The riverside table on the far side of the Île Saint-Louis — wonderful food, Madame Lecomte at the door, and a forty-five-minute wait since the Americans found it.
Ernest Hemingway never prints the restaurant's trading name. He writes "Madame Lecomte's restaurant on the far side of the island," and everything else has to be argued from there. The argument is a strong one. A restaurant called Au Rendez-vous des Mariniers stood at 33 quai d'Anjou, on the far side of the Île Saint-Louis, and from 1904 to 1928 its cook and proprietress was a Madame Lecomte — Pascaline Lecomte, who ran it with her husband. After the armistice it filled with Americans, which is the exact complaint the novel makes about it, and John Dos Passos, who ate there and is a documented friend of Hemingway's, is one of its recorded regulars.
That is an identification by surname, address, clientele and date rather than by a name in the text, so this page treats it as probable rather than settled. Frédéric Vitoux, who wrote the restaurant's history and grew up on the island, treats the two as the same place.
It opened in 1904 and closed in 1953, and for most of that half-century it was not a literary restaurant at all. It fed the people who worked the river: bargemen moored along the quai, the households of the neighbourhood, and the women employed on the laundry boats. Three owners ran it in turn, the Lecomtes first.
The room was plain. Diners ate off marble table tops, the cutlery was plain metal, and the bill was chalked up on a large slate. Hemingway noticed the slate: in the novel it is "doubtless one of the 'quaint' features" — a working detail that had turned into part of the appeal.
The writers came anyway, and kept coming long after the novel. Vitoux's account of the house puts Pablo Picasso, Georges Simenon, Louis Aragon and Blaise Cendrars at its tables alongside Dos Passos, and in March 1933 Louis-Ferdinand Céline dined here with François Mauriac — an unlikely pairing, a year after Journey to the End of the Night. Hemingway is the least documented of them. He is named among the restaurant's writers, but the evidence everyone reaches for is the novel itself.
The dinner is one line long and completely specific:
That is a complete French restaurant dinner of the period and nothing more elaborate. It is not chicken Marengo, not a cream sauce, not a named preparation of any kind — it is plain home-style roast chicken served as part of a fixed meal, which is what a bargemen's restaurant would have been cooking. "New green beans" means young beans freshly in season rather than a recipe. The cheese would conventionally have come as its own course after the salad, and Hemingway does not say which cheese.
"You never come here any more, Monsieur Barnes." "Too many compatriots."
Her answer is the practical one, and the reason the exchange is funny rather than sour: come at lunchtime, she tells him, it is not crowded then.
No. The restaurant closed in 1953 and there is no successor at the address, so the roast chicken cannot be ordered where it was eaten and no venue can honestly claim to serve a recreation of it. Of the novel's meals, this is the one with the clearest answer.
What survives is the walk. From No. 33 the two men go along under the trees on the Quai d'Orléans side, circle the island, watch a bateau mouche go up under the bridge, and cross to the left bank by the wooden footbridge from the Quai de Béthune to stop and look downriver at Notre-Dame. The planks they use were temporary, a stopgap while the Pont de la Tournelle was rebuilt; the stone bridge that opened in 1928 stands in their place. The route is walkable as written, and the downriver view from the bridge is unchanged.
We ate dinner at Madame Lecomte’s restaurant on the far side of the island. It was crowded with Americans and we had to stand up and wait for a place. Some one had put it in the American Women’s Club list as a quaint restaurant on the Paris quais as yet untouched by Americans, so we had to wait forty-five minutes for a table. Bill had eaten at the restaurant in 1918, and right after the armistice, and Madame Lecomte made a great fuss over seeing him.
Chapter VIII — dinner with Bill on the Île Saint-Louis
We had a good meal, a roast chicken, new green beans, mashed potatoes, a salad, and some apple-pie and cheese.
Worth the forty-five-minute wait — an American women's club had just listed the place as 'untouched by Americans.'
From The Sun Also RisesAu Rendez-vous des Mariniers opens at 33 quai d'Anjou, feeding bargemen, neighbours and the laundry-boat women.
The visits of Bill Gorton, a character in The Sun Also Rises, mirror the real postwar clientele; Dos Passos lodges here.
Three Mountains Press prints Hemingway's in our time a few doors along the quai.
An American guidebook listing packs the little dining room with compatriots.
The dinner scene in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises fixes Madame Lecomte's name in print.
Pascaline Lecomte and her husband give up the restaurant after twenty-four years; two owners follow them.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline dines here with François Mauriac in March, a year after Journey to the End of the Night.
The restaurant closes; the address returns to private life.
Almost certainly. Ernest Hemingway never prints a trading name, but a restaurant called Au Rendez-vous des Mariniers stood at 33 quai d'Anjou on the Île Saint-Louis, and from 1904 to 1928 its cook and proprietress was Pascaline Lecomte. The address, the surname, the postwar American clientele and the date all match, so the identification is probable rather than proven.
Roast chicken, new green beans, mashed potatoes, a salad, and apple pie with cheese, followed by coffee and a fine. Jake Barnes, the novel's narrator, and his friend Bill Gorton are characters in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises; the dinner is in chapter VIII. It is a plain, complete French restaurant meal rather than a named preparation.
No. Au Rendez-vous des Mariniers closed in 1953 and nothing succeeded it at the address. No restaurant in Paris can honestly claim to serve a recreation of the meal. You can walk the quai d'Anjou and the route the two men take after dinner.
Someone had listed it in the American Women's Club guide as a quaint restaurant on the Paris quais as yet untouched by Americans. Jake and Bill wait forty-five minutes for a table. Asked why he never comes any more, Jake answers "Too many compatriots" — and Madame Lecomte tells him to come at lunchtime instead.
Frédéric Vitoux's history of the house names Pablo Picasso, John Dos Passos, Georges Simenon, Louis Aragon and Blaise Cendrars among its customers. In March 1933 Louis-Ferdinand Céline dined here with François Mauriac. Dos Passos, who lodged on the island, is the best-documented of the Americans.
33 quai d'Anjou, on the northern shore of the Île Saint-Louis in the 4th arrondissement. The building stands and the address is private; nothing marks the restaurant. Bill Bird's Three Mountains Press, which printed Hemingway's in our time, was a few doors along at No. 29.
Setting of the story
Bill and Jake's dinner on the far side of the Île Saint-Louis — wonderful food, and a forty-five-minute wait since the American Women's Club listed it.
An unlikely pairing preserved by Vitoux: Céline and François Mauriac dine together at the Rendez-vous des Mariniers in March 1933, the year after Journey to the End of the Night.
An unlikely pairing preserved by Vitoux: Céline and François Mauriac dine together at the Rendez-vous des Mariniers in March 1933, the year after Journey to the End of the Night.
Ernest Hemingway wrote about Madame Lecomte's in The Sun Also Rises.
An unlikely pairing preserved by Vitoux: Céline and François Mauriac dine together at the Rendez-vous des Mariniers in March 1933, the year after Journey to the End of the Night.
The cathedral seen at night from the wooden footbridge off the Quai de Béthune — the still point of the finest walk in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, answered a decade later from the same river in Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer.
Visit the place
A working-class accordion dance hall in the Latin Quarter — the neighborhood danced there most nights, and the expatriate crowd borrowed it on Mondays.
Visit the place
George Whitman's bookshop by the Seine — opened as Le Mistral in 1951, renamed Shakespeare and Company in 1964 with Sylvia Beach's blessing, and still sleeping writers among its shelves.
Visit the place
The small Left Bank hotel on the quai Saint-Michel, facing Notre-Dame, where Godard shot the long bedroom scene of Breathless in Room 12. The hotel closed in 1993; the site is now the Hôtel Les Rives de Notre-Dame.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
