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.
Within walking distance
Hôtel Verneuil
The Left Bank hotel where James Baldwin settled after arriving in Paris in November 1948, and where his first published essays were written.
Visit the place
35 rue Jacob
The Catholic girls' school Simone de Beauvoir attended from the age of six until her baccalauréat. The address is now occupied by the Librairie des Femmes — the feminist bookshop and publishing house — which makes it the most improbable coincidence on any Paris literary walk.
Visit the place
14 rue Saint-Guillaume
The Paris home of the lawyer Walter Berry, Edith Wharton's closest friend and literary adviser for forty years — and the man who eventually took over the lease of her apartment on the rue de Varenne.
Visit the place
Rue Bonaparte
The street that stitches the Left Bank together — river to Beaux-Arts to Saint-Germain to Saint-Sulpice — and the nightly walk Henry Miller could not stop remembering.
Visit the placeReferences
References
The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document Michaud's, the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.
1A Moveable Feast
MemoirErnest Hemingway, 1964Used forFirst-person evidence and historical context used in preparing the Michaud's page.
2OpenStreetMap
Map dataUsed forMap data used to verify addresses, geographic coordinates, and the placement associated with Michaud's.
3The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, Volume 1: 1907–1922
Official recordCambridge University Press, 2011Used forOfficial record used to verify names, dates, institutional details, or other factual information on this page.
4Ernest Hemingway, The Art of Fiction No. 21
PeriodicalThe Paris Review, Issue 18, Spring 1958, 1958Used forContemporary reporting or criticism used to document the historical reception and context of Michaud's.
i
Why these sources are here
These references provide the documented foundation for this page's history and context. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.
Explore more resourcesNewsletter
Paris, one address at a time.
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.