Paris… a city where people eat and drink well, even very well, for more than 1000 years! What we don’t always know is that ice cream was born hereafter a little detour through Italy and Sicily anyway!
The first to bring them to France is a certain Procopio, called Procope, in the middle of the 17th century. He opened the first café but also sold refreshments there, such as ice cream and sorbets. Let’s say that he paved the way for others, in the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Frascati, then Tortoni, both of Italian origin, who made delicious ice creams, incredibly creative fragrances for the time: violet, orange blossom, citron, for example. They are sold in cups and trendy Parisians love them… But the most unlikely place where they were sold, in any case, at the end of the 18th century, it was the Elysée Palace !
At that time, the Palace, which belonged to the Duchess of Bourbon, was bought during the Revolution by a financier! The gardens of the Elysée are a model copy of those of the Hameau du prince de Condé in Chantilly… So, to make their purchase profitable, the financier and his associates opened a café-ice cream parlor called “Le Hameau de Chantilly”. There are pastries, hot drinks, refreshments, and of course, ice cream!
The entrance fee is 1 franc, including 75 cents to be worth in drinks! But the place is poorly attended, by grisettes, that is to say workers or lacemakers of modest origins, very available for lovers not only of ice cream but also of fresh meat… The male clientele is rather the type to take care of the horses… the grooms… Since that’s not fancy enough, It all goes downhill pretty quickly! For lack of customers, the Elysée was sold to Joachim Murat, one of Napoleon’s Empire generals, in 1805.
It seems that since the Presidents of the Republic have been housed there, the quality of ice cream at the Elysée has become top-of-the-range again… If, in a heat stroke, or a moment of bewilderment, one of the cyclists was tempted to try, I can only advise him to tell the castle this little anecdote to be forgiven!