Taki
Unlike Geoffrey Wheatcroft — no stranger to Spectator readers, nor to people who know the difference between Sabrina and Miranda Guinness — who when asked to write about his favourite restaurant or dish chooses places and snacks so exotic they tend to epater les bourgeois, my choice of my favourite summer restaurant is made on the basis of where I've been happiest at during all those too short summer weeks when one has the choice of dining indoors or out. The Closerie des Lilas, 171 Boule- vard de Montparnasse, Paris 14eme, to be exact, is my choice. It was also the favourite meeting place of Gide, Verlaine, Trotsky, and Hemingway. When I first hit Paris in the late Fifties, Papa's presence could still be felt there. There is a blue tent outside and a very Parisian bar and an excellent pianist inside. The decor is like that of most brasseries of the Left Bank. There are mahogany chairs, red velvet banquettes, and waiters who dress and act like waiters used to. The food is not the Closerie's strong point, but who, after all, goes to a restaurant in the summer for food? At 3 a.m. one can still get a very good steak tartare and a cold beer a pression, and in my youth I used to sit there until morning dreaming whether the table I was sitting at was the one that Hemingway and Ford Madox Ford occu- pied when Papa asked Ford what consti- tutes a gentleman back in 1921:
'Why, a gentleman is a man who is not a cad.'
'Is Ezra a gentleman?'
'Ezra? Of course not, he's an American.'
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