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Montparnasse was quite dead after World War II, but it enjoyed a modest revival in the '70s and '80s, when restaurantification became the new fad (and source of higher profits). Old-timers still mourn the fate of the Coupole, a barnlike old brasserie that had served as home to Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Samuel Beckett; it was acquired by a restaurant chain, torn down and rebuilt in 1988 into a sort of yuppie grazing center. More felicitous was the 1986 transformation of the Cafe du Dome, a plain, bare sort of place, where an impoverished writer used to be able to get a saucisse de Toulouse and a plate of mashed potatoes for about $1. One section of the Dome has been turned into a really excellent fish restaurant (Michelin gives it one star), with a comfortably old-fashioned decor and atmosphere. The baked turbot is superb, and the Macon makes it even better. But if the sausage is only a memory, so is the old price: dinner for two costs $100.
"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man," Hemingway once wrote, "then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." In my case, the moveable feast was spread at the crossroads outside Paris' oldest church, the 6th century shrine of St. Germain-des-Pres. Baron Haussmann cut a boulevard through here during the Second Empire, and in came what memory still rates as the three best cafes in Paris, and thus the world. The first was the Flore (1865), celebrated as the headquarters of existentialism. "It was like home to us," Jean-Paul Sartre once said, and Simone de Beauvoir wrote part of The Second Sex here. One good reason is that the Flore has a rather secluded second floor, where one can work in peace; another is that the Flore always stayed warm.
After the Germans smashed the Second Empire in 1870, a number of refugees from occupied Alsace fled to Paris. Among them was Leonard Lipp, who opened across the boulevard from the Flore a little brasserie ornamented with luxurious blue and green tropical birds on its tiled walls. Lipp's has long been famous for its choucroute (a.k.a. sauerkraut), and purists argue whether it deserves its reputation. But one outsider's view is that anyone who willingly orders choucroute deserves whatever he or she gets. The Alsatian plum tarts are much better. The main attraction, though, is the beer, which comes in glasses of increasing size, starting with a demi for a half-liter, working up to a serieux and finally a distingue, a mug holding a liter.
The other specialty of the house is politics. The National Assembly is just a few blocks down the boulevard, and when sessions run late, legislators traditionally repair to Lipp's for sustenance, discussion and intrigue. One of the regulars over the years has been Francois Mitterrand, now, of course, President of the Republic. Any cafe that can claim a President among its customers has little need of further endorsements.