The restaurateur who ran Le Fiacre at 4 rue du Cherche-Midi through the 1950s, when it was the centre of homosexual Paris. He kept a twelve-table restaurant on the floor above the bar, and its well-connected diners were what kept the police away from the men drinking below.
Louis Baruc was Basque by origin and trained at Maxim's and at Fouquet's before taking over Le Fiacre, at 4 rue du Cherche-Midi, in the 1950s. Everyone called him Loulou; Nicholas Boggs records that customers also called him Louise.
He ran the house on two floors, with two clienteles that never mixed. The premier étage held a sober restaurant of twelve tables with a forty-franc menu, and it drew Parisian show business — Pierre Cardin was among the diners. The ground floor held a small gay bar, packed to the walls, whose customers had far less money and much more to lose. From 1949 until the end of the 1960s a prefectural order forbade men to dance together in public, and administrative closure was the standing threat to any bar of this kind. The trade upstairs was what bought the room downstairs its tolerance.
The New York Times account of James Baldwin's Paris says that Le Fiacre's owner became the basis for Guillaume in Giovanni's Room. Nicholas Boggs's 2025 biography reaches the same conclusion independently, indexing Baruc by name and reading Guillaume as very much in the vein of Louis. Baldwin never confirmed the identification in any letter or interview in the public record.
Inspired · Book
The New York Times says Le Fiacre's owner became the basis for Guillaume. Nicholas Boggs's 2025 biography reaches the same conclusion independently, indexing Baruc by name and reading Guillaume as very much in the vein of him.
— Samuel Rutter, Exploring James Baldwin's Old Haunts in New York and Paris (2020); Nicholas Boggs, Baldwin: A Love Story (2025)
Worked at
Baruc took over Le Fiacre in the 1950s and ran it on two floors: a twelve-table restaurant with a forty-franc menu on the premier étage, and a packed gay bar on the ground floor. He had trained at Maxim's and at Fouquet's.
Inspired
The New York Times says Le Fiacre's owner became the basis for Guillaume. Nicholas Boggs's 2025 biography reaches the same conclusion independently, indexing Baruc by name and reading Guillaume as very much in the vein of him.
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