Everything, all at once, and by the glass
Le Beaujolais, 25 Litchfield Street, London
Le Beaujolais, sitting along Litchfield Street on the edge of Chinatown and the folly of the Theatre District, is the closest I can get back to France without boarding the EuroStar. The Patron is currently having a lot asked of him; he stays jovial for his guests, wearing glasses to combat his aging eyes, a flowered shirt and jeans. He’s lean from a lifetime on his feet, most of it probably spent walking miles each day within these cluttered walls. He works the tables, holds the bar, answers the phone. A solo dance much the same as so many bar tabacs and small bistros across the channel. He’s annoyed at the phone ringing and does marvellously to not let any signs come across to the customers coming through the door, or the suited gentleman at the bar waving at him for another bottle of Soixante-Quatre.
“Why’s the phone ringing now?” he decries in english, continuing to admonish it in a muttering french. He doesn’t pick up, too many tables to answer. A chef, having dashed through the drizzle from the kitchen (likely housed in the members-only restaurant in the basement) has walked through the front door carrying an Entrecôte Frites. The good size cut of meat almost floats on a generous portion of peppercorn sauce. He places it down on the bar and retreats, the Patron now reconfiguring the list of priorities on constant shuffle in his head. The food cannot be left to cool, the man waving for another beer at the bar has been bumped. He’ll get his drink, he always does in the end.
Everything is happening all at once in Le Beaujolais. A little after 1pm on a rainy day in May and it’s intoxicating—from the ties and tankards hanging from the rafters, to the decades worth of trinkets on the shelves behind the bar, forgotten or gifted after eternal nights fuelled by conversation, Vin du Pays and another assiette de fromage.
Si tu bois pour oublier
Paie avant de commencer d’oublier
This hangs above the bar. It’s hard for some to afford to get drunk in central London, but here, in Le Beaujolais, one can always get drunk on the constant motion of the best of times; unpretentious wine and a gratin de poissons at one of the worn wooden tables, the clatter of cutlery against the chorus of conversation. The background music is an afterthought. I can assure you no one else has noticed that ‘Roxanne’ is playing out of the single speaker. The song is actually a good anthem to working the bustle of a treasured little place like this, tiny moments of reprieve as Sting implores her not to wear that dress tonight, but the tempo will always rise again. The hustle of hard work is always just another beat away.
The phone’s ringing. The Patron doesn’t say anything this time, just loads up a tray with cutlery and a salt and pepper mill and heads to another table, letting out a wonderful sigh.