PARIS JOURNALNov. 24, 1995Credit...The New York Times ArchivesSee the article in its original context from November 24, 1995, Section A, Page 4Buy ReprintsTimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital the ArchiveThis is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived labor costs, higher taxes on meals, critics who think nothing's sacred, and now terrorist bombs running a great restaurant in France has always been a high-risk business, but lately it's also become a little bit like combat."We are a long way from the end of the tunnel," said Jean-Pierre Haeberlin, maitre d'hotel of the Auberge de l'Ill in Alsace, one of 20 restaurants in France awarded three stars by the Michelin Guide, at a gathering of chefs at the Crillon Hotel here the other us continue to inspire our customers with the stuff of dreams," he said, and for seven courses Christian Constant and a team of more than a score of sous-chefs from the hotel's two-star Les Ambassadeurs restaurant tried to do just days, though, clients are more likely to swoon over the bill than the bill of fare in the temples of French haute cuisine. At the Crillon gala, the annual dinner of the Traditions & Qualite trade group, the hot topic was money, which it takes plenty of to patronize most of the hotels and restaurants in the group."I have the reputation of running a very expensive restaurant," acknowledged Claude Terrail, owner of the Tour d'Argent in Paris, "but the truth is that our prices have been relatively constant for the past 10 years."Price has never been an object at his place, which has a breathtaking view of Notre Dame Cathedral across the Seine and is famous for its pressed duck. The management says customers should expect to spend at least $200 to $240 a person, including service but not wine, for a three- or four-course lunch there is an $80 fixed-price menu, which another leading restaurant guide, Gault-Millau France 1996, recommends "unless you have an oil well in your backyard." Mr. Terrail says he loses money on it."I own the building, so rent isn't the problem," Mr. Terrail said. "What people don't realize is the enormous capital it takes to run a restaurant with impeccable standards."I can take 150 customers in the restaurant, but for them I need 110 employees. With 4,500 bottles of wine in the cellar I have to have eight wine stewards, plus four trainees. In France, payroll charges for that kind of staff add up very fast."On top of all this, in July a terrorist bomb went off in an underground commuter train practically right under his restaurant. "Bombs?" he asked with a Claude Rains grin. "What bombs? I'm not well informed; I don't read the newspapers."The biggest bomb in the French restaurant business was set off by the publication last month of the new Gault-Millau guide, which reduced the number of restaurants receiving its top rating from 28 to those demoted was one of the most venerated French chefs, Paul Bocuse, whose restaurant in Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or near Lyons was dismissed as "not as superlative as some."Mr. Bocuse brushed off the attack, saying he refused to feel "traumatized," and he still has three stars in the Michelin Haeberlin, chef of the Auberge de l'Ill, said, "What Gault-Millau did to Paul Bocuse makes me sad, but I don't think it can really hurt his reputation."More of a setback to restaurants like Mr. Haeberlin's, in a village 35 miles from Strasbourg, was a Government road-safety measure reducing the permissible blood-alcohol content level from to milligrams of alcohol .0175 ounces per liter 34 fluid ounces of blood, about what two glasses of wine will do to most people."The average check at our restaurant went down right away," Mr. Haeberlin said, to about $145 a at these prices, French restaurateurs find themselves in a profit squeeze. With crystal wine glasses costing a minimum of $20 apiece and little silver saltcellars as much as $240, and scores of cooks and waiters required to provide the kind of service that people expect for their fistfuls of money, the restaurant business is not as profitable as it used to been even less so since last summer, when the Government raised the value added tax from percent to percent. Rather than pass it on to customers, many restaurants absorbed result, at places like Bernard Loiseau's La Cote d'Or in the Burgundy village of Saulieu, is that an entree like his frogs' legs in garlic puree with parsley juice, $60 on the menu, now brings in only $ in profit, he told a television interviewer the other day."I don't make any money on the restaurant," he said. "Nothing is precooked, nothing is prepackaged, and it all takes a tremendous amount of labor and personnel."Mr. Loiseau said he made more money out of the small luxury inn attached to his in Paris, many top restaurateurs have taken to opening branches where entrees are less expensive and more profitable. Jacques Cagna, whose Michelin two-star restaurant on the Left Bank serves meals that can cost $125 a person, runs across the street most evenings to greet guests at his Rotisserie d'en Face, where a whole three-course menu goes for less than $40. He owns two other more moderately priced restaurants."You have to try to meet your customers halfway," Mr. Terrail said with a grin.