Brotherhood of Foodies
David Burtons review Dominion Post Saturday October 14, 2006
“A culinary freemasons’ get-together in Wellington keeps its members focus firmly on the tradition of spit roasting.”
Many cultures have their dining clubs but few take them as seriously as the French. Throughout France there are well over 50 confreries (“brotherhoods” dedicated to a particular edible treasure.
Most have fanciful names such as the Most Serene Order of the Ardeche Chestnut or the Order of the Burgundy Snail and the Golden Spurs. There are the Chevaliers due Brie and the Companions of the Black Sausage. And even an Academie des Abats, whose menus are made up exclusively of innards.
Most of these orders and brotherhoods have medieval-style hats, gowns and chaines in which they dress for formal parades and meetings. Some get themselves up in puffy Elizabethan bloomers and tights, with purple cloaks and medals so over-sized they are practically breast-plates.
And the hats! There are medieval tricornes, feathered fedoras and floppy bonnets that would easily outdo the professors on Victoria University’s annual graduation procession through our city.
By comparison, then, the regalia of the Confrerie de la Chaine des Rotisseurs is a model of restraint, consisting of nothing more than a chain with a medal and ribbon, worn over a business suit. Women can opt for a simple medal and ribboned bow if they so wish.
The Chaine des Rotisseurs is by far the largest of all the French confreries, because it extends its membership beyond France, and is dedicated not to a specialised regional French foodstuff but (officially at least) to the universal task of spit-roasting meat.
Currently the Chaine has some 22,000 members in 70 countries. They are organised into chapters (“Bailliages”) each headed by a Bailli (“bailiff”). In New Zealand, there are chapters in both Christchurch and Wellington, where the head of our chapter, Ian Hull-Brown also acts as the national “grand fromage” or Bailli Delegue. Since membership of a chapter gives you entry to any chapter worldwide, and conventions are regularly held all over the world, the Chaine might be seen as a foodie version of Rotary or the Freemasons. High annual fees tend to restrict membership to relatively wealthy foodie amateurs, though chefs, restaurateurs and hoteliers are sought after as professional members.
As with any wine and food society, the raison d’etre of the Chaine is the shared enjoyment of good food and rink, either at barbeques or social events at one another’s houses or; for formal occasions, black-tie dinners at hotels and restaurants, when chains are worn. Once such occasion was at the Hotel InterContinental last Saturday evening, when members turned out in the chains (the colour of their ribbons corresponding to their rank) to partake of a seven-course menu of Luxembourg cuisine.
The most solemn event of all is the induction of new members, when a visiting bigwig taps them on the shoulder with a sword and presents them with their chain. I went through such a ceremony myself some years ago at the Duxton Hotel, when I was given the title of Charge de Presse. I’d been a little nervous, as I’d heard about the initiation ceremonies of these organisations, when prospects are put through minor ordeals such as blind tastings or having to sing the society’s anthem in Provencal. But as it happens, all we had to do was swear an oath never to spoil and always to care for a roast on the spit. Then we tucked into an eight-course banquet, following a reading of the Chaine rules: no speeches, no smoking, and in direct contradiction of Anglo-Saxon protocol, all hot dishes are to be eaten immediately upon service, rather than wait for it to go cold while everybody else is served.
Frivolities aside, the Chaine does perform a useful function, in that each year it holds a national cooking competition for commis chefs (aged under 27), the winner of which goes on to complete internationally at a worldwide Chaine event. To raise funds for this, the Wellington members gather for what Secretary Helen Hull-Brown calls a “surplus to requirements raffle”. Each person brings along a present he or she has been given for Christmas or a birthday, but which has been kept in a cupboard. It doesn’t matter what it is, so long as it is in bad taste. Everybody wraps the present in paper they recognise, then takes it along and puts it on a table. Then they buy a raffle ticket with a number on it, and as their number is called, each person picks a present from the table. Everybody then unwraps their parcel at once, and great hilarity ensues as everybody discovers something – normally just what they never wanted: a orange polar fleece Tui hat with flaps, for example, with a white feather halo above it.
Like all the French confreries, La Chaine des Rotissuers is a 20th-century creation, but is modelled on a medieval French guild. It was founded in 1950 by a group that included Curnonsky, the French restaurant critic whose reputation was as prodigious as his physique. The model for the organisation was the royal guild of goose-roasters, founded in 1248, and in 1610 granted a coat of arms (adopted by the modern society). Along with every other guild, the Rotisseurs were disbanded in 1793, at the height of the French Revolution. Having been colonised by the stolid British, such confreries have never existed previously existed in New Zealand. But I often wonder what would have happened if the French had beaten the English to New Zealand. Might we not now have the Noble Order of the Toheroa? Or the Companions of the Pre-Salted Lamb?
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