The debate goes back more than 100 years: Café de Flore or Les Deux Magots? For me, the answer is Brasserie Lipp. Hemingway ate — and drank — at all three of the literary gathering spots that form a triangle of nostalgia on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. But he probably ate best at the Lipp, where a beautifully crisp-edged breaded and stuffed pig‘s trotter — pied de porc farci, grillé — is served with a potato puree so smooth with butter it goes far beyond mashed potatoes. Waiters in classic black tuxedo jackets, bow ties and long, starched white aprons navigate the tightly spaced dining room, delivering plates of escargots, herring and choucroute garnie to locals and tourists with efficiency and good humor. The gorgeous, banquette-lined main dining room, all mirrors, brass fixtures and Art Nouveau ceramic tile, is a wonderful place to sit with a dozen oysters and people watch. And though the brasserie is associated with long-gone figures (Cocteau, Camus, Proust, Joyce, Sartre, de Beauvoir), its cultural history is still being written, with Jean Dujardin, Vincent Lindon and Michel Houellebecq among the artists, actors and writers who still love the Lipp.
151 Boulevard Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris