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1901
King Edward VII
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1908
Claude Monet
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1921
Trotsky
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1923
Georges Clemenceau
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1923
Chou En-lai
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1944
Charles de Gaulle
Winston Churchill
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1962
General
Bradley
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1944
General
Patton
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1943
Sergeant
Montgomery
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Ernest Hemingway at
la mère Poulard's table during
the invasion of 1944
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1956
Bernard Buffet
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1979
Paul Bocuse
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1988
François Mitterrant
Margaret Thatcher
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Although la Mère Poulard never left her ovens and
Mont Saint Michel, she was ever curious about the world and traveled in her own way by receiving her guests, who arrived from all horizons.
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She loved to keep dedications in her special memory book, photos with warm comments or drawings quickly made on the corner of a table.
The hotel of Mère Poulard has maintained this tradition even in the modern-day period and thus reveals a small part of history.
In this way, we discover that King Edward VII and the English royal family, regular guests at the Mère Poulard's in the beginning of the 20th century, contributed greatly to her reputation.
The President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, and the President of the French Council Georges Clemenceau - hero
of the First World War, great friend of la Mère
Poulard and a big fan of her cuisine - contributed also to this budding fame.
They would have certainly been surprised when the young Chou En-lai stayed there in 1923 before returning to China where, twenty-five years later, along with his travel companion Mao Tse-Tung, he actively participated in the Chinese Revolution.
A few years later, the future Chinese Prime Minister could have rubbed shoulders with another revolutionary, this one deposed, Trotsky, who began his exile in the best possible way and could have happened upon members of the grand financial and industrial families, the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, loyal to la Mère Poulard throughout the entire 20th century.
Among the crowned heads who stayed at her hotel, la Mère Poulard had a weakness for the prince and princess Takamatsu, of Japan's imperial family,
as well as for the several Russian princes and princesses in exile who regularly came to her place of business, where they drowned their sadness during joyous evenings that went on until late into the night.
We have no doubt that la Mère Poulard would have appreciated that, upon the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of her hotel, we celebrate the cordial entente between the Prime Minister of England, Margaret Thatcher, and the French President, François Mitterrand, who had come to discuss the problems of the world surrounded by good food.
In the same way, she would have been proud to learn that her hotel had served as the general headquarters during the invasion of 1944 and that in such difficult moments as in the years of commemoration that followed, General Patton, General Bradley and Sergeant Montgomery appreciated her food, just as Winston Churchill, great statesman and grand epicurean.
Ernest Hemingway, did not detach himself from la Mère Poulard's table for several days in order to describe, in detail, the armaments using during the invasion.
As a connoisseur, he certainly noticed the comment that had been made a few years earlier by the French singer Maurice Chevalier when describing his own stay: « Splendid place - Good eats - Good service - Charming hosts - I shall be back! »
Because naturally the Mont Saint Michel and la Mère Poulard
belong to that group of artists, just like the painter Foujita
who drew a small cat, Bernard Buffet a pan and, more surprisingly, the American actor Charlton Heston who sketched the Mont Saint Michel with talent and extraordinary speed.
The list of artists who loved la Mère Poulard is long and we will cite a few here in the style of a Prevert poem who, by the way, was also a
great fan of eating at la Mère Poulard's: Claude Monet, Jean Cocteau,
Marcel Pagnol, André Malraux, Françoise Sagan, Jean
Gabin, Rita Hayworth, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Woody
Allen, Glenn Glose, Juliette Binoche, Arthur Rubinstein,
Jean-Michel Jarre, Charles Aznavour, Christian Dior,
Yves Saint Laurent
Finally, we should not forget the exceptional men loved by la Mère Poulard, such as Charles Lindbergh after his crossing of the Atlantic or Alan Shephard who went to search for the stars before coming back to sit at la
Mère Poulard's table.
And the final word, of course, is left to the Master of French cuisine, Paul Bocuse, who said « la Mère Poulard, is (quite simply) France ».
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