Monsieur le Boucher
In France most people are quite familiar with their butcher and it’s usually the Boucher du quartier – their neighborhood butcher. If you don’t know a good butcher you do your best to seek out your friends and pry out the name of one. One’s relationship with one’s butcher is serious business.
It’s personal.
It’s a little like religion just tastier.
To make a point, I recently came across an add stating “Je cherche de la viande de qualité… Est-ce que quelqu’un connaitrait un bon boucher sur Paris XV? Quartier Motte-Piquet, mais bon, je peux marcher…” In other words “does anyone know a good butcher in the 15 arrondissement, preferably around the Motte-Piquet area where I live and if not I guess I can just as well walk to one that’s a little further.
In preparation for the plat du jour, I am visiting one of my favorite neighborhood butcher shops in the 2e, not too far from the Blvd. de Sébastopol. What am I looking for you ask? Well I can’t really tell you other than to say that if you have spent as much time as I have in local bistros, restaurant familial or brasseries then you most likely have an idea. In any event it is a classic restaurant dish.
I’m stopping in to see “my” Marcel but I address him as Monsieur le Boucher because I still have some residue of good manners. Truly he is a butcher par excellence. He always has his white butcher’s coat on which always appears miraculously spotless. I am waiting for the day when I will see him in a meat-stained tablier waving his cleaver in his hand and a headless creature in the other. I think that’s something I will never see. Marcel is usually behind the counter helping out customers who carefully listen to his recommendations on a particular cut of meat that’s worth buying that day. I am always amazed at his multi-tasking skills. He can be, on the one hand, working the string around a plump gigot of some sort, slapping meat down on the scale, maneuvering his meat cleaver through a loin chop, or wrapping up a customers package with such tender loving care as if it were a present for his little girl, Julie. But always a smile (for the most part) and a little chat about something important like the weather or commiserating about the absence of a cut of meat or sadly admitting he has sold the last of his broiled chickens and potatoes. Oh yes quick note. Those chickens always go fast and no wonder. The rôtisserie is in plain view outside were luckless chicks skewered turn all day browning and cooking ever so slowly, their juices dripping and collecting on the baby potatoes below.
On fait la queue – I am waiting in line like everybody else. Anyone who moves out of the line is shot on the spot. Well almost. I remember witnessing a lady struggling with her two children, frustrated with the time it was taking stepped out of line to address pleading her case for time with the butcher. She was sent to the back of the line with her two children in tears. Rather than face further humiliation she left. Heads shook in amazement from one end of the line to the other. Some people! So I’m moving forward with the rest catching snippets of conversation between Marcel and the customers…”first communion? Congratulations then something special of course, for how many?” I move up and greet Monsieur le Boucher, the master himself, with all the respect he deserves. He listens carefully to my proposed plat du jour, ponders for a second then agrees with me on my choice. He returned a few moments later, cleaver in hand, holding up a chunk of read meat looking at me waiting for my approval. I gushed, making all the right noises, and said it looked like an absolute marvelous cut. Thank you again. Plopping it on the scale, then wrapping it white paper Monsieur le Boucher takes his pencil from his pocket scribbling a price then hands it to Madame. He thanked me. His job was done. Next?
Madame, aka Monsieur le Boucher’s wife, was working the cash register with speed and efficiency and seemed to have a perpetual smile on her face and a sing-song voice to match it, chirping “voila Monsieur merci” as she handed me my change. Of course by the time I left there, everybody knew what I was going to make, side dishes and all. A lady who was in line with me and laboring forward with a bulging net of groceries somehow managed to flash me a smile and wish me bonne appétit monsieur.