Fay Maschler visits Emmanuel Macron’s favourite restaurant

Behind every great statesman is a favourite restaurant fuelling them. Our critic gets a top table at Emmanuel Macron’s regular haunt, La Rotonde in Paris
Positively presidential: Emmanuel Macron is a regular at La Rotonde
GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/GETTY
Fay Maschler22 June 2017

It was seven years ago that Gérard Tafanel — who with his brother Serge owns the Montparnasse brasserie La Rotonde — said to one of his regular customers: “You will be president one day.” That customer, described by the waiters as “respectful, kind and polite” was the now 39-year-old Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron, leader of La République en Marche! and — as of May 14 — the youngest ever President of France. By virtue of this position, it is perhaps worth noting, he is also Co-Prince of Andorra.

That his wife Brigitte Trogneux is 24 years older is, of course, riveting and encouraging, but it is Macron’s choice of where to eat at least once a week — presumably not any more — that sends me hotfoot on the Eurostar to Paris to have dinner at La Rotonde.

I am with my sister Beth, a graduate of La Sorbonne, and my daughter Alice, who astonishes me by suddenly breaking into confident colloquial French. Alice is anti-Brexit.

We make a booking for 7.30pm, the latest time our hotel says a reservation can be taken. La Rotonde, with its striking Art Deco signage curving around the corner of Boulevard Montparnasse where it meets Boulevard Raspail, is un vrai brasserie, where meals are served from morning to night. Its crack troop of staff can handle whoever presents themselves, including local intelligentsia, walk-ins, starry-eyed tourists and the new centrist leader of France, who arrived with an entourage of staff and supporters to celebrate until 2am an historic victory.

Unlike other significant Paris brasseries — the beautiful engine rooms of dining such as La Coupole, Bofinger and Balzar — La Rotonde has avoided being swallowed in the great global maw of Group Flo, the organisation that also runs five restaurants at Disneyland Paris.

Executive chef Franck Gonnet has been running the kitchen for the past 17 years. The “serveurs” dressed in dark suits worn with a white napkin draped over one arm, look as if they have been handed down this very important job from their fathers and their fathers before them.

It is a balmy evening and we are shown to a table at the edge of the ground floor where it meets the deep terrace and red velvet seating gives way to red basket-weave outdoor chairs. Inside, honey-coloured light falls from golden lampshades with deep red fringes on to the womb-like comfort of the banquettes.

Macron may be accused of being ‘caviar Left’ but this brasserie serves the people

Opposite is a newspaper kiosk. The cover of Charlie Hebdo shows a gruesome picture of Theresa May with a severed head. As ever, Johnny Hallyday, sadly very ill, fronts a glossy. The French show greater fidelity to their pop stars than to their politicians, although the editor of Paris Match recently said: “Macron on the cover can easily lift our sales by 10 per cent.”

All in good time — there is a rhythm of service here that nothing can disturb. Menus are brought. On the cover is a painting of a woman with hat, pearls, gloves, a glass of wine and an ashtray — not a Modigliani, I think, although reproductions of his paintings decorate the interior.

During the inter-war years La Rotonde, founded by Victor Libion in 1911, was a haven for impoverished artists and writers, who often paid for meals with their creativity.

Macron and his wife are said to favour shellfish and fish — healthy food. The remarkably slender Brigitte looks to follow a diet of maybe one oyster a day. None of us want oysters but the seafood platters that include a selection start at €29.50 for one and go up to €118.50 for two, three or four to share.

The set-price three-course menu at €46 can be broken down into separately ordered courses at €13.50, €28 and €10.50 but financial wizards can work out that going the whole hog, ordering starter, main course and dessert “saves” you €6. With the current exchange rate more or less matching the pound with the euro, it strikes us as expensive and the 50 cent increments point to a general creeping up.

My choice of dishes comes from Les Classiques à Toute Heure. In place of asparagus, which I only later discover was on the Macron celebration menu, I instinctively lean towards green and good for you and go for haricots verts frais extra fins au xérès et balsamique. They are indeed a heap of very fine green beans of the kind you seemingly only find in France. A squiggle on the plate made with sherry and balsamic vinegars is just right and just enough to provide seasoning.

Again unprompted, cleaving to the Macron diet I order grilled turbot (label rouge) with Béarnaise. With one boiled potato on the plate, this is a whopping €48 and whatever red label means it doesn’t translate into a distinctive slice of fish. Wilton’s in St James’s probably do it better but on looking it up I see wild turbot there is priced at £55.

Hugo Desnoyer, one of the city’s best butchers and restaurant suppliers, is credited with the beef and lamb; eggs are described as bio, and some bio wines wind up the reasonably priced wine list. La Rotonde clearly moves with the times.

Stretching a point to its pretentious limit, Alice’s main course of fillet of sea bass with confit lemon and wild rice could be said to illustrate the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, for whom Macron worked. “The ability to think at the same time two ideas that are apparently opposed” is deemed a virtue — and, you could add, especially for a politician in a country given to demonstrations.

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Desserts are a definite strong suit and while we are obviously tempted by pistachio macaron with raspberry compôte, the sight of devilishly dark shiny hot chocolate sauce being poured on to profiteroles filled with vanilla ice cream guides us to share that — to our utter satisfaction.

Trying to come up with the London equivalent to La Rotonde, I remember encountering Theresa May in Bellamy’s in Mayfair before she became leader. Her Majesty the Queen favours Bellamy’s and actually so do I, but the menu is inspired by the brasseries of France and Belgium.

When Peter Langan was alive, his Langan’s Brasserie, where the wonderfully eclectic selection of paintings included some provided by artist friends who were allowed to “eat down” their payment, might have qualified.

The glory that was The Café Royal with its interesting clientele has been lost in its conversion into a hotel. Christopher Corbin and Jeremy King’s Brasserie Zedel is, ironically, probably the closest we come to La Rotonde, but I have yet to see a politician eating there.

If you can judge a man by the restaurant he chooses, then Emmanuel Macron scores again. I doubt that I’m the first to observe that Montparnasse (Mount Parnassus) in Greek mythology is sacred to the Greek gods Dionysus, Apollo and the Muses. He may be accused by some of being “caviar Left” — their version of champagne socialism — but a long-established brasserie serves the people, offers dining solutions at different levels, works long hours and exhibits a belief in the past as potent as the one for the future. Alice remains firmly anti-Brexit.

La Rotonde, 105 Boulevard du Montparnasse, 75006 +33 43 26 48 26

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