights soap box now, I’m describing how they’re force-fed ‘till their livers swell, get diseased, and become a delicacy, etc, etc. In short, was becoming a bore.

"Shhh! Shut up, she’s spent all her money to entertain us, and you’ll embarrass her!"

How they endured me, so outspoken and crude, I will never know, and I’ll always be grateful. I think they forgave my youth. I cringe when I think of myself back then. I am sure I amused them, in some loving way. Sylvie must have overheard as she arrived with more toasts, and offered me yet more Champagne. I was already tipsy as it was. She had a wonderful twinkle in her eye, and a perfect sense of humor for an ancient Parisiènne. She is pouring my wine. I loved her.

"They love to eat, Michel, do not worry, cherie, they beg for more, you should see! These geese are not abused animals, oh no! Not at all. I lived on a farm. We raised them, they are treated well. They get all the walnuts they want because they want them etc. etc"

I was just drunk and weak enough to believe her. Crumbling, I agreed to sacrifice my ethics to avoid breaking an old lady’s heart, and agreed to taste. (remember this moment, dear reader)

"So okay, one bite: But only a little"

I swear to you, I melted when I tasted it. I was off on yet another tasting adventure. Savoring and concentrating as deeply as I was able, that texture, the aroma, unctuous, rich, velvety, mysterious and just slightly warmed by the toasts which she never stopped delivering. This couldn’t really be liver, could it? It’s way too subtle, too ‘something else’. Almost like butter. So elusive, the way that things are when everyone raves about a thing, and you wonder what the fuss is all about, and then you discover, they were right. Maybe raising geese that way was a wrong thing, but then that goose did not die in vain, because I thanked heaven for it’s having made me such a happy boy.

I am sure you are wanting me to describe foie now, but like a truffle, it is beyond the capability of my pathetic words to do so. It is all at once an experience of texture, taste and aroma. Every sense was being massaged in the softest and yet intense way I ever had. You have to try it yourself.

Everyone has such glorious praises about Paris, and of course I had prepared myself to be cynical. Paris won. Which meant that I won as well. They really have it together - that city is a national treasure. Too bad we don’t think of our cities like that.

The rest of our dinner included a perfect ‘poulet rôti’ with wonderful pommes au beurre and flageolets, baby spring beans just in season and an apple ‘gallette’. I wondered aloud how she had managed in such a tiny kitchen, Pierre explained that she had bought them at a local family food shop called a traiteur. Excellent take away food is easily bought at traiteurs in neighborhoods all over Paris.

I was totally seduced by the entire experience, and I thank them all for that, now wherever they all are. I know the boys are in heaven, still together, and Sylvie, well I heard that she passed away several years after we met.. I recall seeing several of her pieces arriving over the next few years at the Pierre Deux Bleeker Street store, all refurbished, the drabness gone, now alive and beaming with that special waxing technique the boys perfected.

Holidays are the busiest times at The Black Sheep, or were, and one of the treats I would always buy for myself as a reward for exhausting myself and slaving for other people’s holidays at the expense of my own, was a chunk of fresh Foie from my friend Ariane Daguin, at D’Artagnan. It’s the best you can get here in the states. I’d ration tiny taste-treats to myself every so often, make it last a week or a little more. No matter how often I have it, however, I will never be able to taste it without bringing back the memory of that evening chez Sylvie.