Mondays
by Beatrice · 18 June 2026 · Biography & Memoir
Pot-au-feu every Monday since 1987. A critic calls it predictable — she removes it briefly, puts it back after three Mondays. The critic never returns, the regulars never left. Last time in June 2021. It tasted exactly as it always had.
Every Monday from September to June we had the same dish on the menu: pot-au-feu. Not exactly the same — the vegetables changed with the season, the meat varied with what arrived that morning — but pot-au-feu, always. My husband ran the front of house and he started the tradition. He said: people need something they can count on. I said that was sentimental. He was right.
We started it in 1987 and by the nineties the regulars expected it. By the two-thousands tourists would come specifically on Mondays. I took it off the menu once, in 2003, because a food writer had called it predictable. Three Mondays later I put it back. The food writer never returned. The regulars had never left.
I cooked it for the last time in June 2021. It tasted exactly as it always had. That was the right way for it to end.
Read in the app, leave a resonance, discover more stories.