I’ve never much liked queues.
I worked for years as a checkout supervisor at a supermarket, and something instinctive still kicks in when I sense the slightest hint of a line starting to form. Surely they’ve had their day, anyway. With the advent of the written word, let alone the telephone and all technological advances thereafter, there’s basically no actual need to queue for just about anything.
Sometimes, though, a queue is unavoidable. Like the Sunday evening in March when I found myself outside Restaurant L’Entrecôte in downtown Bordeaux. The place is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week, and they do not take reservations.
There’s always, always a queue here, though there’s something reassuring about this one. It’s run with almost military precision. And it moves.
There are polite, if not exactly friendly, greetings when you finally reach the end of the queue and pass each door, stairway or threshold; there are three floors, so you do meet a few people along the way. Hello, go upstairs please. Good evening, through there please.
Inside, it’s all black and yellow and tartan, like a Scottish wasp. It’s hot, and there’s a cooking-fat note in the air. But it’s not dirty or greasy. Tables are turned over quickly; yellow paper tablecloths and napkins with a bull on them keep the place looking like a cross between a Parisian bistro and a child’s birthday party.
If you’re one of those people who struggles to make their mind up in restaurants, you’ll like it here – as long as you eat meat. This is a set menu with an emphasis on “set”. You are in a steak restaurant. Steak singular. Your one option is how you’d like it cooked, and “well done” is not an accepted answer.
The wine list is short. The house wines are perfectly serviceable fare, though you can also push the boat out for something a little more ambitious: a dry white from Château Thieuley in Entre-Deux-Mers, maybe; or a smart red Bordeaux from Château Marjosse, home estate of Pierre Lurton of Châteaux Cheval Blanc and d’Yquem.
The wineglasses are small, round and stubby. These are not the sort of glasses wine people like to drink from. That doesn’t matter, though; don’t come here to sit and savour a glass for an hour or to contemplate aromas. Come here to drink wine with your steak, free of any particular cares, airs or graces.
Your order has probably not hit the kitchen before you’re treated to a bowl of bread and a plate of salad. You didn’t order a salad, and they won’t have mentioned a salad at the time of ordering unless you specifically asked. But a salad you shall have, and it’s the same every time: lettuce, walnuts and a mustardy, vinegary dressing. There must be a team on salad duty around the clock. I’m no fan of walnuts, and if I was whipping up a salad at home, bog-standard lettuce would be towards the bottom of my wish-list.
Here, though, it works. You could almost have a second plate, if only you had the time. Things move fast. The moment the last knife and fork hits the plate, somebody is over to clear up – and to tell you off for putting your cutlery on the plate, you heathen. Here, like in many restaurants in France, you keep the same knife and fork throughout your meal. I’ve never been quite sure why.
No time to find out, though. Because before you know it, it’s time for the main event. This is steak frites of the most reliable, homely and irresistible kind. Generous portions of everything. Thinly sliced steak, drowning in a garlicky, buttery mustard sauce (a secret held closely with the family, apparently; think a Café de Paris sauce and you’re not far off). Your communal serving dish is kept warm by candlelight. If you know what you’re in for here, I don’t think it’s possible to be disappointed.
They give you so many fries that you’d swear they were going out of fashion. And just when you think you’ve had your fill, an insistent serveuse is along with another helping of roasting-hot chips. Resistance is futile. Any pangs of hunger you may have had are now just a distant memory from when you were in a queue outside.
And that’s almost your lot.
It’s France, so obviously there’s cheese, if you want it. And surprisingly, there’s also a relatively long dessert menu. I wonder why. Maybe they’re bluffing, and it’s just for show – a calculated risk that nobody could possibly have room for dessert after all that beef, potato and, ehm, lettuce.
I’m not big on desserts at the best of times, and on the several occasions when I’ve managed to successfully clear my plate at this fine, beefy establishment, I’m not necessarily in the mood. But there is some fancy-sounding stuff to be had if you’re that way inclined, and, on the face of it at least, there is a degree of free will involved.
I don’t live in Bordeaux anymore and I don’t get back as often as I’d like to.
Eight years ago, I met my now wife on the steps of the opera house, not a hundred metres from this restaurant. There would have already been a healthy queue forming as we said hello for the first time. I couldn’t have known back then how things would develop. No clue that we’d move to London together, or that there’d be a global pandemic. No notion of the jobs I would have, the places I’d go or the people I’d meet.
Not much has changed there: I have no idea what the future holds, really.
There are lots of unknowns, from the everyday to the existential. Much in between. Some things I can influence or have some say over; others are entirely out of my, our, anyone’s hands. Maybe everything will work out. Maybe it won’t.
I might never even set foot in Bordeaux again. Or maybe we’ll move back there and never leave.
And if I do get back there, I might not ever eat at L’Entrecôte again. I don’t like queues, after all, and I know Bordeaux well enough to know there are a million other places to get a good meal. Many of them will even let you decide what you eat.
But for whatever reason, I’m drawn to that bright black-and-yellow façade, the gawdy signage – and that queue. Rigid but always in motion; timeless. Different people in different configurations, from all walks of life; always reliably the same. It’ll be the same tonight as it was on that Sunday in March as it was the first time I went there nearly a decade ago and every other time since.
I have no idea who is going there tonight, who they’re going with, where they’ve come from, where they’re going. But I know what they’ll be having.