Grimod de La Reynière was one of life’s true characters. With his artificial hands, culinary curiosity, great wit and ability to write, he cut a swathe through his time — a trickster gourmet credited with inventing food criticism.
Born in France in 1752, Grimod had a genetic condition that left him with stumpy claws instead of hands. As a stain on the family bloodline, his wealthy aristocratic parents reacted badly, secretly baptising him before unknown commoners – not the family blue-bloods as previously arranged. His mother, when not bedding a succession of men, grieved over the death of her other child, an infant boy. Whole in body he could have been a proper heir.
Father changed Grimod’s birth certificate, dropping the noble ‘de’, thus making him a bastard, and this later saved his life when the guillotines of the Revolution started cutting off aristocrat’s heads. The crippled boy, kept out of sight, developed a cutting, mordent wit. When his parents started a rumour that pigs had chewed his hands off, he took the pig as a symbol.
At the age of 17, a Swiss clock maker made Grimod a pair of hands constructed from leather, cork and papier-måché on jointed steel frames. Now he could write, and write he did, first as a lawyer, then as successful theatre critic and finally as best-selling author.
In his late twenties he became a bon-vivant gourmet, frequenting dining clubs, literary salons and hanging out with actors. This ultra-louche lifestyle, his republican politics, and his refusal to move up from lawyer to magistrate, infuriated the heck out of his parents. He was getting a rep as a non-conformist, but Grimod really made his bones with his famous Mortuary Feast of 1783 - held in the family’s Paris home while the folks were away.
The 17 guests, distinguished men of letters, artists and jurists, all held in high esteem the Reynière family name. They would have been pleased to be invited to this distinguished home. Most of what happened next is lost in time. Descriptions are embellished – likely more legend than hard fact — but if even half of it is true then it must have been a hell of a night!
On arrival, the astonished guests were confronted by actors brandishing spears and dressed as Swiss Guards, who demanded, “Are you here to see Monsieur de La Reynière, the People’s Bloodsucker, or his son -the defender of Widow and Orphan?” Another actor dressed as judge scrutinised the guests, making sinister notes in a ledger. Finally allowed to pass, the guests were led past a dressed model of a corpse into a completely darkened room. Incense smoke filled the air and unease grew. Then tapers and antique lamps were lit and a macabre dining room was now revealed.
Everything was black – the walls, tablecloths, the plate rims and the naked women serving. Even the garden outside was covered in charcoal; the pond dyed with ink. Baskets of violets and black scabias, adorned the table and at its centre - a coffin on a decorated stand. Prophetic, ritualistic symbols were everywhere - skull and crossbones painted and embroidered on walls, images of bows and quivers, rose wreathes, and fiery hearts. The upstanding men at the table would have been shocked.
No record of the menu remains, beyond a first course of pork and a second cooked in oil. But apparently the food and drink was mainly . . . black. Russian rye bread, ripe Turkish olives, caviar, smoked black pudding from Frankfurt, game birds in sauces the colour of liquorice and truffle gravy. Chocolate-flavoured cream, plum-puddings, mulberries and black-heart cherries. From black glasses were drunk the darkest wines, and after coffee and walnut brandy, there was kvass, porter and stout to be imbibed.
Maids stood by, their long hair for the guests to wipe their fingers on, and a hidden orchestra played. All the while smoke and incense drifted through the room. Unbeknownst to his guests Grimod had also invited 300 spectators to watch. They jeered from balconies further adding to the diners’ discomfort. What with the copious amounts of rich food and drink, gothic décor, incense and a hostile audience, some guests became delirious – experiencing hallucinations - and many became sick. This bizarre mix of dinner party, performance art and political commentary made Grimod ecstatic. He’d really stuck it to his parents - and made an infamous name for himself.
A few years later, he held another wild dinner party while his folks were away. But Dad unexpectedly returned and found a live pig, dressed in his clothes sitting at the head of the table. This was too much and he had his son arrested and banished to an abbey. The bloody wave of Revolution now crashed through Paris and Grimod went into the country where he broadened his culinary knowledge. He eventually came back in Paris and even though his father was dead, and the family fortune scattered, he still managed to find a few coins to visit the theatres, dining clubs, and the fresh culinary sensation – restaurants.
The capital was rich with the spoils of Napoleon’s imperial conquests and there was a post-revolution class of people eating out now, newly wealthy proletariats and bourgeois commoners. The new restaurants were just perfect for them.
But Grimod felt they didn’t understand the art of dining as he did. He put pen to paper in 1803, and with perfect timing ( and a certain amount of cynicism) published his Gourmet’s Almanac. It was a best seller and over the next nine years he produced a further seven volumes that all sold well. His Almanac reviewed, district by district, all the Parisian purveyors — butchers, delicatessens, pâtissiers and chocolatiers. And in a world first, he checked out and reviewed the new-fangled restaurants. His writing, always passionate, was both learned and eccentric, but there was sometimes a sense that he was taking the mickey out of his breathless readers. He recommended testing a turkey's freshness by sticking a finger deep into its anus and then sucking on the finger.
The success of the Almanac led to the Jury Degustateur, where on a Tuesday night Grimod would convene a group of gourmet diners to critique dishes and foodstuffs submitted by Parisian caterers, providores and restaurateurs. The fine diners of the city took his verdict as gospel. The madcap joker had become the palate of Paris.
A few months after the final Almanac was published, news came of Grimod becoming sick; then of his death. The crème de la crème of the Parisian gastronomic and theatrical worlds came to his home for a funeral feast. It was eerily similar to his famous mortuary supper of 1783 - even down to the coffin in the table’s centre. The meal commenced, and then with a huge shock for the guests - the coffin lid opened and Grimod jumped out. The dinner was a farewell to Paris and to food writing. This remarkable man now made a tree-change, moving to the country and living the rest of his life in peaceful obscurity.
“Life is so brief that we should not glance either too far backwards or forwards ... therefore study how to fix our happiness in our glass and in our plate.”
Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reynieré