DAV.[É].RESTAURANT
© DAVÉ RESTAURANT PARIS : 2017
Davé was born in Hong Kong in 1953. His family was from a province in northern China, but when he was a teenager his parents moved to Paris. The family settled in the suburbs, and it didn't take him long to realise that his ambitions were larger than the few blocks in which he lived his life. Yet his father had a restaurant, and he and his brothers and sisters were expected to work in it. That was what the Cheung family did.
'I was pushed, I think, by the usual fear of the immigrant,' he says. 'So I worked all the time. And I still do. I don't take holidays and I don't go away for the weekend. I am here. Every day. Always.' Late in the afternoon, he can often be found napping on his favourite banquette. He does have a flat, just a short walk from the restaurant. 'When I go home I watch a movie or sleep. But mostly I am here, and my customers like that. They know I am not going to be in New York or on the Riviera when they call. These are people who like certainty.'
Davé opened his restaurant in the summer of 1982, and two decades later he moved it to the current location, not far from the Comedie Française. 'There is such a thing as luck in this world,' he told me. The old restaurant was near the Jardin des Tuileries, where all the fashion shows were held. Helmut Newton came in, and so did Grace Coddington, the creative director of American Vogue . 'Everything followed from that. They came back with their friends. Then the rock people came; Duran Duran were there every day. And Azzedine, Yohji, and Rei [the designers Azzedine Alaia, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo]. People started to have parties. It just went from there.'
It's simple. People don't come here for the food. They come for me. My guests are tired, and this is where they can relax at the end of the day and be with each other socially. They don't want to be disturbed by a bunch of tourists.' The word seemed to twist his face into a moue of distaste. 'My job is to make fabulous people feel fabulous. I mean, really, anybody can serve a spring roll.', the restaurant recommended regularly by people in the fashion business. Like many popular restaurants in Paris, reservations are hard to make at Davé. Davé is dark and claustrophobic, hemmed in by quilted red walls and a velvet curtain inside the door. A tropical-fish tank, which sits in the middle of the front room, provides the only real source of light. Despite all that, Davé may be the most frequently and reverentially mentioned Chinese restaurant in France. It's certainly the most exclusive. Except on weekends, when he does not serve lunch, the place is open every day. On a busy night during the Paris fashion collections Davé serves 100 dinners - many of them tofu and bok choy, at around €60 a head.
“It’s simple. People don’t come here for the food. They come for me.”
Davé is a restaurant that caters to writers, actors, film directors, and rock stars. Allen Ginsberg would wander in when he was in Paris, choose a quiet corner table, ask for a bowl of wonton soup, and read in the dark. ( 'I always worried he would hurt his eyes,' Davé says. 'We don't have that much reading here.') Bernardo Bertolucci has eaten at Davé, and so have Oliver Stone and David Bowie. Davé is always happy to see them, but when he talks about fabulous people he really means fabulous fashion people, because for much of his life fashion is all he has cared about. 'When I was younger, I became obsessed with fashion, with the drama of it,' he says. 'In school, I would go through Vogue and Elle and I always wondered who was behind it and how did it work. Who was making these women look the way they did? That is what fashion really does: it makes fake things real.'
'Look, it's that new girl from Chanel,' a Davé regular said one evening. 'Let's see what he does with her.' A tiny blonde woman, dressed mostly in feathers and diamonds, and wearing cowboy boots, stood warily at the entrance. Diners openly stared as Davé moved, deliberately, toward the door. Where would he seat this woman? Certainly not in one of the alcoves at the front of the restaurant. Perhaps he would put her in the back room, a decision that would make the regular patrons feel better about themselves and confirm their suspicions that she was nobody. Davé seemed unsure at first, too, but in the French fashion world you don't mistreat the people at Chanel, so he gave her a table near the entrance. The woman sat down and placed a napkin across her miniskirt. ' J'aime bien ,' she said. 'J'aime bien. ' The room returned to its food.
“Are you kidding? Do you know what would happen if I took complet sign down?’ People might come in to have dinner? ‘Exactly! They would just walk right in. I would have to let anybody who wanted come and eat here. I would have no control over my own restaurant!”
People don't need to look at a piece of paper to decide what to eat. They have confidence in me.
DAVÉ RESTAURANT PARIS
His kitchen is basic and minimally staffed. Davé doesn't believe in menus, and few of his regular customers have ever consulted one. 'I have been going there for 30 years and I never even knew he had a menu,' Grace Coddington told me. 'He just knows what I want to eat, and if I want something different I tell him.' Davé confers with his diners when they arrive, and if they have a request he will honour it. Usually, he just says, 'Let me bring you something good, lemon chicken, for example, or bok choy, and usually spring rolls and spare ribs, too. I asked about his anti-menu stance. 'Too much stress,' he says. 'That is why I don't use them. We don't talk about bills, either. It's rude. Just come and sit with your friends and I will bring you food. And drink. Put the cost out of your mind for five minutes,' which is not difficult, since so few of his customers actually pay for meals with their own money. A typical meal for two, with a bottle of wine, can cost £100. 'Basically, the people don't care. Nobody comes here and complains about the prices. I charge depending upon the food and what people are drinking, of course. People don't need to look at a piece of paper to decide what to eat. They have confidence in me.'
“Yes,’ he says. ‘No. I can’t. Not tonight. We are closed. ‘Well, no,’ he continues. ‘I can’t promise tomorrow. No. We are very busy. It’s the fashion time, and we really don’t have room for other people.”
Davé is his own rope line. If you dial his number, he will answer. If you want a table, you will need to get it from him. 'There are some people for whom I will always have a table,' he continues. 'They know that. And that is the way a restaurant has to work. I answer the phone and try to be nice. I say I am sorry. I say, "You can call back later". But I am working 16 hours every day and the people call several times and they will wait for the other per son to answer the phone. But I am the other person. I am always the other person.'