A Waiter in Paris — Book walk and ‘in conversation’ with Edward Chisholm
On a sunny Spring afternoon, UCL Postgrad Urbanists went on a book walk through Regent’s Park discussing Edward Chisholm’s A Waiter in Paris (2021).
We were joined by PhD researchers across UCL departments including Geography, The Bartlett School of Architecture, Institute of Education, and Engineering. In this piece, Postgrad Urbanists Sidra Ahmed (PhD, UCL Geography) and Yichang Sun (PhD, UCL The Bartlett School of Architecture) share reflections from the walk and a post-walk Q&A we had with the author Edward Chisholm.
The Book Walk
A Waiter in Paris is Chisholm’s memoir of his seven years in Paris. It opens with Chisholm as an English graduate in Paris with little to no prospects and hardly any money, but the guts to wait it out and figure out what Paris has in store for him. The book is an underdog narrative that follows an English waiter, (or rather, ‘waiter-in-waiting’ who starts out as a restaurant runner), experiencing Paris via the stage of the fictional ‘Le Bistrot de La Seine’ restaurant and its backstage gang of waiters, cooks, and management.
We’re taken on Chisholm’s story from passing as a waiter barely speaking French, navigating the kitchen politics of Le Bistrot de La Seine, to yes, becoming a waiter. Through Chisholm’s observations, we encounter a Paris that is dynamic, multifaceted, and deeply human. Below we share a few highlights from our discussion during the walk.
We opened the book walk by asking everyone to share moments in the book which were amusing. Our favourites include a moment when Chisholm, as a runner at that time, figures out how to manipulate the waiter politics to finally earn tips in the chapter ‘The Rise of the Runner’ and avenge the stealing of his tips from a previous shift:
“The role of the runner, it turns out, is a corrupt one. This is my source of prestige, I realize. If the waiters are bounty hunters, constantly chasing tips, then the runner is a mercenary, a gun for hire, His allegiances are to no one, only the person who pays him best. The waiters know that, if the runner is working with them, then he’s not working with anyone else.
At the end of the evening there’s no need to ask the waiters for the three euros. They all give more. It’s like protection money.
I’ve noticed a change in the others, too: they see me as an equal, as one of them — no longer a plaything. That’s what they were waiting for, perhaps, to see if I had enough grit to stick it out.”
— A Waiter in Paris (2021: pp.132–133)
Another encounter involves the procuring, preparing and delivery of olives for a special group of diners — only Chisholm, his fellow waiter, and the reader know the journey those olives took. We also mused on ‘live where the tomatoes are good’, a piece of layered life advice fellow waiter Salvatore gives Chisholm. Sidenote, we did end up discussing where the tomatoes are actually good — Croatia and Italy were two suggestions.
As we carried and referenced our copies of the book during the walk, we also interrogated the title itself. A Waiter in Paris activates a social role coupled with one’s urban imaginations of a city such as Paris; it makes you want to fill in the story. Other book titles and song names that made us feel the same came to mind, especially those from the perspective of the outsider. Sting’s single Englishman in New York. Mark Vanhoenacker’s Imagine a City: A Pilot Sees the World (2022). We were even reminded of a past Q&A we had with Geographer and Author Giada Peterle who described ‘urban spaces as narrative archives’. A Waiter in Paris is one such archive of life in Paris activated by Chisholm’s writing:
“It’s not really my story; I was merely an observer passing through. ‘A camera with its shutter open’, as Christopher Isherwood wrote of his time in Berlin.”
— A Waiter in Paris (2021: p.3)
As we follow Edward’s journey from runner to waiter, we find ourselves rooting for him as he navigates the complexities of the restaurant world. To read a book titled A Waiter in Paris is to also gain an insight into how waitering is an art form, requiring a delicate balance of humanity, decency, and sometimes manipulation.
We talked about how the scene of the Parisian restaurant became the author’s tiny window to observe urban life. As a “third place” in the city, as described by author Ray Oldenburg in The Great Good Place (1999), the restaurant is not merely a place to eat in. It works as an everyday melting pot of different cultures generating interpersonal and communal interaction of people from all walks of life. We commented on the ‘place ballet’ of La Bistrot de La Seine, it was an intersection of different groups of people’s spatial and temporal routines. For the workers, the restaurant was a daily grind and seasonal challenge; for tourists and diners, a one-off adventure immersed in the performance of the front stage of the restaurant. They are all experiencing a different Paris.
We reflected on the ballet of behaviours we saw in the lower and upper kitchens of La Bistrot de La Seine, scenes that are usually invisible to diners and revealed to the reader. As readers we feasted on the time pressures and anxieties that came with waiters fighting it out to get their orders completed, putting food that had fallen on the floor back on the plate, or cleaning a spill with anything that came to hand be it a sleeve, napkin or something out of the bin. As we walked and talked, we were reminded of The Bear TV series which also depicts the intensity and chaos of a Chicago restaurant kitchen with the constant shouting of “BEHIND”, anxieties of completing orders on time, and colourful characters.
Along with facing the restaurant and the city, we thought about how Chisholm faces himself with the city and Philosopher Georg Simmel’s Metropolis and Mental Life (1903) on how one mentally navigates the city. We’re taken on twists and turns through Parisian restaurants, different accommodation, dark streets and hidden spaces as well as through the twists and turns of Chisholm’s own mentality in navigating being homeless, jobless and an outsider.
The metropolis, or the magnificent city, has a unique way of fragmenting our mentality, leaving us staring nakedly into the abyss. Yet, at the same time, it has the power to heal. This duality is beautifully captured in the book. One such expression of this is in a moment from the chapter ‘A Taste of Restaurant Life’ where Chisholm writes about his own gaze on Paris:
“Even when you’re exhausted, broke and hungry, there’s still an indefinable magic of the place. And no matter how much your feet hurt after a never-ending shift, how physically dead you feel as you walk up the Avenue de l’Opéra at night, or across the Seine under the shadow of Notre-Dame, inside, you can’t help but feel intensively alive. Because you’re in it, you’re in the film. You’re not watching, you’ve got a walk-on, speaking part. And everything feels possible. Besides, when you’re in Paris you couldn’t care less about anywhere else. Your world shrinks; it’s the centre of the universe. There is nowhere else.”
— A Waiter in Paris (2021: p.204)
Edward, thank you for answering our questions. We had a wonderful walk through Regent’s Park discussing A Waiter in Paris. As urbanists, we couldn’t help but dwell on the spatial imaginings and way in which the grit of urban life was portrayed in this account of your time in Paris. So that is the perspective from which we would like to ask our questions.
You wrote about how within Paris it may be possible to find all of France and that the scenes and stories you observed are indicative of urban life in other cities too. George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) was also one of the books you mention travelling with you when you moved to Paris.
How would you compare the ‘dark heart of Paris’ to the ‘dark heart’ of London? Or equally, to anywhere else you have lived?
It’s hard to compare, in the sense that both cities are a reflection of their histories. For example, one thing you notice immediately is how former colonies play a huge part in the ethnic make-up of the city. In France, the majority of people working at the lower end of the social ladder are North African or from sub-Saharan French-speaking African countries. In London South Asia is much more represented.
That said, London also feels more international, more cosmopolitan, you find the whole world there; whereas Paris feels distinctly French, particularly intramuros, outside of the peripherique it is a different story, there’s a distinct division there. Whereas in London, which is more a collection of joined up villages, everybody is more spread out.
We mused on the title during our walk too and asked our attendees what it was about the book title that made them want to join us. The title contains a fusion of spatial and personal identity. In the book, you mention publishing ‘Notes from a Parisian kitchen’ in The New York Times.
When did ‘Notes from a Parisian Kitchen’ become A Waiter in Paris? And why this title?
Notes from a Parisian Kitchen was the title given to the article by the NY Times editor, probably inspired by Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground. My working title for the manuscript was always The Waiting Game, because the double sense of waiting intrigued me. However this was never particularly liked, and in the end the publisher wanted something that didn’t need to be deciphered, and that’s where A Waiter in Paris was born. There was some discussion whether it should be waiters, plural, but in the end it stayed singular.
Paris itself is a main character. And we say character because of the way in which your writing personifies Paris as human and as female. You describe Paris as ‘quiet’ with ‘her avenues empty’ in the opening. During the snow, Paris is ‘replaced by a soft memory’. Paris ‘cares little’ for the workers that keep the city running ‘for she has seen them all before and will see many more’.
Can you reflect on this personification? What image and experience of Paris does it help depict?
It’s almost a cliché to refer to Paris in the feminine, and initially I tried to avoid it, but coming from London, and essentially comparing it with London, the personification became more apt. London feels distinctly masculine in my mind’s eye. Whereas Paris more feminine. Maybe it’s the intimacy of central Paris, the presence of more organic forms on building façades or metro entrances. It’s also no doubt informed by other writers. But there’s something more austere and concrete based about London, which obviously suffered a lot more damage during the war.
You’ve shown us a really delicate description of the urban spaces of Paris at various scales, touching upon both the outdoor city and the interior world of the Parisian restaurant. As readers, we’ve encountered urban life in Paris’ alleys, courtyards, trains, parks, a car and so much more. We’ve been presented with the socio-spatial hierarchies of restaurant kitchens and cafes as well as the experience of being together yet feeling alone at the Bistrot de la Seine.
Can you share an insight into your writing process for distilling and capturing this array of spatial dimensions?
That’s very kind, thank you. I have to admit that this was a huge part of the writing process. So much ink has been spilled describing Paris that I was keen not to fall into the same trap and employ the usual tired tropes to describe the city. Giving a sense of the size of the city, the macro experience helps place the reader in the intoxicating experience of being somewhere new, and all of the 19th century changes to Paris (wide boulevards, square, and public spaces) for this upon you. But it is very superficial, in the sense that you quickly step from this ceremonial world to something much smaller, more intimate, and often forgotten to the mists of time. The interior spaces are, especially in the less glamorous areas, often dilapidated after years and years of neglect. So choosing the right details to express this hopefully gave the reader a rich idea of what these places were actually like.
We opened the book walk by asking everyone if there was a moment in the book that made them laugh. And we would love to ask you the same. Is there a memory from the book that still makes you laugh when you recall it?
There were many moments that made me laugh, in fact the whole experience was probably much more joyous than written. The writing process tended to bring out the feeling of injustice I felt about the experience and the people that are going through it. So in the second draft I was keen to rectify that by adding more of the humourous exchanges that were the day-to-day of life in a gang of waiters.
We are part of UCL Urban Lab and we wanted to use the term ‘urban lab’ to launch our last question. You are currently working on a second book project about Paris. Can you tell us a bit about your next book and why Paris is your ‘urban lab’ for writing stories?
I imagine it’s because I amassed such a wealth of experience from the seven years I lived there that I have a rich well from which to draw upon. I love the idea of being able to transport someone there through words.
As for the next book, it is slightly different in that I will be recounting the story of something that happened in the late 60s. So I will need to draw on my own experience but also plenty of primary sources. To be honest, I am still working through how I will do it, but I am hoping that the research will illuminate the way.
This piece was written by Sidra Ahmed (PhD, UCL Geography) and Yichang Sun (PhD, UCL The Bartlett School of Architecture) with thanks from UCL Urban Laboratory
