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It was January 1972. President Richard Nixon had Henry Kissinger trying to negotiate an end to the war in Vietnam. The Watergate break-in of Democratic Party headquarters was in the early planning stages, and an old ragtime song of Scott Joplin’s had been rediscovered and zoomed to No. 3 on the charts.
It was a time just prior to a restaurant renaissance in Philadelphia. You only had to go back about 10 years to when practically the only two major Center City restaurants were Arthur’s Steak House and the Pub-Tiki. But in ’70, Georges Perrier opened a small 30-seat restaurant at 13th and Spruce called Le Bec-Fin. It soon became famous for its classic French cuisine and fixed-price menu costing a budget-busting $42.50 per person. From the first time I heard about it, my fantasy was to take my wife to dine at Le Bec-Fin.
In ’72, we had been married eight years and had two young children. My wife was a stay-at-home mom and we were making it on the salary of a GS-11 civil servant. It was going to take a while to save the money to afford to have our dream meal. In those days, we believed in paying with cash for our entertainment, not credit cards. I saved the money and got us a reservation by calling almost a month in advance. Finally, we were ready for our dream dining experience.
On a blustery, cold night on Saturday, Jan. 29, ’72, we entered Le Bec-Fin, located in a town house at 1312 Spruce St. Couples chatted quietly at nearby tables. We were seated by the door. The food was marvelous. The owner, a short, stubby Frenchman, was not yet the toast of Philadelphia he was to become. Perrier was going to be married the following week and he was in an ebullient mood. He circulated the dining room, wearing a white chef’s apron, and chatted amiably with the other diners and then spotted us out of the corner of his eye.
Perrier had noticed that as a couple left by the door where we were seated, my wife had reacted to the sudden burst of cold air. He quickly came over to us. You caught a draft, he said to my wife, and I must apologize for your discomfort. Both of us tried to minimize what, after all, was a small occurrence in a grand evening, but Perrier was having none of it. I must make you a special drink, he insisted, some raspberry cognac. My wife replied she much rather have another of the restaurant’s luscious pastries. You shall have both, Perrier said. You can tell this happened a long time ago. For these days, we would not be so bold and usually skip dessert altogether.
The other patrons were staring at us. In restaurants such as Le Bec-Fin, you always assume the other diners must be celebrities. Who were we?, they wondered. Perrier mixed the drinks with the precision of an alchemist in the 17th century, and poured the pink-tinted liquid into two brandy snifters. We drank a toast to Perrier, wished him success on his upcoming marriage (that didn’t work out so well) and off he disappeared into the kitchen. Later he returned with a Grand Marnier soufflé for us to share. We dipped our spoons into the heavenly froth, pinching ourselves to make sure we weren’t dreaming.
Like Cinderella’s magical night, our evening too had to end. We rode home on a bus and wondered how many of Perrier’s patrons went home on public transit. Our bus driver had an amazing likeness to comedian Flip Wilson and he entertained us all the way home.
The years passed. Le Bec-Fin had moved to 1523 Walnut St. Both my wife and I now work part-time. Our days of dining at Perrier’s restaurant were limited to one evening when we had a gift certificate (we still had to add more than $100 to pay the tab). We also had been to a lunch during Restaurant Week when three courses only ran us $20. The highlight of our gift certificate night was running into a friend who handled the famed cheese and pastry carts for Perrier. He made sure we carried home a doggy bag of Le Bec-Fin pastries that night.
Our kids are now grown. Neither had ever dined at Le Bec-Fin. We decided to treat them to lunch last fall for a Restaurant Week special. The three-course meal is only a pale imitation of the experience, but still it was Le Bec-Fin. Afterwards, my wife cornered Perrier outside the restaurant. He talked wistfully about how times had changed. He didn’t know whether there was a place for Le Bec-Fin anymore.
As it turned out, that was the last time we would ever dine in the landmark restaurant. Recently he handed the culinary palace over to his successor. The restaurant is currently closed for renovations. It will reopen and hope to create food fantasies for future generations. As for us, I always tell my wife, in my best Humphrey Bogart voice, “we’ll always have January 1972.”
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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