Where the Elite Meet to Eat

By Hugh Sidey

THE PRESIDENCY

Jean Baptiste Delisle may be the most skillful politician in Washington. Every noon he brings together the folks who count in the fractured capital and he sends them away a little mellower. Paul, as he is known to the cognoscenti, is the maitre d' of the Sans Souci, the restaurant that has become a national institution.

Sans Souci may be the most significant extracurricular power arena in the Western Hemisphere, perhaps the world. It is the only place where the people who run things still see each other and behave in a civilized way. And eat well, too.

A couple of Fridays ago Pierre Salinger, John Kennedy's press secretary, penned a note between bites of his shrimps sautes nantua and sent it over to Pat Buchanan, President Nixon's speechwriter, who was deep into an omelette au parmesan. Salinger congratulated Buchanan for his performance before the Watergate committee. On his way out of the restaurant, Buchanan stopped for a cheery chat with Salinger and his companions, Columnist Art Buchwald and Frank Mankiewicz, George McGovern's sometime campaign aide.

At another table on that day, Jeb Magruder dined on scampi and still looked a little selfconscious. But Paul is nursing this early Watergate casualty back to full participation. When Magruder called to see if he could still get a reservation, Paul said, "Of course, Mr. Magruder, you still belong to Sans Souci."

Indeed, Buchwald, who is more or less the presiding elder, claims that before long it will be just like Harvard. A father will have to enroll his son at birth to be accepted at Sans Souci.

Most of the 32 tables are committed for as long as the republic lasts. At every lunch Paul can expect Republicans, Democrats, rights, lefts, ins and apparently outs. Sometimes, to keep them all separated but still within view of each other, he will have to change a person's table 15 times before he or she arrives. The touchiest situation now is between the Nixon and Agnew men. Back on that same Friday, Paul maneuvered Vic Gold, Agnew's former press secretary and current White House nemesis, a respectable distance from Ken Clawson, a Nixon aide.

The other night Paul got a call from a man. "I am General Haig [the President's White House staff chief]," the voice said. "I would like a table for four and send the bill to the White House." Paul knows his people and their voices, and that is not the way things are done. He politely informed the impostor that he had no tables left, and the incident was quietly buried in Paul's memory, a rich lode of human behavior at the epicenter. Paul says, "I don't hear anything, I don't see anything, I don't say anything."

He does break a Sans Souci rule now and then, however. The restaurant does not send meals out. But on a lonely Saturday afternoon a plaintive request from Henry Kissinger for his favorite luncheon steak was instantly honored. A tray bearing an elegant setting was handed to a security agent who had been dispatched for the pickup. The nation went on.

The Sans Souci regulars have learned to read the subtle signs of power from the day's mix of people. A sudden increase in White House personnel means the President is out of his office. In the eye of every crisis, Kissinger shows up. Sometimes with a girl. How come, he was asked once. "It's hopeless," he joked. "There is no sense doing anything."

Buchwald claims that any story that survives 48 hours in the Sans Souci is almost certainly true. He also claims that any high Administration figure who is stood up at the Sans Souci is on the skids and had better begin to look for work.

"And if Henry Kissinger comes in and sits anyplace in the restaurant," declares Buchwald, "everybody's lunch is deductible." Since commissioners of Internal Revenue dine there, too, it may be so.

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