Word: argent
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Jeeves, another gin stengah. A treasure, Jeeves is. Been with the club since the flood. Where was I? Ah, yes. Books. Haven't read but one since Oxbridge. Burke's Peerage. Breeders' guide to British nobility. Smashing heraldry: gules argent, lions rampant, bars sinister, all that drill. Snob's bible, they call it-the envious ones. For those of us who can trace our lineage back to Ethelred the Unready, it's-well, it's sort of a-er -bible. Meaning no disrespect, padre. Since the Empire's gone to the demnition bowwows...
...Tour d'Argent, a 515-page book about the restaurant to be published next month, Claude Terrail, its proprietor, makes clear that it is not quite the place for a Texas oilman in search of a sirloin and fries. Even Lyndon Johnson, then Vice President, was accorded a rather undistinguished table. Undaunted, he asked, "Don't you serve the same food at all the tables?" The food is indeed succulent anywhere on the premises, especially La Tour's famous leg of lamb Claude Terrail and pressed ducks-of which the restaurant has served 468,800 since proprietors...
...Terrail's Tour, the menu is not all that commands attention. As Sacha Guitry, the French playwright, observed, "You go to La Tour d'Argent to dine. Once there, you look" at the scene. Shirley Temple Black, unable to flag a cab on a rainy day, was conveyed to the restaurant by gallant gendarmes in a Black Maria. Terrail also relates that a distinguished Roman Catholic prelate, Monsignor Fernand Maillet, loved late dinners at La Tour. "As he was obliged by ecclesiastical rules to stop eating at midnight so that he could conduct early morning Mass," Terrail says...
What makes and sustains a restaurant like La Tour d'Argent? In an interview with TIME Correspondent Paul Ress, Terrail, the Gielgud of gastronomy, explained: "La Tour d'Argent is like a theater. I am the author of the play, an actor in it and the director. The words and gestures of every actor are carefully rehearsed. Every employee knows exactly how to walk, stop, bow. There is no obsequiousness. Nor is anyone allowed to take a fat tip from a guest in exchange for a 'good' table. I'd fire anyone who accepted...
...Tour d'Argent is one of only four Parisian restaurants that consistently earn three stars-the highest rating-from the Guide Michelin, France's arbiter of gastronomy. The others: Maxim's, Las-serre and Le Grand Vefour...