How to Be Parisian: Queueing for Soup

Fresh from an auction, Stephen is aghast at the idea of waiting in line… for soup.

I got a shock the other evening. I was walking along Boulevard Montmartre, heading towards Grands Boulevards Métro station, when I saw one of my friends standing aimlessly in the street.

He was staring into space, apparently unaware of everything going on around him. I wondered if he’d been struck by lightning and baked into a statue. But no, he didn’t look singed. Or was he begging, and would leap into action if I dropped a euro in a coffee beaker at his feet? No, no beaker. I went and woke him up, and he informed me he was standing in line. It was true – now that he mentioned it, there were other people standing either side of him, though most were on their phones. “Why?” I asked. “My nephews are staying with me. And they want to go to the bouillon.”

This is one of the traditional brasseries that are so fashionable at the moment. One of the nearby phone-browsers looked up from his screen. “You know you can get a bowl of soup for one euro?” he said. I had to admit I didn’t know that. Anyway, I was concerned by a different issue. “So why aren’t you standing outside the bouillon? It’s round the corner.” “We’re in line to get in line,” my friend sighed. “How long before you get in the restaurant?” I asked. “An hour, apparently, once we’re in the actual line,” he sobbed.

A faux economy

I asked the nephews how much they’d paid for their plane tickets. Several hundred euros each. “And you don’t want to shell out eight or nine euros for a decent bowl of onion soup in the café across the street? Then enjoy all the time you’ve saved. Stroll through Palais Royal gardens, across the Louvre courtyard down to the Seine and then watch the Eiffel Tower light up?” Apparently not.

The bouillon was on the bucket (or broth) list. I tutted meaningfully and left my friend to it. I think I was feeling even more intolerant than usual because I’d just come from the opposite of waiting in line – an auction.

Auctions are quite literally places where you’re encouraged to push to the front. Just raise your hand and you’re there. Paris’s central auction house, the Hôtel Drouot, is a fascinating place to visit, and provides a brilliant opportunity to buy the souvenir equivalent of the €1 soup.

Place your bets

It takes a little planning: go to interencheres.com and find a sale on the date you want – there are several per day at Drouot. Then you browse the catalogues until you find something that interests you. The lots sell on average at one per minute, so you can estimate the time you have to arrive.
Turn up early if you want to observe the assorted Parisian characters on show. The bullying auctioneers (I once bid €42 for a drawing and the auctioneer told me, “Quarante-deux, monsieur? You insult me! €45 or I sell it to the bidder of €40!”); the sneaky, dusty dealers, many of them appropriately in hunter’s anoraks; the chic, nervous couples with their eye on a Louis XVI gilt armchair or a painting they suspect might be an undiscovered Utrillo.

And don’t worry, you have to do more than blink to bid. It takes a definite wave or a shouted offer to attract the auctioneer’s attention. You can find real gems there. I bought my soup bowls at Drouot, a group of 12 crudely printed china relics from a café closure, €20 the lot. Indestructible, vintage and oh-so Parisian. Perhaps I should take the bowls to the Grands Boulevards and start selling authentic Parisian soup to the people waiting in line. €2 a shot – €1 for the broth and €1 for letting them push to the front of the soup queue.

Stephen Clarke’s latest book, Charles Worth, the Englishman Who Invented Parisian Haute Couture, is the rag-trade to riches story of a Brit and his French wife who created a new industry in 1860s Paris.

From France Today Magazine

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