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Goodbye Café de France
But that's not the point here. Well---at least it's not the primary
point this time. We always have an eye out for eyes (see below). But we
are writing a special feature here in triubute to one of the best known
and loved restaurants in UB---the Cafe de France. It is hardly "obscure"
by any definition of that word, because every expat knows it and all
tourists find it within a few hours of touching down. We are writing
about CdF, not because it is obscure but because it is now history. It
served its last meals on December 21, the shortest day of the year. And
your food critics, as always, were on top of things and were there for
this newsworthy moment.
In our Obscure Restaurant series, we have had a select few "celebrity diners" to join us. Now we feature the Cafe de France (CdF) as a "celebrity restaurant". It's the first in this category. CdF was more than a restaurant. It was an institution. Following is our report on CdF in our more-or-less standard, objective and unbiased format: NAME: Cafe de France (aka "CdF") TYPE: French with a distinct Corsican flavor and attitude HISTORY: CdF opened its doors on July 1, 1997, founded by one of a pair of Corsican nomads named Philippe Cassetari. His brother, Marc, came along later to manage the show while Philippe explored other business frontiers in other remote places on the globe. The brothers made it quite clear that they were Corsican first and French second. HOURS: Daily from noon until the last customer left. On Sundays, it opened in the evening starting at 5 pm. In 1997, restaurants in UB closed around 8 pm whether the customer liked it or not. " We're closing now. Pay your money and eat your desert on the street." That was the prevailing attitude among restaurants in 1997. CdF set a new standard in restaurant service. It stayed open as long as customers came in to eat, drink and be merry or whatever. Sometimes it closed as the sun was rising the next morning. It was an unpredictable place (see "special events" below). CdF was sort of like the famous Bar Scene in the original "Star Wars" movie with a whole array of colorful characters strolling in from different parts of the gallaxy and hanging out. FACILITIES AND AMENITIES: Clean, bright, cheerful, friendly, well decorated with Corsican and Mongolian art. There was a small dining room in the back called the "petite chambre" which could accomodate up to 15 people for private discussions during lunch or dinner. Only God and the waitresses know what went on in that room over the years. Ministers and ambassadors dined in there. Mongolia's top fashion designers and models dined in there. Oh,.... to have been a fly on the wall in the petite chambre. We suspect some important elements of Mongolia's modern history were constructed in that little room and maybe other things were consumated there as well. CdF was one of the first places in UB to establish an outdoor "beer garden" which subsequently became the rage in UB, even if there was not a garden or blade of grass in sight. Cement beer gardens were fine for other places. But CdF's garden was a small area surrounded by a wooden fence, grassy inside with wooden picnic tables and a outdoor BBQ at one side. During the long days of summer, people would wine and dine in this garden under the feathery larches and cottonwoods. In the fall, those trees began to change to gold and the customers continued to enjoy a good dinner and conversation until the sun set in its magnificent and incomparable Mongolian brilliance. Our first celebrity diner for the OR series, Syann Williams (see Eskimo Cafe), was a habitue of CdF. She and your OR author this time, Shel, made it a habit to open and close the Beer Garden each year----first in, last out. This was an extreme sport in the extreme. The obvious advantage is that CdF's good white wines chilled quickly when the temp was -20F outside (fall or spring ----don't make no difference). Just stick the bottle in the snow and enjoy the feisty bouquet of a white Bordeaux in fine crystal, assuming the crystal, the wine or the embibers ddin't croak of hypothermia first. Passers-by rushing to the nearest match to warm themselves up always thought we were a bit strange. The tables inside CdF had amoeboid qualities. They came together, shifted shape, split apart and, in general, consumed the customers as they came and left. There was always room for one more person and a configuration to meet any demand. Now, as you know, your OR reviewers are fastidious when it comes to comfort amenities or, more crudely, the toilets. CdF's water closets (as Europeans like to call them) were always impeccably clean. No doubt. But the men's room did have two minor deficits in our opinion. First, compared with our other restaurants, CdF's WCs had no electric hand dryer. But, to CdF's credit, it always had clean hand towels. Second, the toilet had no seat to sit on so, when nature called, that became a defining moment in life. It was either down and out or up and out. ATTENDANCE: Here we get to what one of the elements that made CdF the great watering hole and institution that it was. Who went to CdF to wine and dine? Presidents. Prime Ministers. Ministers. Members of Parliament. Heads of foreign donor organizations like the UN (with all its affiliates), the IMF, WB, ADB. Ambassadors of many countries, businessmen and, occasionally, businesswomen with after hours agendas (but rarely), professors, consultants and scientists. Drunk monks (really!!), people in the charity business such as the French sisters in their habits who ran a hospital which the Corsican brothers supported and, of course, all those with French/Corsican connections who like to speak French. Tourists parachuted into UB in the summer time and found their way to CdF within minutes of landing, their parachutes already folded and stowed under the seat in front of them at CdF. We got our noses a bit out of joint when we had to compete at CdF for table space with the inane jabbering of these summer visitors. But, of course, that was good foreign exchange, good for the local economy and good for CdF. A few miscreants and reprobates staggered in from time to time but the ever-vigilant Corsicans sent them packing in an instant. Finally, there were the ordinary guys off the street like your OR reviewers at the bottom of the list just looking for an honest pomme frite. Here's another way to look at "attendance". If you wanted to find out about politics, economics and other current affairs in Mongolia, go to CdF. If you had more esoteric interests, go to CdF, too. If you wanted to find out about the traditional uses of alcohol in Mongolia, go to CdF. If you wanted to find out about gold mining in Mongolia, go to CdF. If you wanted to find out about urban shaminism in Mongolia, go to CdF. If you wanted to learn about the status of bird migration in Mongolia, go to CdF (but that's seasonal, like mushrooms, see below). And the status of the cashmere business in Mongolia? Go to CdF. The point is that people who knew what's going on in Mongolia came to CdF. It was a living Internet Exchange.
STAFF AND SERVICE: We have to mention the Corsican brothers first,
Philippe and Marc. It was the two of them who made CdF what it was. They
set a new standard for restaurant service in Mongolia. The two of them
were always at CdF whenever it was open for business. They greeted
people when they arrived. They said goodbye to them when they left. They
chatted with customers and sat down with them as they dined. They made
the diners feel that CdF was a friendly place and that they were at home
on the edge of the planet. Other restuarants provide edible food, but
the owners and managers are never there to greet and be with the diners.
Other restuarants in UB are a business. CdF was an institution, a
friendly home where all kinds of things could transpire.
CdF had the most charming and efficient staff of any restaurant in UB (although Philipppe and Marc would huff and puff over that), either as servers or as kitchen staff or as administrators. Over the years they came and went. But, under Philippe's and Marc's management, they provided the most courteous, gracious and personalized service anywhere in UB. The most beautfiul pair of eyes in Mongolia once looked after our needs at CdF. Many of the staff have gone on to bigger and better things. CdF was a training ground for young Mongolians aspiring for a better future. Another credit to the management. MENU: If you were cross-eyed, you could probably read and understand CdF's menu pretty well. If you were not cross-eyed, you would soon become cross-eyed trying to read the menu. That's because the Parliament in its great good wisdom passed a law a few years ago saying that all restaurant menus had to be in Mongolian, English and whatever other language of your choice.
FOOD: Generally excellent but on the pricey side. The beef was obviously "range-fed" in Mongolian tradition and in that sense it was always tasty if not tender. Green salads became a feature of CdF in an era when the word "green" was hardly known in this country. Spices too----Ten years ago there was only one spice in Mongolia and that was salt. Taste buds of expats were shriveling from the salt, like wrinkled fingers after too many hours swimming in the ocean. CdF resurrected our taste buds to dance to some Corsican tune. SPECIAL EVENTS: As we have said above, CdF was not a restaurant. It was an institution where anything might happen, planned or unplanned at any time of day or night, but mostly long after the sun set.The Corsican brothers were always looking to do something different and interesting. They believed, in the good tradition of cooking, that variety is the spice of life. They bought an old upright piano and installed it in the main dining salon. They invited a young Mongolian couple to play dinner music for the diners for several weeks, a pianist and a violinist. Jazz buffs were thrilled to hear Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" being played by a Mongolian gal on a violin in a Corsican restaurant in UB. Think about it......something is happening out here on the edge of the planet. One dark winter in the middle of the night, some faithful CdF customers got into a huge and friendly food fight, the likes of which your reviewer (Shel) had never seen before in his life, not even in his fraternity days at college. It was a one-off event. He walked into it with one of CdF's great patrons, Deb Rasmussen, from across the border in Calgary, Canada. The entire length of the floor of CdF was covered with champagne, eggs, and tomatoes. Eggs were still flying when we entered. To this day, Deb has a yoke stain on her parka from that evening. When the food fight subsided, the dancing began, with all the staff joining in. Dancing on a tile floor covered with champange, eggs and tomotoes must be one of the smoother and slippery experiences in life. Then, at CdF, there were performances among the seated diners of contortionists. One of the contortionists was the daughter of the bar tender at that time. Great idea, except that eating itself became a bit contorted. There was an elegant fashion show put on by teenage Mongolian designers and models called the Mongolian Beauty Group, prancing and twirling among the tables as the customers dined. There were many candle-lit "soirees a theme" with up to 100 people attending in tight quarters. There were Bastille Day celebrations held in the Beer Garden on beautfiul summer days in July. In the last year of CdF's shooting-star existence, there were two champagne brunches on Sundays, put on by the Corsican brothers and your reviewer, Shel. About 30 people came. Shel scrambled 60 eggs for the diners, some of whom seemed hung over from the night before. Smoked salmon and caviar canapes, green salad, scrambled eggs and bacon (VERY un-French), a sweet desert and, of course, Russian champange to wash it all down. HYGIENE: Impeccable everywhere, in the vestibule, in the bar and dining salon, in the kitchen, in the restrooms. Every diner noticed that there were always staff mopping the floor constantly as people tracked in the dust from the steppe. And to sop up the eggs and champagne after the food fight. COST: At the up-end of the scale for restaurants in UB. But worth every tug you might have payed. Anyway, that's all moot, now. RECOMMENDATION: None. CdF is now history. It's over. If you go to that place now, you will find a GTZ-supported printing press in cooperation with Mongolian Techncial University. On second thought, go there and take a look to see what you missed. RATING: 5.5. - As you all know, our OR reviews have 5.0 as the top mark. Of course, CdF was not an OR in our original defintion of the phrase. And we would never have covered it in our series. But now that CdF, as we have known it, is deceased (ie, more than obscure), we want to give it a 5.5 rating. This is a challenge to any restuaranter in UB to come up with a place that can meet everything CdF offered to its diverse clientele and friends.
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