The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Eater

Jean Didier sits at the wheel of his bright-orange Lancia, resting briefly, composing mind and stomach. It is noon Friday. He is in Valence, a pleasant town halfway between Lyons and Avignon. To his right are the immaculate stucco walls and the big oaken front door of Pic, one of the greatest restaurants in the world. He has really been eating since Monday. Now, on the fifth day, duty calls again, but he isn't hungry.

Didier is a professional eater. A French professional eater, to make matters worse. The peculiar trade he exercises takes him several hundred times a year into the temples of gastronomy, the fabulous dining places that most ordinary mortals only dream about. For Didier, they are the stuff of routine, like middle-income houses for door-to-door salesmen. Not only does he have the opportunity to eat like a prince every day; he is expected to. It is his job to ingest the most exquisite creations of the best cooks on the face of the earth. It is as if ... as if you were employed by a harem of the most beautiful and desirable women you can imagine, all of them lusting after you, all of them expecting some action right now. You've got to perform; you've got to get it up (the appetite, of course). The image occurs to Didier when he has been eating too much and has to start eating again. Delicious torture.

He feels the numbing anguish of satiety as he sits in his parked car. He has already been spotted, he knows. The Lancia Spider isn't exactly a discreet car in the first place, and when it is bright orange, the top restaurateurs in France instinctively snap to attention, because it means the Guide Kléber has arrived. Didier is founder, editor in chief, guiding genius and still the number-one eater of the Kléber, the blood rival of the famous old Guide Michelin. Both are offspring of publicity-conscious tire companies, but the Michelin had enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the restaurant-guide business in France since its first publication in 1900. Then, in 1954, Didier founded his company's guide and has been steadily eating into (pardon) the mighty Michelin's lead ever since.

Didier sighs, slides out from behind the wheel, carefully locks up, squares his shoulders and marches into the restaurant. Within seconds, there is some more goddamn champagne.

It sounds ridiculous--it is ridiculous--that a gourmet can become so jaded, so surfeited by good things that he inwardly winces at the appearance of a bottle of fine champagne, but such are the dynamics of Didier's life. He has been drinking fine champagne, great Burgundies and sublime digestifs since Monday morning. Not to mention all the food that accompanied them. Now, as he walks into the beautiful, flower-laden dining room, past the respectfully smiling maître d'hôtel and the respectfully inclining waiters, into the welcoming arms of Jacques and Suzanne Pic--"Mais, quelle surprise, Monsieur Didier, et quel plaisir"--his athletic digestive tract is stalled, his appetite extinguished. Pic makes a quick imperious gesture, mutters a few words sotto voce to Alex, his sommelier, and within seconds, a bottle of Billecart-Salmon has appeared on the corner table by the picture window, nestling snugly in a silver bucket, surrounded by a crackling sea of tiny ice chips. A man of impulse, Pic has chosen a rosé champagne, even though he knows full well that most gourmets and food snobs disdain all rosé wines. But he has confidence in Billecart-Salmon's magic. Didier smiles graciously, sips--it is chilly, dry, refreshing, the color of an onion's outer skin--and almost immediately falls to discussing with Monsieur Pic the composition of his lunch menu. It is the professional reflex of the eating trade. As the moments pass, as the delectable possibilities flash past his mind's eye--a young guinea hen, perhaps, or an orgy of truffles in a flaky pastry shell, or a lobster, or maybe a stuffed pigeon, or a saddle of lamb--the champagne begins its subversive work, tickling his guts, building the base of yet another nascent euphoria. Didier feels his stomach juices coursing again. His appetite is coming to life. At length, after much scholarly examination and comparison, Monsieur Pic and he agree on a menu that will offer him the chance to judge a wide range of the specialties that, naturally, Pic himself will prepare:

Fisherman's salad (lobster, scallops, crayfish tails and green beans in a vinegary mayonnaise)

Feuilleté bohémienne (truffles and foie gras in a flaky pastry shell, topped with a Périgueux sauce)

Filet of sea bass with caviar, with a champagne sauce

Artichoke hearts with baby asparagus tips, accompanied by a light hollandaise sauce

Saffroned veal sweetbreads on a bed of fresh spinach

Cold breast of duckling cooked with raspberry vinegar, served with fresh peas and cucumber mousse

Turbot with fresh morel mushrooms

Salmon filet with leeks

Fricassée of lamb with basil

Cheeses and desserts

Pic suggests that a small filet steak might be indicated after the lamb, but Didier doesn't feel he needs any beef. The menu seems good enough as it is. He takes a sip of champagne, nibbles on a grilled almond and waits. He is feeling better. Luckily, that's the way it usually happens with his meals.

Didier began his eating trip (he calls it a tournée) at 6:30 Monday morning, wheeling south out of Paris on the Auto-route du Sud, heading toward Lyons, France's third-largest city and its traditional capital of gastronomy. He breaks up his tournées by regions and subregions of France, following a pre-established calendar that by year's end will have taken him into virtually every corner of the country. The point of each trip, and each meal, is to double-check restaurants' quality against the rating he has given them in his guide: a crowned red rooster (The Best Restaurants in France), a crowned black rooster (Great Restaurants, Comfortable Surroundings), a crowned stewpot (Great Restaurants, Simpler Surroundings) and uncrowned roosters or stewpots (Fine Restaurants). If he finds them better, or worse, he will change the symbol in the next edition. Naturally, it is physically impossible for one man to try all the restaurants of a given area (he has regional correspondents and inspectors for that), but Didier feels duty-bound to visit the best ones every year. This time he is striking at the center, the best of the best. As always, his secret hope is to find a chef so serious, a meal so superb, that he can make another promotion to his top category, the coq rouge couronné, the Kléber's equivalent of the Michelin's three stars. The recital that follows is the story of a professional eater's week of work.

Day One

Cramped in his little car, his head just barely clearing the roof, his eyes large and liquid behind his oversized hornrims, Didier bears no resemblance whatsoever to the cartoon image of a full-time trencherman. Tall at 6'1", he is also remarkably trim, almost slender at 170 pounds. There is a certain vague similarity to French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Didier is happy to attribute his freedom from obesity to a nervous character and a fast-acting digestive tract sometimes aided by pills. Smoking a pack of cigarettes a day also helps keep his weight down, he admits. It is curious that many French professional gourmets are heavy smokers, in spite of the presumed damage to their palates. They hold on to cigarettes by a kind of desperate instinct, for fear of ballooning without them. Times have changed. The terrorism of fashion spares no one: Even career eaters want to appear svelte nowadays. But none of the great French chefs, and very few of the lesser ones, are smokers.

"I like cooks," Didier says. "They are artisans. They work with their hearts." Didier enjoys talking and falls into long and involved exposition of his reflections, presented in didactic fashion.

"Cooks are not commercial people," he goes on. "They are respectable. They are people with roots in the peasantry, just like the food they prepare. Contrary to what most people believe, French cooking is for people with modest purses. It is the cooking of shepherds and vineyard laborers. French cooking is simple. Once it becomes a cuisine de spectacle, I am against it. It is a waste of money and it is false."

It is 11:45. Didier leaves the freeway at the wine town of Mâcon and strikes off southeast toward his first stop, the hamlet of Thoissey. For weeks, he has been eating lightly in Paris. Now, as he approaches the restaurant called Le Chapon Fin (crowned black rooster, two stars in the Michelin), his gastric juices are flowing in anticipation.

"It's decided," he says. "No overindulging. No drinking too much. Everything balanced. No mixing. This being said," he continues, "I really could use a little drink right now."

He means wine, naturally, which in (continued on page 160) Long-Distance Eater (continued from page 154) France is classified as a food and a tonic for the body. "I never drink alcohol--only wine," the French will say, and then down two, three or four quarts a day.

As the Lancia crunches over the gravel, a white-coated waiter peers curiously out through the glass door, then abruptly disappears into the depths of the building.

"We've been spotted," says Didier in his deep bass voice. He reaches into the pocket of his blazer and pops two Sulfarlems. These tiny pills, hardly bigger than matchheads, are one of the secret weapons of the eating establishment. Acting on the liver, they excite and advance the flow of bile, as an aid to digestion. Didier and his colleagues swallow Sulfarlems the way athletes guzzle Gatorade. He locks up and strolls into the Chapon Fin. He is feeling good, eager to start.

Didier is met at the threshold by Pierre Maringue, the sommelier and second in authority in the restaurant's chain of command, who is smiling the quizzical, half-apprehensive smile common to most restaurateurs at the arrival (almost always unannounced) of the Kléber. Maringue regrets that his father-in-law and boss, Paul Blanc, who founded the inn back in 1932, is in Spain for a short vacation. But he knows where to find the champagne. With a swift, practiced hand, he twists the cork off a bottle of Laurent Perrier Crémant, and the wine announces itself with a polite, almost noiseless exhalation of carbon dioxide. As if on cue, Didier and Maringue fall into learned discourse about the quality of last year's crop of Beaujolais. It is already good, they conclude, and is quickly getting better. For the ritual analysis of the menu, Maringue sends a waiter to fetch the chef, Gilbert Broyer. Broyer appears in his white blouse, white apron and white chef's hat, refuses a glass of champagne ("I'm working") and immediately begins ticking off what he considers most recommendable that day. At length, Didier and he agree on a plan of attack: quenelles de brocket (a mousse of pike with a creamy white wine sauce), frogs' legs, a sophisticated "stew" of fresh-water fish filets with vegetables, an assortment of cold pâtés, cheeses and desserts. Didier likes the simplicity of the composition. It is like a little country picnic.

"The reason for the frogs' legs," he explains at the table, "is that the herbs and garlic in the butter will cut the richness of the pike's cream sauce."

He tastes his Beaujolais with the great chewing, sucking and smacking of lips characteristic of expert tastevins, then instantly orders the waiter to put the bottle (too warm) in a pitcher of ice water. As for the meal, lesser palates might consider it fabulous, but Didier finds things to criticize: The pike's sauce is too thick, too sticky and too salty; evidently, it has reduced too much. He imagines that Broyer became flustered ("He's trembling") but forgives him with the arrival of the big, luscious heap of buttery frogs' legs and the even better stew of fish filets. When the trolley of pâtés rolls up to the table, he exiles the potted hare and the foie gras out of hand--too big and too rich. Instead, he opts for small portions of preserved duck and a goose-liver terrine.

"Too much laurel! Too much thyme!" he cries softly. "The herbs completely dominate the meat taste. That's the third error he's made." Didier chews a bit longer, sips some Beaujolais, chews again, reflects, then says: "And there's too much fat on the goose liver."

He sighs, makes a few quick jots in his notebook. There will be no promotion this year for the Chapon Fin. When it is all over, when the cheeses and desserts have been consumed, Didier orders a toothpick and calls the waiter over. It is lecture time.

"Young man," he says, "I thank you very much for your help, but I permit myself to make you a few observations. First, you didn't ask me how I wanted my salad seasoned. The vinaigrette was good, but you could have asked me what kind of vinegar I wanted. You could have given me a choice of perhaps six oils. Secondly, serving the coffee: Did I want it short and concentrated or long and weak? Did I want it from the espresso machine or did I want it in a filter cup? I beg of you, young man--always ask the clients such things. People come to a beautiful restaurant like this to spend money. You mustn't betray them."

The waiter smiles and nods, like a chastised schoolboy. "Bon," says Didier with a smile. "I feel in form." He is content to have delivered himself of his criticisms. "Let's go taste the wine."

While taking champagne with Maringue, Didier had met an old acquaintance from a newspaper in Lyons. He and his colleagues have been delegated to choose a barrel of Beaujolais, to be bottled and used for the paper's promotional campaigns. Didier and his friends spend the rest of that afternoon in the salon of wine merchant Georges Duboeuf at the nearby town of Romanéche-Thorins. In all, each man tastes 16 bottles. After the wine tasting, there is a modest feast: country sausages, ham, pork chops and spareribs, cheeses and country bread, apple pie and ... more Beaujolais. Didier is beginning to feel the old familiar dread: too much good stuff, too much good stuff.

At seven o'clock, he is in Vonnas, home town of Chez la Mére Blanc (crowned black rooster), where Georges Blanc, nephew of the Chapon Fin's owner, does his own cooking. Georges is just 30, dark, intent, serious and ambitious. He does not hide the fact that he is shooting for the top ranking in both the Kléber and the Michelin. He will probably make it before long, for he works hard and his restaurant is first-rate. But his serious nature tends to make him appear humorless, and other chefs are constantly playing practical jokes on young Georges, like throwing a couple of old fish under his Alfa Romeo's hood before a long trip or tormenting him with fake phone calls from "police headquarters." One of the most spectacular recent stunts happened spontaneously, when a wicked friend of his dared the two ladies with whom he was supping in Chez la Mére Blanc's dignified dining room to remove their clothes. They did, with studied calm, and consumed the rest of their meal 100 percent bare-ass (except for the fine linen napkins poised on their thighs) under the goggle eyes of their neighboring gourmets.

•

"A little refreshment, Monsieur Didier?" inquires Georges deferentially. "A little champagne?"

"No, thank you, Monsieur Blanc," Didier instantly replies, shuddering inwardly. "But if you could send a cold bottle of mineral water up to my room?" (La Mére Blanc, like many of the places Didier visits, is an auberge, meaning it has rooms to let--a great advantage over a mere restaurant, for it means only a flight of steps before collapsing.)

At dinnertime, Georges is eager for the Kléber to make the acquaintance of some of his latest creations. The menu he works out is considerably more complex than the lunch at his uncle's place: salad of water cress and duck liver with vinaigrette and truffle dressing; grilled filet of salmon; a creamy-winy stew of (continued on page 228) Long-Distance Eater (continued from page 160) lobster and crayfish tails with young vegetables; casserole of chicken with vegetables, basil, garlic and scattered truffles; Georges's own special potato pancakes; cheeses, sherbets and desserts. There is a bottle of white Burgundy, followed by an exquisite red, a 1969 Grands-Echezeaux. Georges is bringing out a bottle of sauterne to accompany the dessert when Didier holds up his hand and waves it off.

"Too much is too much," he says almost desperately. But that doesn't stop Georges from popping open a bottle of champagne after the meal is finished--"just for a friendly drink together."

By the time the champagne ceremony is finished, it is nearly midnight. Didier clambers up to bed with the leaden legs all Frenchmen recognize as the sure sign of too much wine. They have an aphorism for such overindulgence: "White on red, nothing moves anymore; red on white, you're all through." Didier is through. He crashes into a deep slumber and sleeps right through his breakfast call.

Day Two

"Georges has made progress," Didier concludes the next morning, en route south again. "His restaurant is better than his uncle's. But I'm not sure he's ready for the top yet. It's tough, to be at the top."

By half past noon, Didier is comfortably installed on the sunny terrace of Alain Chapel, formerly La Mére Charles in Mionnay, drinking a cocktail of champagne and raspberry syrup. Once a modest bistro (it was painted by Utrillo in 1929), the restaurant is now a monument to the cooking talent of Alain Chapel, who is generally considered one of the half dozen or so greatest chefs in the world. Naturally, his restaurant sports a crowned red rooster in the Kléber and three stars in the Michelin. Antoine, the headwaiter, suggests a series of several entrees, making it sound as simple and easy as a hostess serving up stuffed celery and crackers. Antoine is a master of understatement.

It begins while Didier is still out on the terrace with the champagne: deep-fried whitefish and baby sole hardly bigger than artichoke leaves. It is what the French call an amuse-gueule, or "snout amuser," their equivalent of a palate tickler. He moves inside for the serious stuff, opening the hostilities with a salad of sautéed fresh morel mushrooms (the season is only two or three weeks long, and he is in luck with his timing) over crayfish tails with a buttery sauce accented by a tiny point of anise. With it he drinks a cold Brouilly, one of the best of the Beaujolais growths. A ragout of sea bass and red mullet follows, the two filets sitting on a bed of chervil, spinach and Swiss chard. The sauce for the sea bass is based on white wine, the sauce for the mullet, on red. Chapel is having fun playing with colors. Didier devours them with a flat spoon, making little guttural noises of contentment.

At a table to his left, and at another behind him, some serious sexual electricity is crackling. For the couple behind, the formalities of courtship have obviously been terminated several nights earlier. They are enjoying a duckling as much as they enjoy each other, making their lunch an erotic feast. The girl is as soft and humid and warm as an oyster poached in champagne. To the left, the relationship hasn't been consummated yet, but it clearly is about to be, and it promises to be a good one, too. He is a middle-aged business type with a wallet full of money, a belly full of champagne and a head full of self-confidence; she looks remarkably young, hardly more than 17 or 18, but the deft, fleeting touch of her hand on his cheek and her knowledgeable use of the lingering smile are masterful demonstrations of the art of seduction as practiced by what the French call a fausse vierge: false virgin. She is in control, and she is doing fine.

Didier continues chewing. Now it is tender white asparagus, lukewarm, between delicate rectangles of flaky pastry, with rooster kidneys and thick slices of truffles. At this moment, his entire world--his person, his aspirations, his life--is concentrated into this feuilleté d'asperges and its hollandaise sauce, into each savory explosion of taste when he bites through another rooster kidney. You take your sensuous pleasures as they come.

Gérard, the sommelier, pours a superb red Burgundy, a Bonnes Mares 1971, into his oversized snifter-style glass, taking care not to agitate or bruise it. Didier destroys a duck-liver steak with sweet turnips. When the cheese table is rolled up, he opts for his sophisticated-peasant act, ordering a plate of green leeks to accompany his fresh goat cheese. His meal ends with a simple lemon sherbet and coffee. But not, of course, just any coffee. It should be filter, he specifies, and a mix of Colombian, Mocha and Costa Rican: "Colombian for the fullness, Mocha for the color, Costa Rican for the perfume."

In the Royal Sogetel, the hotel Didier has chosen for the night in Lyons, manager Jean-Pierre Anquetin offers him a late-afternoon whiskey and asks him to taste his terrine of calves' feet. By the time the ceremony is over (the calves' feet is an interesting idea, but it lacks depth), the earth has inexorably revolved around to dinnertime. It is only day two, and Didier has only three meals under his belt. But he isn't hungry.

"The foie gras is passing badly," he mutters. "I'm stalled."

He is sitting in the crowded, sympathetic second-floor dining room of Léon de Lyon, which is probably the best bistro on the face of the earth. Jean-Paul Lacombe, the 28-year-old proprietor and chef, is trying to talk him into some of the spécialtiés de la maison, but Didier and his digestive tube are adamant. With the grimace of a man in acute discomfort, he orders nothing but a dish of creamed leeks. Although not meant as such, it is an affront to the artistry of Lacombe, who is an extraordinary, inventive and passionate cook. (In other, similar moments of distress, Didier has been known to order soft-boiled eggs and toast for dinner in renowned restaurants.) Lacombe disappears back into his kitchen but is determined to have the last word: He sends out an unrequested salade Léon de Lyon to keep Didier company while he waits for his leeks. The salad is a delicious little creation of foie gras, a duck filet, mushrooms and green beans. Didier picks at it desultorily.

"Ah, foie gras," he says, his deep voice edged with polite disgust.

Since he arrived, he has been sipping at the bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé that Jean-Paul sent over to his table. Now, as he pushes the mushrooms around his plate, the cold, fruity white wine begins to accomplish its mission. Almost imperceptibly, Didier finds his disgust giving way to professional interest.

"Hmm," he says. "There must be some truffle oil in the dressing." A few moments pass. He eats a bean, then reflects, stares around the room--and stabs his fork into the foie gras.

"Ca y est!" he announces with a triumphant smile. "It's happened! I'm hungry again." He quickly devours the rest of the salad.

"It's just like a horseman who's fallen at a jump," he says. "You have to get right back into the saddle and attack the jump again."

Didier polishes off his leeks, and the cheese and dessert, too. The only truly eventful moment of the evening occurs when the waiter pours the red Burgundy accompanying the leeks. Didier finds it too warm, orders a bucket of ice and plunks a big cube into his glass, to the utter astonishment of the young waiter.

"That's what I think about the rules," Didier says, giving a vulgar high sign. "There are no rules."

Day Three

The big project of the day is lunch at La Pyramide, in the city of Vienne, about 18 miles south of Lyons. The almost legendary Pyramide is the temple founded by Fernand Point, the giant of French cooking who taught most of today's great chefs most of their kitchen grammar. Although Point has been dead for years now, his intractable tradition of respect for proper food properly eaten is faithfully maintained by his 80-year-old widow, Mado. No French gourmet would ever dare smoke between courses in Madame Point's presence, for unthinking nicotinophiles who lit up after their appetizers found Fernand Point instructing the headwaiter to deliver the check, "since you have obviously finished your repast." Didier never dared smoke at all in Point's presence. Now, with his widow, he requests permission to do so--at the end of the meal.

When he arrives at La Pyramide's big white gate, he has already checked out another restaurant a few miles south of Vienne, appearing incognito to look over the dining room and peruse the menu while having a glass of Côtes du Rhône at the bar. Elegant and assured, Madame Point greets him as soon as he passes into her restaurant's vestibule.

"A bottle of Dom Pérignon, Louis," she tells the sommelier. She takes a symbolic splash in her own glass and sits down to talk with Didier as he plans his lunch. Wealthy food fanatics would pay dearly for the honor of Madame Point's joining them for a drink. Didier likes the idea of fresh morel mushrooms, the same ones that were so good at Alain Chapel, but Madame Point raises an eyebrow.

"I'm afraid you'll have to have them en casserole," she says. "We had problems this morning with the flaky pastry, so there's no croustade."

The pastry chef probably caught hell for that. Didier sticks with the morels, nonetheless, but first prepares the ground with an old Point specialty, pâté of thrush flavored with juniper berries. After the mushrooms, Madame Point sends over a tart pear sherbet to clear mouth and stomach for the rich, creamy cassolette of veal kidneys that follows.

Shortly after, Didier allows that it is his birthday this very day. "I would be tempted to order a vintage from my birth year," he says to the sommelier, "but then, of course, that would have to be a Bordeaux, wouldn't it?"

"If you're fatigued, you can call for a Bordeaux," says Louis, the 69-year-old sommelier, with feigned innocence. (Bordeaux is the aristocracy of wines, but Burgundy is richer, perhaps less subtle, redolent of youth and folly--ballsier.) "One likes Bordeaux after a certain age." Didier compromises and asks him to choose a good Côtes du Rhône for the main course. But first he has a fruity Condrieu white wine to accompany the mushrooms.

Louis uncorks the red wine without going through the ritualistic display of the label. Didier has been challenged. Louis fills his glass and places the bottle at the far end of the table, its label facing outward. Didier sips.

"Goddamn!" he fairly shouts. "That's a truck! That's a bulldozer!"

The powerful, sun-nourished wine is of a red so deep that it borders on blue. Didier has to think for several long moments before making a pronouncement.

"I think it's a Côte Rôtie," he ventures, "but I'm not sure."

Louis turns the bottle around: Côte Rôtie.

After lunch, Didier joins a friend at another table for a glass of ancient vintage cognac offered by Madame Point. Their conversation turns to Marc Fournier, the world's number-one collector and restorer of hurdy-gurdies and fairground organs, who lives just down the street from La Pyramide. They decide to pay him a quick visit. Fournier is delighted to see them, cracking open a bottle of champagne for the occasion.

By dinnertime, Didier has only half regained his appetite. The attractive redhead who waits on him in La Renaissance in the industrial burg of Rive-de-Gier is the wife of the owner and chef, Gilbert Laurent. It is Didier's first trip to the establishment, and he doesn't identify himself as the man from Kléber. She seems troubled by his appearance and his expertise, but she obviously can't place him. Didier consumes a plate of smoked country ham and a lake salmon poached over a bed of garden herbs, accompanied by a bottle of white Côtes du Rhône. As he is eating the fish, he notes that the waiter has left the alcohol flame burning under the chafing dish. Didier grumbles, even though the tarragon-based sauce is delicious. When the waiter proposes a second serving (there is a whole, fat filet still untouched), Didier haughtily refuses it without even a taste, maintaining that by now the salmon is ruined by the continuing heat.

"I just meant to keep it warm," the luckless waiter protests. Didier sends for the headwaitress and politely but firmly scolds her for the waiter's misplaced good intentions. Madame is desolated. Would monsieur like something else to replace it? No, thank you, says Didier. He has had a very full day. Somehow, in the long interlocution that ensues, it comes out that he is Jean Didier of the Kléber. Madame is more desolated than ever. She instantly sends for her husband, who appears from the kitchen in full chef's regalia. He looks apprehensive, sits down to explain his policy on lake salmon, snaps his fingers and sends for a bottle of champagne.

Day Four

Driving out of town the next morning, Didier is explaining the tribulations and physical trade secrets of the long-distance eater. Luckily, hangovers are rare for him, though he often has a hard time waking up in the morning. He has never known any of the various hangover pills to do any good. Aspirin for the head, maybe, but that is bad for the stomach. Several of the gastronomic critics walk as much as possible to help their digestion, but there isn't any miracle remedy for that, either. Some of his confreres have been known to make themselves vomit, in the style of the ancient Romans, but he finds himself physically unable to do it.

"You've just got to let nature take its course. As an old family doctor of mine said, 'What goes in one hole must come out another.' What is important is the saddle."

The saddle--la selle--is the French euphemism for defecation. It is a subject of great concern and attention to the long-distance eater.

"I have two times the saddle in the morning," Didier explains. "Directly upon arising, and then another after bathing and shaving. In this business, you must have a good transfer. It is very important to eliminate quickly. Above all, you must not hold yourself back. If you do, you profit from the food more and you become fat. You've always got to watch your saddles. Constipated people are unhappy. This morning, just before leaving, I had a third saddle."

Today's lunch is to be another high point of the trip--with the Troisgros Brothers in Roanne. Roanne is an undistinguished and not particularly gracious middle-sized French city on the banks of the Loire River, whose only attraction, unless you have a lover there, or some textiles to flog, is Hôtel des Fréres Troisgros. Along with Alain Chapel's place, and Paul Bocuse's in Lyons, and a handful of others, it is one of the front-runners in anyone's theoretical sweepstakes for the world's greatest restaurant. Both brothers, Jean, 51, and Pierre, 49, are former disciples of old Fernand Point, and both are venerated by the eating establishment as high priests of equal stature in the religion of what has come to be known as the new school of French cooking.

When Didier enters the restaurant, he takes the professionals' route--from the parking lot through the back door and into the kitchen. There, amid the bubbling pots, the heaps of mushrooms and raspberries and the enormous slabs of Charolais beef (one of the three best in the world, along with Texas and Kobe), Pierre is holding court and keeping things in order. As massively built as a bull, but also gifted with the fine and subtle intelligence of a scholar of human nature, Pierre is possessed of the magic power of speeding up: One glance from him at an apprentice or an assistant chef and the work suddenly goes 20 percent faster. Didier has a few lids off pots, sticks his finger into a sauce, then follows Pierre into the bar for a kir maison--white Burgundy with a shot of blackcurrant syrup. Jean Troisgros isn't around today; he has gone down to the town of Pauillac to do a little party cooking for Philippe de Rothschild. Over in a corner booth, Pierre's wife and daughter are just finishing their lunch of soft-shelled lobster.

"If you had come half an hour earlier, I would have given them to you," Pierre says. "You don't see many of them."

Didier consoles himself with an appetizer that is a little invention of Pierre's: a salad of baby eels smothered in crushed tomato, oil and vinegar. To his thorough satisfaction, he finds that he is starving. He races happily through the famous Troisgros vegetable terrine (artichoke hearts, green beans, celery, carrots, asparagus tips and truffles bonded together by a foie gras mousse), thrush pâté with a spinach-and-potato salad, oysters lightly poached in champagne and four fish filets on a bed of green vegetables, washing it all down with cool red Burgundy. With the main course, a pigeon cooked with whole garlic cloves, the choice of the wine is both more important and trickier.

"I'm more Burgundy than Bordeaux," says Didier, "and more Côte de Nuits than Côte de Beaune," spontaneously coining an unbeatable bit of one-upmanship for the vocabulary of future wine snobs.

"Why don't I give you a 1973 Bonnes Mares?" suggests Gilbert, the sommelier.

"Bravo!" cries Didier. "He remembered--my favorite wine!"

Shortly after the arrival of the beautiful, plump pigeon and its side order of sautéed mushrooms, Pierre saunters out of the kitchen to see how things are going.

"I'm working," says Didier between mastications, "I'm working."

When the waiter, Michel, proposes the impressively vast Troisgros cheese platter, Didier brings forth another nice bit of didactic expertise. "Young man," he says, "I'm drinking the Bonnes Mares '73, so I will choose my cheese in consequence. I will take one goat cheese only, and not too young. Never two women in my bed at the same time, and never two cheeses on my plate."

A little champagne with dessert, a long professional chat with Pierre over coffee, and at 5:30 they rise and go to the bar, where Pierre opens a bottle of fine Pommard and brings out a little munching material of hot tripe sausages, slathered with explosive mustard. It brings tears to Didier's eyes.

That night, back in Lyons, he has his first failure: He cancels a restaurant and stays in the hotel. He consumes a bowl of onion soup and a glass of Beaujolais in the snack bar. Shame.

Day Five

Didier doesn't want to admit it, but he has trouble going through Monsieur Pic's monumental menu. Naturally, Pic means well: By nature, he is as generous as he is shy, expressing himself through the profusion of delicacies that he sends forth from his kitchen. But Didier isn't feeling in form. After a brief reawakening of desire with the pink champagne and the fisherman's salad, he finds himself bogged down with the salmon filets. He plugs on through a sense of duty, but his heart isn't in it. He is paying the ransom of the late 20th Century, when men just don't eat the way they used to. Pic's overwhelming lunch, for instance, would have been a mere frivolous nibble for the Club of the Big Stomachs, 18 serious trenchermen of the mid-19th Century who met at six P.M. every Saturday in a Parisian restaurant called Pascal. They ate for 18 hours straight, in three servings of six hours apiece. Six P.M. to midnight: several glasses of bitter wine to whet the appetite; carrot soup, turbot with caper sauce, filet steak, leg of lamb, braised chicken, veal tongue, cherry sherbet (for cooling the palate), roast chicken, creams, tarts and pastries, with six bottles of Burgundy each. Midnight to six A.M.: several cups of tea, turtle soup, a curry containing six chickens, salmon with spring onions, peppered venison cutlets, filets of sole with truffle sauce, peppered artichokes, rum sherbet, grouse cooked in whiskey, rum pudding, spiced English puddings and three Burgundies and three Bordeaux apiece. Six A.M. to noon: superpeppery onion soup with various crackers and unsugared pastries in unlimited quantity, accompanied by four bottles of champagne apiece, coffee and an entire bottle of cognac per man.

Didier would have passed for a sparrow next to the Big Stomachs. He drinks only three wines with the lunch: a Condrieu white and a Saint-Joseph and a Cornas red. After dessert and coffee, Monsieur Pic joins him, bringing another bottle of champagne--Pol Roger Brut this time. Didier takes one look and one sip, then sends the bottle back. It is off color, he says; the cork must have been bad. The sommelier trots out with another bottle. This one meets his approval.

Driving back to Lyons late that afternoon, Didier has to fight off the waves of sleepiness generated by the wine. He knows that tonight's dinner is at Paul Bocuse's.

Bocuse is both Lyons's most famous citizen and the most famous cook in the world today. After working as an apprentice and assistant chef for Fernand Point, he moved back to his father's modest little riverside restaurant in the mid-Fifties, took it over completely when his father died and within a few years brought it up from nothing to three stars in the Michelin and a crowned red rooster in the Kléber. Bocuse is a phenomenon: a force of nature, a multifaceted entrepreneur who is a born leader of men, a swinging practical-joking lover of life who generates a wave of personal publicity as naturally as a seal barks, a wealthy and diversified businessman (he owns three restaurants in Tokyo and has deals, endorsements and pieces of action all around the world); he is also a giant of the cooking trade.

But Didier isn't hungry, and that is bad show, bad show. They have been waiting for him at Bocuse's restaurant. Once the word got around that the Kléber was in the region, they knew very well he had to drop by the emperor's place sooner or later. Didier is greeted at the door by Françoise, Bocuse's beautiful daughter, and, a few seconds later in the dining room, by Raymonde, his equally beautiful wife. Bocuse himself is out of town, as it happens, tending to his Rengaya restaurants in Tokyo. But with wife and daughter in the room (his mother, Irma, is there, too, writing out the bills at the cash desk), and his number-one chef, Roger Jaloux, in the kitchen, things are under control.

As soon as Didier takes a seat, a champagne and raspberry syrup appears before him, along with a plate of amusegueules. Secretly, he wishes he could just have a salad and go to bed, but when you are the Guide Kléber, you don't play the wilting virgin. You are expected to eat. Bocuse's famous truffle soup is a must; it is a fairly recent creation and Didier has never sampled it. He follows with a hot pâté in a pastry shell and a lukewarm salad of lobster with garden vegetables and herbs. The Beaujolais accompanying it all comes from the cellars of Georges Duboeuf, where Didier went wine-tasting what now seems like a couple of centuries ago.

In spite of Didier's mild protestations, Kiki the waiter gives him a second helping of pâté chaud. Kiki has been serving Didier for 15 years. He knows he is a sucker for the pâté and pepper sauce. At 9:20 P.M., Didier pops another bile pill. He feels hot and uncomfortable.

The lobster is fabulous, of course, but now Didier is truly laboring. He feels as if he were onstage--which isn't too far from the truth, in fact. By an act of sheer will, he chews mechanically through the lobster, enjoying it as much as if it were cardboard.

"One is full up, huh?" he remarks. "I feel like the guy who asked his fairy godmother to make him young and handsome forever, and always get plenty of ass. She turned him into a toilet."

He goes on chewing, but the pernicious combination of too much food and no exercise is having its fatal effect. Didier is bloated. He has heartburn. His stomach is churning. He hurts.

"I have gas," he says. At 10:25, he excuses himself, plods to the men's room and farts heroically. He returns much relieved, and although he passes up the cheeses, he manages to do justice to the dessert.

Day Six

"I've been born again! I'm brand-new this morning." Didier's tortured guts are in blessed repose, thanks to some extremely satisfactory saddles.

"I've emptied myself," he says, "that's what's marvelous. If there had been a turd contest this morning, I would have won it. And the dinner last night was of a great finesse and elegance. That pâté chaud was sublime."

He is heading north out of Lyons, on the last leg of his tournée. Only one meal remains. Almost before Didier knows it, he is on the twisting country road leading toward Saulieu, home of the grand old Côte d'Or, a restaurant almost as famous as La Pyramide. But where La Pyramide has continued navigating under the steady hand of Madame Point, the Côte d'Or has had an irregular record since the retirement of Alexandre Dumaine, its former master. Now it is owned by Claude Verger, a terrible-tempered ex-kitchen-equipment salesman turned restaurateur. Verger has given over responsibility for the kitchen to his 26-year-old disciple, Bernard Loiseau, and Loiseau is out to prove that he, too, can merit a coq rouge couronné.

Loiseau is so nervous about Didier's visit that he is literally watching the road, because this time Didier has telephoned ahead. When he arrives in the parking lot, Loiseau comes out to greet him before he has even gotten out of the car. Within minutes, Didier has a kir in his hand. He and Loiseau walk down the hill to say hello to Gerard Houssaie, a young cook from Normandy who has taken over the neighboring Vieille Auberge. Houssaie is about Loiseau's age, but he has the advantage of having his wife with him. Loiseau is a bachelor, in the prime of life with the sap running hard, but he has no diversion beyond food in Saulieu.

"There's nothing here," he sighs. "No girls, no action, nothing. I'm just devoting myself to bringing the Côte d'Or back to the top. Other than that, I'm bored stiff here."

Didier rewards Loiseau's monklike fealty to haute cuisine by destroying his lunch with obvious pleasure. Loiseau is watching every plate as it comes back to the kitchen. If Didier had left anything uneaten, Loiseau probably would have rushed out, demanding to know what had been displeasing. The lobster terrine, the poached oysters and the ragout of fish with red peppers disappear into Kléber's maw with the help of a delicious 1971 Puligny-Montrachet. The red that follows, with the thin, rare duck steaks, is a vigorous Latriciéres-Chambertin. Loiseau's lunch is light, imaginative and easy to eat. Didier tells him so, and for a few minutes the young bachelor doesn't even care that there are no girls in Saulieu.

With the desserts, Claude Verger himself appears, just down from Paris. Verger adores shocking people with his opinions. Calling for a bottle of champagne (Perrier-Jouët), he rails on, finding almost everything bad in the profession. Ninety-five or even 99 percent of the cooks in France are lousy, he shouts, and only two or three know how to make a steak marchand de vin. The only guy who knows how to make sauces is Pierre Troisgros--but then, most sauces are no damn good, anyway.

At one point in his diatribe, Verger tries to make Didier put up his dukes by attacking the guides in general and food critics in particular. He even goes so far as to call them all whores, but Didier doesn't react. He feels euphoric and benign. He is thinking about taking it easy back in Paris, and drinking mineral water for a few days. His tournée is over. He has made it. He can almost feel his digestive tube working. A good saddle is promised. He takes another sip of champagne and smiles.

"They consumed the rest of their meal bare-ass (except for the fine linen napkins on their thighs)."

"His entire world--his person, his aspirations, his life--is concentrated into each savory explosion."