Michaud’s is a crowded, expensive Paris restaurant that the narrator and his wife regard as an occasional treat rather than part of their ordinary meals at home. Its significance lies in that contrast: it is a place where hunger can be satisfied with a grand dinner, but also where hunger proves to be more than a bodily need. The restaurant brings the couple’s economic restraint, their intimacy, and the narrator’s discreet observation of James Joyce into the same scene.

Setting and Access

Michaud’s is close enough to be chosen for a special meal without requiring a journey across the city. When the couple considers going somewhere for a “truly grand dinner,” the narrator proposes the restaurant; his wife agrees that it is perfect and so close. They walk up the rue des Saints-Pères, pausing to look in the windows at pictures and furniture, then stop outside Michaud’s to read the posted menu. The restaurant is crowded, and they wait for diners to leave, watching tables where people have already reached their coffee. That pause makes the meal an event before they have even gone inside: the couple are hungry, but they are also watching a place associated with greater expense and the promise of indulgence.

The restaurant’s expense matters because the couple generally eat at home. In another conversation, the narrator says they mostly eat there and that they have a good cook. Their domestic plans include a meal at home, Beaune bought from a cooperative whose price is displayed in the window, and the need to pay the library. Michaud’s therefore represents a choice to spend, not a routine. The narrator recalls having been severe and mean about money, while also insisting that the couple did not think of themselves as poor: they ate and drank well and cheaply. Against that habitual economy, an outing to Michaud’s can feel exciting precisely because it is exceptional.

Joyce and the Restaurant’s Social World

Michaud’s also enters the narrative as a place where the narrator has seen James Joyce with his family. When asked whether they have ever seen Joyce, the narrator explains that they have seen him eating at Michaud’s, but that it is not polite to look at people while they are eating—and that Michaud’s is expensive. The answer joins social discretion to the couple’s limited means: they know where Joyce may be encountered, but they neither treat his meal as a spectacle to intrude upon nor describe the restaurant as an ordinary destination for themselves.

On the couple’s later visit, the restaurant’s literary association becomes a direct observation. From outside, the narrator sees Joyce holding the menu up in one hand and peering through his thick glasses. Joyce sits with his wife, Nora, and their children: Giorgio, thin and sleek-headed, and Lucia, whose heavy curly hair marks her as not quite grown. They are talking Italian. These details give the scene the character of a family meal rather than a public appearance. Michaud’s is simultaneously a restaurant of literary recognition and a place where the famous writer is simply eating with his family.

Hunger, Memory, and the Meal

The walk to Michaud’s follows a conversation about the feeling the couple experienced on a bridge. The narrator wonders how much of it might be hunger. His wife distinguishes among different kinds of hunger and says, “Memory is hunger.” Looking through the restaurant window, the narrator sees two tournedos being served and recognizes that he is hungry in the straightforward physical sense as well. The scene sets bodily appetite beside a more elusive longing: a meal can answer one without necessarily explaining the other.

Once the couple are inside and have eaten, the immediate hunger is gone, but the other feeling remains. It follows them onto the bus, into their room, and into the night. After they make love, it is still present; when the narrator wakes with the moonlight on the roofs, he turns his face into shadow and lies awake thinking about it. Michaud’s thus provides a clear test of the distinction raised before dinner. Food can satisfy the body, but the persistence of the feeling after the meal leaves its source unresolved. The old city, the couple’s youth, poverty, sudden money, right and wrong, and the breathing of the person beside him all resist the narrator’s wish to make life simple.

Narrative Significance

The restaurant gathers the book’s recurring material concerns—money, food, and the work of looking—into a single ordinary outing. The couple’s desire for a costly dinner is framed by domestic thrift and the obligation to pay for their library; their hunger is at once literal and a language for memory; and the view of Joyce places literary life within the scene of family dining. Michaud’s does not resolve the couple’s deeper unease. Instead, the meal removes one possible explanation for it, leaving the narrator to confront the difference between an appetite that dinner can end and a longing that survives the journey home and the night.