A barbette is the fixed area underneath a rotating gun turret on a warship. It contains the top ends of the hoists that lift shells and cordite from below.
Before the development of turrets, barbettes were raised circular platforms on the deck, on which the guns were mounted. The barbette was protected by a ring of raised iron plates, over which the guns fired.
When applied to military aircraft, a barbette is a position on an aircraft where a gun or guns are placed in a mounting less mobile than a turret. The word is frequently used to describe the tail gunner's position in bombers.
More generally, a barbette is a gun carriage that allows a field gun to be fired over a defensive wall.
Barbette uses local and organic ingredients as much as possible, presenting beautiful food in a casual, eclectic, bistro atmosphere.
Barbette has several food and wine events throughout the year, as well as live music occasionally, and an inexpensive prix fixe dinner every Monday evening.
Barbette is named for the renowned aerialist Vander Clyde, who graduated from high school early so as to join the circus.
Barbette became the talk of Paris and was befriended by members of both American café society and French literary and social circles.
Inspired by Barbette's act, which he described as "an extraordinary lesson in theatrical professionalism," Cocteau wrote a review in the July 1926 issue of the Nouvelle Revue Française, "Le Numéro Barbette," which is considered a classic essay on the nature of art.
To Cocteau, Barbette's craftsmanship, practiced on the fine edge of danger, elevated a rather dubious stunt to the level of art, analogous to the struggle of a poet.
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