In 1996, when the French restaurateur Jean-Paul Bucher announced he was buying the great Parisian brasserie Bofinger, in a narrow lane just off the Place de la Bastille, the regular customers reacted furiously. There was nothing remarkable about this. Customers usually react furiously whenever Bucher announces he is buying a Parisian brasserie. In a city which has turned the pursuit of civic pride into an art form, its great brasseries are regarded not merely as restaurants but as grand historic symbols as rich in heritage as any museum or opera house. They are temples to the French way of food which must surely never be allowed to come under the control of bean counters and marketing men. Despite this, over a 30-year period, Bucher has purchased nearly a dozen in the French capital for his Flo restaurant group, including famous names like La Coupole and Terminus Nord.
Bucher was, and still is, regarded with suspicion, even though very little seems to change at these places under his ownership - save, perhaps, that they are spruced up and service becomes slicker. Nevertheless, perhaps the doubts over the future of Bofinger (pronounced bow-fahn-jay, with a soft 'j') were understandable. At the grand old age of 134, it lays reasonable claim to being the very father of the Parisian brasserie. It was opened in 1864 by FrÀdÀric Bofinger, a refugee from war-torn Alsace on France's north-eastern border with Germany. The first Bofinger was tiny: little more than a bar that served draught beers - it was the first establishment in Paris to do so - and charcuterie. It soon became fashionable and has remained that way, as it has expanded and grown, through four different owners, including a stint under one of the Rothschild family.
Today it occupies almost the entirety of the rue de la Bastille, its brilliant red awnings decorated with an over sized gold 'B' making it look a little like a galleon about to set sail. Inside it is a confection of dark polished wood, shining brass and comfortable banquettes. The whole of the interior - including the deliciously Victorian urinals in the basement - is now a protected national monument. But the crowning glory is the intricate glass dome above the central dining room. 'Everybody asks to sit in here,' says Jean-Luc Blanlot, Bofinger's director. 'People book weeks ahead to be able to sit beneath it.' Upstairs there is the rather more rustic Hansi room, named after the Alsatian artist whose gloweringly Teutonic landscapes decorate its walls, and a series of other wood panelled salons and private rooms. Bofinger seats 300. Each day a staff of around 100 - 30 of them in the kitchen - serve 800 diners. 'This is one of the important things about a brasserie,' M. Blanlot says. 'It must always be busy.'
As to the food, it is drawn straight from the French brasserie hymnal and done just about as well as it can be done. 'We serve 80 orders of soupe a l'oignon every evening, and each week we use 90 kilos of foie gras,' says M. Blanlot. But there are two dishes, he says, which are key to the idea of the brasserie in general, and Bofinger in particular. The first is the fruits de mer: they serve six different types of oyster at Bofinger, all of which are kept on display on a stall which, by tradition and convenience, stands outside on the pavement, a symbol of the seriousness with which the place it guards approaches its food. There are also lobsters and mussels, scallops and langoustine, available by themselves or on vast, ice-laden platters rising to Le Royal Bofinger at £60 for two.
'The other dish, because M. Bofinger was Alsatian, is the choucroute. This must always be on the menu. Here we serve 100 platefuls of choucroute a day.' Choucroute, a statement of Alsatian identity on a plate, is a sturdy dish of sauerkraut laden with cured and boiled meats: smoked sausage, ham knuckles, belly pork. Only the hungry need apply. 'The Bofinger choucroute recipe has not been written down by me,' says chef Patrice Maccrez, who has been in the brasserie's kitchens for 17 years and head chef for 10. 'It was taught to me by the previous chef, who was from Alsace.'
Like all the great Parisian brasseries Bofinger gets its share of the tourist trade. But, perhaps because of its location tucked away down a side street, it has never become a captive of that trade, unlike, say, La Coupole (now generally regarded as a joint only for out of towners). Instead it has a reputation as a place where French writers, academics and politicians like to meet; almost every French president and prime minister of modern times has eaten here, and regularly. (The day I visited the family of the late FranÀois Mitterand was due that evening en masse.) Does M. Blanlot have to warn his waiters to be discreet about the conversations they might hear over the tables? 'I do not have to tell them,' he says. 'They have been here for so long - 10, 20, 25 years - that they already know.' Naturally the only two world-famous French entertainers - Maurice Chevalier and Johnny Halliday - have also eaten here. Apparently Halliday's hairdresser has his salon across the road, which may or may not be an added attraction. (Gene Kelly, the genius behind An American in Paris, also once ate here.)
I first ate at Bofinger only seven or eight years ago (before it was purchased for the Flo group) when I managed to get a table beneath the glass dome for a Saturday night, courtesy of a powerful hotel concierge who made the booking for me. There is always a fear, when visiting a history-laden, landmark restaurant for the first time, that it will somehow be a parody of itself; a flimsy theme park of a place which has lost touch with its own traditions. It was clear to me from that first meal beneath the dome, however, that Bofinger is still very much a living restaurant. It has remained that way through each subsequent meal. Returning recently it was clear that, while ownership may have changed and time moved on, Bofinger continues to be what it has always been: the classic Parisian brasserie.
Brasserie tacks
Brasserie Bofinger
7 rue de la Bastille, Paris.
Tel 0033 1 42 72 87 82.
Bon viveurs
Jacques Chirac
Lionel Jospin
FranÀois Mitterand
Johnny Halliday
Gene Kelly
Madonna
Steven Spielberg
Burt Lancaster
What to eat
Oysters
Choucroute
La fameuse Andouillette
What to drink
Alsatian GewÀrztraminer or Riesling
The bill
Reasonable. The three-course set menu is around £18.
What to say
I have always loved sauerkraut.
What not to say
Why don't you get that Philippe Starck to give the interior a modernist work over?
