Dali Planet #107: La Couronne
Perhaps Dali’s “Cathedral of Thumbs” from 1947 was a positive review for La Couronne in Rouen, reputedly France’s oldest inn with a history going back to 1345. Its chefs have fed kings and queens, heads of state, Sophia Loren, John Wayne, Princess Grace, Maurice Chevalier, Jean-Paul Sartre and, anytime he was heading to Le Havre to set sail for America, Salvador Dali. He usually had the Canard a la Rouennaise and, like most of the VIP guests, scrawled his compliments on the wall.
Tantalising at right, “Still Life with Fish” from 1927. Famed TV cook Julia Child got her first taste of proper French food here in 1948, en route from Le Havre to Paris, and wrote just before she died in 2004 that it was “the most exciting meal of my life”.
