Walter Steiger: Lover of Feet and Food

From: Godfrey Deeny

1. Often, the best possible revenge is simply eating very well; something Swiss couture shoemaker Walter Steiger could tell you a thing or two about, especially over lunch.
   
   He may have created shoes for scores of designers - his podiatric Pantheon features everyone from Karl Lagerfeld and Azzedine Alaia to Albert Kriemler and Helmut Lang - but when it comes to restaurants, he′s a hard-core loyalist.
   
   His preferred table in Paris is called Le Griffonnier, one of those miniature bistros they attempt to recreate for pampered financial types in Hong Kong or New York but always fail to reproduce. Located 100 meters from his rue Faubourg St. Honore flagship in Paris, Le Griffonnier has a sturdy semi-circular bar, banquettes, Hobbit like mezzanine, waiters who are civil but never obsequious and a rather politico crowd, not surprising as it′s a stone throw from the main gate to the Elysees Palace.
   
   “I′ve been coming here for 20 years. The food is always, always good. I know when I look at the menu that I′m going to find something that makes me say, ′mmmmmh, that sounds great.′ And, then you order it and it does,” smiles Walter, as he peers through his custom-made, and personally designed, bottle-like glasses, that made him look like a nuclear physicist.
   
   His opener when we meet; a plate of pate de campagne which he cuts up with relish, washed down by several glasses of Yl, a great Corsican Vin de Pays of 80% Grenache and 20% Nielluciu (Sangiovese), a hand-harvested, gustily earthy wine with hints of black tea, raspberry and fossils.
   
   Walter likes things authentic and home made, recalling a great lunch he had with Oscar de la Renta, who once sent Steiger a helicopter to ferry him to his estate in Connecticut.
   
   “Oscar actually grew his own vegetables! We had a corn and tomato salad, grown on his estate that was the best plate I ever ate with a designer… Lovely man Oscar, he behaves that way to everyone; the mark of a true gentleman, of course,” insists Walter, as he tucks into his main course, that succulent old Gascon specialty, confit de canard.
   
   Le Griffonnier′s menu is not for those on diets - Os a Moelle, Entrecote, pheasant terrine or andouillette, that′s pig′s colon sausage, by the way. It′s one of those bistros which takes it’s time to get things right. Le Griffonnier is closed all weekend, and only open one evening a week, Thursday, when people practically fight to get in.
   
   Post-lunch we stroll back to Maison Steiger Bottier, Walter′s new hand-made couture shoe boutique, where he proudly shows off red sequined boots Beyonce′s been sporting on her current tour and crocodile shoes for Lapo Elkann, the Italian luxury entrepreneur US Vogue described as, “possibly the best dressed man in the world.”
   
   There are various photos of Walter too, including him as a Swiss dandy in London, when Michelangelo Antonioni decided to use his shoes in Blow Up, his mannerist vision of the Swinging Sixties. Live has treated Steiger with some favor; he owns apartments in Paris and Fifth Avenue, New York; a farm in Emiglia Romagna and lives in a palazzo in Ferrara, where he produces his shoes.
   
   “I had so much fun in those London days; you could eat practically for nothing, scotch cost two bob and people were never more creative. Still, I did not have Le Griffonnier,” he smiles.
   
   Le Griffonier, 8, Rue des Saussaies, 75008 Paris. Tel. 33 1 42 65 17 17

2. Eyeing home cooking in avant garde eyewear; Walter Steiger at his favorite table in Paris, November 2009

3. Le Griffonnier′s pate de campagne opener

4. Walter in his new "couture" space with the latest last for Lapo Elkann

5. Le Griffonnier′s Gascon specialty, confit de canard