Monsieur Jean Bardet was 'taking the cure' or having some monkey gland injections as he looked wonderful, with a radiance and glow only a French cosmetic empire could have dreamed of achieving. They should have used him as a model, a TV personality, a magazine cover even if he had never used their creams.
Perhaps he would have said it was his food, and I completely believed him after a life time spent in a notoriously hard, tiring and competitive industry on his legs all day.
While eating the best food in France would give one an edge, at $400 a couple and with every table full in his restaurant it would also bring a flush to the cheeks.
Madam Sophie Bardet wasn't wasting time on that nonsense, as she looked like a woman who had found the secret of how to take the money onto the next world with her.
Floating through the dining room in black silk evening pants, a silk top with seven inch lime green lilies, white curly hair, and piercing blue eyes, one hardly needed to ask who she was.
Nothing about her was small, thin, mean, adverse or ordinary, and her brain was as furiously active as the kitchen staff. She nodded at every table in turn and we all nodded back.
We were honoured to get a table, to be served, nodded at, and even more honoured to receive a huge bill, for feeling so honoured.
They were the theatre of the evening, and appeared to us separately in case the presence of one cancelled out the importance of the other. It was 'in stage left' and 'out stage right'.
She might have taught him how to cook, and judging by the size of them, they were not eating the restaurant’s portions.
It’s true that the more you pay, the smaller the portions become, as Tom had the lamb chops which were so small it cannot have ever seen a field.
I had the sweetbreads which were absolutely delicious but one forkful was 20% of the food on the plate so there was no sharing dishes.
Noticing a delightful evening cocktail party outside on the terrace I wanted to be Mme B, glide over, give a few nods, sip a coup and exit stage left.
It was many years later when I read “In April 1998, investigators from the (DGCCRF) found ten irregularities at the Château Belmont, including “clear deception” on the origin of some products. Legal proceedings were initiated, while the lawyer for the owners admitted blunders, but argued the lack of “will to deceive hosts”.
They closed eventually and left the likes of Sarkozy, Gerard Depardieu, and Jean Germain hunting for somewhere else to eat. Impossible, I thought…