academic paper: memories of meals: the case of class and the clown

The Base Memory from the author:


She’s nine years old, give or take a few years. She’s been to this restaurant a plethora of times growing up, so the memories of this particular place may have blended over time. She’s in an outfit she undoubtedly had to fight with her mom over, as was often the scenario. Some uncomfortable dress or skirt, one of those cringeworthy ‘fits from the early 2000s with the patterned skirt and nice blouse, or worse, a dress with embroidery or jewels sewn on. “This place has a dress code, it means you have to dress formally,” her mother would explain. Her brothers had to wear button-ups and ties, and one was forced into a bow tie one year. That gave her comfort in not being the only one suffering through the seemingly stupid and uppity “p’s and q’s” that this restaurant required.

Le Titi de Paris was a place they only went to for ultra-celebrations like her parent’s anniversary or the rare holiday meal that wasn’t home cooked that year. The place had a coat check, penguin-clad waitstaff, a xylophone of the shiniest cutlery flanking each plate, a musician or two playing a harp or piano, large white-clothed tables that were round and gave plenty of legroom, so much she could swing her legs if she wanted and no one would know except for the slight flutter of the tablecloth.

None of the children had ever requested to go there, not to her knowledge at least. Yet, they looked forward to it because they knew it was good food, and her parents always ordered sparkling grape juice for her and her siblings so they could get in the celebratory mood. Though she generally disliked vegetables, she found that they were more pleasant here, even coming to love and crave the mushroom bisque and the asparagus, nevermind their flavors are forever linked to being sharply reminded of the proper way to spoon soup and learning that asparagus, per the Queen’s standards, can be a finger food. And the bread, the bread, how could she forget the bread? Crunchy, soft pillows cushioned and melted yellow gobs of butter. She remembered to make a “b” with her left hand and a “d” with her right, “b” for bread dish on left, “d” for drink on right. The meals were decadence, course after course, leaving them feeling even more uncomfortable in their formal attire after every plate. But she knew what came at the end. It was the best part.

Her older brother never liked dessert - some strain of crazy he must have gotten from their father’s side. He would huff and moan and point at leftovers, exclaiming, “Look, she didn’t even finish her meal!” Yet, she remained steadfast in her belief in dessert (which oftentimes she argued was her right), and at Le Titi de Paris it was expected everyone would order some kind of sweet at the end, another opportunity for a lesson in cutlery use and decorum. Dessert at Le Titi de Paris was safe space from her brother’s protests, at least.

Perhaps it was the extremism of the dish, or the fact it didn’t feel like it belonged in that restaurant, or the initial creepiness it emanated, or perhaps because it took more time to prepare and therefore felt more theatrical. Whatever the reason, she ordered the same dessert every visit - a clown mousse cake. Imagine: a dome of layered chocolate and vanilla mousse, a red powder-dusted, raspberry-filled chocolate shell nose protruding from the base of the mousse and plate, a clown face that thankfully was not structurally able to show any nightmarish grin. Some edible Mad Hatter-type decor delicately balanced atop the head, only outdone by the two coral-like explosions of candied red sugar hairs bursting from the head of this edible clown. Addictively bright purees swirled around the rest of the plate, streaks of kiwi and pineapple and raspberry only broken by dark chocolate droplets, a literal pool of flavor. Nevermind the creepy premise of a clown dessert, it was, in its entirety, fantastical, and she would eat every drop, every time (well, except for the ones she had to sacrifice to her surrounding family out of courtesy, a “dessert tax” one might say).

There was one time, just a few years before Le Titi de Paris closed, when her family had gone regularly enough that the chef invited them back to the kitchen just before dessert. It was just as elegant as the dining rooms, though brighter, and sterile, and white and steel. It was as if the politeness from out there continued in the kitchen, just in a much more utilitarian way. The seeming perfection of the kitchen went sideways for her when a blowtorch appeared, the smell of warm sugar, and a few magical, noisy, expressive steps turned the sugar into clown hair. She can still feel the sticky fragility of the red sugar glass being handed from the chef, in her fingers it slowly started to melt as she pinched firmly but carefully to the freshly made piece. She was right - it was a fantastical dessert.


Memory Interview with Ian Talty, the younger brother of the author:


“It’s a confusing memory, I was very young. You know, it’s one of those stories you’re told about a number of times, and I’m not sure if it’s my own memory or made of the memories of other people telling me about it, like adults at the time or other people that were there. I don’t know if I can say, ‘This is my memory.’ But I remember what you’re talking about, I remember that restaurant, and I could never forget the dessert - the clown! Oh my god, the clown…”

            He has positive emotions and “a fond memory” of the clown dessert at Le Titi de Paris. “That dessert was for us kids, the shape of that food was aimed at us, and I’m sure the adults found it entertaining, cute you know, but not nearly as much as we did.” The “gist of the dessert” is still in his memory, though similar to the author, it is built on a rough description based on what is recalled. “It was a playful little clown, wasn’t it?”

            “I remember them having a small menu overall. I don’t know if the clown dessert was even on the menu, maybe it was something special because we had a relationship with the restaurant…It was a relatively small restaurant, I don’t know…maybe like 30 tables? I remember the white tablecloths. And the servers or busboys, one or the other, had these little shiny silver crumb table scrapers that they’d come around and use at our table between service.” The author was pleasantly surprised - her younger brother had remembered something she hadn’t. “I think the presence or absence of little crumb scrapers defines a restaurant in my mind,” he jokingly argues. “It’s like a cat grooming itself. It’s a sensory experience - cleansing and purifying. It’s a tool made for one single purpose that works so well, and it brings back the formality of the setting, as if it’s a reset to a nice and proper setting.” He remembers dark carpeting and selected overhead lighting that made the space feel darker and more formal. The family always sat somewhere near the kitchen and he remembers the “very classic stainless steel kitchen door.” It was a standalone restaurant with higher ceilings, maybe music “but nothing comes to mind,” and white-clothed round tables with heavy chairs. “But all chairs are heavy to kids because they’re built for adults, so I guess there’s some juxtaposition there - the chairs are built for adults but the dessert is built for kids!” he laughs. “It’s probably a place you’d order coffee at, you know? After dinner. Like it’s super European, French of course, and they’d probably have some kind of coffee cart they’d roll out for a full coffee service after dinner.

            “I was excited to go there! I liked the place. It was fun, had good food, and it was a production. It was a step above a regular, average restaurant, you know. It made it feel special, and it was a special place because we didn’t go there often, just on occasions. You know, the less you go, the cooler it is. But at some point, we started to go less and less, and eventually we stopped going. It became very formal and stifling, just for the benefit of having a clown dessert that we were probably outgrowing. I doubt that the fiasco of the clown dessert outweighed the laborious task of going through the motions of preparing for this meal.”

            The details of the clown dessert remain the core of the experience at Le Titi de Paris. “We were kids going into the kitchen and got to see the hair, which of course was the selling point. I remember it being candied…the color of cough syrup, an extremely bright red color, like hardened webbing that made up the hair…maybe there was a nose?” The rest of the clown has no details for him. “It could have been a white blob of styrofoam for all I know, maybe it was ice cream or pound cake. It wasn’t as important as the hair.” The aesthetic of the dessert seems more relevant than the details of the dessert. “It didn’t give circus clown energy, more like an aberration of a clown, a suggestion of a clown. Like, if it was in an art museum level, someone would walk by and be like, ‘Ooh, edgy.’ Or maybe it was like papier mache…round and white… I think it was just the head, maybe a collar…wait, yes! Some frilly piping work for the collar? Some kind of piping with ridges made it look like a formal French clown… And there was coulis, maybe mango and raspberry…shaped like ying-yang swirls, spaced out on the plate…like tadpoles.” This particular ingredient, coulis, has extenuating associations for the family. “Mom had - and still has - this tendency when a plate would come out, and she’d say, ‘Oh, I just want like three fries,’ that thing…but with this dish, she would drag her spoon through the coulis and say, ‘That’s all I wanted.’ It was like food sabotage, ‘I’m going to enjoy my experience and fuck the rest of you,’ kind of! If it wasn’t a formal restaurant, you would have licked the plate, Kiva.” The author took a moment to remember her frequent visits to the freezer for spoonfuls of homemade coulis, which their mom would later lament about when she wouldn’t have enough for a recipe. This trait must be genetic - the author is also guilty of eating ice cream directly from the container, ruining the experience for others. “The only taste I remember is the candied hair portion of the clown dessert…and I remember the taste being incredibly underwhelming…I mean, it’s just sugar and color, so it tasted just like that, sugar and color. But it doesn’t lose its specialness…the hair brought us more joy than the dessert or flavor itself, I think.”

            When asked how he would feel if the dessert was given to him today, he responded with humor. “I think I’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s crazy!’ I don’t know if I’d eat it…I’d nibble on the hair and be interested in parsing it out - figuring out what it was all made of. I want to dissect the memory of what I chose to forget about…I’d want to live through another dinner at that restaurant to bring me back into that position to experience it again so I could confirm or deny the details. Also, I had a higher propensity to like sweeter things then, so now I for sure wouldn’t eat it.”

            His most immediate memories when prompted about Le Titi de Paris revolve around the restaurant and its role itself. “I spent most of my childhood with my head down in the dirt, so I remember the white tablecloths the most because they were at my height.” He also remembers it being on the pricier side. “I remember it being a point of contention sometimes, because our parents would spend money on us and they’d argue if it was worth it or not to do that, like it was an inherent waste of a meal. But I also have a tendency to overestimate dining prices!” he notes, as he admittedly claims to be the most frugal member of the family.

            He spoke about feeling like his memory was not his at the end of the interview. He and the author are close in age and share similar memories as the two youngest siblings of their family. They had the same vista from their heights and therefore shared experiences and abilities of memory-keeping. “I’m nervous retelling stories from when I was young because I’m not sure what is memory, what is told, and what is just ‘strange sweat dreams.’”


Memory Interview with Kiv Robertson, mother of Kiva Victoria:


            “We went to Le Titi de Paris numerous times…I have a lot of good memories from there. It’s where I told your father that I was going to have you!” For the mother of the author, the memories affiliated with the restaurant center more about the experience, the intention, and specific instances or events. “It really was all about starting…for you guys…to start learning where you’d wear handsome and pretty clothes. It wasn’t Bennigan’s…it wasn’t just for the delicious French food but it was where we could start introducing you kids to manners - not that you didn’t have them at home, but it was more like answering the question, ‘What are all these knives and forks for?’” The author reminded her of the mushroom soup, recalling when she had to be reminded to scoop, wipe away from you, blow gently, and then take in the spoon. “After the first few times we took you there, the boys started asking, ‘Do we have to wear our handsome clothes?’...Ian had a striped tie with bugs on it, and Cameron had…I can’t remember now, but they had their whole Brooks Brothers outfits, and you had to wear a skirt or dress…It gave you guys exposure to different levels of eating out and expectations for attire, for etiquette, for manners…I think it shows respect for the level of food and service. There’s commitment and work and purchasing and time that goes into a dinner and experience like that, and so I think we should dress the part…For me, it’s a whole package.”

            When asked why this particular restaurant was frequented, she reiterated that it was “the whole package.” “You know, you go out and dress fancy. The sophistication of the food is represented there. And they really included you kids…when you sat down, they invited and included you in that whole dining process and experience. They didn’t roll their eyes at you, it was a welcoming experience and it was a way to expose you kids to different things.” She expanded on exposure by mentioning their upbringing in Chicago, where her kids had the opportunity to learn to use chopsticks when visiting Chinatown, cutting with a steak knife at a steakhouse, or watching saganakibe lit on fire in the middle of a restaurant (albeit a Greek Chicagoan tradition). “I didn’t have these experiences growing up because my parents didn’t have the money. Maybe the most was when we had to get dressed up for dinner at the yacht club in Lorain [Ohio]...we’d spend the day in the water or go on the sailboat and then we’d have to shower and get dressed up and act right during dinner. This is something that we wanted to give to you guys…and, the food was delicious!”

            She described dishes she recalled, but mostly remembering how the flavor and food experience was. “The flavor in each dish was savored. You could taste the flavor of each item on the plate…the mushrooms, the demi glace, the richness of the meat. To know how to cook like that, that’s a real accomplishment.”

            She recalls when we were invited to make our own dessert, that being the memorable clown dessert. “I remember you all popped up out of your seats, your eyes lit up and you all had this look on your face, a look that asked, ‘Really? Is this okay?!’ They took you three into the kitchen first, and then Steve and I went back there after. It was a classic kitchen - I’m sure you know now that you’ve got to gastronomy school - the stainless steel, drawers, everything clean, organized…they showed you guys how they would drizzle the sugar on a pan, torch it, and lift it off to make that hair for the clown.” When asked if she remembered how often it was ordered, she couldn’t recall, “I just remember when they invited you three into the kitchen because you acted nicely that night, no one was fighting…It probably happened more than once…You know, it was probably one of those things we got to expect but it wasn’t necessarily going to happen every time…I just remember when you came back how proud you all were. You listened so attentively, followed directions, and came back proud of making those desserts.” When prompted about the details of the dessert, she had struggles pinning down details, similar to the other interviewees. “Was it ice cream? There was this little hat thing, red and blue, on top…a splatter of coulis that you would smoosh around the plate.” When jokingly accused of being a fervent fan of coulis, she replied, “I’d eat coulis for breakfast, lunch, and dinner…well, it’s a fruit, and when I make it I don’t nearly use that much sugar.” When thinking back on the dessert, she mentioned it was “funny and strange, because all of us hate clowns.” Like the other interviewees, the clown dessert holds a specific place in her mind, but unlike the others, she had an adult experience of the location.

            “When I think about it now, it was always fond memories made there. Delicious food, your father and I trying new wines, and having us all share that experience…it kind of makes me proud. Kids these days would have probably been miserable or on their iPads, but you kids really enjoyed it and looked forward to going I think.” In recalling her family’s presence there, she noted how often they frequented. “We hosted Peter and Maryanne’s shower there, and Ian’s christening. It was a step up from other places around, and everything was always done really well. Ian’s christening was a luncheon…that’s where my dad died.” An abrupt moment of clarity. “Wait, that’swhere he passed away? Where Papa had his heart attack?” the author asks. “Yep,” she replies. “He was telling a joke, martini in hand, and you kids were running around the restaurant, and when I looked to you guys and looked back, he was ‘boom,’ on the floor…Hells bells, if I could go with a martini in my hand and not know what hit me, I’d sign up!”


Memory Interview with Cameron Talty, older brother of Kiva Victoria - Unavailable for interview due to military work, but texts were exchanged:


“Ok so the problem is i genuinely don’t remember it at all. I know it was a thing that happened but i just cannot remember anything about it,” he responded when prompted with the restaurant name and the (seemingly) memorable dessert. “Lol you’re tripping me out I’m the least helpful person. Sorry. I just for some reason have no recollection of it at all. I remember the restaurant and everything at the table. But i just don’t remember the food itself.”


Analysis of Collective Memory:


For the author and her family, Le Titi de Paris holds a spectrum of value and meaning. Although the restaurant was often frequented collectively, a sort of “repast” for the family done so only on occasions or for special celebrations[1], the sentiment and memories surrounding it vary for each member. There is a collective memory of the restaurant, the dessert, and the atmosphere, however each member contributes to the memoryscape differently. While the author’s younger brother holds specific minor details - a crumb scraper, the feeling of being young and smaller than the “adult-sized” chairs - her mother holds general, sweeping feelings of the experience of being a patron with a purpose - for means of education and entertainment. Her older brother, surprisingly, holds very few memories of the entire memoryscape, while the author herself recalls specific instances and moments spent during their repasts there.

As discussed by Scott Alves Barton, defining a repast is difficult as it is a broad term. For the author and her family, going to Le Titi de Paris was a repast if following Barton’s example - “[it] is a metonymy for a refection as well as the ritual practice applied to this commensal meal.”[2]Not only did meals at the restaurant provide substance and nourishment, but also the “ritual practice” of elevated elegance and expectation of etiquette was included. Those rituals of etiquette and embellishment held different meanings for each member of the family, however, not only for reason of subjectivity but also for reason of age.

The divide between the youth and the adult in this food memoryscape is mentionable, although without much surprise. The author and her younger brother, the youth in this scenario, have borderline mystical memories of the clown dessert (what patchwork of memories they could compile), of entering the kitchen (what could be seen as a sacred space), of seeing the making of the clown hair (what could be seen as magic). Meanwhile, the author’s mother only briefly connected with the memory-building of the dessert, rather focusing on the actions and reactions of her children being included in the process. A child’s surprise and delight and a mother’s pride combine to create this constructed moment within the memoryscape, their own subjective perspectives mixing together like swirled coulis to reconstruct what was.

            These recollections of memories are just that - recollections. As it is generally believed and experienced, memories are subjective not only for the past but also for the present, as “...memory intrinsically destabilizes truth through a concern with the subjective ways that the past is recalled, memorialized, and used to construct the present.”[3] Where the author seems to maintain a distaste in her mouth for the required pomp and circumstance of etiquette practice from this memory, recalling meltdowns and annoyances as a child, the author’s mother recalls that practice as going smoothly, with good and lasting results, and maintains a positive attitude towards giving that experience to her children.

            Upon conducting these interviews, it did not surprise the author that her and her mother distinctly recall the etiquette expectations involved more so that her siblings. Their relationship as mother and daughter, as most, was tense and rocky at times. If the author had been familiar with Pierre Bordieu at the time, she might have quoted this excerpt as a form of protest:


The manner of presenting and consuming the food…the presentation of the dishes…the etiquette governing posture and gesture, ways of serving oneself and others, of using the different utensils…the censorship of all bodily manifestations of the act or pleasure of eating…this whole commitment to stylization tends to shift the emphasis from substance and function to form and manner…[4]


For the author, the constraints and restrictions of etiquette and fine fashion outweighed the memory of flavor and taste, though she must admit today that these learned skills, nuances, and awarenesses have helped tremendously in given scenarios.

Personal sentiments aside, the sharing of opportunities for learning and gifting of manners was crafted and intentional. As the mother of the author mentioned, it gave her pride in being confident that her children would know how to navigate a variety of social scenarios surrounding food. Perhaps it was not the subject that irked the author so, but rather how the lessons were provided. Although it context it applies to giving gifts of food, I believe it can be argued that David Sutton’s analysis of gift-giving can also relate to courtesies and formalities of food-related manners. “The giving of gifts must be publicly witnessed and validated in order to be effective” could not be truer for the author’s mother giving the gift of opportunity for etiquette.[5]By bringing her children into a public space of altered social status, her “gift” is publicly witnessed; by the waitstaff including us in the routines and motions of French dining service, her “gift” is validated; by the end result of her children’s obtained knowledge and practice of manners in foodscapes, her “gift” is effective. Her bringing her children to a restaurant to perform these acts of learning and practice of etiquette shows how she, as a mother and a caretaker, bestows upon her children the gift of learned knowledge.

Upon a conclusive review of the interviewing experience and recollection of memories, the author remains with an itch that wants to be scratched. Each person involved had interest in the topic and probably could have expanded onwards and tangentially. In fact, the author and her mother did digress to speak about another restaurant experience from their past, as well as speaking to the outfits and dress that her children wore. There seems to be a rich and interesting pool of knowledge and memory between the family members that the author desires to explore. These interviews provided light and perspective in reviewing the role this restaurant and dish played in their subjective and collective memory.

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[1] Barton, “Repasting: A Metonymy,” p. 2.

[2] Barton, “Repasting: A Metonymy,” p.2.

[3] Holtzman, “Food and Memory,” p. 363.

[4] Bordieu, “Taste of Luxury, Taste of Necessity,” p. 77.

[5] Sutton, Remembrance of Repasts, p. 45.

Written for: University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo, Food Anthropology, Dr. David Sutton, 2022