Questions Readers Send

Real questions from letters, answered as plainly as I answered them across the seating plan.

Is this an official site of the cabaret? No — and this first question matters, so let me answer it fully. These pages are the private memoirs of Marcelle Renaud, a retired maître d'hôtel. They are not connected with the cabaret, endorsed by it, or maintained on its behalf. Nothing here is sold; there are no tickets, no reservations, no payments of any kind — only an old woman's notes. For anything official, please go to the establishment itself.

Then who is this site for? For the friends and former colleagues who keep writing to ask me the same dozen questions about the evenings on Boulevard de Clichy, and for any stranger who enjoys hearing how a famous room actually ran. It is a notebook, not a business.

Which evening should I take if I can only have one? The nine o'clock with the dinner if the budget allows it — the full ritual, once, done properly. If not, the nine o'clock revue alone. The late show is a connoisseur's pleasure, best kept for a second visit.

Is the dress code really strict? The door was genuinely firm and I imagine still is — jacket or no entry was a sentence I spoke in four languages. Nothing elaborate is needed; evening-wear standards, effort visible, trainers left at the hotel. Err one notch smarter than you think necessary and the question dissolves.

Can I take my mother / my son who is sixteen? Mothers: absolutely, and the staff are wonderful with them — mention a birthday and watch. For young people, check the establishment's own rules; my memory is that teenagers accompanied by family were welcome, but rules change and my information is, after all, memoir.

How early is too early? For dinner, doors are half an hour before service and the room rewards arriving on the earlier side — you watch the house fill, which is itself a show. For the revues, twenty minutes is comfortable. Anything earlier and you are queuing on the boulevard, which has its own charm but only once.

Why no comments section? Because I am sixty-one years old and I answer letters. Write to me by post — the address is on the contact page — and I will write back. It is slower and it is better.

Do you still go to the shows? Now and then, as a guest like anyone else — a friend in the house keeps a table for me on the quieter nights. I sit in the parterre left side, where I always told people to sit, and for two hours I am simply part of the room I used to run. It is the strangest and nicest thing retirement gave me: the same view, with the duties left on the stairs.

Will you write more pages? Perhaps. The notebook on my desk is thicker than this site, and there are stories — the night the mill's sails stopped mid-show, the ambassador who tipped in ancient coins — that I have not set down yet. If the letters keep coming, so will the pages.

May I share this site? Please do — a quiet link passed between friends is the finest traffic a notebook can have. No permission needed, no form to fill; that is the whole point of keeping it simple.