Out to France
Hoovering over to Le Touquet
Digby Anderson
If you feel like an outing to France for lunch, you'd better hurry. Soon the hordes will be filling the boats and stocking up for their Christmas, which starts early in Advent.
Catch the earliest boat or Hoover from Dover. Hoovers are better. There is less time for the lower-class youths to get drunk and when they do so, because they are sitting down, they tend to be sick over themselves or their friends. The noise of the Hoover also muffles their talk about football, and 'entitlements'; "Ere, what's this Gay-Laussac?'
In Calais, go in the opposite direction to all the signs and take the road down the coast to Boulogne. It is, surprisingly, a not unattractive coast. Stop at Wimereux to buy mussels. The plan is to buy for a late-ish dinner at home in the evening and indeed for tomorrow. The live mussles will keep a couple of days. Park on the front at Bdulogne. Send one detachment to the cheese shop in the town, another to the fish stall by the harbour. Be clear of
WINE AND FOOD
Boulogne within 20 minutes and on the road to Le Touquet for lunch.
But stop at Etaples. It has at least five fish shops or, rather, little markets. There were several different sorts and sizes of oysters, when I was there, five sorts of clams including venus clams and the de- licious dark brown ones, live shrimps, crabs, cockles, lobsters and, perhaps best of all, small whelks and escargots de mer. At other times they must also have razor shells judging by the shells on the coast. The fish is also good: most of it less than London prices and all better quality per franc or pound than most English shops. There are few unusual varieties but some interesting sizes excellent small turbot and brill just right for four or six at 70F a kilo, and large gurnards.
Over the bridge into Le Touquet. The back is still very attractive and though the front was vandalised in the Sixties and has a funny glass water palace, it still has a charm. Park the car near the palace and go up the main steet into the town centre. On your right is a sort of toy shop selling those fireworks which our government and F- work manufacturers have conspired to deny us. The Petards le Tonnerre No.2 certainly justify the instruction to light them and 'se retirer vivement' bii better are the 'Tom Pouce' specially cie- signed for throwing — fifty in a little box and made in Hunan. I haven't the faintest idea if it's legal to bring them back: if not you could let them off on the way back to the Hoover.
A bit further up and turn right to Perard's in the Rue de Metz for lunch. It's a fish shop as well as a restaurant and in the shop they make and bottle fish soup so there are huge and mysterious pipes, churns and boilers for making bisque from crab and other shells and sterilising and packing bottles. It's a real joy to have something interesting to look at while eating lunch. Mr Ladenis announced in his recent book that flowers are essential for the dining table. Rot. There's far too much art nonsense about modern cuisine.
One other chap eating was an elegantly dressed rather impressive elderly lady with a lot of bracelets who was at work sucking the little crab claws, weedling at her winkles, slurping the oysters and spitting out the sandbags in the whelks. How many educated English ladies know how to manage a simple fish on the bone let alone a full plate of fruits de mer in public? The lady was right. The mixed sea food is the best thing in the house, that and the soup de poissons of course. The cuisined fish is not that remarkable. After lunch you buy fish soup for home. The bottled stuff will keep a long time and forms a good basis for a home made fish soup and — perhaps heresy — an astounding risotto, but they also have a daily version on draught that will certainly do well for the evening.
Down to the front, a little air, then into the motor and back to Calais. There, I'm afraid, we are all brought down to the lowest cultural common denominator by our common oppression under our Gov- ernment's vicious anti-wine taxes. Quickly, silently we go through the sordid business of 'getting our allowances'. But then I always find there's nothing like a little humiliation to sharpen the appetite for dinner.
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