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Love Songs. The restaurant seats only 60. Bocuse, his wife and his daughter are apt to greet guests at the door. In the fireplace, chickens revolve on a spit. Individual dishes may be relatively simple, but Bocuse assembles a meal of awesome proportions and exquisite quality. TIME's Steven Englund recently sampled a luncheon that was spiced with Bocuse's commentary. It began with sausage in a brioche ("You really have to eat sausage when you come to Lyon") and continued with pâté de foie gras that had been made the same morning. Next came the shrimp soup ("Escoffier would have been horrified at how simple it is. Just some shrimp, white wine, heavy cream, butter, a few shallots"). The fourth course was wild duck in green pepper sauce ("If you come in December, you can eat duck that I shoot myself"). Though sated by now, Englund continued through the goat cheese—Collonges goats, of course—but a sense of self-preservation made him turn down the pastry and the seven varieties of fruit in wine.
For a meal of that kind, Bocuse charges between $18 and $25, excluding the cost of wine, or about two-thirds the price of a three-star Parisian restaurant. He also maintains a staff of 48 and habitually loses money on the operation. Bocuse stays prosperous by lending his name to a line of wines exported to the U.S. and by running an annex, the Abbaye, that he calls his "laughing place." There he can feed 300 at a banquet, and there he enjoys tinkering with a stereo system on which he plays schmalzy love songs and a $10,000 automated organ that booms out John Philip Sousa marches. Occasionally he even sings for the customers.
What Escoffier would think about that can only be imagined.