Lille
The real thing
Gina Thomas
When our Georgian and Victorian forebears got itchy feet they were able to satisfy the urge to see different places by visiting a Panorama. They were all the rage in the 19th century when foreign travel was still expensive and horribly uncomfortable. The public were persuaded that panoramic views provided them with a splendid substi- tute. Such was the enthusiasm that some critics preferred the illusion to the real thing.
Looking at a view of Naples in Leicester Square was, one journal argued, even more pleasant than 'reality with all its abomina- tions of tyranny, licentiousness, poverty and dirt'. Blackwood's Magazine wrote in 1824, `Panoramas are among the happiest con- trivances for saving time and expense in this age of contrivance. What cost a couple of hundred pounds and a half year a centu- ry ago, now costs a shilling and a quarter of an hour . . . The mountain or the sea, the classic vale of the ancient city, is transport- ed to us on the wings of the wind . . . If we have not the waters of the Lake of Geneva, and the bricks and mortar of the little Greek town, tangible by our hands, we have them tangible by the eye — the fullest impression that could be purchased, by our being parched, passported, plundered, starved, and stenched, for 1200 miles west and by south, could not be fuller than the work of Messrs Parker's and Bruford's brushes.'
Walking into the Place du Gendral de Gaulle across the bridge from the spanking new TGV and Eurostar station in Lille makes one feel rather as those armchair travellers must have done. Thanks to the Channel Tunnel you can be in another world in less time than it probably took them to reach the Strand Panorama through the congested streets of London. It may seem strange to extol the velocity of rail travel when we can cross the Atlantic at more than twice the speed of sound. But taking the Eurostar is more akin to hop- ping onto a bus or catching the Tube than any aeroplane journey. So one marvels all the more at being able to relish the solid bourgeois grandeur of a restaurant such as L'Huitriere in the heart of the old town lit- tle more than two hours after leaving Waterloo station. On a bad day it can take almost as long to get from the Isle of Dogs to Ladbroke Grove.
The dining room of L'Huitriere is approached through an inconspicuous door at the back of a fishmonger's-cum-deli- catessen which is a sight in itself, for the walls are splendidly tiled with mosaics of marine and rural scenes, lobsters idle away in tanks and heavy slabs of pâté de foie lie ready for the taking. The food in the restaurant is as good as any you will find in northern France outside the well-known Parisian establishments. It has a distinct regional accent and local products are cun- ningly used to lend an individual flavour. Beer figures in a variety of dishes. They cook salmon in beer, eel fillets are laced with beer vinegar, local cheeses come with beer jelly and there is even a sorbet a la fleur de biere.
The delicate way the waiter skins and fil- lets the contents of the bouillabaisse would probably dismay his less sophisticated
SUMMER WINE AND FOOD
counterparts in Marseille, but L'Huitriere is refined without being in the least preten- tious. It has the style so many French restaurants abroad aspire to with dismal results. Besides a fixed lunch menu at 260 francs the restaurant does more elaborate menus on a theme of one ingredient. When we went, asparagus was on offer in all sorts of tantalising combinations, ranging from a starter of morels with green asparagus to duck foie gras with asparagus vinegar. If you stray away from the lunch menu expect to pay about £50 a head.
It's well worth the treat, but there is no need to spend as much. The centre of Lille is littered with cheaper bistros and brasseries. Belgium being just across the border, moules frites or flammenkuchen are the staple diet here. During the first weekend in September, when Lille cele- brates its major festival, the Grande Braderie, the citizens traditionally indulge in an orgy of mussels and chips. The empty shells are piled up in the streets, as if to boast of the excess.
Aux Moules in the rue de Bethune, one of the busiest shopping streets, has the rep- utation of outdoing its rivals in accumulat- ing the largest pile. It is open from noon to midnight and serves regional dishes and beers in a fresh Art Deco interior buzzing with activity at peak times. You can have lunch here for less than 70 francs before strolling on to the recently restored Musee des Beaux Arts nearby. There ceramics are displayed on the ground floor, sculpture in the basement and the magnificent picture gallery is on the first floor. The museum houses wonderful Flemish altarpieces con- fiscated from the churches of Lille during the Revolution, an important collection of drawings, and treasures such as Donatello's relief of the 'Feast of Herod'. It is well worth travelling here just for that.
One of the joys of a day trip to Lille is that you can walk everywhere from the TGV station. You can wander along the cobbled streets of the old town to the birth- place of Charles de Gaulle in the rue Princesse, now a museum with the bullet- riddled Citroen in which he survived the attempt on his life in 1962 among the prime exhibits; you can marvel at the lavish Flemish baroque architecture of the old exchange building on the main square; you can see enough of the Musee des Beaux Arts to make a point of returning. There's even enough time before catching the train back to London for a quick pot of moules frites on the Place de la Gare in front of the old Parisian Gare du Nord which was brought here brick by brick in 1865.
In 1850 Charles Dickens's journal House- hold Words published an 'Account of an Extraordinary Traveller' called Mr Booley. Having described his globe-trotting adven- tures, Booley admits that his mode of conveyance had been 'the gigantic-moving- panorama'. 'It is', he writes, 'a delightful characteristic of these times, that new and cheap means are continually being devised, for conveying the results of actual experi- ence, to those who are unable to obtain such experiences for themselves, and to bring them within the reach of the people — emphatically of the people.' The same can be said of the Eurostar, except that it offers you the real thing rather than virtual reality.
L'Huitriere: 3 rue des Chats-Bossus; tel: 03 20 55 4 41 Aux Moules: 34 rue de Bethune; tel: 03 20 57 12 46
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