Discover the chic cutlery taking its design cues from Parisian café society
It’s been a few years since industrial designer Johnny Lim set foot in Paris, yet his memories of the city’s café spirit have remained so vivid, he easily drew upon them when creating a new pattern for Canadian cutlery house Gourmet Settings.
‘I had a definite image in my mind, this feeling of sitting at a table, facing the street and watching the world go by,’ he says. ‘You’re just free to enjoy the moment.’ An evolution of a previous line, the Rivoli pattern in the new Concept Collection interprets the practical yet perfectly proportioned cutlery that has been deployed by cafés and bistros in the City of Light for centuries. ‘The pieces they used were utilitarian – they had to function well because they were used so many times a day – but were also sleek and unobtrusive. They couldn’t get in the way of your dining experience,’ Lim explains.
His resulting designs were forged from red-hot bars of stainless steel, rather than stamped from thin sheets of the metal, to imbue them with a pleasing weight and volume. Each knife, fork and spoon boasts a slim and elegant profile, with a discreet flare in its handle to maximise ergonomic comfort. ‘I’m a fan of simple, flowing forms. That nice curve allows them to sit well in your hand, ensures they are well balanced and that they feel pleasant to hold,’ Lim adds. ‘That stability is what makes this pattern shine. They also have a smooth mouthfeel, which is important.’ Polished to a softly reflective sheen, these are elegant pieces that are designed to elevate the art of your table, but not to compete with the enjoyment of your food.
The new Rivoli collection by Gourmet Settings
Similar utensils have served the denizens of Paris and its visitors since the 17th century, when coffee – that exotic beverage from the Middle East – began to be served in public cafés and bistros. Accessible to all, these democratic dining spaces featured smaller, more intimate tables than restaurants or taverns, and often arranged them outside on the pavement to maximise covers.
Convivial meeting spots, they attracted a host of leading intellectuals and literary figures, and many are now considered historical monuments. Le Procope, Paris’s oldest such establishment, first opened its doors in 1686. The brainchild of an Italian chef, Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, Le Procope’s unfussy fare nourished philosophers such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot. In Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Les Deux Magots has been a literary hotspot for almost 150 years, frequented by Verlaine, Rimbaud and Camus, as well as James Joyce and Hemingway, who, it is said, would leave his manuscripts under the care of waiting staff as he ate, and even used the café as a location in The Sun Also Rises.
The new Rivoli collection by Gourmet Settings
After he had left England, Oscar Wilde nursed his drinks at Les Deux Magots’ bar, while existentialist power couple Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir liked to occupy their favourite table. Nearby, Café de Flore has been a haunt for fashionable movers and shakers since 1870. Patrons have included Picasso, Truman Capote, Karl Lagerfeld, Loulou de la Falaise and Helmut Newton. Designer Sonia Rykiel lunched there so often, she has her own “carb free” sandwich on the menu. More recently, it was the preferred meeting place for director Sofia Coppola while she worked on her Oscar-winning 2006 film Marie Antoinette.
But while the Left Bank cafés are famed for their creative, bohemian vibe, the city’s chic Rive Droite establishments, like the Café Marly by the Louvre, introduce an elegance to Parisian café culture that has inspired Lim for this collection. Symbolically named for the Rue de Rivoli, the vibrant street located at the French capital’s heart, this sleek, refined collection, he hopes, ‘will fit seamlessly into your life and just feel completely right’. A daily reminder to slow down and gracefully enjoy the pleasures of dining.
