INNS AND OLD-TIME CUISINE

This is the time when all our corners of France are invaded by crowds of tourists. From all sides, they have seen tempting promises coming to them. Does not the smallest inn claim to offer both the height of comfort and good food?

In the past, if the good old French inn lacked comfort, at least most often, one ate well, sometimes even superiorly. Of course, there were a few exceptions here and there, but they were quite rare. Many of our old inns proudly preserved the tradition of good food.

I knew one, in the Morvan, which had been founded by a famous chef under the First Empire; his descendants had always tried to preserve for their inn the culinary renown it had enjoyed for so many years. In the South, I remember that there was one where an old and marvelous spit dating from Louis XIV was still in use, with an incomparable cadence for cooking game, and where one would have felt dishonored if one had roasted partridges and woodcocks in front of a fire other than a vine fire. The owner of the place, a marvelous cook, operated it himself. He had retired after making his fortune with an English lord whose table was renowned on the other side of the strait. He prided himself on scrupulously following the principles of old French cuisine. He was a perfect artist.

For alas! quite a few years now, this very French art of eating well, despite the laudable efforts of some who strive to preserve it, has been lost. Recently, at the Académie delphinale, M. le comte de Miribel made himself, with great wit, the interpreter of those who lament living in an era when one no longer knows how to eat. Today, what I dare to call "cosmopolitan ratatouille", enjoyed in the four corners of the world, has replaced or almost replaced, because fortunately there are some laudable exceptions, the good food of yesteryear. It is really understandable that we hear moans in this Dauphiné land where the culinary art was so honored.

It must be said, as an excuse for our time, that life is exorbitantly expensive and that very good food has become a ruinous luxury. I carefully keep in my archives a cookbook written by the hand of one of my ancestors and containing a series of old and famous recipes. I admit that if they had to be made now we would spend extravagant sums. I am therefore forced to close, with great regret, this culinary manual, which Brillat-Savarin would not have disowned!

ANDRÉ MÉVIL