Recalled in the memoir
A Moveable Feast
The restaurant where the Hemingways watched the Joyce family dine when they couldn't afford to, and the scene of the infamous “A Matter of Measurements” lunch with Fitzgerald.
Michaud's
Still standing
In, as a customer
Le Comptoir des Saints-Pères
The smart restaurant of the quarter — where the hungry Hemingways watched the Joyce family dine, and where F. Scott Fitzgerald asked the question answered in 'A Matter of Measurements.'
- 29 Rue des Saints-Pères (corner of Rue Jacob), 75006 Paris
Artistic reconstruction
The place, briefly
Michaud's stood on the corner of the rue Jacob and the rue des Saints-Pères, and for the Americans of the quarter it marked a very precise line: the restaurant you ate at when there was money, and looked into when there wasn't. A Moveable Feast uses it both ways. In the hunger chapters, Ernest and Hadley stand on the pavement watching James Joyce and his family at their table inside — the whole clan reading menus and speaking Italian — the era's most quietly devastating image of who could afford dinner. When luck ran good, a win at the races meant the same table from the other side of the glass.
The restaurant's second claim on literary history is the lunch behind the chapter called 'A Matter of Measurements.' Fitzgerald, shaken by a cruelty of Zelda's, confided his anxiety to Hemingway over the meal; Hemingway walked him to the toilettes, conducted his inspection, and delivered the reassurance — seconded by an appeal to the statues in the Louvre — that has been quoted in every memoir of the era since. Whether the scene happened quite as written is a question scholars enjoy; that Hemingway set it at Michaud's tells you what the room meant.
Michaud's itself did not survive mid-century. The corner premises passed to Le Comptoir des Saints-Pères, which still operates there and is happy to tell you what used to be served under the old name. The window you can be watched through, however, is original equipment.
Key facts
- The fashionable restaurant of the rue Jacob corner
- Saint-Germain-des-Prés, at rue Jacob and rue des Saints-Pères
- James Joyce and family, dining nightly while others watched
- Fitzgerald's confidence and Hemingway's reassurance, 'A Matter of Measurements'
- Closed — Le Comptoir des Saints-Pères occupies the corner
In images
Timeline
The Joyce family's regular table; the hungry watch from the pavement in Hemingway's A Moveable Feast.
Racing winnings get celebrated here — the same window, better side.
The Fitzgerald lunch behind 'A Matter of Measurements' — dated later by scholars, placed here by Hemingway.
Michaud's closes; Le Comptoir des Saints-Pères takes the corner.
The successor restaurant still serves on the corner; the window remains.
On the map
Related books
Writers who knew this place
Ernest Hemingway
Frequented by
Where the Hemingways watched the Joyce family dine when they couldn't afford to themselves.
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