I’ve talked about the Howard Johnson’s part of “Howard Johnson’s at Versailles,” but not about the Versailles part. And as I think about it, I realize I have no clear memory of when mashing up those two contradictory things came to mind! “Lost in the mists of Time” at this point.
But really, when you think of Versailles, what do you think of? Gilding, mirrors, and Marie Antoinette. And therefore cake. And perhaps also Louis XIV, and therefore Big Hair. I have always loved Marie Antoinette, even before I found Madame Campan’s memoirs at Boston Book Annex in my sophomore year of college, and then Stefan Zweig’s Freudian biography of her, Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman. Even Mary, Queen of Scots, who I first read about in third grade, takes second place.
So visiting Versailles and the Petit Trianon was a priority when I first went to Paris in 2008. A room I’d never heard of deeply impressed me: the chapel of the Petit Trianon. White and black, with a dash of red. This became my inspiration for the pantry (even though the pantry will look nothing like it).
Many people will be shocked by this, but I rejected the idea of any gilding right off the bat. White and gold might be a very Versailles combination, but in America it was also every suburban girl’s bedroom in the mid-century. I didn’t want a Veda Pierce Distinctly Middle Class kitchen at all.
I’d also thought about lining the back wall with floor-to-ceiling panels of mirrors, including a sliding panel that would obscure the pantry and backstairs doors. That, no surprise, would have been impractical. I am still toying with the idea of placing a mirror someplace.
There is also The Urn, which has been languishing down in the cellar for a long time now and needs to be brought back out. About 30 years ago, when Daddy was serving on the board of one of the local hospitals, he would get a ridiculously elaborate-looking gift for Christmas. The first year it was an over-the-top porcelain urn, over two feet tall and encrusted with porcelain flowers and cupids and whatnot. It was not like anything either of my parents would have chosen for themselves! The whole thing made me laugh like a drain, which is undoubtedly why I begged for it to put on top of the toilet in my Beacon Street basement apartment. And there it stayed, and it had a place of honor in the bathroom on Columbus Avenue, too. It’s time to bring it out again.
That leaves how to include the Queen, besides my sweet Marie Antoinette action figure with head-popping action my friends gave me for my birthday in 2009. Oddly enough, that journey detours through Provincetown. In August, 2019, I acquired this handsome gentleman from a Provincetown art gallery.
Pastelitos shows a handsome young man on a palm-lined beach offering a basket of traditional Cuban pastries. Handsome young man + carbohydrates = marry me! And notice the blue and orange color scheme, and how well it would complement Fiestaware.
The artist, Kurt Walters, has created an ongoing Dessert Series of paintings, all of people offering desserts from their culinary traditions. He’s not only a talented artist with a fabulous sense of whimsy, but also an engaging raconteur. Happily, I was able to persuade him to create for me an addition to this series, of Marie Antoinette with a cake.
So the two of them will make an unlikely pairing in the kitchen . . . but then, that’s part of why I find it so delightful. As noted before, I am seized with flights of fancy so obscure that only I can appreciate them. ;-)