BoBo déjeuner à Bofinger

Monsieur L, the inveterate lotus-eater that he is, was enthusing over the idea of daily lunches at the Brasserie Bofinger while growing old together in Paris. We would sit side by side on the end banquette in the grandiose dining room under the magnificent glass dome, with an encompassing view of all the tables occupied by other bourgeois, but notably less bohemian, elderly Parisians [although this opulent main salon of Bofinger’s usually seats more tourists and provinciaux, but all the more interesting of a mix to observe].

Brasserie Bofinger, on a small street off the Place de la Bastille, is just a short walk away from Monsieur L’s apartment. One is guided there by the gilded winged génie de la Bastille [the Genius of Liberty] perched high up on top of the July Column, a memorial to the Trois Glorieuses, three days of street fighting in July, 1830 that dethroned Charles X and installed the Bourgeois Monarchy under the anglo-styled Louis-Philippe. [Scènes de la vie de Bohème by Henri Murger was published in 1845, and thus was born a new breed of BoBo artists, like the bourgeois Courbet who led a wildly bohemian lifestyle.] And by 1864, Bofinger was serving its hearty Alsatian specialties to such radical socialists and fiery artistes and famished northern travellers disembarking at the Gare de Lyon and Gare d’Austerlitz.

Over the years, it has always been one of our first picks to bring clients, visiting friends and family for lunch or dinner, sharing large platters of fresh seafood choucroute. The service is brisk but friendly, and we feel pampered all cozied up along the banquette while being part of an ornate theatrical set animated by other well-fleshed out characters. One can’t help but feel more french when installed amidst the sumptuous decor, partaking in the traditional cuisine served by quintessential brasserie waiters to the bon et haute bourgeois, and even the odd aristocratic, diners.

Monsieur L himself comes from a bon bourgeois family from the Alsace on his mother’s side. I am from a similar background but of a much different culture. We met in a neutral country far from our respective homelands, and we bonded together as outsiders in that cold anglo world. We are unambitious artists, stubborn and free-spirited in our own ways, and we have led meandering bohemian lives converging in France every so often. Lately though the idea of cultural tradition, comforting rituals and solidity of base appeals again and we visualize grafting a more habitual lifestyle onto our natural hedonistic tendencies.

Hence, daily lunching at the venerable Bofinger, sitting side by side with the other regulars, often distinguished older men on their own, reading the papers between bites, looking up once in a while to check out who is being seated and who is leaving. If we don’t order dessert, our doting waiter will slide us an extra plate of complimentary cookies to linger over our coffees, and when he is not busy, will come over and update us on the famous personages who have dined there recently. We will in turn fill him in on that day’s manifestation happening around the Bastille that we hope is over by the time we leave so to avoid circumventing the blockades that are inevitably in place on our route home for a well-deserved sieste.

And so passes another day for a couple of aging BoBos suspended in time between an ultimate empirical Parisian existence and the repressed inkling that beyond the doors of the warm and sentimental cocoon that is Bofinger, the world is careening along at a pace and to a place we have no desire to grasp.